Truth or verisimilitude in story work

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —February 13, 2007
Filed in Business storytelling

The Master gave his teaching in parables and stories which his disciples listened to with pleasure – and occasional frustration, for they longed for something deeper.

The Master was unmoved. To all their objections he would say, ‘You have yet to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story’.

Anthony De Mello, One Minute Wisdom

Now this opens up a whole can of worms because if you take Bruner’s concept of a narrative mode of thinking, then the objective is not truth but verisimilitude.

About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

Comments

  1. ken says:

    verilismily what? that’s a big word 🙂
    Sounds like an elephant, a big ‘thing’ (subject or object). Can the-truth can be different at different points in space and time (for those blind men feeling the elephant, in the platonic shadows) – i like simple words, and truth is a simple word but big subject – perhaps “point-of-view” conveys the idea (doh! plato strikes again), we can have different points of view (of the same mess – now there’s a word i love 🙂 and from those pov’s (implying characters) come one or more stories (not just dry facts). What’s cool about the story is the storyteller and audience come together in a place (space/time) and the teller knows whether the connection is there (or they are dieing on their feet), like this stream of consciousness mess is 😉

  2. Thanks for cutting through the crap Ken and making a simple and important point. It’s not a word I can use easily without passing around a dictionary 🙂
    While I agree with the idea that the teller and the listener ‘come together in a place’ I think we need to be careful not to overdo the performance metaphor. Most storytelling, certainly in a business environment, happens without most people noticing except for those attuned to story. I find myself going to meeting and presentations and thinking “Wow! so many stories” or “Wow! hardly one story and the one told was vague and abstract.” Thanks again for prompting some thoughts.

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