The nature of storytelling, a storytelling nature
Bateson regarded stories, parables, and metaphors as essential forms of expressing human thoughts or the human mind in general …
For him, the important role of such stories was closely linked with the word “patterns.” If I had to describe the message Bateson tried to convey in a word, I would use the word “patterns.”
It was patterns Bateson was always talking about. A central aspect of the emerging new paradigm, maybe even the central aspect, is turning away from objects and focusing on patterns. Bateson aimed at basing all definitions on patterns.
A biological form is made up of patterns and not of parts, and this also holds true for the way we think. This actually is the only way we are able to think according to Bateson.
Bateson often emphasized that whoever wanted to describe nature should try to speak the language of nature. Once, he illustrated this quite dramatically by asking, “How many fingers do you have on one hand?”
After some moments of bewilderment, some of his listeners timidly answered, “Five.” Bateson shouted, “No!” Then some tried “Four,” and again he answered, “No.”
Finally, after everybody had given up, he said, “No.” The right answer would be: “You should not ask such a question. This is a stupid question. This is the answer a plant would give you since there is nothing like a finger in the world of plants and living beings. There are only patterns.”
As patterns are the essential thing in life, Bateson claims that it would be best to use a language of patterns for describing them. And this is exactly what stories do. For Bateson, stories were the ideal solution for exploring patterns.
What is important in a story is not what is true in it, nor its plot, nor its characters but the patterns which connect.
Fritjof Capra Speaking about Gregory Bateson
(Synthese – Neue Bausteine für das Weltbild von morgen
Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Th. Knaur Nachf., München 2000)
Ecoliteracy:
A Path with a Heart
An Interview with Fritjof Capra
by Barbara Vogl
