Humans are Hominid Primates. Hominid Primates Believe What They See And Imagine What They Hear.

-- By OliviaMartinez - 16 Apr 2021

This line, repeated throughout the semester, has stuck with me as I consider my theory of social action. This is key to making things happen in society using words.

Story Telling

My favorite book is Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurtson. In this “autoethnographical collection of folklore”, one of the first recognized collections of Black American folktales, Hurston documents and preserves the oral histories, the traditions, the dialect, the songs, and the lifestyle of Black communities in Eatonville, Florida and New Orleans, Louisiana, in writing. In my first year of college, this collection led me to an interest in how and why stories are told. From this, I learned (1) Oral story telling is an important tradition, and it keeps more than just the story alive (2) Writing stories down is a way to prevent their erasure, but this changes something about the stories permanently. (3) Stories are a method of survival, used to communicate things that can not be written or spoken without illustration.

Using the power of oral production and auditory consumption, change can be made. Humans can close their eyes to something they don’t want to see, but they cannot close their ears to what they don’t want to hear. Oral storytelling not only recreates the plot, but allows the listener to make it their own. I’ve seen many movies inspired by books, by which I’m deeply disappointed in the casting for a certain character’s role. After seeing the actor, I can’t disassociate their image from that character, who could have stayed in my imagination as whatever I wanted them to be. Hearing brings freedom, where seeing brings constraints.

Words Defeat Monsters and Words Grow Heroes

Growing up in South Jersey, I was terrified of the Jersey Devil, a creature I had only heard of from other people. One day, I decided to look up the monster for myself. Somehow, in my searching through pictures and different reiterations of this story, it became less scary. I believed what I saw, and the Jersey Devil became merely an evil, winged horse-like creature, instead of the many things it was in my imagination. To my ears the Jersey Devil was limitless, to my eyes he was merely another creature.

Words have the ability to grow a thing, and images have the ability to shrink it. Harriet Tubman was a small woman, born into slavery, with a debilitating illness. “Moses”, alternatively, was a force of power -- a hero. By word of mouth, enslaved persons heard of Tubman and, by her songs, they knew she had arrived. Oral messages were crucial forms of communication for constantly surveilled enslaved populations. These words, passed between people and sung by Tubman, made her larger than life.

When people hear of a person or a thing, their imagination allows it to grow. When people see something, it is limited, now existing within the boundaries of what is before them. The sharing of information via auditory channels can be used to create ideas, to invoke fear or to inspire, while sharing via visual channels may be used to prove, to limit, or to rationalize. Seeing is believing, and hearing is imagining.

Using This To Make Things Happen Using Words

An important part of making things happen with words is to make others understand why the thing matters, and why it should happen. For example, police body cameras made it possible for America to see that George Floyd’s death was a murder. While the words, “I can’t breathe” were powerful, we’ve heard this before without the same effect. However, a full eight minutes of video footage can not be denied. The judge and jury didn’t need to imagine what happened -- they saw. This makes certain movements and changes, where there is visible evidence of the wrong being done, placed directly in front of the eyes of millions of people, easier to catalyze and keep alive than others.

Issues Hidden in the Shadows

With issues of little visibility, such as conditions of confinement in prisons or domestic violence or inhabitable apartments, those who do not experience it can close their eyes to these ills, and might not ever see it. These issues are not caught on camera, and often impact people who are already pushed into the dark corners of our society, where we don’t look if we don’t have to. When stories of such issues do emerge as headlines a few days, it almost makes them seem irregular: this is the one story of this happening and that’s why it is broadcasted. Although the image might be horrific, it makes the issue smaller, like seeing the Jersey Devil’s image did for me. Awareness is not enough. The ugly truths need to be there even after a person closes their eyes to the horrors. The marches, the chants, and the constant news coverage still have not let people forget George Floyd. People may close their eyes and look away, but they can not close their ears to the sounds of pain and the sounds of change. They can not close off their imagination to what can come from this.

Re-Imagining Justice

The Role of Storytelling

With issues of little visibility, such as conditions of confinement in prisons or domestic violence or inhabitable apartments, those who do not experience it can close their eyes to these ills, and might not ever see it. These issues are not caught on camera, and often impact people who are already pushed into the dark corners of our society, where we don’t look if we don’t have to. When stories of such issues do emerge as headlines a few days, it almost makes them seem irregular: this is the one story of this happening and that’s why it is broadcasted. Although the image might be horrific, it makes the issue smaller, like seeing the Jersey Devil’s image did for me. Awareness is not enough. The ugly truths need to be there even after a person closes their eyes to the horrors. The marches, the chants, and the constant news coverage still have not let people forget George Floyd. People may close their eyes and look away, but they can not close their ears to the sounds of pain and the sounds of change. They can not close off their imagination to what can come from this.

This is fine work. It needs unification. You are writing about the consequences and ramifications of one idea, which happens to be my Second Law of Social Psychology for Lawyers. But the Jersey Devil, the living legend that was Harriet Tubman and the body cameras of the early 21st century paramilitary police are relevant illustrations that take up too much space and detract from the unity that is the draft's architectural ambition. They need to be presented lucidly in their essentials, perhaps supplemented by other ways in which making things happen in society using words triggers imagination through story-telling and acted drama. From Arnold to Leff to Simpson we read works that might contain other useful examples that can be invoked in very few words. I think the fulfillment of the effort ilies in pulling the skein more tightly together, so as to emphasize the richness of your single idea once it has been orchestrated as you choose.

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