Every story is the story of change
The surprisingly simple reason why things get noticed
A brief anecdote about a vigilant ape
While walking across the savannah one warm summer day, the story goes, an upright ape hears a rustling from behind.
The rustling could be a lion hiding among the blades of grass.
Or, the rustling could be the wind blowing across the plain.
The ape has a choice: he may turn, or he may not, and thus he might live, or he might not.
If he turns, and there’s a lion, and he lives … then he’s learned something. He’s learned to recognize the sound of a lion in the grass.
And if he turns and there’s no lion and he lives … then he’s learned something as well. He’s learned to recognize sounds that are similar to lions, but aren’t actually lions.
The ape learns something from not turning, too.
If the ape doesn’t turn and there’s no lion and he lives, he’s learned to dismiss the sound of the wind.
And if he doesn’t turn, and there’s a lion, then he’s dead. He didn’t learn anything, but his friends and family and all their descendants will have. The gene pool has one fewer ape who can’t distinguish the sound of the wind from the sound of a lion in the grass. The ape’s mistake benefits the rest of ape-kind, though sadly it doesn’t benefit him.
This, of course, isn’t a new story: it’s the story of pattern recognition, and why recognizing patterns is an important skill, and how deep in our noggins we’re just primates who process patterns.
Today, the ability to recognize patterns helps us to make life-saving distinctions like friend’s face vs. foe’s face, and time-saving distinctions like Bachelor vs. Bachelor in Paradise.
But what’s typically elided in the story of recognizing patterns is this: every pattern begins with a change.
When the ape first heard a rustling, what he was noticing were sensations: the sudden sound of blade-on-blade scratching, and how close or far it was, and how fast or slow it was happening; the sudden movement of air on his skin, and how strong or weak it was, and how fast or slow that was happening; and an infinite number of other facts about his surroundings that, from one second to the next, had changed.
Every pattern begins with a change, and every feeling begins by noticing the intensity of that change.
When the ape walked back to his campfire that day, he told his friends and family, in his own ape-like way, the story of what had happened.
Millions of years later we are still telling stories about what just happened and why we feel the way we feel, so we’d do well to remember two things:
- Every feeling is a feeling about change.
- Every change implies a story.
So whether it’s a news story in a paper, or a marketing story about a product, whether it’s an anecdote you tell your friends or the tale of a great romance—every story is the story of change.
Every Story Is the Story of Change
We have always paid attention to the differences between things. Comparison is the only way we understand the world.
This is, for example, how our eyes evolved.
Five hundred million years ago a protein inside a single-called organism sensed a change in electromagnetic radiation and sent electrical signals to a flagellum.
The protein sensed a new pattern, the pattern of non-darkness, and moved itself toward or away from light.
The pattern of the light created a feeling about light.
This is similar, for example, to how our friend the ape’s hearing works.
Changes in air pressure created vibrations in small bones, which sent waves through the fluid in a spiral cavity, which moved hairs, which sent electrical signals to the brain.
The ape heard a new pattern, the pattern of non-silence, and moved toward or away from sound.
The pattern of air pressure created a feeling about air pressure.
It’s no wonder of profundity to say that organisms respond to sights and sounds. That a pattern of facts from outside creates a pattern of feeling within.
But it’s worth remembering: the proteins that became the eye and the small bones that became the ear didn’t begin by responding to nothingness. They began by responding to a somethingness that changed.
They moved toward the light, or they didn’t, and so they lived, or they didn’t.
And they moved away from the sound, or they didn’t, and so they lived, or they didn’t.
They learned to do what they were continually rewarded to do.
But each began with a feeling about a single thing: status quo isn’t a story.
This is, of course, how the internet works
Everything on the internet is a rustle in the grass. Same with television. Same with streaming video and push notifications and everything we consume. We seek out change. We are surrounded by change.
The most noticeable of those changes are the ones we feel are timely and interesting and relevant.
The more timely and interesting and relevant the change, the more intense the feeling.
Take the ape.
The more the rustling grass appears to be sudden (timely), unique (interesting), and close (very fucking relevant), the stronger the ape feels about it.
When change was a literal rustle in the grass, attention was spatial-temporal. The timing of the rustle, the distance from our ears, our proprioceptive sense of our limbs in space, all these things mattered.
But these days, we experience most change through media, where attention is more temporal than spatial.
When consuming media, we literally use less space to experience an exponentially greater number of changes in time. We walk less in the (literal) tall grass of the savannah, and think more in the (metaphorical) tall grass of television and the internet and VR.
Reading this, right now, you are exchanging tiny movements (taps, clicks, swipes) to receive large amounts of change. These changes will have no effect on your space, but plenty of effect on your time. This is why it’s called the attention economy.
If you think this sounds like you’re a battery for the Matrix, well there you are.
Today, if a change is timely and interesting but not relevant, it’s merely distracting. This would be breaking news alerts about famous people you’ve never heard of, sci-fi esoterica retweeted into your timeline by entertainment reporters, a co-worker who consistently slacks you GIFs, procrastinating by CMD-tabbing between applications, and anything upvoted in /r/showerthoughts.
If a change is timely and relevant but not interesting, it’s merely boring. This is doing your taxes, most conference call hold music, quarterly earnings from established companies, replying to work emails, waiting for the subway, and driving a road you’ve driven many times before.
If a change is relevant and interesting but not timely, then it’s put-offable. This is reading historical non-fiction, finally watching that Akira Kurosawa DVD your ordered from Netflix three years ago, any longform journalism you saved to Pocket, meditating, and visiting that up-and-coming neighborhood that everyone says is so cute.
If a change is all three, then it must be addressed. This would be a flash flood warning on a clear afternoon, a new Star Wars teaser trailer, a frantic phone call from your mother in the middle of the night, a significant someone saying they love you for the first time, a campus shooting when your child is at school, a Facebook Live video of a murder, a tweet from a man who has the nuclear codes, and maybe sometimes an actual lion.
The important point is this: whatever seems to be most timely wins.
The more sudden a change is (something just happened), the more that change may be relevant (it’s more likely to affect you), and thus interesting (huh, this is a unique kind of shit that’s happening).
This is why videos autoplay, and why CNN is constantly “breaking news”, and why people write important tweets in caps, and why Alex Jones is always yelling, and Keith Olbermann is always yelling, and everybody is always yelling. If you don’t have any new facts, the only way to make something timely and interesting and relevant is to induce new feelings.
New facts certainly happen, but it’s a lot easier to induce new feelings. It’s a lot easier to make you feel there may be a lion lurking behind you than it is to produce an actual fucking lion.
The intensity of a lion
It is always the intensity of feeling a change, and not the fact of the change itself, that compels us to act.
This is why the most exhilarating moments are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell your boat, why orgasms are short-term fun but relationships are long-term hard, and why people find it difficult to care about climate change.
This is also why climbing Everest isn’t about being at the top. Climbing Everest is about the climb. Peak experiences are not about the peak, they’re about the feeling of getting to and leaving the peak.
Another way of saying that is this: You can always get what you want, but you can never keep it.
Every story is the story of change. It can be no other way. And no story ever stops changing. Unless there really is a lion lurking behind you.
But even then, for the rest of us, the story would continue … having changed.
