"In the "Arabian Nights" ( The Thousand and One Nights) story collection, a young Persian queen named Scheherazade prevents the king's plans to execute her by telling a succession of stories so enthralling that the king doesn't want to miss the endings. In "The Crow and the Pitcher," one of Aesop's fables, a thirsty crow can't reach the water in a tall jug, so it drops pebbles into the jug until the water rises to its beak."
"Creativity and storytelling are like human superpowers when leveraged appropriately. Both can drive innovations or solutions that are "outside the box" of what is expected, and often never even seen before. These superpowers are getting extra attention in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), as AI provides answers and solutions based on what was, whereas only creativity and storytelling can lead us to what might potentially be. But something called storythinking-crucial to both creativity and storytelling-doesn't always get the attention it deserves."
Storythinking is the brain's narrative mode evolved to plan escapes from threats and to simulate sequences of actions and consequences. Tales such as Scheherazade's storytelling, Aesop's crow dropping pebbles, and the Trojan Horse illustrate creativity that breaks expected patterns. Creativity and storytelling act as human superpowers that generate novel possibilities beyond past data. In the age of AI, AI offers solutions based on historical patterns while storythinking enables imagining what might be. Heavy emphasis on logic in schools by third or fourth grade reduces storythinking capacity and contributes to a creativity crisis. Sarah Lagrotteria holds an MA from Stanford and is chief educator at Just Bloom School.
Read at Psychology Today
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