Political activists should be aware that stories are more powerful movers of the human spirit than propositions. A fine example comes from the journey of the amazing movie Bella, Mike D’Virgilio writes.
Lectures just don’t have the same power to move the human heart as a well-told story. As important as logic and intellectual rigor are, they will never by themselves move people in the way a vivid, truthful story can. Yet the right for the past half-century has acted as if lectures and political activism were sufficient to win a people’s hearts and minds. A wonderful example to the contrary is the 2006 movie Bella:
Like many of Jason Jones’ best ideas, this one came in the middle of the night.
A member of the production team that put out the pro-life hit movie of 2006, Bella, Jones’ previous nocturnal brainstorm had instigated Bella Hero, a campaign devoted to putting a copy of the film in the hands of every visitor to a crisis-pregnancy center in the United States.
Next came Bella on Campus, which raises funds to pay for college screenings.
Now, because of a chance meeting with a New York City beggar, drug addict and ex-con to whom he had given a ticket to the movie the day before, he had a new idea and a new target market.
He instantly called up Tracy Reynolds, one of his key partners in Bella Hero, and pitched it: “Why don’t we screen Bella in prisons?”
You can read the rest of the article here.
–Mike D’Virgilio
The one compilation of books, which many divide into “Old” and “New” versions, cited by the Right as the most important Book written is full of almost nothing but stories. In the fact the Central Character of that “New” version never once gives a lecture, but He does tell plenty of stories. Only when his thick as brick followers stare at Him in bemusement does He slip into more mundane “logic and intellectual rigor.”