Ancient campfires may have aided the rise of storytelling
news.sciencemag.org
news.sciencemag.org
My business partner and I have a weekly brainstorm on Tuesday night (not quite by campfire) that's focused on us coming up with wacky and crazy creative ideas. We often do it over wine, we let our imaginations run wild, we try to come up with extreme concoctions that might just be able to work, and we have a space to be creative and no idea is bad during that time. Surprisingly, we've found that this really helps our creativity for the other 99.9% of the work-week: sometimes, our crazy ideas come back to us (in more reasonable forms, less extreme) that we then implement and make happen!
In other words: we realized, too much of our day-to-day work is concerned with tactical issues, so we've created a space around a virtual fire to unleash our creativity, which then helps us in the day-to-day.
Maybe this work due to evolutionary forces on humans since these paleolithic days!
I mean, all the work is done for the day, you've likely eaten (or are eating), the dark sky and the fire sets the mood, stories are told. We still do it to this day (although not as often). It's why people go camping...
Some of the older cultures have a fire tending tradition. For some, the "fire starter" was a sacred, and respected skill. In others, a boy or a girl was initiated into the tradition by given a fire to tend when they come of age (around 10 - 12). They tend to it all their lives, merge the fires when they get married. When their children becomes of age, they start a fire for the children from their own fire. When they die, that fire they have tended all their lives cremates their body for the final time.
Modern-day Fire rituals are not confined to the candle or the flame or turning on the TV. Running a torch around the world is an example.
These days, we're out of touch with Fire. We typically control it in the form of gas fuel lines or electricity (lightning, in the old stories are considered a different form of fire). Your mom probably told you not to touch the stove, because it is hot and it will hurt. We have fire-safety drills. We have fireman who comes in to wipe out the fire, lauded as heroes. The typical story we have around Fire these days involve explosions, anger, and destruction. Lots of mad cackling.
The old stories of Fire, on the other hand, speak about inspiration, will and drive. Fire worked with the other elements: Earth to contain it and is itself the fuel and raw materials; Water to circulate and transport heat; Wind to stoke it up. Fire is to be respected, both the fire in the campfire and the fire within your belly.
When you lead people in your quest to make it big, change the world, or to get rich, is your inner fire that of anger, rage, suffering, and destruction? Is your "disruption" story another fancy way of saying attack and ill will? Is it another way of saying you're going to take over the world and control it with power?
Or is your inner fire inspirational? Is it the clear, cleansing fire that burns the darkness you carry within? Is it the kind of fire that you'd share with friends? Is your inner fire the warmth of your love and the light of your vision?
Which is why everyone should go camping, and be forced to start their own fire with only matches (no fire-starter). I'd say with a couple sticks, but then they'd never go camping again.
Starting a fire, tending it, cooking over it, and sitting around it and telling stories/playing games is one of the best experiences one can have, it's fun, frustrating, satisfying, and enlightening all at the same time (just put the phones away though).
The next startup I am joining, I'm going to try convincing the whoever it is to do this kind of a thing. "Team bonding" is not a very good substitute.
It's fun though! We do it nearly every weekend in the summer. It's also fun cooking on a wood fire - you set the heat by moving the pot around, stoking the fire, spreading the coals, etc...
“I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.”
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/books/review/24LEWISKR.htm...
I didn't say it was good or bad. You did. I said people became out of touch with fire and the stories and experiences around fire. We've more or less lost touch with fire as an inspirational experience, and it seems to me, your words more or less is a great example of it.
Correlation is not causation. Maybe people found that stories are best suited to being told by firelight, but without fire they would have found time for them at other times.
These days, the role of flame in the hearth has been taken up by the TV.
It's why I like my Franklin stove in the living areas and relegated the TV into a separate room.
I guess if "I hacked my life by taking cold showers" is worthy of hn attention, then "I hacked my culture by telling fireside stories" should be too...