Story is Organic

“Gregory Bateson goes on to give his definition of story:

A story is a little knot or complex of that species of connectedness which we call relevance. In the 1960s, students were fighting for “relevance,” and I would assume that any A is relevant to any B if both A and B are parts or components of the same “story.”

Again we face connectedness at more than one level:

First, connection between A and B by virtue of their being components in the same story.
And then, connectedness between people in that all think in terms of stories. (For surely the computer was right. This is indeed how people think)

. . . thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds, whether ours or those of redwood forests or sea anemones.

In other words, Bateson sees story as a form of all organic organization.”
- quotation comes from Gold, Joseph. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 79-80
- internal quotation comes from Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Bantam: New York, 1980. pg 14.