Once upon a time, we intended to focus on one life-care service, our access to healthcare, but we were surprised by the results of our preliminary public inquiry. Five surprises to be specific.

First, everyone we approached, had opinions not just on access to healthcare but on the other prominent social services, too. Second, there was widespread opinion that the public agencies are not performing well due to funding shortages. Alas, the public does not know if it is due to reduced funding or fraud but access to services is obstructed or the, “services are failing to serve us.”. Third, their opinions were “embedded” in personal, familial, historical, and political stories. Fourth, storytelling investment was lop-sided toward one end of the spectrum. Those we approached expressed an overwhelming sense of futility in telling their story and even in their political votes. (We believe voting is the dramatic climax of our life-care stories as most of them involve governmental social services by default.) Fifth, conversely, we observed an insatiable desire to tell one’s story, but, a self-restricting “up-front” suspicion of our (the listener/inquirier’s) political bias and potential attack or manipulation of their commentary.

We questioned if the social services’ performance failures are ironically due to a lack of support (defense) by the public? Even if the public understands the societal value of government funded social services, does their own political efficacy interfere? Public commitment to their preservation, not to mention expansion, appeared to be fickle. Does that emanate from the individual vote or from undue political influence (oppression) by lobbyist and political party platforms? Worse, we heard a constant lament on the break-down in intergenerational and intersectional exchanges between the young and old, and between distinct communities self-identifying by cultural, faith, racial, wealth, etc. differentiations. 

Obviously, these observations struck us as central to our interactions with the public and impacting our original intent. We quickly deduced: First, we had to expand our subject to include access to all six life-care services, Second, the public’s ability to voice “direct, focused opinions” on our life-care services may be stymied. Third, in order for us to collect opinions about our six life-care services, we had to collect “stories.” Filmed stories to thwart the subjects’ fears of manipulation of their commentaries. Fourth, if there is an actual and perhaps even a ‘perceived’ lack of opportunity to tell one’s story, it adversely affects personal political efficacy and public political activation. Fifth, these dynamics supersede our primary inquiry into social services.

Storytelling can be an academic focus. The theories of narrative, ethics, history, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology all involve the analysis of storytelling and its individual/societal function. Yet, we make no pretense that our efforts are geared to rigorous academic standards. Instead, we are genuinely focused on the more elementary goal of motivating communication between our diverse neighbors and recording our interactive storytelling.

We now seek to explore storytelling as a personal and social dynamic, but the subject will be focused on the six life-care services: justice—education—sustenance—shelter—health—protection. We regretfully acknowledge that in today’s politically charged atmosphere, discussion alone of these subjects may be considered too political but we simply refute that assertion. They are the encompassing domain of our critical social services, they are broad enough that few should feel a sense of restriction, and they are vital to our personal and communal welfare and democracy.

As collectors, we believe we have reduced our political bias to a negligible level. We have no hypothesis only questions about the “health” of our storytelling. We drafted this website to explore the nature of storytelling, our six life-care services, and to inspire participation. We will simply catalogue peoples’ vast range of stories but with specified subjects, and, we have defined a time limit. The upcoming midterm election–about seven months away–strikes us as a reasonable end-goal of the ‘first phase,’ of cataloguing our stories. We will upload them on YouTube, as we go. 

Our penultimate declaration: We expect to encounter artistic expression as such stylized activity is inherent in the art of storytelling. We will leave the interpretations and evaluations to the viewers.

Our final note/almost premise: Within a democratic nation committed to freedom of speech and inclusion, and one that is insanely engaged with social media, ironically, too many persons from the entire political spectrum and age range expressed a sense of being divided and silenced. It begs the question: Are we being bullied by antagonists, agendas or algorithms, and if so, does it have a detrimental impact on our storytelling investment, our lifelines of perpetuity, our young?