Anecdotes
An anecdote is a short story about an event the story-teller considers interesting or amusing. For some reason, older people love anecdotes- we are considered to be in our anecdotage. We use anecdotes to illustrate lessons of life, to remind ourselves of good and bad times in the past, to demonstrate the relevance of our experience to current events. Frankly, we love to tell stories of our youth- no matter what happens later in life, things were better when we were young. Even if, from an objective standpoint, things were worse, we were better, we were younger.
We also love to generalize from anecdotes, to insist that the morals of our stories are applicable to all situations. And that's the danger: We begin to rely on anecdotes as evidence of how things are in every case. A writer on a favorite website notes that the plural of anecdote is not data. That's a good thing to remember. Just because something happened once in a certain way doesn't mean that it will happen in the same way in the future. Just because a solution to a problem proved correct in the past doesn't mean that the same possible solution will work when the problem arises again. A series of anecdotes, necessarily based on an individual's (limited) experience, don't make up a comprehensive database.
It's ok to tell stories. If you enjoy them. it's ok to tell the same stories over and over again. It's not ok to make your judgments based entirely on anecdotes. And it's not ok to expect your listeners to act the same as you acted in your anecdotes. Times are different, people are different and, need I say, your memories may be imperfect. Our experiences are an important part of the bases for our judgments, but they aren't the only ones. Facts, an understanding of the times and people and our experiences form a good basis for our judgment. Stick to those.
7-3-06
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