A single story is a background of perception of any person or life sphere, which is based on one-side view, provided by family, books, society. Life is full of single stories, which influence our world’s acceptance and close our eyes to the diversity of this world. A single story deprives us of perception choice. If a person sees the single story of a nation, culture, religion etc. he or she forcedly or of own free will narrow the mind and cannot judge objectively. A person pins a label on something or someone in advance, not giving a chance to himself or herself to see the full picture of the reality. The danger of single stories is that people live in a distorted world without truthful freedom of thoughts and actions. A single story that was written by writing elites creates an image of the only one story that existed, exists and will exist despite the fact that other humongous amount of stories exist.
It perverts attitude from the scratch and does not provoke appropriate feelings, actions, relations and one-sided views. It may lead to racism, social abuse, religious confrontations, it can even terminate a life.
There are a lot of single stories even in my life. For instance, the attitude towards Arabic nations, Muslim nations was formed only via negative news shown to me. There was no speech about their generosity, their beliefs or their family attitude. No, all the information dealt with cruelty, violence and fanatics. It automatically provokes a negative attitude towards an Arabic person even before meeting him.
Another single story is on the ethic views of euthanasia. Though it is a complicated topic, we were always told that nobody except God has a right to decide our destiny. A person who did not give birth to another person has no right to take his life. But also, we don't have a right to make a person suffer if his choice is to get relief. If not for a single story, the ethical point of such acts would be more developed probably.
In my life, I have never caught anyone who had a single story about me, though I'm sure there are such people. People may pin a label on me just looking at my gender. Even in the 21st century, a man will be paid more, whereas a woman is deemed not appropriate for certain positions. For instance an employer will often consider a woman less reliable for a job because of stereotyped emotional instability, putting the family value higher than the job (even if a woman is single). Before, I had no idea about it and was sure we were just not compatible with those people. Now I think maybe some of them just beforehand had no other option to accept me as they had a single story in their minds.
