Just Imagine...

We are all born storytellers.

It's a uniquely intrinsic part of ourselves and our culture. On a surface level, we consume movies, books, plays, comics, and countless other forms of media on a frightfully large scale, ever digesting and regurgitating shared pieces of cultural heritage. But even on the smaller, more individual level, we live and thrive on the stories we create every day. The lives we imagine for strangers we pass on the street. The bits and pieces we assume and consider for the people in our lives. We use these stories as a means of processing the larger world we live in- by creating stories and histories for each and every part of our lives, we begin to make sense of that which is impossible to understand. And, more crucially, we create stories to better understand and better empathize with the people around us. It's what makes us human.

And one of the best places to find this is in our own childhood toys.

After all, most of us had a toy at some point in our lives. The beat-up doll, the well-worn stuffed animal- any scrap of a plaything that we engaged with as a child. We created stories and histories for these playthings, and they soon became real and material parts of our own lives, helping us through the more trying parts of childhood.

But perhaps the best example of this comes with LEGO, the highly sophisticated interlocking brick system that has for generations allowed children to literally build their own stories. With a bucket of bricks we could create spaceships, monsters, castles, and whatever else our imagination could conjure. With LEGO we could take our stories and meaningfully interact with them in our own lives. They became real, physical spaces.

This is a journey through those stories.

Over the course of this blog I'll be meandering through the history of LEGO on a theme-by-theme basis, journeying through the various worlds it's created (City, Castle, Pirates, etc.) and taking a look at the things they say about us and our own lives. I'll walk through each world as its own physical space, and we'll seep in the stories they're waiting to tell.

Often we'll be looking at storytelling's intersection with consumerism- the way in which corporations have seized some of the most fundamental stories of our culture and twisted them for gain and profit. Other times we'll look at its intersections with history- sometimes, perhaps even religion. But more often than not, we'll be looking at the way we use stories as a resistance. As a means of rebellion and upheaval, tearing down the corrupt structures around us and telling new and better stories to replace them with. This is a story about social change.

And make no mistake, this is an actual story. With you, dear reader, whoever and wherever you may be, at the center of it. As I walk through, you will be thrust into a world of heroes and villains, of wars and rebellions, of love and loss. You will see worlds lost in fire, and born again in hope. Cities will be torn apart and rebuilt, brick by brick by brick, until something new and beautiful has taken its place. Because the key to social change is rooted in the power of stories, and maybe by telling this story now, we can hope to make a difference.

Let's begin.