I don’t find their argument that you can “reject having a narrative” very convincing. Human beings exist embedded in society, and to handwave that away in favor of “perspectives” just results in you adopting a different narrative, the “I reject narratives” one. Which is ultimately why existentialism never really went anywhere.
Instead I think the problem is actually the exact opposite: people don’t embrace stories enough. Modernity is accurately described as a place without any coherent sort of arch-story for society and local-story for individuals and places. To use the concept by Deleuze, everything has been too “deterritorialized.” We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
Humans desire narratives to understand the world, but the world is too complex to be captured into reality.
Those arch-theories already exist in the theories like Dialectical Materialism, or worse, Fascism, and with terrible consequences once they confronted reality.
The circumstantial perspective of (Liberal Western) Modernism & Postmodernism may have it's flaws, but it has offered more practical results in policymaking than not.
I’d describe those things (along with most traditional worldviews) as failed attempts to encapsulate reality into an over simplified story. But just because they failed and had bad consequences doesn’t mean that the attempt itself is misguided or impossible. Otherwise, the alternative seems to be an endlessly growing malaise, which isn’t much of a solution either.
In fact, I think the lack of such an attempt to make a coherent story is what draws people to the over simplified ones in the first place.
Why do you believe such alternative suggestions exist?
Maybe there aren’t any such that are risk free. So you have to evaluate both the potential upsides and downsides to see if it’s a net positive and worthwhile risk to take.
Then I'm really not sure what exactly you are arguing for or against. The act of making a story that attempts to give meaning to human life and society? How would you evaluate that for potential upsides and downsides, and what are you comparing it against?
> Then I'm really not sure what exactly you are arguing for or against.
If it helps, neither do they. Given that they are already suggesting Postmodernism provides a valuable philosophical and analytic view to understand the world, it's pretty clear that they've given up on any concept of defining a pathway, outcome, or objective.
Probably because most of those don't line up with how humans experience the world. Storytelling has a long history in the human experience, while haiku or epigrams aren't really the sort of thing one can "wrap" a life around.
Humans experience the world as a story, but that is not necessarily the most human way to wrap a life around as you are implying. In some cases there are more powerful frameworks. For example Hitler is wrapped (by most of the world at least) around the damage and pain he caused not around his story.
Stories are mostly fine, but thinking that we should strive for that to being the main perspective is limiting.
Why would that be the qualification for success? I didn’t write that “everyone believing it” was the marker of success, so I don’t know why that would be relevant.
In another comment thread, I wrote that a story is needed which combines accurate scientific information with a human purpose in the world. Those examples quite obviously didn’t have scientific views of the world.
By that token, every attempt to encapsulate reality into a simplified story is successful until it fails. Not a very useful thing to bring to the table
Narratives are unfortunately intrinsically very good tools for sociopaths to manipulate people. That makes them an attractive nuisance for sociopaths to gain at very best, just like how large piles of uninvested money serves as an attractive nuisance for thieves. Judged more harshly, narratives are a tool whose purpose is the promotion of delusion.
>and to handwave that away in favor of “perspectives” just results in you adopting a different narrative
The point isn't to hand-wave anything. Freeing yourself from narratives is a lot of work. The person who probably took this idea most seriously was Stirner, often pointing out that people who leave religious faith just sacralize human nature. ("leaving Man with a capital M intact"), making the oppression even worse.
To be free when rejecting narrative is also to be on the lookout to not chase freedom in a naive way, but it is an achievable process, and it is exactly that. You're obviously never done if you take the idea seriously.
But it is probably the most single liberating thing a human being can do. Personally speaking I come from a blue collar household, I had drilled into me that I must learn a vocation. I didn't, I went to uni and got a CS degree because I loved computers. Some choice as simple as this many people don't make because of how strong the narrative is that their parents tell them about who they are supposed to be. And there's millions of decisions like this. A lot of people think they must buy a house in the suburbs, just because everyone else says so. They actually despair if they don't. The extent to which people imitate desires of others in societies that are supposed to be free is incredible.
> A lot of people think they must buy a house in the suburbs, just because everyone else says so. They actually despair if they don't. The extent to which people imitate desires of others in societies that are supposed to be free is incredible.
Indeed, and I am quite amazed by that seeing that behavior in others. Although maybe/probably I am biased by other narratives in similar ways while not being aware. I feel it would be liberating to understand those narratives and see them for the mere stories they are.
As the resident stirner shill of this website, Thank you.
The unique and its property is and will always be my favorite book. There really isn’t any other proper defense of radical individualism philosophically.
Stirners worldview is so unique and fresh. It’s sad to see how little impact it’s had on the world, except within anarchism of all places.
I think stirners thought is 100% compatible with liberalism (I’m liberal because it’s in my interests to be liberal). We still have about zero stirnerist liberal scholars. John Rawls sucked the air out of the room far too early!
You touch on something interesting there - a lack of a solid, consistent narrative, such as the Cold War, leaves a vacuum into which incoherent and disparate tales grow, as people seek a new bulk narrative to explain their world. Instead of a largely coherent narrative across societies, one ends up with numerous, usually conflicting, narratives.
Maybe we just need to accept that our narrative is more James Joyce and Marcel Proust than it is Michael Crichton.
I actually think that it's much deeper of a problem than the lack of a geopolitical situation like the Cold War, and instead goes all the way back to Copernicus and Darwin. While these discoveries (that humans aren't the center of the universe and weren't created in a supreme being's image, but are evolved from animals) were good from a scientific truth perspective, I think they had a negative malaise effect on human psychology – if only because the previous narratives were thrown out without a sufficiently meaningful one to replace it. And so yeah, you just get a variety of localized, incoherent narratives arising in this vacuum of meaning.
The answer that is really needed IMO is a way of squaring contemporary scientific knowledge with a story that still centers humanity in the universe and offers a better worldview than "you're a primate lost in space."
Hard to say. It might be simply a supply problem- most movies, books etc. don’t really promote this vision of humanity’s place in the world, so it indeed might be a question of accessibility. Historically, belief systems definitely had a wide range of “content” aimed at different levels of society.
But there also seems to be a real interest in “spiritual” needs, whatever that might mean in particular. And so a purely scientific approach may not be enough in the first place.
Personally I think it may be too much of a past-focused narrative to be very compelling. Most successful religions have a vision of the future, not merely the past.
So a proposal might be: construct a narrative that defeats these two biases in a convincing way:
But there are two very human biases on display here: the idea that occupying large amounts of physical space is indicative of "importance"; and that things which exist for long durations of time are inherently more valuable. These are human biases and there any many examples in nature of the exact opposite being true.
are they getting in the way of finding a middle ground between being lost in space and being the center of the universe? do we need to find a middle ground?
in my opinion a compelling narrative primarily needs to address the problems humanity is facing today: poverty and wealth, climate change, gender equality, war and conflict, disagreement of religion, racism and prejudice, injustice...
i think to address these, it doesn't matter much whether we are lost in space or the center of the universe
It isn’t a comforting story. It doesn’t give meaning or explanation. People imagine themselves as a tiny ape on a giant rock hurtling through the void and shiver at the nihilistic vision.
Now, being made by a magic man who will welcome you to his magic wonderful home after this short, nasty, brutish life? There’s a comforting story.
It's not a comforting story, but I think it can provide meaning. It does for me at least. While we are not gods, we are different from all other animals - we are where "the fallen angel meets the rising ape" as Terry Pratchett wrote.
While we might not have free will in an absolute, metaphysical sense, we can self-reflect, practice self-control, shape our environment, and even change our nature. What will we do with this power?
There is no eternal afterlife to go to, but we now understand what actual life is - and it's no longer so nasty and brutish. Perhaps soon it won't be so short either. We are certainly capable of extending it in principle, we just need to get our shit together.
Comforting stories are cozy, but we are growing up. We've become smart enough to cause a whole lot of trouble for ourselves, and are not yet wise enough to fix it. We're confused, can't make sense of things and constantly whine about it. But that's how growth works. Humanity might just be in its awkward emo teenage phase.
The answer that is really needed IMO is a way of squaring contemporary scientific knowledge with a story that still centers humanity in the universe
i agree. science and religion need to be in harmony and not contradict each other. if there is an apparent contradiction we need to open to the possibility that we are either misinterpreting the religious claim or that the scientific findings need further research or even both.
You can find sarcastic discourses about whoever think anthropocentric is a sane point of view that go back as far as we have any philosophical account. Take Xenophane’s Satire for example
Copernicus and Darwin didn’t change much things on that side.
I wholly disagree with your later point though. Knowing that we are only primate lost in space, that civilizations and even our whole species could totally disappear tomorrow without any deity to help, save, rescue, blame or give congrats is actually a far more appealing scenario in term of being challenged to excel. Compare that with "you are full first class member of that special species that the most perfect imaginable being ever created and whatever you do you’ll be granted salvation and experiment an eternal existence in paradise".
"you are full first class member of that special species that the most perfect imaginable being ever created and whatever you do you’ll be granted salvation and experiment an eternal existence in paradise".
That's really not an accurate description of the role religion has played in human psychology, and is only accurate for a very specific subset of beliefs in a specific time and place.
My argument was more that humans thought of themselves as inhabiting a world designed for them, but then learned that this was (likely) not true, and that for many people this is a pessimistic, nihilistic conclusion.
- I'm talking primarily about the Western world and its legacy of Christianity. The situation is different in India, China, etc.
- Even then, in practice, most successful religions tend to have a human-like personal figure in an important place, even if the religion itself is technically non-personal.
If the point is about "humanity" and how the world cannot have non-human goals, then rejecting the inconvenient religions (oriental, animistic, whatever) is definitely not a convincing argument. Those are just as humans, and don't explain the world in the convenient western way. So yes, we can very well live in a world not designed for humans.
The point is about Western society and its progression, not “humans” in general. So yes, one route may to be create a belief system more similar to animist or other religions. But that is itself a tall order.
A lot of this has to do with the Enlightenment project and disenchantment so it’s already largely focused on the Western world to begin with. Other places have less a history with this.
All I can suggest is, if you really want to take a scientific approach to all this, you may want to start by finding out what Christianity actually teaches, rather than the garbled third-hand nonsense you've quoted above, which bears no resemblance to anything taught by a mainstream Christian denomination at least since the Council of Nicaea. I'll admit it's not easy to figure out, especially when some churches like to continue arguing with others about some of the details, and also when "just read the Bible" really doesn't help because it's hard to make sense of on its own (sorry, Luther, but sola scriptura never really stood up, otherwise all the preachers would be out of a job). It takes time and patience to really understand what claims Christianity makes on your life and on the world. Welcome to theology, it's not science, but it still requires critical thinking, intelligence and a sensitivity to nuance.
mankind has been created to carry forward an ever advancing civilization
that's what i go by. the goal is for each individual and for humanity as a whole to better themselves during their life on earth and how they will experience their eternal existence depends on how well they do on earth. plenty of motivation for me, and better than the idea that after i die there is nothing and therefore what i do in my life doesn't really matter.
That's a narrative from a certain perspective. Let's advocate for different perspectives, like the article does.
I'm perfectly fine with the Darwinistic idea that mankind has evolved from something very primitive rather than created for a purpose.
The declaration of basic human rights is a narrative that humans deem good. But they are still human inventions, no superior creator needs to be involved to have something deemed good for everyone.
We are here, that is a fact. Why or how is a mystery. You can build narratives around that but in fact they are not necessary. I would say, let's just make the best of our existence by trying to not make other beings miserable.
You can build narratives around that but in fact they are not necessary
well, that is the question. that narrative may not be necessary for you, but it is for me and for many others.
what do you think will be more successful/sustainable? convincing everyone that we don't need a narrative or adopt a narrative that is beneficial for all?
your idea of making the best of our existence by trying to not make other beings miserable is a good one. and it is compatible with advancing civilization. so why don't we focus on working together to achieve those goals (and other related goals like peace, elimination of poverty, justice, clean environment, etc) instead of arguing whether we need a narrative or not?
> well, that is the question. that narrative may not be necessary for you, but it is for me and for many others.
Being convinced that we need something is not the same as something being necessary for us. There are all sort of human endeavor out there whose main goal is to convince us we need something, be it some
consumer commodity, some skill, or some divinity. Most often than not, people who conduct these propaganda campaigns are themselves convince that it's relevant to do it for some of their aspiration to become a reality, be it something they expose in what they communicate openly or some more or less hidden agenda.
The topic is not that much about are narratives a necessity, but what they lead to. If they lead to people wanting to give only love and respect to other as much as for themselves, that sounds great, and who would complain, really? If they lead to "we the camp of the good vs the heretics evil others that must be destroyed whatever the means", that's an entirely different concern.
When we think "advancing civilization", we are actually stashing the real issue that is that there is not "a single narrative about a single civilization".
It makes as much sense to ask whether we need narratives as to ask whether we need tools. Stories can glorify the gun holder or the people who learnt how and when to use first aid kits.
Being convinced that we need something is not the same as something being necessary for us
of course it isn't. all i am saying is that arguing about that difference is not helpful.
whose main goal is to convince us we need something
which is no different than trying to convince us that we don't need a narrative.
this is the problem i have with dominant religions today. to much focus on the narrative itself. not enough focus on using the narrative to solve actual problems. narratives are being treated as if they are the solutions in themselves, as if only believing the narrative will solve our problems automatically.
instead of pushing a narrative, what we really need is to adress the problems humanity is facing today. i'll use a narrative for those that need it, if it helps them to understand why certain problems need to be solved, but for those that don't need a narrative to do that, i won't. i don't care about people believing the narrative, i care about them solving problems.
The topic is not that much about are narratives a necessity, but what they lead to
true. the actual narrative needs to be carefully chosen. not all narratives are good, and bad narratives do need to be replaced. but again, it is easier to come up with a better narrative than to convince someone that the narrative is not needed.
After reading all above, i am convinced that the three of us are saying the same. The only difference is our definition of 'narrative', a term pksitioned somewhere on the long gray area between religion and a suggestion.
ones personal suggestion could be someone else's religious mandate. that's part of the thing with stories. everyone is free to take them as serious as they like. for good and for bad. we all know the cases where someone takes a particular story to serious and goes overboard trying to live by it.
The author answers the inability to escape all narratives with the ability to constantly change perspectives. From the article:
> We might never fully escape the narratives that surround us, but we can learn to change the perspectives behind them. And so, we are never bound by stories, only by our ability to understand how our beliefs and values shape the way we perceive and engage with the world. We don’t need better narratives; we need to expand and refine our perspectives.
There are problematic narratives though. The robin hood one, were you are always the underdog against a evil universe out to get you. The everything is people and societal norms narrative, that completely blends out the physical universe as a sort of "defeated" final boss and thus is blind for dangers like global warming. Many more come to mind.
>We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
Religion, at its most fundamental core, is about providing a set of guidelines and contexts with which to make sense of life and the world around us so we can spend less time bickering and worrying about things that we ultimately can't do anything about.
I feel the mad rush to reject and remove religion from society in the 20th century onwards has caused significant damage that we should address. It's not like religion is gone either, we've simply found impromptu replacements that are inferior and repeat a lot of problems religion dealt with already (eg: politics, "science", fanboyism, etc.).
religion needs to evolve and grow with the development of humanity. the currently dominating religions are no longer capable of addressing all the needs of our global society, which is why they are losing ground. but instead of finding a viable alternative we get distracted, as you say, by inferior replacements.
Religion as a binding factor falls apart in a society where it's trivial to encounter multiple someones with a different holy book than yours, each who claims theirs is the only correct one.
only if that religion claims exclusivity in exclusion to others. in order to address todays problems a religion must not do that but it must be inclusive and open to all. technically, at least to a degree the abrahamic religions do that in that they do claim that their predecessors are genuine and their followers are considered people of the book. the fact that many members today reject them is a misinterpretation of their respective holy words.
a modern religion must be inclusive to all others, not just the abrahamic religions. at least all those who expect a return of their prophet which is the case not only for all abrahamic religions but at least also for buddhism, hinduism, zoroastrianism, and even native american religions. (there may be others, but i am not familiar with those)
This is how autocracies are appealing, initially. You replace reality by one narrative and it all feels good, at least if you are among those favored by the choose narrative.
> To use the concept by Deleuze, everything has been too “deterritorialized.” We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
That’s a narrative in and of itself. The Opium of the masses.
And judging by the length of the comment thread, it’s really difficult to change someone’s mind once they have settled on a narrative, like trying to kick a habit.
Indeed, a solid narrative is dangerous. Consider a 'solid' narrative that seems fine at first sight: you tell yourself constantly that you are happy to just be able to be here, and that you are whole with the world. It would somehow feel very liberating to you, but at the same time having the danger of not trying one's best, of not taking care of self and others. Exactly the effect of drugs.
But I think the example is bad. If you actually experientially know you are whole with the world, I think it would push your limits and take care of others even better.
People don't tend to take care of others because of the idea of separation between you and me. It's the cause of all wars. People tend to do things good for themselves or who look like themselves.
I was more thinking about an exaggerated example, people who simply convince themselfs that they are happy (LSD-like happy), it will not advance others and also not themselves in the long run.
Deleuze being uncritically mentioned is evidence that everything you’ve said here is intellectual bankrupt.
Deleuze and Guattari, Jacques Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Jung, and most of their disciples are at best fashionable nonsense, always charlatans, and there’s even evidence that some of the success of post-structuralism was a psyop from your local spymasters to keep Ivy League intellectuals from doing subversive shit in the USA like May of 68/situationalist internationale.
For all the problems that existentialism, Sartre, Camus, De Bouiver, and the other existentialists had, they tended to write (more) coherently and they descend (slightly less) into the pit of academic wankery.
Seriously, Deleuze and Guattari destroyed continental philosophy. Anti-oedipus is full of shit. Freud is full of shit. The oedipus and Electra complex and mirror stage and object petit an are all psudo science. Reject their work in every instance or continue the further debasement of academic philosophy.
> We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
I disagree. Religion has fulfilled that role for millennia and all it gets you is people being abused. Fascism has also fulfilled that role with the same results. Look at communism in Cuba, China and the Soviet Union. Everyone blindly sharing the same narrative is dangerous
> just results in you adopting a different narrative, the “I reject narratives” one.
This is like saying that atheism is just another religion because it's the belief in nothing. In a a hairsplitting way it may arguably be true but atheism does not provide a consistent(-ish) narrative about the world like religions do and therefore is fundamentally different.
In the typical Western sense of the word Atheism (that is, not just as a label defining the lack of belief, but the specific instance of ideas/people) is not another "religion," but it's absolutely another "belief system" that often comes with the same set of beliefs about various things.
It's largely an intellectual distinction, because in practice everyone still acts and exists in the world. Identity itself is probably impossible without having some sort of story about who you are.
To be clear, Atheists have different belief systems. They all have in common that they believe in one less god than monotheists, and a handfull less gods than polytheists (that, they share with monotheists), but overall you can have different belief systems that do not involve the existence of one (or multiple) god(s).
I know someone who does not believe in gods because he think aliens are playing with us (fake flags etc. Basically the Stargate mythos, except he never saw the show). Less anecdotal, Chalmers is definitely Atheist, but i sure don't have his belief system, and i'm sure no functionalist does.
Also, in general, philosophy of mind is imho the best way to test you belief systems. Or maybe it's the philosophy field i'm the most comfortable in and thus the one where i pushed my beliefs the furthest :/
I don’t really want to repeat what I already wrote, but just to sum this up again: yes, the mere label of atheist doesn’t imply a specific belief system. But in actual practice, in the real world and not merely in definitions, it tends to indicate certain groupings of beliefs.
In other words, the definitional concept of atheist doesn’t imply a specific belief set (except in the choice of using such a word to define oneself), but the sociological definition definitely does. If we looked at various communities calling themselves atheists, they certainly have beliefs in common.
It’s always confusing to read an article where the way your mind works is seen as an error. It must work somehow. You cannot operate without simple algorithms or more complex “narratives”.
If you ever moved you know the feeling of a new apartment when you have no automatic habits yet. You have to decide everything - how to hold your keys, where is a light switch, which side is too sunny and requires blinds, does elevator work or is it just slow. But then you adapt cause your mind automates the hell out of it. Left hand, further on the right, the one with the table, it’s not that slow (it is).
If you ever learned something new, you know the feeling and you know how much you want an overview before digging deep. To make sense of it, to structure it anyhow, just that much. Otherwise it stays untackable and overwhelming.
A waiter in the article is a template/overview that you start with. It’s only a problem if you’re “a little autistic” and stick to it despite receiving negative feedback. But then narratives aren’t your primary problem.
If your every thought and action started afresh, you’d be incapable. Otoh detecting that an algorithm is messing with your life is a useful skill. I think that the article could drop the (probably click/read-bait) idea of “narrative bad” and instead simply point out that this phenomenon exists and can be analyzed for overuse.
Not as an error, but as something that can trap you in certain behaviours.
This is something you can find in other places. I've read that in education books where they advise you to get kids to see themselves as nice and competent, in order for them to internalizing this is who they are (and conversely, not to tell them they're idiots, they're not nice or stuff like that). It's also in that "win friends and influence people" book, "give people a reputation to live by". And more simply, "fake it till you make it".
Now when it comes to getting rid of narratives, I'm not sure what it really means. The whole thing around replacing with perspectives, which is pretty much switching from prose to poetry, I didn't get. Maybe I'm not smart enough, or maybe it's something that correspondance to different characters.
I find Robin Hanson's interpretation resonates more (on lex podcast). According to him, the executive brain (which is a huge chunk of consciousness) acts more like a press secretary than a dictator. It creates a narrative to justify our actions to others. So making a narrative is THE JOB of the consciousness.
Think of life as one long trial. The narrative you weave is not for your benefit, really. It's for the Tribe: the judges and the jurys. So trying to weave an esoteric or arcane narrative won't work, and you know it wont, if you know others won't buy it or understand it. You need a narrative that others, or at least a subset of others that represents authority, would be able to buy. You don't really have a choice in it. It's just how we are built. And why would you want to go against it really.
The article is talking about the narratives we construct of the external world.
The two may not be entirely unrelated; our facility for constructing an narrative of the external world might have led to us constructing a narrative of our internal world.
> It creates a narrative to justify our actions to others
I would disagree on that point.
I believe that you create that narrative for yourself, to create an illusion of consciousness. More than that, an illusion of consciousness through time. That's why memories are so easily modified/created by outsiders. That how placebo/nocebo effect works. That's why you create fake memories from a photography, or why you sometimes tries to justify reactions post hoc.
This is also just a theory (inspired by Keith Frankish).
> Think of life as one long trial. The narrative you weave is not for your benefit, really.
I like the trial metaphor, but disagree about who it is for. It has to be for yourself. How you explain life, your actions, etc is only for you - it is an end in itself - and you have to be happy about it.
Alternatively, you can consider the idea that once you die, you then become the judge at your trial. How do you find yourself - guilty or innocent?
"This is the reason we can tell the business world." ( says one fictional CEO )
The real reason may be something else altogether, but people will accept this rationale based on that if provided. I don't think you are wrong.
Pareto is well known for his 80-20 split; he's less well known for dividing bases for action into residues (sentimental bases, differing largely by whether one is conservative or progressive by inclination) and derivations (the logical rationales one gives for proposed or taken actions).
Consider Dolphus Raymond in To Kill a Mockingbird. He weaves one narrative for his birth Tribe, but when Scout looks on the other side of the fabric, there's a plot twist for himself and his adopted Tribe.
Some people see an abyss or total blankness, and panic, because they don't know what to do with it and need to be given a purpose. Others see the same and rejoice, because it is the ultimate canvas on which a creative can make things.
> As Sartre warned, everything changes when you tell a story. Narratives limit our potential. Though we are complex beings, living in a chaotic universe, our stories create the illusion that our lives are ordered, logical and complete.
Of course life is full of endless potential, but people and in general society could not function without some kind of shared narrative. In the case of society the narrative is culture. It both limits us and nurtures our potential to move beyond it. There is a duality.
I have but one meager, measly, impoverished point of view, but I can tell multiple stories from my one point of view, because I can imagine the point of view of other people.
What is dangerous is being trapped inside a single story, which can be related to trauma in some cases. (Search something like trauma story loop)
When you are trapped inside a single story, you can have strong feelings that you MUST respond in certain ways to certain stimuli, as there is no other story that could be true. When you can tell a different story, you can make progress.
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Edit: the author's reference to 'perspective taking' is very much like what I am saying. It's still a silly article.
> "Think of the ways that perspectives organise experiences differently. By ‘perspective’ I mean something more complex than ‘point of view’. I’m referring to the way we engage with the world from a particular position or orientation that draws our attention to aspects of experience, like how our visual ‘perspective’ allows bright colours to show up more easily than dull ones. Perspectives are shaped by our place in the world, our beliefs, values and what we think matters. As the philosopher Elisabeth Camp explains, a perspective ‘helps us to do things with the thoughts we have: to make quick judgments based on what’s most important, to grasp intuitive connections, and to respond emotionally, among other things.’ Through perspective some features of our experiences ‘stick out in our minds while others fade into the background.’
Perspectives, then, determine the narratives we adopt. In other words, our core beliefs and values shape the way we see things and what we take to be important in our experiences. It is our perspectives that generate our narratives. Perspective also explains why our narratives can differ so radically from those of other people, even when we experience the same events. But once we understand these perspectives, we can see how flexible our narratives can truly become. Perspectives, it turns out, don’t have a linear, ordered structure. We can’t think of them in terms of sequences of events, like stories. In some ways, perspectives are better represented by the non-linearity of poetry."
Folks. Please. I have a request. Read the article first. Someone took the time to write it. Don't dash off a quick gut reaction to the title and then go back and read the text later.
I read the first 3 paragraphs, skimmed, and the last paragraph, and did a keyword search (I should have search for perspective, but that wasn't on my mind).
Title is bad no matter what.
Edit:
Here's another Narrative:
The author is a university professor and most often writes for students.
As such, they expect the reader to fully and completely read the whole selection, as they will be tested on it.
I, however am not a student, and so the first thing I do is evaluate whether an article is worth my time. I do this by reading 3 or so paragraphs, skim for keywords, and the last paragraph. This is so common there must be a name for it [0] that I don't know because I am also not a media studies graduate.
As this is so common, it must be written for; the author is expected to introduce any keywords in the first 3 or last paragraph. If they do not, the editor should return it.
The title is generally not written by the author, but may be selected from a list that are provided by an editor. The author should update their writing so that the title makes sense in context.
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0. grug brain media literacy?
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Edit 2: I have no idea if the narrative above is true
Why should I? It’s full of critical theorists, whose whole careers were based on nothing but critiquing things they either didn’t read at all (see Zizek admitting to this repeatedly), or poorly/narrowly read.
It’s absolutely in line with critical theorist nonsense to just critique it without reading it! Very rhizomatic thinking! No biopolitical thinking here at all!
I’ve found rejecting the tendency to reduce people to narratives so incredibly important with our children.
Whether their latest choice has been probably good or probably bad, keeping those choices as something they did rather than something they are keeps the future open for them.
"The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad - because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune." ~ Alan Watts
The map is not the territory. Est (and its offspring Landmark) talked about this a lot: the distinction between the things that happened and the story we tell ourselves about the things that happened. What would happen if we told ourselves a different story? What are we getting from the current story that keeps us hanging on to it? Etc
Well it's OK not to act as a waiter in a cafe while you are in fact a waiter in a cafe but some customers might be unhappy about how you conduct yourself as a result, they might leave and your boss is likely to fire you.
So that particular example was not convincing. That "actor doing a script" angle is true but the idea that you can drop it at any time is sadly not; many people have hard expectations of you depending on which role you are filling in their life at the moment. If you "break character" they'll reject you.
Which is by no means a bad thing per se -- but it's also something a lot of people avoid, so the disclaimer of "break character and people will leave" is necessary.
It goes both ways though, I've had work handed to me for generous sums just because I did not hide my actual persona and was not only acting as a programmer.
As with everything: "it depends".
I find myself in agreement with the premise of the article in general which can IMO be paraphrased as "do not do one-dimensional analysis of your life; treat it like thousands of smaller things happening at the same time and often intersecting". True enough, though our feeble human brains prefer just 2-3 narratives at a time and to shape our self and idea of a life story around them. So I agree that it's useful to try and actively sabotage with this way of internalizing life. We should not ignore complexity, for as much as our brain capacity allows it.
> I've had work handed to me for generous sums just because I did not hide my actual persona and was not only acting as a programmer.
You just switched the professional programmer role for a professional technical business problem solver unless you go around solving problems for businesses for free
Same here. It's just wishy-washy uncommitted phrasing indicative of "don't make a strong opinion that is polarizing" that is so characteristic of AI generated text. I used to use an online writing service for content many years ago and one of the hallmarks of "I'm doing this for a little extra money" and "I'm a pro writer between gigs" was the "in conclusion" and "therefore" and the three part school essay structure. It screamed bad writing, and I am seeing the same kind of flags in AI generated text too.
I was at a music festival in Southern California and had a 5meo-DMT trip. During the trip the vantage point of my consciousness left my body, saw that the universe is a hologram, and time as we experience it is a lower dimension. The human life is a temporary experience and yes it is all just a story.
What an awful article; full of a-priori conclusions that lead down that blissful road to despair and nihilism. The world needs less of this form of superficial thought. The article claims that narratives can give more meaning, as if meaning can come from anywhere else. The story is THE meaning - it's consciousness that gives narrative and consequentially meaning to everything. Be careful of what you "liberate". Your mind can be open enough to the point that your brain falls out, you know.
That said, I don't disagree with everything the author had to say. I agree with the point about the danger of making yourself the main character.
reminds me of the famous zen tale, as I recall it:
A western professor once went to a zen master in order to study zen. The master welcomed him, and offered him a cup of tea. When tea was ready, he began to pour the liquid into the professor's cup. When the liquid reached the top of the cup, the master continued filling it, making the tea go all over the floor. The professor asked what he was doing, and the master answered: "This cup couldn't hold more tea because it was already full. If you don't first empty your mind from your prejudices, how can I teach you anything?"
Oh yeah. I had a shift one day when the "I" realised the narrative it has been living on was a bunch of cherry picked crap of emotions and memories.
Till then I used to do things that fit the narrative. A voice in head that criticises when it deviates.
Now I am free to do more things that don't fit the narrative.
It's brings much more freedom. But with narrative going away you also need to find a good replacement for the existential questions which will soon starts knocking down the door.
Narratives in the world of ideas play the same role as governments play here: they create order to prevent us from sliding into anarchy. And just like governments often create too much order, which is tyranny, narratives also tend to crystallize over time and become dogmas. Until we haven't evolved beyond our selfish nature, governments and narratives will remain necessary.
Oh boy, my crazy niece had some weird stuff to say about this. Here goes:
"Narratives are anthropomorphization of time. Anthropomorphization of non-human concepts is taking something that is beyond human and turning it into a human-based idol, distorting it in the process. Like other idols, it can be used to manipulate and deceive. Therefore all narratives are manipulations and deceptions, sometimes done for self-comfort, other times done to manage a populace."
I thought about this, and thought the perspective interesting. However I think it is stretching the concept too far so I don't buy it - you can't simply call everything you don't like idolatry. I also thought it got uncomfortably close to conspiracy-theory style thinking so I told her to just shut up.
This is an interesting concept, but it doesn't seem like the article does it justice. Does anyone have suggestions for further reading on the topic? Either rejecting narrative thinking or crafting helpful ones.
I find this a facinating topic, especially as someone who studied film and storytelling. This paper, while I dont fully agree with all of it, is wonderfully provocative and goes much deeper than this article in exploring this topic https://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/against_narrativity.pdf
Or just don’t treat life like a story because you’d compare it with other stories. The only reason someone goes “This is the story of my life” is likely to brag or get sympathy or something Facebook-esq
The End of the Movie
Starring Josh Groban
Featuring rachel bloom
So this is the end of the movie
Whoa whoa whoa
But real life isn’t a movie
No no no.
You want things to be wrapped up neatly
The way that stories do.
You’re looking for answers
But answers aren’t looking for you.
Because life is a gradual series of revelations
That occur over a period of time
It’s not some carefully crafted story
It’s a mess and we’re all gonna die.
If you saw a movie that was like real life
You’d be like “what the hell was that movie about?”
It was really all over the place
Life doesn’t make narrative sense.
Nuhuh
We tell ourselves that we’re in a movie.
Whoa whoa whoa
Each one of us thinks we got the starring role.
Role role role.
But the truth is sometimes you’re the lead
And sometimes you’re an extra
Just walking by in the background
Like me, Josh Groban!
Because life is a gradual series of revelations
That occur over a period of time
Some things might happen that seem connected
But there’s not always a reason or rhyme
People aren’t characters
They’re complicated
And their choices don’t always make sense
I see the author is perhaps ironically rejecting a narrative by using another narrative to advocate for their position.
The author is sort of implying that there's harm to society and the individual by engaging in these narrative arcs without any actual evidence to support their position. Merely a "I feel" and "might" and "could even become dangerous."
Way too many wishy-washy phrases attempting to soften their opinion, but then goes on to present a false dichotomy of absolutes vis-a-vis: You either embrace the narrative structure and have it destroy you, or you reject the narrative structure and live a care free life.
And because of the uncommitted weasel phrases this entire article has the hallmarks of AI generated slop that someone had to rush through for publication because they procrastinated. I'm flagging this one as "yawn."
> Living in a non-narrative way means rejecting a particular identity, and instead seeing life and meaning as a set of open choices.
I choose to fly up through the sky into outer space, away from this place. ;-) Oh wait, I don't have wings, and there's no way to fly into outer space besides maybe begging for a ticket on Virgin Galactic.
It's true that choices are important, but it's also true that you have less control over your choices than you might think (see e.g. The Power of Habit). In particular some choices that you would like to decide one way are simply impossible to actually do.
In practice I've found the best way to modify choices is to build tools. In particular my smartphone - at this point essentially all of my life is directed by apps. There are some cases where this backfires, e.g. recently I found myself driving to an event location and halfway there I realized the event had been cancelled and I had forgotten to remove it from my calendar, but it's the best I've got.
I think this is an interesting point. I don't think the article makes it well. So I'm going to throw away the article and just make what I think is a better argument. But if you want the tl;dr version (and this is the Internet, so people want that), I would say:
Math.
Frankly I don't think math is really a 'story.' You can try to fit it into that frame, but I don't think it's a natural fit. So often the data we need doesn't easily compress into story form: in fact, the best way to describe it is to use mathematical terms. Which leads me to my other example:
Physics.
Now here's an area where we've become really explicit about saying "Do NOT tell a story about this" in many situations. There's the math and what it describes, which goes first, and then some limited descriptions around that, which comes second and tends to get more wrong the more of a "story" it becomes. In fact we often say something like "this is what the math says and all interpretations beyond that are speculative." Which is about as anti-story as you can get.
Which is interesting and worth reflecting on. Because what could be more fundamental than that? And yet, if the most fundamental things cannot be fit into story form, that really calls the whole story framing into question.
A writer who's taken that concept and developed it is Timothy Morton, with his idea of hyperobjects. But you don't have to agree with that; the above examples make the point - they're as 'basic' to reality as you can get, and yet resistant to the story format.
“Um yeeeah (Office Space), Peter if you could, like, just casually, reject one of the hard-wired evolutionary learning processes of your biology that would be great.”
One of the six characteristics of consciousness as formulated by Julian Jaynes in his work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is that of narratization: a story that we tell ourselves of how we got here, where we are going, and why towards that end. In addition, his notion of consciousness is that it is essentially lexical, linguistic, and metaphorical in character; our self-concept, our ideas of who we are, are in fact linguistic models we use to analogize the body physical into a mental metaphor, and it is language that facilitates this process through its ability to represent physical concretions with mental, symbolic abstractions.
Identity then is a narrative subroutine written in natural language, and in this way it becomes possible to speak forth identity and program a persona out of whole cloth through the force of the Word alone; this is the sense of the Logos and the famous declaration, "In the beginning was the Word," where all of reality was spoken forth through the utterance of language. This is the Western, Greek, and Abrahamic view of the primacy of language and of symbolic realism.
> As a result of embodying the waiter-narrative, he lives inauthentically because he can only act in a way that fits with the role. The narrative he follows gives him a limited understanding of himself [...]
This is why it is of paramount importance that one minds the language and narratives they use to describe one's self, for every utterance ascribed to one's persona circumscribes and limits it, setting it off on a fixed trajectory instead of maximizing optionality (see also pg's Keep Your Identity Small: "the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible" [0]). You are neither a waiter, nor a parent, a child, an athlete nor a hobbyist [1]:
The principal disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with
reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth, and our names
about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, with ourselves.
... and this Eastern non-identification with symbolic content is the rejection of narrative identity espoused by TFA.
The advent of postmodern social media has given rise to a new form of "hyperreal identity" now, where it becomes possible to publish language that literally creates personas and identities with no basis in physical reality. Confusing symbols of self with the actual self is not only easier than ever, it is the default mode of existence in the digital era, and one's avatar or social media profile takes precedence over the person themselves - a "simulacrum of the fourth order." One must be careful of the media they use to carry the language and narrative of their identity, because all messages are constrained by the medium they inhabit, and if the language of one's narrative is constrained, so too is their self-concept and their identity; we have progresses from "the medium is the message" to "the medium is your identity."
I don’t find their argument that you can “reject having a narrative” very convincing. Human beings exist embedded in society, and to handwave that away in favor of “perspectives” just results in you adopting a different narrative, the “I reject narratives” one. Which is ultimately why existentialism never really went anywhere.
Instead I think the problem is actually the exact opposite: people don’t embrace stories enough. Modernity is accurately described as a place without any coherent sort of arch-story for society and local-story for individuals and places. To use the concept by Deleuze, everything has been too “deterritorialized.” We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
Humans desire narratives to understand the world, but the world is too complex to be captured into reality.
Those arch-theories already exist in the theories like Dialectical Materialism, or worse, Fascism, and with terrible consequences once they confronted reality.
The circumstantial perspective of (Liberal Western) Modernism & Postmodernism may have it's flaws, but it has offered more practical results in policymaking than not.
I’d describe those things (along with most traditional worldviews) as failed attempts to encapsulate reality into an over simplified story. But just because they failed and had bad consequences doesn’t mean that the attempt itself is misguided or impossible. Otherwise, the alternative seems to be an endlessly growing malaise, which isn’t much of a solution either.
In fact, I think the lack of such an attempt to make a coherent story is what draws people to the over simplified ones in the first place.
How do you know they weren’t ‘attempts to make a coherent story’ that turned destructive?
I don’t, but what is your alternative suggestion? What important things don’t also have the potential to end badly?
Unless your position is a kind of Daoist quietism, I’m not sure what you are suggesting instead.
Why do you believe such alternative suggestions exist?
Maybe there aren’t any such that are risk free. So you have to evaluate both the potential upsides and downsides to see if it’s a net positive and worthwhile risk to take.
Then I'm really not sure what exactly you are arguing for or against. The act of making a story that attempts to give meaning to human life and society? How would you evaluate that for potential upsides and downsides, and what are you comparing it against?
> Then I'm really not sure what exactly you are arguing for or against.
If it helps, neither do they. Given that they are already suggesting Postmodernism provides a valuable philosophical and analytic view to understand the world, it's pretty clear that they've given up on any concept of defining a pathway, outcome, or objective.
Why is "story", which is known to be an accurate model, the preferred model? Why not non-linear dynamical system, epigram, clerihew, or haiku?
Probably because most of those don't line up with how humans experience the world. Storytelling has a long history in the human experience, while haiku or epigrams aren't really the sort of thing one can "wrap" a life around.
Humans experience the world as a story, but that is not necessarily the most human way to wrap a life around as you are implying. In some cases there are more powerful frameworks. For example Hitler is wrapped (by most of the world at least) around the damage and pain he caused not around his story. Stories are mostly fine, but thinking that we should strive for that to being the main perspective is limiting.
> For example Hitler is wrapped (by most of the world at least) around the damage and pain he caused not around his story.
Isn't this exactly part of Hitler's story though? I think I'm misunderstanding what your concept of "story" means.
I never said anyone had good prospects to complete such an evaluation in a single lifetime… in fact it’s very unlikely to happen.
But without that it’s hard to see how such proposals have any merit at all, considering the historical track record.
Both communism and nazism provided simplified narrative stories.
Yes, that's why I called them "failed attempts to encapsulate reality into an over simplified story."
This sounds like a non true scotsman. If large societies buying into a story doesn’t qualify it as a success, what does? M
Why would that be the qualification for success? I didn’t write that “everyone believing it” was the marker of success, so I don’t know why that would be relevant.
In another comment thread, I wrote that a story is needed which combines accurate scientific information with a human purpose in the world. Those examples quite obviously didn’t have scientific views of the world.
By that standard, successful societies are the ones without a story. While the ones with story are autocratic and dictatorships.
Those societies not being failures as a result. They both fail to properly understand politics and economics. Also sociology.
By that token, every attempt to encapsulate reality into a simplified story is successful until it fails. Not a very useful thing to bring to the table
Any movement. Communism, nazism, capitalism and religions.
Any extremist political '-ism' has thousands of murders in his belt.
The best goverments are the centered ones, the ones which gave both individual and social rights.
Narratives are unfortunately intrinsically very good tools for sociopaths to manipulate people. That makes them an attractive nuisance for sociopaths to gain at very best, just like how large piles of uninvested money serves as an attractive nuisance for thieves. Judged more harshly, narratives are a tool whose purpose is the promotion of delusion.
ding ding ding we have a godwin
>and to handwave that away in favor of “perspectives” just results in you adopting a different narrative
The point isn't to hand-wave anything. Freeing yourself from narratives is a lot of work. The person who probably took this idea most seriously was Stirner, often pointing out that people who leave religious faith just sacralize human nature. ("leaving Man with a capital M intact"), making the oppression even worse.
To be free when rejecting narrative is also to be on the lookout to not chase freedom in a naive way, but it is an achievable process, and it is exactly that. You're obviously never done if you take the idea seriously.
But it is probably the most single liberating thing a human being can do. Personally speaking I come from a blue collar household, I had drilled into me that I must learn a vocation. I didn't, I went to uni and got a CS degree because I loved computers. Some choice as simple as this many people don't make because of how strong the narrative is that their parents tell them about who they are supposed to be. And there's millions of decisions like this. A lot of people think they must buy a house in the suburbs, just because everyone else says so. They actually despair if they don't. The extent to which people imitate desires of others in societies that are supposed to be free is incredible.
> A lot of people think they must buy a house in the suburbs, just because everyone else says so. They actually despair if they don't. The extent to which people imitate desires of others in societies that are supposed to be free is incredible.
Indeed, and I am quite amazed by that seeing that behavior in others. Although maybe/probably I am biased by other narratives in similar ways while not being aware. I feel it would be liberating to understand those narratives and see them for the mere stories they are.
As the resident stirner shill of this website, Thank you.
The unique and its property is and will always be my favorite book. There really isn’t any other proper defense of radical individualism philosophically.
Stirners worldview is so unique and fresh. It’s sad to see how little impact it’s had on the world, except within anarchism of all places.
I think stirners thought is 100% compatible with liberalism (I’m liberal because it’s in my interests to be liberal). We still have about zero stirnerist liberal scholars. John Rawls sucked the air out of the room far too early!
You touch on something interesting there - a lack of a solid, consistent narrative, such as the Cold War, leaves a vacuum into which incoherent and disparate tales grow, as people seek a new bulk narrative to explain their world. Instead of a largely coherent narrative across societies, one ends up with numerous, usually conflicting, narratives.
Maybe we just need to accept that our narrative is more James Joyce and Marcel Proust than it is Michael Crichton.
I actually think that it's much deeper of a problem than the lack of a geopolitical situation like the Cold War, and instead goes all the way back to Copernicus and Darwin. While these discoveries (that humans aren't the center of the universe and weren't created in a supreme being's image, but are evolved from animals) were good from a scientific truth perspective, I think they had a negative malaise effect on human psychology – if only because the previous narratives were thrown out without a sufficiently meaningful one to replace it. And so yeah, you just get a variety of localized, incoherent narratives arising in this vacuum of meaning.
The answer that is really needed IMO is a way of squaring contemporary scientific knowledge with a story that still centers humanity in the universe and offers a better worldview than "you're a primate lost in space."
> a story that still centers humanity in the universe and offers a better worldview than "you're a primate lost in space."
The fact of being a self-aware meta-cognitive primate lost in space isn't enough of a miracle to justify feeling centered in the universe?
It might be, but I don't think culture at large finds this story very inspirational.
Why do you think that is? Is this narrative too complicated, or too different from the sort of myths that we naturally tend to create?
I wonder whether it'd be possible to make the story more inspirational by telling it in more accessible ways.
Hard to say. It might be simply a supply problem- most movies, books etc. don’t really promote this vision of humanity’s place in the world, so it indeed might be a question of accessibility. Historically, belief systems definitely had a wide range of “content” aimed at different levels of society.
But there also seems to be a real interest in “spiritual” needs, whatever that might mean in particular. And so a purely scientific approach may not be enough in the first place.
Personally I think it may be too much of a past-focused narrative to be very compelling. Most successful religions have a vision of the future, not merely the past.
Do have some proposal for a narrative that could work?
Big question, and one worthy of a book-length treatment.
One starting point might be what I wrote in a comment here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41358528
So a proposal might be: construct a narrative that defeats these two biases in a convincing way:
But there are two very human biases on display here: the idea that occupying large amounts of physical space is indicative of "importance"; and that things which exist for long durations of time are inherently more valuable. These are human biases and there any many examples in nature of the exact opposite being true.
why do these biases need to be defeated?
are they getting in the way of finding a middle ground between being lost in space and being the center of the universe? do we need to find a middle ground?
in my opinion a compelling narrative primarily needs to address the problems humanity is facing today: poverty and wealth, climate change, gender equality, war and conflict, disagreement of religion, racism and prejudice, injustice...
i think to address these, it doesn't matter much whether we are lost in space or the center of the universe
It isn’t a comforting story. It doesn’t give meaning or explanation. People imagine themselves as a tiny ape on a giant rock hurtling through the void and shiver at the nihilistic vision.
Now, being made by a magic man who will welcome you to his magic wonderful home after this short, nasty, brutish life? There’s a comforting story.
It's not a comforting story, but I think it can provide meaning. It does for me at least. While we are not gods, we are different from all other animals - we are where "the fallen angel meets the rising ape" as Terry Pratchett wrote.
While we might not have free will in an absolute, metaphysical sense, we can self-reflect, practice self-control, shape our environment, and even change our nature. What will we do with this power?
There is no eternal afterlife to go to, but we now understand what actual life is - and it's no longer so nasty and brutish. Perhaps soon it won't be so short either. We are certainly capable of extending it in principle, we just need to get our shit together.
Comforting stories are cozy, but we are growing up. We've become smart enough to cause a whole lot of trouble for ourselves, and are not yet wise enough to fix it. We're confused, can't make sense of things and constantly whine about it. But that's how growth works. Humanity might just be in its awkward emo teenage phase.
Culture is the problem. Remove the dead beliefs. Replace it with something alive. Live from awareness.
The answer that is really needed IMO is a way of squaring contemporary scientific knowledge with a story that still centers humanity in the universe
i agree. science and religion need to be in harmony and not contradict each other. if there is an apparent contradiction we need to open to the possibility that we are either misinterpreting the religious claim or that the scientific findings need further research or even both.
You can find sarcastic discourses about whoever think anthropocentric is a sane point of view that go back as far as we have any philosophical account. Take Xenophane’s Satire for example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophanes#Satires
Copernicus and Darwin didn’t change much things on that side.
I wholly disagree with your later point though. Knowing that we are only primate lost in space, that civilizations and even our whole species could totally disappear tomorrow without any deity to help, save, rescue, blame or give congrats is actually a far more appealing scenario in term of being challenged to excel. Compare that with "you are full first class member of that special species that the most perfect imaginable being ever created and whatever you do you’ll be granted salvation and experiment an eternal existence in paradise".
"you are full first class member of that special species that the most perfect imaginable being ever created and whatever you do you’ll be granted salvation and experiment an eternal existence in paradise".
That's really not an accurate description of the role religion has played in human psychology, and is only accurate for a very specific subset of beliefs in a specific time and place.
My argument was more that humans thought of themselves as inhabiting a world designed for them, but then learned that this was (likely) not true, and that for many people this is a pessimistic, nihilistic conclusion.
Not all religions/belief systems have/had the world (just) designed for humans. People can "cope" with other views.
Definitely true, but:
- I'm talking primarily about the Western world and its legacy of Christianity. The situation is different in India, China, etc.
- Even then, in practice, most successful religions tend to have a human-like personal figure in an important place, even if the religion itself is technically non-personal.
If the point is about "humanity" and how the world cannot have non-human goals, then rejecting the inconvenient religions (oriental, animistic, whatever) is definitely not a convincing argument. Those are just as humans, and don't explain the world in the convenient western way. So yes, we can very well live in a world not designed for humans.
The point is about Western society and its progression, not “humans” in general. So yes, one route may to be create a belief system more similar to animist or other religions. But that is itself a tall order.
A lot of this has to do with the Enlightenment project and disenchantment so it’s already largely focused on the Western world to begin with. Other places have less a history with this.
All I can suggest is, if you really want to take a scientific approach to all this, you may want to start by finding out what Christianity actually teaches, rather than the garbled third-hand nonsense you've quoted above, which bears no resemblance to anything taught by a mainstream Christian denomination at least since the Council of Nicaea. I'll admit it's not easy to figure out, especially when some churches like to continue arguing with others about some of the details, and also when "just read the Bible" really doesn't help because it's hard to make sense of on its own (sorry, Luther, but sola scriptura never really stood up, otherwise all the preachers would be out of a job). It takes time and patience to really understand what claims Christianity makes on your life and on the world. Welcome to theology, it's not science, but it still requires critical thinking, intelligence and a sensitivity to nuance.
mankind has been created to carry forward an ever advancing civilization
that's what i go by. the goal is for each individual and for humanity as a whole to better themselves during their life on earth and how they will experience their eternal existence depends on how well they do on earth. plenty of motivation for me, and better than the idea that after i die there is nothing and therefore what i do in my life doesn't really matter.
> mankind has been created to...
That's a narrative from a certain perspective. Let's advocate for different perspectives, like the article does.
I'm perfectly fine with the Darwinistic idea that mankind has evolved from something very primitive rather than created for a purpose.
The declaration of basic human rights is a narrative that humans deem good. But they are still human inventions, no superior creator needs to be involved to have something deemed good for everyone.
We are here, that is a fact. Why or how is a mystery. You can build narratives around that but in fact they are not necessary. I would say, let's just make the best of our existence by trying to not make other beings miserable.
You can build narratives around that but in fact they are not necessary
well, that is the question. that narrative may not be necessary for you, but it is for me and for many others.
what do you think will be more successful/sustainable? convincing everyone that we don't need a narrative or adopt a narrative that is beneficial for all?
your idea of making the best of our existence by trying to not make other beings miserable is a good one. and it is compatible with advancing civilization. so why don't we focus on working together to achieve those goals (and other related goals like peace, elimination of poverty, justice, clean environment, etc) instead of arguing whether we need a narrative or not?
> well, that is the question. that narrative may not be necessary for you, but it is for me and for many others.
Being convinced that we need something is not the same as something being necessary for us. There are all sort of human endeavor out there whose main goal is to convince us we need something, be it some consumer commodity, some skill, or some divinity. Most often than not, people who conduct these propaganda campaigns are themselves convince that it's relevant to do it for some of their aspiration to become a reality, be it something they expose in what they communicate openly or some more or less hidden agenda.
The topic is not that much about are narratives a necessity, but what they lead to. If they lead to people wanting to give only love and respect to other as much as for themselves, that sounds great, and who would complain, really? If they lead to "we the camp of the good vs the heretics evil others that must be destroyed whatever the means", that's an entirely different concern.
When we think "advancing civilization", we are actually stashing the real issue that is that there is not "a single narrative about a single civilization".
It makes as much sense to ask whether we need narratives as to ask whether we need tools. Stories can glorify the gun holder or the people who learnt how and when to use first aid kits.
Being convinced that we need something is not the same as something being necessary for us
of course it isn't. all i am saying is that arguing about that difference is not helpful.
whose main goal is to convince us we need something
which is no different than trying to convince us that we don't need a narrative.
this is the problem i have with dominant religions today. to much focus on the narrative itself. not enough focus on using the narrative to solve actual problems. narratives are being treated as if they are the solutions in themselves, as if only believing the narrative will solve our problems automatically.
instead of pushing a narrative, what we really need is to adress the problems humanity is facing today. i'll use a narrative for those that need it, if it helps them to understand why certain problems need to be solved, but for those that don't need a narrative to do that, i won't. i don't care about people believing the narrative, i care about them solving problems.
The topic is not that much about are narratives a necessity, but what they lead to
true. the actual narrative needs to be carefully chosen. not all narratives are good, and bad narratives do need to be replaced. but again, it is easier to come up with a better narrative than to convince someone that the narrative is not needed.
After reading all above, i am convinced that the three of us are saying the same. The only difference is our definition of 'narrative', a term pksitioned somewhere on the long gray area between religion and a suggestion.
ones personal suggestion could be someone else's religious mandate. that's part of the thing with stories. everyone is free to take them as serious as they like. for good and for bad. we all know the cases where someone takes a particular story to serious and goes overboard trying to live by it.
The author answers the inability to escape all narratives with the ability to constantly change perspectives. From the article:
> We might never fully escape the narratives that surround us, but we can learn to change the perspectives behind them. And so, we are never bound by stories, only by our ability to understand how our beliefs and values shape the way we perceive and engage with the world. We don’t need better narratives; we need to expand and refine our perspectives.
There are problematic narratives though. The robin hood one, were you are always the underdog against a evil universe out to get you. The everything is people and societal norms narrative, that completely blends out the physical universe as a sort of "defeated" final boss and thus is blind for dangers like global warming. Many more come to mind.
>We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
Religion, at its most fundamental core, is about providing a set of guidelines and contexts with which to make sense of life and the world around us so we can spend less time bickering and worrying about things that we ultimately can't do anything about.
I feel the mad rush to reject and remove religion from society in the 20th century onwards has caused significant damage that we should address. It's not like religion is gone either, we've simply found impromptu replacements that are inferior and repeat a lot of problems religion dealt with already (eg: politics, "science", fanboyism, etc.).
religion needs to evolve and grow with the development of humanity. the currently dominating religions are no longer capable of addressing all the needs of our global society, which is why they are losing ground. but instead of finding a viable alternative we get distracted, as you say, by inferior replacements.
Religion as a binding factor falls apart in a society where it's trivial to encounter multiple someones with a different holy book than yours, each who claims theirs is the only correct one.
only if that religion claims exclusivity in exclusion to others. in order to address todays problems a religion must not do that but it must be inclusive and open to all. technically, at least to a degree the abrahamic religions do that in that they do claim that their predecessors are genuine and their followers are considered people of the book. the fact that many members today reject them is a misinterpretation of their respective holy words.
a modern religion must be inclusive to all others, not just the abrahamic religions. at least all those who expect a return of their prophet which is the case not only for all abrahamic religions but at least also for buddhism, hinduism, zoroastrianism, and even native american religions. (there may be others, but i am not familiar with those)
This is how autocracies are appealing, initially. You replace reality by one narrative and it all feels good, at least if you are among those favored by the choose narrative.
> To use the concept by Deleuze, everything has been too “deterritorialized.” We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
That’s a narrative in and of itself. The Opium of the masses.
And judging by the length of the comment thread, it’s really difficult to change someone’s mind once they have settled on a narrative, like trying to kick a habit.
> We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
Sure. You would also be much happier taking drugs all day.
Indeed, a solid narrative is dangerous. Consider a 'solid' narrative that seems fine at first sight: you tell yourself constantly that you are happy to just be able to be here, and that you are whole with the world. It would somehow feel very liberating to you, but at the same time having the danger of not trying one's best, of not taking care of self and others. Exactly the effect of drugs.
Agree with blindly following narrative idea
But I think the example is bad. If you actually experientially know you are whole with the world, I think it would push your limits and take care of others even better.
People don't tend to take care of others because of the idea of separation between you and me. It's the cause of all wars. People tend to do things good for themselves or who look like themselves.
True.
I was more thinking about an exaggerated example, people who simply convince themselfs that they are happy (LSD-like happy), it will not advance others and also not themselves in the long run.
Deleuze being uncritically mentioned is evidence that everything you’ve said here is intellectual bankrupt.
Deleuze and Guattari, Jacques Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Jung, and most of their disciples are at best fashionable nonsense, always charlatans, and there’s even evidence that some of the success of post-structuralism was a psyop from your local spymasters to keep Ivy League intellectuals from doing subversive shit in the USA like May of 68/situationalist internationale.
For all the problems that existentialism, Sartre, Camus, De Bouiver, and the other existentialists had, they tended to write (more) coherently and they descend (slightly less) into the pit of academic wankery.
Seriously, Deleuze and Guattari destroyed continental philosophy. Anti-oedipus is full of shit. Freud is full of shit. The oedipus and Electra complex and mirror stage and object petit an are all psudo science. Reject their work in every instance or continue the further debasement of academic philosophy.
> We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
I disagree. Religion has fulfilled that role for millennia and all it gets you is people being abused. Fascism has also fulfilled that role with the same results. Look at communism in Cuba, China and the Soviet Union. Everyone blindly sharing the same narrative is dangerous
> just results in you adopting a different narrative, the “I reject narratives” one.
This is like saying that atheism is just another religion because it's the belief in nothing. In a a hairsplitting way it may arguably be true but atheism does not provide a consistent(-ish) narrative about the world like religions do and therefore is fundamentally different.
In the typical Western sense of the word Atheism (that is, not just as a label defining the lack of belief, but the specific instance of ideas/people) is not another "religion," but it's absolutely another "belief system" that often comes with the same set of beliefs about various things.
It's largely an intellectual distinction, because in practice everyone still acts and exists in the world. Identity itself is probably impossible without having some sort of story about who you are.
To be clear, Atheists have different belief systems. They all have in common that they believe in one less god than monotheists, and a handfull less gods than polytheists (that, they share with monotheists), but overall you can have different belief systems that do not involve the existence of one (or multiple) god(s).
I know someone who does not believe in gods because he think aliens are playing with us (fake flags etc. Basically the Stargate mythos, except he never saw the show). Less anecdotal, Chalmers is definitely Atheist, but i sure don't have his belief system, and i'm sure no functionalist does.
Also, in general, philosophy of mind is imho the best way to test you belief systems. Or maybe it's the philosophy field i'm the most comfortable in and thus the one where i pushed my beliefs the furthest :/
I don’t really want to repeat what I already wrote, but just to sum this up again: yes, the mere label of atheist doesn’t imply a specific belief system. But in actual practice, in the real world and not merely in definitions, it tends to indicate certain groupings of beliefs.
In other words, the definitional concept of atheist doesn’t imply a specific belief set (except in the choice of using such a word to define oneself), but the sociological definition definitely does. If we looked at various communities calling themselves atheists, they certainly have beliefs in common.
> the sociological definition definitely does.
It definitely does not.
> If we looked at various communities calling themselves atheists, they certainly have beliefs in common.
The lack of belief in gods. There are types of Hinduism that have always been atheistic.
Believing in god is like having blue eyes. There's nothing necessarily shared amongst people who don't have blue eyes other than a lack of blue eyes.
It may not hold you back that much.
It’s always confusing to read an article where the way your mind works is seen as an error. It must work somehow. You cannot operate without simple algorithms or more complex “narratives”.
If you ever moved you know the feeling of a new apartment when you have no automatic habits yet. You have to decide everything - how to hold your keys, where is a light switch, which side is too sunny and requires blinds, does elevator work or is it just slow. But then you adapt cause your mind automates the hell out of it. Left hand, further on the right, the one with the table, it’s not that slow (it is).
If you ever learned something new, you know the feeling and you know how much you want an overview before digging deep. To make sense of it, to structure it anyhow, just that much. Otherwise it stays untackable and overwhelming.
A waiter in the article is a template/overview that you start with. It’s only a problem if you’re “a little autistic” and stick to it despite receiving negative feedback. But then narratives aren’t your primary problem.
If your every thought and action started afresh, you’d be incapable. Otoh detecting that an algorithm is messing with your life is a useful skill. I think that the article could drop the (probably click/read-bait) idea of “narrative bad” and instead simply point out that this phenomenon exists and can be analyzed for overuse.
> the way your mind works is seen as an error.
Not as an error, but as something that can trap you in certain behaviours.
This is something you can find in other places. I've read that in education books where they advise you to get kids to see themselves as nice and competent, in order for them to internalizing this is who they are (and conversely, not to tell them they're idiots, they're not nice or stuff like that). It's also in that "win friends and influence people" book, "give people a reputation to live by". And more simply, "fake it till you make it".
Now when it comes to getting rid of narratives, I'm not sure what it really means. The whole thing around replacing with perspectives, which is pretty much switching from prose to poetry, I didn't get. Maybe I'm not smart enough, or maybe it's something that correspondance to different characters.
I find Robin Hanson's interpretation resonates more (on lex podcast). According to him, the executive brain (which is a huge chunk of consciousness) acts more like a press secretary than a dictator. It creates a narrative to justify our actions to others. So making a narrative is THE JOB of the consciousness.
Think of life as one long trial. The narrative you weave is not for your benefit, really. It's for the Tribe: the judges and the jurys. So trying to weave an esoteric or arcane narrative won't work, and you know it wont, if you know others won't buy it or understand it. You need a narrative that others, or at least a subset of others that represents authority, would be able to buy. You don't really have a choice in it. It's just how we are built. And why would you want to go against it really.
You might like these two ideas of Daniel Dennett, multiple drafts model and fame in the brain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drafts_model
https://kenyonreview.org/2008/04/fame-in-the-brain/
Yes, but that’ a narrative of our internal mind.
The article is talking about the narratives we construct of the external world.
The two may not be entirely unrelated; our facility for constructing an narrative of the external world might have led to us constructing a narrative of our internal world.
> It creates a narrative to justify our actions to others
I would disagree on that point.
I believe that you create that narrative for yourself, to create an illusion of consciousness. More than that, an illusion of consciousness through time. That's why memories are so easily modified/created by outsiders. That how placebo/nocebo effect works. That's why you create fake memories from a photography, or why you sometimes tries to justify reactions post hoc.
This is also just a theory (inspired by Keith Frankish).
> Think of life as one long trial. The narrative you weave is not for your benefit, really.
I like the trial metaphor, but disagree about who it is for. It has to be for yourself. How you explain life, your actions, etc is only for you - it is an end in itself - and you have to be happy about it.
Alternatively, you can consider the idea that once you die, you then become the judge at your trial. How do you find yourself - guilty or innocent?
"This is the reason we can tell the business world." ( says one fictional CEO ) The real reason may be something else altogether, but people will accept this rationale based on that if provided. I don't think you are wrong.
Pareto is well known for his 80-20 split; he's less well known for dividing bases for action into residues (sentimental bases, differing largely by whether one is conservative or progressive by inclination) and derivations (the logical rationales one gives for proposed or taken actions).
Homo sapiens or Homo praetexendo?
Consider Dolphus Raymond in To Kill a Mockingbird. He weaves one narrative for his birth Tribe, but when Scout looks on the other side of the fabric, there's a plot twist for himself and his adopted Tribe.
INCONCINNVM SED LIBERVM
if it's not for my benefit then why would he conclude that it must be for the tribe? are there no other options?
all very confusing
that part is my own words. His was only the first paragraph of my comment. I tend to make things more complicated than it needs to be, maybe.
Nihilism solves so much nothing.
A million more layers of "freeing" yourself and you are back to where you started every time.
An ape granting all impulsive choices the ability to undo anything long-term at all.
Futility is a real thing for some dreamers to accept... but plan-less-ness is not freedom.
It is bondage to short-sighted repeated failure.
Some people see an abyss or total blankness, and panic, because they don't know what to do with it and need to be given a purpose. Others see the same and rejoice, because it is the ultimate canvas on which a creative can make things.
> As Sartre warned, everything changes when you tell a story. Narratives limit our potential. Though we are complex beings, living in a chaotic universe, our stories create the illusion that our lives are ordered, logical and complete.
Of course life is full of endless potential, but people and in general society could not function without some kind of shared narrative. In the case of society the narrative is culture. It both limits us and nurtures our potential to move beyond it. There is a duality.
This is a VERY silly article.
A better article would have the title:
Life is Not A Story, Life is Many Stories.
I have but one meager, measly, impoverished point of view, but I can tell multiple stories from my one point of view, because I can imagine the point of view of other people.
What is dangerous is being trapped inside a single story, which can be related to trauma in some cases. (Search something like trauma story loop)
When you are trapped inside a single story, you can have strong feelings that you MUST respond in certain ways to certain stimuli, as there is no other story that could be true. When you can tell a different story, you can make progress.
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Edit: the author's reference to 'perspective taking' is very much like what I am saying. It's still a silly article.
> "Think of the ways that perspectives organise experiences differently. By ‘perspective’ I mean something more complex than ‘point of view’. I’m referring to the way we engage with the world from a particular position or orientation that draws our attention to aspects of experience, like how our visual ‘perspective’ allows bright colours to show up more easily than dull ones. Perspectives are shaped by our place in the world, our beliefs, values and what we think matters. As the philosopher Elisabeth Camp explains, a perspective ‘helps us to do things with the thoughts we have: to make quick judgments based on what’s most important, to grasp intuitive connections, and to respond emotionally, among other things.’ Through perspective some features of our experiences ‘stick out in our minds while others fade into the background.’
Perspectives, then, determine the narratives we adopt. In other words, our core beliefs and values shape the way we see things and what we take to be important in our experiences. It is our perspectives that generate our narratives. Perspective also explains why our narratives can differ so radically from those of other people, even when we experience the same events. But once we understand these perspectives, we can see how flexible our narratives can truly become. Perspectives, it turns out, don’t have a linear, ordered structure. We can’t think of them in terms of sequences of events, like stories. In some ways, perspectives are better represented by the non-linearity of poetry."
Folks. Please. I have a request. Read the article first. Someone took the time to write it. Don't dash off a quick gut reaction to the title and then go back and read the text later.
I read the first 3 paragraphs, skimmed, and the last paragraph, and did a keyword search (I should have search for perspective, but that wasn't on my mind).
Title is bad no matter what.
Edit:
Here's another Narrative:
The author is a university professor and most often writes for students.
As such, they expect the reader to fully and completely read the whole selection, as they will be tested on it.
I, however am not a student, and so the first thing I do is evaluate whether an article is worth my time. I do this by reading 3 or so paragraphs, skim for keywords, and the last paragraph. This is so common there must be a name for it [0] that I don't know because I am also not a media studies graduate.
As this is so common, it must be written for; the author is expected to introduce any keywords in the first 3 or last paragraph. If they do not, the editor should return it.
The title is generally not written by the author, but may be selected from a list that are provided by an editor. The author should update their writing so that the title makes sense in context.
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0. grug brain media literacy?
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Edit 2: I have no idea if the narrative above is true
Why should I? It’s full of critical theorists, whose whole careers were based on nothing but critiquing things they either didn’t read at all (see Zizek admitting to this repeatedly), or poorly/narrowly read.
It’s absolutely in line with critical theorist nonsense to just critique it without reading it! Very rhizomatic thinking! No biopolitical thinking here at all!
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I’ve found rejecting the tendency to reduce people to narratives so incredibly important with our children.
Whether their latest choice has been probably good or probably bad, keeping those choices as something they did rather than something they are keeps the future open for them.
This reminds me of a Chinese farmer story:
"The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad - because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune." ~ Alan Watts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWd6fNVZ20o
People are also multifaceted.
My dad was a pretty great dad, but when he split with my mom he did some pretty dick moves.
I have no trouble to simultaneously hold those two facets in my mind when my mom rants about him.
The map is not the territory. Est (and its offspring Landmark) talked about this a lot: the distinction between the things that happened and the story we tell ourselves about the things that happened. What would happen if we told ourselves a different story? What are we getting from the current story that keeps us hanging on to it? Etc
Well it's OK not to act as a waiter in a cafe while you are in fact a waiter in a cafe but some customers might be unhappy about how you conduct yourself as a result, they might leave and your boss is likely to fire you.
So that particular example was not convincing. That "actor doing a script" angle is true but the idea that you can drop it at any time is sadly not; many people have hard expectations of you depending on which role you are filling in their life at the moment. If you "break character" they'll reject you.
Which is by no means a bad thing per se -- but it's also something a lot of people avoid, so the disclaimer of "break character and people will leave" is necessary.
It goes both ways though, I've had work handed to me for generous sums just because I did not hide my actual persona and was not only acting as a programmer.
As with everything: "it depends".
I find myself in agreement with the premise of the article in general which can IMO be paraphrased as "do not do one-dimensional analysis of your life; treat it like thousands of smaller things happening at the same time and often intersecting". True enough, though our feeble human brains prefer just 2-3 narratives at a time and to shape our self and idea of a life story around them. So I agree that it's useful to try and actively sabotage with this way of internalizing life. We should not ignore complexity, for as much as our brain capacity allows it.
> I've had work handed to me for generous sums just because I did not hide my actual persona and was not only acting as a programmer.
You just switched the professional programmer role for a professional technical business problem solver unless you go around solving problems for businesses for free
I mean, maybe? It just felt at the moment that the people liked how I conduct myself and maybe related to something as well.
Why am I having AI vibes after reading the article? A narrative (prompt) sparkled this whole "lets think step by step" thing.
Same here. It's just wishy-washy uncommitted phrasing indicative of "don't make a strong opinion that is polarizing" that is so characteristic of AI generated text. I used to use an online writing service for content many years ago and one of the hallmarks of "I'm doing this for a little extra money" and "I'm a pro writer between gigs" was the "in conclusion" and "therefore" and the three part school essay structure. It screamed bad writing, and I am seeing the same kind of flags in AI generated text too.
This is the tale of how I learned to overcome the narrative fallacy.
I was at a music festival in Southern California and had a 5meo-DMT trip. During the trip the vantage point of my consciousness left my body, saw that the universe is a hologram, and time as we experience it is a lower dimension. The human life is a temporary experience and yes it is all just a story.
I also saw this hologram thing. Like the field of perception is a hologram. Not with DMT but after I stupidly meditated on a high dose THC.
What an awful article; full of a-priori conclusions that lead down that blissful road to despair and nihilism. The world needs less of this form of superficial thought. The article claims that narratives can give more meaning, as if meaning can come from anywhere else. The story is THE meaning - it's consciousness that gives narrative and consequentially meaning to everything. Be careful of what you "liberate". Your mind can be open enough to the point that your brain falls out, you know.
That said, I don't disagree with everything the author had to say. I agree with the point about the danger of making yourself the main character.
I'm not especially thrilled by the article. I won't really go into why.
However, one thing that I'll say, is that stories; especially the stories of other people (i.e. "not me"), make my life much more interesting.
reminds me of the famous zen tale, as I recall it:
A western professor once went to a zen master in order to study zen. The master welcomed him, and offered him a cup of tea. When tea was ready, he began to pour the liquid into the professor's cup. When the liquid reached the top of the cup, the master continued filling it, making the tea go all over the floor. The professor asked what he was doing, and the master answered: "This cup couldn't hold more tea because it was already full. If you don't first empty your mind from your prejudices, how can I teach you anything?"
That actually says more about the prejudices of the zen master, than the professor
That's true. If you don't have prejudice you cannot talk about it since you don't know it.
It's an educational metaphorical demonstration, not a prejudice.
It doesn't really do anything. Adds one more crap belief to the list of all other crap beliefs one already have.
If I knew what I was doing I’d never learn anything.
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Oh yeah. I had a shift one day when the "I" realised the narrative it has been living on was a bunch of cherry picked crap of emotions and memories.
Till then I used to do things that fit the narrative. A voice in head that criticises when it deviates.
Now I am free to do more things that don't fit the narrative.
It's brings much more freedom. But with narrative going away you also need to find a good replacement for the existential questions which will soon starts knocking down the door.
Narratives in the world of ideas play the same role as governments play here: they create order to prevent us from sliding into anarchy. And just like governments often create too much order, which is tyranny, narratives also tend to crystallize over time and become dogmas. Until we haven't evolved beyond our selfish nature, governments and narratives will remain necessary.
Can't help but think half of hacker news lives through the story of founder. Might be why "founder mode" cut so deep.
Oh boy, my crazy niece had some weird stuff to say about this. Here goes:
"Narratives are anthropomorphization of time. Anthropomorphization of non-human concepts is taking something that is beyond human and turning it into a human-based idol, distorting it in the process. Like other idols, it can be used to manipulate and deceive. Therefore all narratives are manipulations and deceptions, sometimes done for self-comfort, other times done to manage a populace."
I thought about this, and thought the perspective interesting. However I think it is stretching the concept too far so I don't buy it - you can't simply call everything you don't like idolatry. I also thought it got uncomfortably close to conspiracy-theory style thinking so I told her to just shut up.
Your niece sounds cool.
Thoughts are idols (except for math, those thoughts are themselves.)
The author of the article seems to be not aware of the Transactional Analysis model of the lifescript.
This is an interesting concept, but it doesn't seem like the article does it justice. Does anyone have suggestions for further reading on the topic? Either rejecting narrative thinking or crafting helpful ones.
I find this a facinating topic, especially as someone who studied film and storytelling. This paper, while I dont fully agree with all of it, is wonderfully provocative and goes much deeper than this article in exploring this topic https://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/against_narrativity.pdf
Or just don’t treat life like a story because you’d compare it with other stories. The only reason someone goes “This is the story of my life” is likely to brag or get sympathy or something Facebook-esq
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend did it
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rtvwu75K3I
The End of the Movie Starring Josh Groban Featuring rachel bloom
So this is the end of the movie Whoa whoa whoa But real life isn’t a movie No no no.
You want things to be wrapped up neatly The way that stories do.
You’re looking for answers But answers aren’t looking for you.
Because life is a gradual series of revelations That occur over a period of time It’s not some carefully crafted story It’s a mess and we’re all gonna die.
If you saw a movie that was like real life You’d be like “what the hell was that movie about?” It was really all over the place Life doesn’t make narrative sense.
Nuhuh
We tell ourselves that we’re in a movie. Whoa whoa whoa Each one of us thinks we got the starring role. Role role role.
But the truth is sometimes you’re the lead And sometimes you’re an extra Just walking by in the background Like me, Josh Groban!
Because life is a gradual series of revelations That occur over a period of time Some things might happen that seem connected But there’s not always a reason or rhyme
People aren’t characters They’re complicated And their choices don’t always make sense
Am I supposed to take this article seriously?
I see the author is perhaps ironically rejecting a narrative by using another narrative to advocate for their position.
The author is sort of implying that there's harm to society and the individual by engaging in these narrative arcs without any actual evidence to support their position. Merely a "I feel" and "might" and "could even become dangerous."
Way too many wishy-washy phrases attempting to soften their opinion, but then goes on to present a false dichotomy of absolutes vis-a-vis: You either embrace the narrative structure and have it destroy you, or you reject the narrative structure and live a care free life.
And because of the uncommitted weasel phrases this entire article has the hallmarks of AI generated slop that someone had to rush through for publication because they procrastinated. I'm flagging this one as "yawn."
A narrative about the inadequacy of narratives. Choice!
> Living in a non-narrative way means rejecting a particular identity, and instead seeing life and meaning as a set of open choices.
I choose to fly up through the sky into outer space, away from this place. ;-) Oh wait, I don't have wings, and there's no way to fly into outer space besides maybe begging for a ticket on Virgin Galactic.
It's true that choices are important, but it's also true that you have less control over your choices than you might think (see e.g. The Power of Habit). In particular some choices that you would like to decide one way are simply impossible to actually do.
In practice I've found the best way to modify choices is to build tools. In particular my smartphone - at this point essentially all of my life is directed by apps. There are some cases where this backfires, e.g. recently I found myself driving to an event location and halfway there I realized the event had been cancelled and I had forgotten to remove it from my calendar, but it's the best I've got.
I think this is an interesting point. I don't think the article makes it well. So I'm going to throw away the article and just make what I think is a better argument. But if you want the tl;dr version (and this is the Internet, so people want that), I would say:
Math.
Frankly I don't think math is really a 'story.' You can try to fit it into that frame, but I don't think it's a natural fit. So often the data we need doesn't easily compress into story form: in fact, the best way to describe it is to use mathematical terms. Which leads me to my other example:
Physics.
Now here's an area where we've become really explicit about saying "Do NOT tell a story about this" in many situations. There's the math and what it describes, which goes first, and then some limited descriptions around that, which comes second and tends to get more wrong the more of a "story" it becomes. In fact we often say something like "this is what the math says and all interpretations beyond that are speculative." Which is about as anti-story as you can get.
Which is interesting and worth reflecting on. Because what could be more fundamental than that? And yet, if the most fundamental things cannot be fit into story form, that really calls the whole story framing into question.
A writer who's taken that concept and developed it is Timothy Morton, with his idea of hyperobjects. But you don't have to agree with that; the above examples make the point - they're as 'basic' to reality as you can get, and yet resistant to the story format.
“Um yeeeah (Office Space), Peter if you could, like, just casually, reject one of the hard-wired evolutionary learning processes of your biology that would be great.”
What a load of crap.
One of the six characteristics of consciousness as formulated by Julian Jaynes in his work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is that of narratization: a story that we tell ourselves of how we got here, where we are going, and why towards that end. In addition, his notion of consciousness is that it is essentially lexical, linguistic, and metaphorical in character; our self-concept, our ideas of who we are, are in fact linguistic models we use to analogize the body physical into a mental metaphor, and it is language that facilitates this process through its ability to represent physical concretions with mental, symbolic abstractions.
Identity then is a narrative subroutine written in natural language, and in this way it becomes possible to speak forth identity and program a persona out of whole cloth through the force of the Word alone; this is the sense of the Logos and the famous declaration, "In the beginning was the Word," where all of reality was spoken forth through the utterance of language. This is the Western, Greek, and Abrahamic view of the primacy of language and of symbolic realism.
> As a result of embodying the waiter-narrative, he lives inauthentically because he can only act in a way that fits with the role. The narrative he follows gives him a limited understanding of himself [...]
This is why it is of paramount importance that one minds the language and narratives they use to describe one's self, for every utterance ascribed to one's persona circumscribes and limits it, setting it off on a fixed trajectory instead of maximizing optionality (see also pg's Keep Your Identity Small: "the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible" [0]). You are neither a waiter, nor a parent, a child, an athlete nor a hobbyist [1]:
... and this Eastern non-identification with symbolic content is the rejection of narrative identity espoused by TFA.The advent of postmodern social media has given rise to a new form of "hyperreal identity" now, where it becomes possible to publish language that literally creates personas and identities with no basis in physical reality. Confusing symbols of self with the actual self is not only easier than ever, it is the default mode of existence in the digital era, and one's avatar or social media profile takes precedence over the person themselves - a "simulacrum of the fourth order." One must be careful of the media they use to carry the language and narrative of their identity, because all messages are constrained by the medium they inhabit, and if the language of one's narrative is constrained, so too is their self-concept and their identity; we have progresses from "the medium is the message" to "the medium is your identity."
[0] https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w
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