8 ms·

Life is not a story

135 points by Tomte 2y ago

keiferski 2y ago
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.
- hshshshshsh 2y ago
  > 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.
  - nuancebydefault 2y ago
    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.
    - hshshshshsh 2y ago
      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.
      - nuancebydefault 2y ago
        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.
- madaxe_again 2y ago
  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.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    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."
    - psychoslave 2y ago
      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 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".
- corimaith 2y ago
  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.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    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.
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      How do you know they weren’t ‘attempts to make a coherent story’ that turned destructive?
      - keiferski 2y ago
        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.
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        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.
- watwut 2y ago
  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.
- vlz 2y ago
  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.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >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.).
  - em-bee 2y ago
    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.
    - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
      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.
      - em-bee 2y ago
        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)
- Barrin92 2y ago
  >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.
  - nuancebydefault 2y ago
    > 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.
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    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!
- aaplok 2y ago
  > 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.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    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.
    - orwin 2y ago
      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 :/
      - keiferski 2y ago
        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.
- mr_toad 2y ago
  > 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.
- ItCouldBeWorse 2y ago
  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.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  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.
- bossyTeacher 2y ago
  > 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
justanotherjoe 2y ago
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.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  "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.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    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?
- mieses 2y ago
  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
  - justanotherjoe 2y ago
rovingEngine 2y ago
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.
- nntwozz 2y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWd6fNVZ20o
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  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.
hshshshshsh 2y ago
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.
wruza 2y ago
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.
- charles_f 2y ago
  > 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.
optimalsolver 2y ago
This is the tale of how I learned to overcome the narrative fallacy.
lupire 2y ago
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend did it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rtvwu75K3I 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
fedeb95 2y ago
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?"
- usrnm 2y ago
  That actually says more about the prejudices of the zen master, than the professor
  - hshshshshsh 2y ago
    That's true. If you don't have prejudice you cannot talk about it since you don't know it.
  - lupire 2y ago
    It's an educational metaphorical demonstration, not a prejudice.
    - hshshshshsh 2y ago
      It doesn't really do anything. Adds one more crap belief to the list of all other crap beliefs one already have.
- mr_toad 2y ago
  If I knew what I was doing I’d never learn anything.
- emptyfile 2y ago
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est 2y ago
Why am I having AI vibes after reading the article? A narrative (prompt) sparkled this whole "lets think step by step" thing.
- justinlloyd 2y ago
  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.
jeezfrk 2y ago
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.
- RiverCrochet 2y ago
  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.
Gabriel54 2y ago
> 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.
nomoreusernames 2y ago
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justinlloyd 2y ago
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."
RiverCrochet 2y ago
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.
- wormlord 2y ago
  Your niece sounds cool.
- carapace 2y ago
  Thoughts are idols (except for math, those thoughts are themselves.)
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akomtu 2y ago
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.
brink 2y ago
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.
ryandv 2y ago
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." [0] https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
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.
carapace 2y ago
A narrative about the inadequacy of narratives. Choice!
calmbonsai 2y ago
“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.
csours 2y ago
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. --- 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."
- nyeah 2y ago
  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.
m3kw9 2y ago
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
Mathnerd314 2y ago
> 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.
ksymph 2y ago
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.
- simonsmine 2y ago
  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 https://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/against_narrativity.pdf
enos_feedler 2y ago
Can't help but think half of hacker news lives through the story of founder. Might be why "founder mode" cut so deep.
loriverkutya 2y ago
The author of the article seems to be not aware of the Transactional Analysis model of the lifescript.
julianeon 2y ago
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.
shove 2y ago
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
nixdev 2y ago
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.
- hshshshshsh 2y ago
  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.
pdimitar 2y ago
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.
- bossyTeacher 2y ago
  > 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
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    I mean, maybe? It just felt at the moment that the people liked how I conduct myself and maybe related to something as well.
stefantalpalaru 2y ago
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theknocker 2y ago
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135 points by Tomte 2y ago

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.

hshshshshsh 2y ago
> 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.
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  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.
  - hshshshshsh 2y ago
    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.
    - nuancebydefault 2y ago
      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.
madaxe_again 2y ago
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.
- keiferski 2y ago
  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."
  - psychoslave 2y ago
    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 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".
corimaith 2y ago
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.
- keiferski 2y ago
  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.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    How do you know they weren’t ‘attempts to make a coherent story’ that turned destructive?
    - keiferski 2y ago
      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.
      - MichaelZuo 2y ago
        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.
watwut 2y ago
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.
vlz 2y ago
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.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>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.).
- em-bee 2y ago
  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.
  - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
    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.
    - em-bee 2y ago
      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)
Barrin92 2y ago
>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.
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  > 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.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  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!
aaplok 2y ago
> 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.
- keiferski 2y ago
  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.
  - orwin 2y ago
    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 :/
    - keiferski 2y ago
      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.
mr_toad 2y ago
> 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.
ItCouldBeWorse 2y ago
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.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
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.
bossyTeacher 2y ago
> 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

justanotherjoe 2y ago

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.

A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
"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.
- deleted 2y ago
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- 082349872349872 2y ago
  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?
mieses 2y ago
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
- justanotherjoe 2y ago

rovingEngine 2y ago

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.

nntwozz 2y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWd6fNVZ20o
magicalhippo 2y ago
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.

hshshshshsh 2y ago

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.

wruza 2y ago

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.

charles_f 2y ago
> 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.

optimalsolver 2y ago

This is the tale of how I learned to overcome the narrative fallacy.

lupire 2y ago

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend did it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rtvwu75K3I 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

fedeb95 2y ago

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?"

usrnm 2y ago
That actually says more about the prejudices of the zen master, than the professor
- hshshshshsh 2y ago
  That's true. If you don't have prejudice you cannot talk about it since you don't know it.
- lupire 2y ago
  It's an educational metaphorical demonstration, not a prejudice.
  - hshshshshsh 2y ago
    It doesn't really do anything. Adds one more crap belief to the list of all other crap beliefs one already have.
mr_toad 2y ago
If I knew what I was doing I’d never learn anything.
emptyfile 2y ago
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est 2y ago

Why am I having AI vibes after reading the article? A narrative (prompt) sparkled this whole "lets think step by step" thing.

justinlloyd 2y ago
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.

jeezfrk 2y ago

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.

RiverCrochet 2y ago
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.

Gabriel54 2y ago

> 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.

nomoreusernames 2y ago

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justinlloyd 2y ago

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."

RiverCrochet 2y ago

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.

wormlord 2y ago
Your niece sounds cool.
carapace 2y ago
Thoughts are idols (except for math, those thoughts are themselves.)

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akomtu 2y ago

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.

brink 2y ago

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.

ryandv 2y ago

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." [0] https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

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.

carapace 2y ago

A narrative about the inadequacy of narratives. Choice!

calmbonsai 2y ago

“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.

csours 2y ago

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. --- 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."

nyeah 2y ago
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.

m3kw9 2y ago

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

Mathnerd314 2y ago

> 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.

ksymph 2y ago

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.

simonsmine 2y ago
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 https://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/against_narrativity.pdf

enos_feedler 2y ago

Can't help but think half of hacker news lives through the story of founder. Might be why "founder mode" cut so deep.

loriverkutya 2y ago

The author of the article seems to be not aware of the Transactional Analysis model of the lifescript.

julianeon 2y ago

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.

shove 2y ago

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

nixdev 2y ago

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.

hshshshshsh 2y ago
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.

pdimitar 2y ago

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.

bossyTeacher 2y ago
> 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
- pdimitar 2y ago
  I mean, maybe? It just felt at the moment that the people liked how I conduct myself and maybe related to something as well.

stefantalpalaru 2y ago

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theknocker 2y ago

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