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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

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

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