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."
I don’t find their argument that you can “reject having a narrative” very convincing. Human beings exist embedded in society, and to handwave that away in favor of “perspectives” just results in you adopting a different narrative, the “I reject narratives” one. Which is ultimately why existentialism never really went anywhere.
Instead I think the problem is actually the exact opposite: people don’t embrace stories enough. Modernity is accurately described as a place without any coherent sort of arch-story for society and local-story for individuals and places. To use the concept by Deleuze, everything has been too “deterritorialized.” We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
Humans desire narratives to understand the world, but the world is too complex to be captured into reality.
Those arch-theories already exist in the theories like Dialectical Materialism, or worse, Fascism, and with terrible consequences once they confronted reality.
The circumstantial perspective of (Liberal Western) Modernism & Postmodernism may have it's flaws, but it has offered more practical results in policymaking than not.
I’d describe those things (along with most traditional worldviews) as failed attempts to encapsulate reality into an over simplified story. But just because they failed and had bad consequences doesn’t mean that the attempt itself is misguided or impossible. Otherwise, the alternative seems to be an endlessly growing malaise, which isn’t much of a solution either.
In fact, I think the lack of such an attempt to make a coherent story is what draws people to the over simplified ones in the first place.
Why do you believe such alternative suggestions exist?
Maybe there aren’t any such that are risk free. So you have to evaluate both the potential upsides and downsides to see if it’s a net positive and worthwhile risk to take.
Then I'm really not sure what exactly you are arguing for or against. The act of making a story that attempts to give meaning to human life and society? How would you evaluate that for potential upsides and downsides, and what are you comparing it against?
Probably because most of those don't line up with how humans experience the world. Storytelling has a long history in the human experience, while haiku or epigrams aren't really the sort of thing one can "wrap" a life around.
Humans experience the world as a story, but that is not necessarily the most human way to wrap a life around as you are implying. In some cases there are more powerful frameworks. For example Hitler is wrapped (by most of the world at least) around the damage and pain he caused not around his story.
Stories are mostly fine, but thinking that we should strive for that to being the main perspective is limiting.
Why would that be the qualification for success? I didn’t write that “everyone believing it” was the marker of success, so I don’t know why that would be relevant.
In another comment thread, I wrote that a story is needed which combines accurate scientific information with a human purpose in the world. Those examples quite obviously didn’t have scientific views of the world.
The author answers the inability to escape all narratives with the ability to constantly change perspectives. From the article:
> We might never fully escape the narratives that surround us, but we can learn to change the perspectives behind them. And so, we are never bound by stories, only by our ability to understand how our beliefs and values shape the way we perceive and engage with the world. We don’t need better narratives; we need to expand and refine our perspectives.
There are problematic narratives though. The robin hood one, were you are always the underdog against a evil universe out to get you. The everything is people and societal norms narrative, that completely blends out the physical universe as a sort of "defeated" final boss and thus is blind for dangers like global warming. Many more come to mind.
> 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.
> just results in you adopting a different narrative, the “I reject narratives” one.
This is like saying that atheism is just another religion because it's the belief in nothing. In a a hairsplitting way it may arguably be true but atheism does not provide a consistent(-ish) narrative about the world like religions do and therefore is fundamentally different.
In the typical Western sense of the word Atheism (that is, not just as a label defining the lack of belief, but the specific instance of ideas/people) is not another "religion," but it's absolutely another "belief system" that often comes with the same set of beliefs about various things.
It's largely an intellectual distinction, because in practice everyone still acts and exists in the world. Identity itself is probably impossible without having some sort of story about who you are.
To be clear, Atheists have different belief systems. They all have in common that they believe in one less god than monotheists, and a handfull less gods than polytheists (that, they share with monotheists), but overall you can have different belief systems that do not involve the existence of one (or multiple) god(s).
I know someone who does not believe in gods because he think aliens are playing with us (fake flags etc. Basically the Stargate mythos, except he never saw the show). Less anecdotal, Chalmers is definitely Atheist, but i sure don't have his belief system, and i'm sure no functionalist does.
Also, in general, philosophy of mind is imho the best way to test you belief systems. Or maybe it's the philosophy field i'm the most comfortable in and thus the one where i pushed my beliefs the furthest :/
I don’t really want to repeat what I already wrote, but just to sum this up again: yes, the mere label of atheist doesn’t imply a specific belief system. But in actual practice, in the real world and not merely in definitions, it tends to indicate certain groupings of beliefs.
In other words, the definitional concept of atheist doesn’t imply a specific belief set (except in the choice of using such a word to define oneself), but the sociological definition definitely does. If we looked at various communities calling themselves atheists, they certainly have beliefs in common.
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.
You touch on something interesting there - a lack of a solid, consistent narrative, such as the Cold War, leaves a vacuum into which incoherent and disparate tales grow, as people seek a new bulk narrative to explain their world. Instead of a largely coherent narrative across societies, one ends up with numerous, usually conflicting, narratives.
Maybe we just need to accept that our narrative is more James Joyce and Marcel Proust than it is Michael Crichton.
I actually think that it's much deeper of a problem than the lack of a geopolitical situation like the Cold War, and instead goes all the way back to Copernicus and Darwin. While these discoveries (that humans aren't the center of the universe and weren't created in a supreme being's image, but are evolved from animals) were good from a scientific truth perspective, I think they had a negative malaise effect on human psychology – if only because the previous narratives were thrown out without a sufficiently meaningful one to replace it. And so yeah, you just get a variety of localized, incoherent narratives arising in this vacuum of meaning.
The answer that is really needed IMO is a way of squaring contemporary scientific knowledge with a story that still centers humanity in the universe and offers a better worldview than "you're a primate lost in space."
The answer that is really needed IMO is a way of squaring contemporary scientific knowledge with a story that still centers humanity in the universe
i agree. science and religion need to be in harmony and not contradict each other. if there is an apparent contradiction we need to open to the possibility that we are either misinterpreting the religious claim or that the scientific findings need further research or even both.
You can find sarcastic discourses about whoever think anthropocentric is a sane point of view that go back as far as we have any philosophical account. Take Xenophane’s Satire for example
Copernicus and Darwin didn’t change much things on that side.
I wholly disagree with your later point though. Knowing that we are only primate lost in space, that civilizations and even our whole species could totally disappear tomorrow without any deity to help, save, rescue, blame or give congrats is actually a far more appealing scenario in term of being challenged to excel. Compare that with "you are full first class member of that special species that the most perfect imaginable being ever created and whatever you do you’ll be granted salvation and experiment an eternal existence in paradise".
"you are full first class member of that special species that the most perfect imaginable being ever created and whatever you do you’ll be granted salvation and experiment an eternal existence in paradise".
That's really not an accurate description of the role religion has played in human psychology, and is only accurate for a very specific subset of beliefs in a specific time and place.
My argument was more that humans thought of themselves as inhabiting a world designed for them, but then learned that this was (likely) not true, and that for many people this is a pessimistic, nihilistic conclusion.
- I'm talking primarily about the Western world and its legacy of Christianity. The situation is different in India, China, etc.
- Even then, in practice, most successful religions tend to have a human-like personal figure in an important place, even if the religion itself is technically non-personal.
If the point is about "humanity" and how the world cannot have non-human goals, then rejecting the inconvenient religions (oriental, animistic, whatever) is definitely not a convincing argument. Those are just as humans, and don't explain the world in the convenient western way. So yes, we can very well live in a world not designed for humans.
The point is about Western society and its progression, not “humans” in general. So yes, one route may to be create a belief system more similar to animist or other religions. But that is itself a tall order.
A lot of this has to do with the Enlightenment project and disenchantment so it’s already largely focused on the Western world to begin with. Other places have less a history with this.
mankind has been created to carry forward an ever advancing civilization
that's what i go by. the goal is for each individual and for humanity as a whole to better themselves during their life on earth and how they will experience their eternal existence depends on how well they do on earth. plenty of motivation for me, and better than the idea that after i die there is nothing and therefore what i do in my life doesn't really matter.
That's a narrative from a certain perspective. Let's advocate for different perspectives, like the article does.
I'm perfectly fine with the Darwinistic idea that mankind has evolved from something very primitive rather than created for a purpose.
The declaration of basic human rights is a narrative that humans deem good. But they are still human inventions, no superior creator needs to be involved to have something deemed good for everyone.
We are here, that is a fact. Why or how is a mystery. You can build narratives around that but in fact they are not necessary. I would say, let's just make the best of our existence by trying to not make other beings miserable.
>and to handwave that away in favor of “perspectives” just results in you adopting a different narrative
The point isn't to hand-wave anything. Freeing yourself from narratives is a lot of work. The person who probably took this idea most seriously was Stirner, often pointing out that people who leave religious faith just sacralize human nature. ("leaving Man with a capital M intact"), making the oppression even worse.
To be free when rejecting narrative is also to be on the lookout to not chase freedom in a naive way, but it is an achievable process, and it is exactly that. You're obviously never done if you take the idea seriously.
But it is probably the most single liberating thing a human being can do. Personally speaking I come from a blue collar household, I had drilled into me that I must learn a vocation. I didn't, I went to uni and got a CS degree because I loved computers. Some choice as simple as this many people don't make because of how strong the narrative is that their parents tell them about who they are supposed to be. And there's millions of decisions like this. A lot of people think they must buy a house in the suburbs, just because everyone else says so. They actually despair if they don't. The extent to which people imitate desires of others in societies that are supposed to be free is incredible.
> A lot of people think they must buy a house in the suburbs, just because everyone else says so. They actually despair if they don't. The extent to which people imitate desires of others in societies that are supposed to be free is incredible.
Indeed, and I am quite amazed by that seeing that behavior in others. Although maybe/probably I am biased by other narratives in similar ways while not being aware. I feel it would be liberating to understand those narratives and see them for the mere stories they are.
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.
>We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
Religion, at its most fundamental core, is about providing a set of guidelines and contexts with which to make sense of life and the world around us so we can spend less time bickering and worrying about things that we ultimately can't do anything about.
I feel the mad rush to reject and remove religion from society in the 20th century onwards has caused significant damage that we should address. It's not like religion is gone either, we've simply found impromptu replacements that are inferior and repeat a lot of problems religion dealt with already (eg: politics, "science", fanboyism, etc.).
religion needs to evolve and grow with the development of humanity. the currently dominating religions are no longer capable of addressing all the needs of our global society, which is why they are losing ground. but instead of finding a viable alternative we get distracted, as you say, by inferior replacements.
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
> As Sartre warned, everything changes when you tell a story. Narratives limit our potential. Though we are complex beings, living in a chaotic universe, our stories create the illusion that our lives are ordered, logical and complete.
Of course life is full of endless potential, but people and in general society could not function without some kind of shared narrative. In the case of society the narrative is culture. It both limits us and nurtures our potential to move beyond it. There is a duality.
I'm not really excited 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"), are one of the things that makes my life much more interesting.
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.
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.
What an awful article; full of a-priori conclusions that lead down that blissful road to despair and nihilism. The world needs less of this form of superficial thought. The article claims that narratives can give more meaning, as if meaning can come from anywhere else. The story is THE meaning - it's consciousness that gives narrative and consequentially meaning to everything. Be careful of what you "liberate". Your mind can be open enough to the point that your brain falls out, you know.
That said, I don't disagree with everything the author had to say. I agree with the point about the danger of making yourself the main character.
I find Robin Hanson's interpretation resonates more (on lex podcast). According to him, the executive brain (which is a huge chunk of consciousness) acts more like a press secretary than a dictator. It creates a narrative to justify our actions to others. So making a narrative is THE JOB of the consciousness.
Think of life as one long trial. The narrative you weave is not for your benefit, really. It's for the Tribe: the judges and the jurys. So trying to weave an esoteric or arcane narrative won't work, and you know it wont, if you know others won't buy it or understand it. You need a narrative that others, or at least a subset of others that represents authority, would be able to buy. You don't really have a choice in it. It's just how we are built. And why would you want to go against it really.
The article is talking about the narratives we construct of the external world.
The two may not be entirely unrelated; our facility for constructing an narrative of the external world might have led to us constructing a narrative of our internal world.
> It creates a narrative to justify our actions to others
I would disagree on that point.
I believe that you create that narrative for yourself, to create an illusion of consciousness. More than that, an illusion of consciousness through time. That's why memories are so easily modified/created by outsiders. That how placebo/nocebo effect works. That's why you create fake memories from a photography, or why you sometimes tries to justify reactions post hoc.
This is also just a theory (inspired by Keith Frankish).
Consider Dolphus Raymond in To Kill a Mockingbird. He weaves one narrative for his birth Tribe, but when Scout looks on the other side of the fabric, there's a plot twist for himself and his adopted Tribe.
> Think of life as one long trial. The narrative you weave is not for your benefit, really.
I like the trial metaphor, but disagree about who it is for. It has to be for yourself. How you explain life, your actions, etc is only for you - it is an end in itself - and you have to be happy about it.
Alternatively, you can consider the idea that once you die, you then become the judge at your trial. How do you find yourself - guilty or innocent?
"This is the reason we can tell the business world." ( says one fictional CEO )
The real reason may be something else altogether, but people will accept this rationale based on that if provided. I don't think you are wrong.
Pareto is well known for his 80-20 split; he's less well known for dividing bases for action into residues (sentimental bases, differing largely by whether one is conservative or progressive by inclination) and derivations (the logical rationales one gives for proposed or taken actions).
Same here. It's just wishy-washy uncommitted phrasing indicative of "don't make a strong opinion that is polarizing" that is so characteristic of AI generated text. I used to use an online writing service for content many years ago and one of the hallmarks of "I'm doing this for a little extra money" and "I'm a pro writer between gigs" was the "in conclusion" and "therefore" and the three part school essay structure. It screamed bad writing, and I am seeing the same kind of flags in AI generated text too.
I’ve found rejecting the tendency to reduce people to narratives so incredibly important with our children.
Whether their latest choice has been probably good or probably bad, keeping those choices as something they did rather than something they are keeps the future open for them.
"The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad - because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune." ~ Alan Watts
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.
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."
reminds me of the famous zen tale, as I recall it:
A western professor once went to a zen master in order to study zen. The master welcomed him, and offered him a cup of tea. When tea was ready, he began to pour the liquid into the professor's cup. When the liquid reached the top of the cup, the master continued filling it, making the tea go all over the floor. The professor asked what he was doing, and the master answered: "This cup couldn't hold more tea because it was already full. If you don't first empty your mind from your prejudices, how can I teach you anything?"
Oh yeah. I had a shift one day when the "I" realised the narrative it has been living on was a bunch of cherry picked crap of emotions and memories.
Till then I used to do things that fit the narrative. A voice in head that criticises when it deviates.
Now I am free to do more things that don't fit the narrative.
It's brings much more freedom. But with narrative going away you also need to find a good replacement for the existential questions which will soon starts knocking down the door.
“Um yeeeah (Office Space), Peter if you could, like, just casually, reject one of the hard-wired evolutionary learning processes of your biology that would be great.”
One of the six characteristics of consciousness as formulated by Julian Jaynes in his work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is that of narratization: a story that we tell ourselves of how we got here, where we are going, and why towards that end. In addition, his notion of consciousness is that it is essentially lexical, linguistic, and metaphorical in character; our self-concept, our ideas of who we are, are in fact linguistic models we use to analogize the body physical into a mental metaphor, and it is language that facilitates this process through its ability to represent physical concretions with mental, symbolic abstractions.
Identity then is a narrative subroutine written in natural language, and in this way it becomes possible to speak forth identity and program a persona out of whole cloth through the force of the Word alone; this is the sense of the Logos and the famous declaration, "In the beginning was the Word," where all of reality was spoken forth through the utterance of language. This is the Western, Greek, and Abrahamic view of the primacy of language and of symbolic realism.
> As a result of embodying the waiter-narrative, he lives inauthentically because he can only act in a way that fits with the role. The narrative he follows gives him a limited understanding of himself [...]
This is why it is of paramount importance that one minds the language and narratives they use to describe one's self, for every utterance ascribed to one's persona circumscribes and limits it, setting it off on a fixed trajectory instead of maximizing optionality (see also pg's Keep Your Identity Small: "the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible" [0]). You are neither a waiter, nor a parent, a child, an athlete nor a hobbyist [1]:
The principal disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with
reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth, and our names
about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, with ourselves.
... and this Eastern non-identification with symbolic content is the rejection of narrative identity espoused by TFA.
The advent of postmodern social media has given rise to a new form of "hyperreal identity" now, where it becomes possible to publish language that literally creates personas and identities with no basis in physical reality. Confusing symbols of self with the actual self is not only easier than ever, it is the default mode of existence in the digital era, and one's avatar or social media profile takes precedence over the person themselves - a "simulacrum of the fourth order." One must be careful of the media they use to carry the language and narrative of their identity, because all messages are constrained by the medium they inhabit, and if the language of one's narrative is constrained, so too is their self-concept and their identity; we have progresses from "the medium is the message" to "the medium is your identity."
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.
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
This is a VERY silly article.
A better article would have the title:
Life is Not A Story, Life is Many Stories.
I have but one meager, measly, impoverished point of view, but I can tell multiple stories from my one point of view, because I can imagine the point of view of other people.
What is dangerous is being trapped inside a single story, which can be related to trauma in some cases. (Search something like trauma story loop)
When you are trapped inside a single story, you can have strong feelings that you MUST respond in certain ways to certain stimuli, as there is no other story that could be true. When you can tell a different story, you can make progress.
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Edit: the author's reference to 'perspective taking' is very much like what I am saying. It's still a silly article.
> "Think of the ways that perspectives organise experiences differently. By ‘perspective’ I mean something more complex than ‘point of view’. I’m referring to the way we engage with the world from a particular position or orientation that draws our attention to aspects of experience, like how our visual ‘perspective’ allows bright colours to show up more easily than dull ones. Perspectives are shaped by our place in the world, our beliefs, values and what we think matters. As the philosopher Elisabeth Camp explains, a perspective ‘helps us to do things with the thoughts we have: to make quick judgments based on what’s most important, to grasp intuitive connections, and to respond emotionally, among other things.’ Through perspective some features of our experiences ‘stick out in our minds while others fade into the background.’
Perspectives, then, determine the narratives we adopt. In other words, our core beliefs and values shape the way we see things and what we take to be important in our experiences. It is our perspectives that generate our narratives. Perspective also explains why our narratives can differ so radically from those of other people, even when we experience the same events. But once we understand these perspectives, we can see how flexible our narratives can truly become. Perspectives, it turns out, don’t have a linear, ordered structure. We can’t think of them in terms of sequences of events, like stories. In some ways, perspectives are better represented by the non-linearity of poetry."
I don’t find their argument that you can “reject having a narrative” very convincing. Human beings exist embedded in society, and to handwave that away in favor of “perspectives” just results in you adopting a different narrative, the “I reject narratives” one. Which is ultimately why existentialism never really went anywhere.
Instead I think the problem is actually the exact opposite: people don’t embrace stories enough. Modernity is accurately described as a place without any coherent sort of arch-story for society and local-story for individuals and places. To use the concept by Deleuze, everything has been too “deterritorialized.” We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
Humans desire narratives to understand the world, but the world is too complex to be captured into reality.
Those arch-theories already exist in the theories like Dialectical Materialism, or worse, Fascism, and with terrible consequences once they confronted reality.
The circumstantial perspective of (Liberal Western) Modernism & Postmodernism may have it's flaws, but it has offered more practical results in policymaking than not.
I’d describe those things (along with most traditional worldviews) as failed attempts to encapsulate reality into an over simplified story. But just because they failed and had bad consequences doesn’t mean that the attempt itself is misguided or impossible. Otherwise, the alternative seems to be an endlessly growing malaise, which isn’t much of a solution either.
In fact, I think the lack of such an attempt to make a coherent story is what draws people to the over simplified ones in the first place.
How do you know they weren’t ‘attempts to make a coherent story’ that turned destructive?
I don’t, but what is your alternative suggestion? What important things don’t also have the potential to end badly?
Unless your position is a kind of Daoist quietism, I’m not sure what you are suggesting instead.
Why do you believe such alternative suggestions exist?
Maybe there aren’t any such that are risk free. So you have to evaluate both the potential upsides and downsides to see if it’s a net positive and worthwhile risk to take.
Then I'm really not sure what exactly you are arguing for or against. The act of making a story that attempts to give meaning to human life and society? How would you evaluate that for potential upsides and downsides, and what are you comparing it against?
Why is "story", which is known to be an accurate model, the preferred model? Why not non-linear dynamical system, epigram, clerihew, or haiku?
Probably because most of those don't line up with how humans experience the world. Storytelling has a long history in the human experience, while haiku or epigrams aren't really the sort of thing one can "wrap" a life around.
Humans experience the world as a story, but that is not necessarily the most human way to wrap a life around as you are implying. In some cases there are more powerful frameworks. For example Hitler is wrapped (by most of the world at least) around the damage and pain he caused not around his story. Stories are mostly fine, but thinking that we should strive for that to being the main perspective is limiting.
> For example Hitler is wrapped (by most of the world at least) around the damage and pain he caused not around his story.
Isn't this exactly part of Hitler's story though? I think I'm misunderstanding what your concept of "story" means.
I never said anyone had good prospects to complete such an evaluation in a single lifetime… in fact it’s very unlikely to happen.
But without that it’s hard to see how such proposals have any merit at all, considering the historical track record.
Both communism and nazism provided simplified narrative stories.
Yes, that's why I called them "failed attempts to encapsulate reality into an over simplified story."
This sounds like a non true scotsman. If large societies buying into a story doesn’t qualify it as a success, what does? M
Why would that be the qualification for success? I didn’t write that “everyone believing it” was the marker of success, so I don’t know why that would be relevant.
In another comment thread, I wrote that a story is needed which combines accurate scientific information with a human purpose in the world. Those examples quite obviously didn’t have scientific views of the world.
Those societies not being failures as a result. They both fail to properly understand politics and economics. Also sociology.
The author answers the inability to escape all narratives with the ability to constantly change perspectives. From the article:
> We might never fully escape the narratives that surround us, but we can learn to change the perspectives behind them. And so, we are never bound by stories, only by our ability to understand how our beliefs and values shape the way we perceive and engage with the world. We don’t need better narratives; we need to expand and refine our perspectives.
There are problematic narratives though. The robin hood one, were you are always the underdog against a evil universe out to get you. The everything is people and societal norms narrative, that completely blends out the physical universe as a sort of "defeated" final boss and thus is blind for dangers like global warming. Many more come to mind.
> 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.
> just results in you adopting a different narrative, the “I reject narratives” one.
This is like saying that atheism is just another religion because it's the belief in nothing. In a a hairsplitting way it may arguably be true but atheism does not provide a consistent(-ish) narrative about the world like religions do and therefore is fundamentally different.
In the typical Western sense of the word Atheism (that is, not just as a label defining the lack of belief, but the specific instance of ideas/people) is not another "religion," but it's absolutely another "belief system" that often comes with the same set of beliefs about various things.
It's largely an intellectual distinction, because in practice everyone still acts and exists in the world. Identity itself is probably impossible without having some sort of story about who you are.
To be clear, Atheists have different belief systems. They all have in common that they believe in one less god than monotheists, and a handfull less gods than polytheists (that, they share with monotheists), but overall you can have different belief systems that do not involve the existence of one (or multiple) god(s).
I know someone who does not believe in gods because he think aliens are playing with us (fake flags etc. Basically the Stargate mythos, except he never saw the show). Less anecdotal, Chalmers is definitely Atheist, but i sure don't have his belief system, and i'm sure no functionalist does.
Also, in general, philosophy of mind is imho the best way to test you belief systems. Or maybe it's the philosophy field i'm the most comfortable in and thus the one where i pushed my beliefs the furthest :/
I don’t really want to repeat what I already wrote, but just to sum this up again: yes, the mere label of atheist doesn’t imply a specific belief system. But in actual practice, in the real world and not merely in definitions, it tends to indicate certain groupings of beliefs.
In other words, the definitional concept of atheist doesn’t imply a specific belief set (except in the choice of using such a word to define oneself), but the sociological definition definitely does. If we looked at various communities calling themselves atheists, they certainly have beliefs in common.
> We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
Sure. You would also be much happier taking drugs all day.
Indeed, a solid narrative is dangerous. Consider a 'solid' narrative that seems fine at first sight: you tell yourself constantly that you are happy to just be able to be here, and that you are whole with the world. It would somehow feel very liberating to you, but at the same time having the danger of not trying one's best, of not taking care of self and others. Exactly the effect of drugs.
You touch on something interesting there - a lack of a solid, consistent narrative, such as the Cold War, leaves a vacuum into which incoherent and disparate tales grow, as people seek a new bulk narrative to explain their world. Instead of a largely coherent narrative across societies, one ends up with numerous, usually conflicting, narratives.
Maybe we just need to accept that our narrative is more James Joyce and Marcel Proust than it is Michael Crichton.
I actually think that it's much deeper of a problem than the lack of a geopolitical situation like the Cold War, and instead goes all the way back to Copernicus and Darwin. While these discoveries (that humans aren't the center of the universe and weren't created in a supreme being's image, but are evolved from animals) were good from a scientific truth perspective, I think they had a negative malaise effect on human psychology – if only because the previous narratives were thrown out without a sufficiently meaningful one to replace it. And so yeah, you just get a variety of localized, incoherent narratives arising in this vacuum of meaning.
The answer that is really needed IMO is a way of squaring contemporary scientific knowledge with a story that still centers humanity in the universe and offers a better worldview than "you're a primate lost in space."
The answer that is really needed IMO is a way of squaring contemporary scientific knowledge with a story that still centers humanity in the universe
i agree. science and religion need to be in harmony and not contradict each other. if there is an apparent contradiction we need to open to the possibility that we are either misinterpreting the religious claim or that the scientific findings need further research or even both.
You can find sarcastic discourses about whoever think anthropocentric is a sane point of view that go back as far as we have any philosophical account. Take Xenophane’s Satire for example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophanes#Satires
Copernicus and Darwin didn’t change much things on that side.
I wholly disagree with your later point though. Knowing that we are only primate lost in space, that civilizations and even our whole species could totally disappear tomorrow without any deity to help, save, rescue, blame or give congrats is actually a far more appealing scenario in term of being challenged to excel. Compare that with "you are full first class member of that special species that the most perfect imaginable being ever created and whatever you do you’ll be granted salvation and experiment an eternal existence in paradise".
"you are full first class member of that special species that the most perfect imaginable being ever created and whatever you do you’ll be granted salvation and experiment an eternal existence in paradise".
That's really not an accurate description of the role religion has played in human psychology, and is only accurate for a very specific subset of beliefs in a specific time and place.
My argument was more that humans thought of themselves as inhabiting a world designed for them, but then learned that this was (likely) not true, and that for many people this is a pessimistic, nihilistic conclusion.
Not all religions/belief systems have/had the world (just) designed for humans. People can "cope" with other views.
Definitely true, but:
- I'm talking primarily about the Western world and its legacy of Christianity. The situation is different in India, China, etc.
- Even then, in practice, most successful religions tend to have a human-like personal figure in an important place, even if the religion itself is technically non-personal.
If the point is about "humanity" and how the world cannot have non-human goals, then rejecting the inconvenient religions (oriental, animistic, whatever) is definitely not a convincing argument. Those are just as humans, and don't explain the world in the convenient western way. So yes, we can very well live in a world not designed for humans.
The point is about Western society and its progression, not “humans” in general. So yes, one route may to be create a belief system more similar to animist or other religions. But that is itself a tall order.
A lot of this has to do with the Enlightenment project and disenchantment so it’s already largely focused on the Western world to begin with. Other places have less a history with this.
mankind has been created to carry forward an ever advancing civilization
that's what i go by. the goal is for each individual and for humanity as a whole to better themselves during their life on earth and how they will experience their eternal existence depends on how well they do on earth. plenty of motivation for me, and better than the idea that after i die there is nothing and therefore what i do in my life doesn't really matter.
> mankind has been created to...
That's a narrative from a certain perspective. Let's advocate for different perspectives, like the article does.
I'm perfectly fine with the Darwinistic idea that mankind has evolved from something very primitive rather than created for a purpose.
The declaration of basic human rights is a narrative that humans deem good. But they are still human inventions, no superior creator needs to be involved to have something deemed good for everyone.
We are here, that is a fact. Why or how is a mystery. You can build narratives around that but in fact they are not necessary. I would say, let's just make the best of our existence by trying to not make other beings miserable.
> a story that still centers humanity in the universe and offers a better worldview than "you're a primate lost in space."
The fact of being a self-aware meta-cognitive primate lost in space isn't enough of a miracle to justify feeling centered in the universe?
It might be, but I don't think culture at large finds this story very inspirational.
Culture is the problem. Remove the dead beliefs. Replace it with something alive. Live from awareness.
>and to handwave that away in favor of “perspectives” just results in you adopting a different narrative
The point isn't to hand-wave anything. Freeing yourself from narratives is a lot of work. The person who probably took this idea most seriously was Stirner, often pointing out that people who leave religious faith just sacralize human nature. ("leaving Man with a capital M intact"), making the oppression even worse.
To be free when rejecting narrative is also to be on the lookout to not chase freedom in a naive way, but it is an achievable process, and it is exactly that. You're obviously never done if you take the idea seriously.
But it is probably the most single liberating thing a human being can do. Personally speaking I come from a blue collar household, I had drilled into me that I must learn a vocation. I didn't, I went to uni and got a CS degree because I loved computers. Some choice as simple as this many people don't make because of how strong the narrative is that their parents tell them about who they are supposed to be. And there's millions of decisions like this. A lot of people think they must buy a house in the suburbs, just because everyone else says so. They actually despair if they don't. The extent to which people imitate desires of others in societies that are supposed to be free is incredible.
> A lot of people think they must buy a house in the suburbs, just because everyone else says so. They actually despair if they don't. The extent to which people imitate desires of others in societies that are supposed to be free is incredible.
Indeed, and I am quite amazed by that seeing that behavior in others. Although maybe/probably I am biased by other narratives in similar ways while not being aware. I feel it would be liberating to understand those narratives and see them for the mere stories they are.
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.
>We’d all probably be happier with a solid narrative underlying our senses of self and society.
Religion, at its most fundamental core, is about providing a set of guidelines and contexts with which to make sense of life and the world around us so we can spend less time bickering and worrying about things that we ultimately can't do anything about.
I feel the mad rush to reject and remove religion from society in the 20th century onwards has caused significant damage that we should address. It's not like religion is gone either, we've simply found impromptu replacements that are inferior and repeat a lot of problems religion dealt with already (eg: politics, "science", fanboyism, etc.).
religion needs to evolve and grow with the development of humanity. the currently dominating religions are no longer capable of addressing all the needs of our global society, which is why they are losing ground. but instead of finding a viable alternative we get distracted, as you say, by inferior replacements.
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
> As Sartre warned, everything changes when you tell a story. Narratives limit our potential. Though we are complex beings, living in a chaotic universe, our stories create the illusion that our lives are ordered, logical and complete.
Of course life is full of endless potential, but people and in general society could not function without some kind of shared narrative. In the case of society the narrative is culture. It both limits us and nurtures our potential to move beyond it. There is a duality.
I'm not really excited 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"), are one of the things that makes my life much more interesting.
Nihilism solves so much nothing.
A million more layers of "freeing" yourself and you are back to where you started every time.
An ape granting all impulsive choices the ability to undo anything long-term at all.
Futility is a real thing for some dreamers to accept... but plan-less-ness is not freedom.
It is bondage to short-sighted repeated failure.
Some people see an abyss or total blankness, and panic, because they don't know what to do with it and need to be given a purpose. Others see the same and rejoice, because it is the ultimate canvas on which a creative can make things.
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.
What an awful article; full of a-priori conclusions that lead down that blissful road to despair and nihilism. The world needs less of this form of superficial thought. The article claims that narratives can give more meaning, as if meaning can come from anywhere else. The story is THE meaning - it's consciousness that gives narrative and consequentially meaning to everything. Be careful of what you "liberate". Your mind can be open enough to the point that your brain falls out, you know.
That said, I don't disagree with everything the author had to say. I agree with the point about the danger of making yourself the main character.
I find Robin Hanson's interpretation resonates more (on lex podcast). According to him, the executive brain (which is a huge chunk of consciousness) acts more like a press secretary than a dictator. It creates a narrative to justify our actions to others. So making a narrative is THE JOB of the consciousness.
Think of life as one long trial. The narrative you weave is not for your benefit, really. It's for the Tribe: the judges and the jurys. So trying to weave an esoteric or arcane narrative won't work, and you know it wont, if you know others won't buy it or understand it. You need a narrative that others, or at least a subset of others that represents authority, would be able to buy. You don't really have a choice in it. It's just how we are built. And why would you want to go against it really.
You might like these two ideas of Daniel Dennett, multiple drafts model and fame in the brain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drafts_model
https://kenyonreview.org/2008/04/fame-in-the-brain/
Yes, but that’ a narrative of our internal mind.
The article is talking about the narratives we construct of the external world.
The two may not be entirely unrelated; our facility for constructing an narrative of the external world might have led to us constructing a narrative of our internal world.
> It creates a narrative to justify our actions to others
I would disagree on that point.
I believe that you create that narrative for yourself, to create an illusion of consciousness. More than that, an illusion of consciousness through time. That's why memories are so easily modified/created by outsiders. That how placebo/nocebo effect works. That's why you create fake memories from a photography, or why you sometimes tries to justify reactions post hoc.
This is also just a theory (inspired by Keith Frankish).
Consider Dolphus Raymond in To Kill a Mockingbird. He weaves one narrative for his birth Tribe, but when Scout looks on the other side of the fabric, there's a plot twist for himself and his adopted Tribe.
INCONCINNVM SED LIBERVM
> Think of life as one long trial. The narrative you weave is not for your benefit, really.
I like the trial metaphor, but disagree about who it is for. It has to be for yourself. How you explain life, your actions, etc is only for you - it is an end in itself - and you have to be happy about it.
Alternatively, you can consider the idea that once you die, you then become the judge at your trial. How do you find yourself - guilty or innocent?
if it's not for my benefit then why would he conclude that it must be for the tribe? are there no other options?
all very confusing
that part is my own words. His was only the first paragraph of my comment. I tend to make things more complicated than it needs to be, maybe.
"This is the reason we can tell the business world." ( says one fictional CEO ) The real reason may be something else altogether, but people will accept this rationale based on that if provided. I don't think you are wrong.
Pareto is well known for his 80-20 split; he's less well known for dividing bases for action into residues (sentimental bases, differing largely by whether one is conservative or progressive by inclination) and derivations (the logical rationales one gives for proposed or taken actions).
Homo sapiens or Homo praetexendo?
Why am I having AI vibes after reading the article? A narrative (prompt) sparkled this whole "lets think step by step" thing.
Same here. It's just wishy-washy uncommitted phrasing indicative of "don't make a strong opinion that is polarizing" that is so characteristic of AI generated text. I used to use an online writing service for content many years ago and one of the hallmarks of "I'm doing this for a little extra money" and "I'm a pro writer between gigs" was the "in conclusion" and "therefore" and the three part school essay structure. It screamed bad writing, and I am seeing the same kind of flags in AI generated text too.
I’ve found rejecting the tendency to reduce people to narratives so incredibly important with our children.
Whether their latest choice has been probably good or probably bad, keeping those choices as something they did rather than something they are keeps the future open for them.
This reminds me of a Chinese farmer story:
"The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad - because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune." ~ Alan Watts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWd6fNVZ20o
People are also multifaceted.
My dad was a pretty great dad, but when he split with my mom he did some pretty dick moves.
I have no trouble to simultaneously hold those two facets in my mind when my mom rants about him.
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.
Thoughts are idols (except for math, those thoughts are themselves.)
Your niece sounds cool.
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."
reminds me of the famous zen tale, as I recall it:
A western professor once went to a zen master in order to study zen. The master welcomed him, and offered him a cup of tea. When tea was ready, he began to pour the liquid into the professor's cup. When the liquid reached the top of the cup, the master continued filling it, making the tea go all over the floor. The professor asked what he was doing, and the master answered: "This cup couldn't hold more tea because it was already full. If you don't first empty your mind from your prejudices, how can I teach you anything?"
That actually says more about the prejudices of the zen master, than the professor
That's true. If you don't have prejudice you cannot talk about it since you don't know it.
It's an educational metaphorical demonstration, not a prejudice.
It doesn't really do anything. Adds one more crap belief to the list of all other crap beliefs one already have.
If I knew what I was doing I’d never learn anything.
A narrative about the inadequacy of narratives. Choice!
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.
“Um yeeeah (Office Space), Peter if you could, like, just casually, reject one of the hard-wired evolutionary learning processes of your biology that would be great.”
What a load of crap.
One of the six characteristics of consciousness as formulated by Julian Jaynes in his work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is that of narratization: a story that we tell ourselves of how we got here, where we are going, and why towards that end. In addition, his notion of consciousness is that it is essentially lexical, linguistic, and metaphorical in character; our self-concept, our ideas of who we are, are in fact linguistic models we use to analogize the body physical into a mental metaphor, and it is language that facilitates this process through its ability to represent physical concretions with mental, symbolic abstractions.
Identity then is a narrative subroutine written in natural language, and in this way it becomes possible to speak forth identity and program a persona out of whole cloth through the force of the Word alone; this is the sense of the Logos and the famous declaration, "In the beginning was the Word," where all of reality was spoken forth through the utterance of language. This is the Western, Greek, and Abrahamic view of the primacy of language and of symbolic realism.
> As a result of embodying the waiter-narrative, he lives inauthentically because he can only act in a way that fits with the role. The narrative he follows gives him a limited understanding of himself [...]
This is why it is of paramount importance that one minds the language and narratives they use to describe one's self, for every utterance ascribed to one's persona circumscribes and limits it, setting it off on a fixed trajectory instead of maximizing optionality (see also pg's Keep Your Identity Small: "the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible" [0]). You are neither a waiter, nor a parent, a child, an athlete nor a hobbyist [1]:
... and this Eastern non-identification with symbolic content is the rejection of narrative identity espoused by TFA.The advent of postmodern social media has given rise to a new form of "hyperreal identity" now, where it becomes possible to publish language that literally creates personas and identities with no basis in physical reality. Confusing symbols of self with the actual self is not only easier than ever, it is the default mode of existence in the digital era, and one's avatar or social media profile takes precedence over the person themselves - a "simulacrum of the fourth order." One must be careful of the media they use to carry the language and narrative of their identity, because all messages are constrained by the medium they inhabit, and if the language of one's narrative is constrained, so too is their self-concept and their identity; we have progresses from "the medium is the message" to "the medium is your identity."
[0] https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w
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.
This is the tale of how I learned to overcome the narrative fallacy.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend did it
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rtvwu75K3I
The End of the Movie Starring Josh Groban Featuring rachel bloom
So this is the end of the movie Whoa whoa whoa But real life isn’t a movie No no no.
You want things to be wrapped up neatly The way that stories do.
You’re looking for answers But answers aren’t looking for you.
Because life is a gradual series of revelations That occur over a period of time It’s not some carefully crafted story It’s a mess and we’re all gonna die.
If you saw a movie that was like real life You’d be like “what the hell was that movie about?” It was really all over the place Life doesn’t make narrative sense.
Nuhuh
We tell ourselves that we’re in a movie. Whoa whoa whoa Each one of us thinks we got the starring role. Role role role.
But the truth is sometimes you’re the lead And sometimes you’re an extra Just walking by in the background Like me, Josh Groban!
Because life is a gradual series of revelations That occur over a period of time Some things might happen that seem connected But there’s not always a reason or rhyme
People aren’t characters They’re complicated And their choices don’t always make sense