Narrative
A substitution for reality that emerges out of ignorance or a belief that it does not conform to our expectations.
A story about truth that we believe is stable enough to build upon, although we often settle on those we prefer over those that make sense.
The foundation of ideology.
All narratives are stories, but not all stories are narratives. Most of what we conceive is predominantly informed by stories - constructions about meaning that vary in complexity, utility, depth, scope, particularity, and resonance. Each concept contains numerous stories, they are not constrained to a single composition. Even the concepts themselves qualify as stories, but this is a convoluted metaphysical claim that, while meaningful in its own right, will struggle to find its place in this setting.
Some examples are language, money, and love.
Language contains a story about the connection between conveyance and reality, but it also contains stories about philosophy, history, geography, culture, power, biology, art and humanity. Money contains a story about value and potential, but it also contains stories about transference, status, ownership, markets, commodities, leverage and human interest. Love contains a story about emotion and commitment, but it also contains stories about tradition, violence, property, control, compulsion, evolution and procreation. There are many more beyond these to be sure, and appreciating the significance of each and how they are interrelated is a determining factor in whether we actually understand something. If we cannot grasp these strands and their interconnectivity, then we have no basis for professing conceptual proficiency.
Stories also iterate over time, and they are subject to selective pressures just like any phenotypical characteristic, improving their resolution if they are valuable for adaptation. Those that do not offer sufficient value, or if they promote maladaptive tendencies, will have to undergo significant changes or they will be forgotten to time, and rightfully so. Stories have always been part of human sense-making, and our necessity for narrative formation driven by our biology is likely to keep them around for as long as we remain human. Narratives, while typified as stories, possess some unique characteristics that distinguish them from others.
Most stories seek to interpret reality in a manner that improves human understanding, narratives seek to prescribe reality in a manner that the bard believes is or ought to be the case. Stories are constructed around phenomenon that emerges around us - they are bottom-up models of perceived reality. Narratives are constructed around an ideal that presumes its relevance irrespective of reality – they are top-down models of prospective desirability.
Narratives are often esoteric, requiring that an anointed class remain at the forefront of its cause, whereas stories possess a quality of universal accessibility. One demands that a select group govern an obedient majority, the other democratizes meaning and encourages reciprocity. Stories wane over time if they suffer practical repudiation, but narratives remain consistent over time due to their rigidity, and their waxing is encouraged, not due to any adaptive strategy that benefits humanity, but because it benefits the narrative and its adherents. Complexity is found in both, but the richness in compelling stories occurs as a result of natural processes. The complexity in narratives occurs as a result of normative processes designed to conflate its validity with redundant and often inconsistent navel-gazing – it is shallow and empty.
Both are useful in their own right, but while stories spread memetically built upon evolutionary principles, narratives feign profundity built upon an artificial substrate of idealism. The former leads to understanding, the latter leads to control. This can be seen in how often exchanges are welcome that challenge our understanding of each.
Stories are like poetry, they follow a recognizable structure, they vary in potency, and we are all encouraged to share our understanding of the material. High quality stories possess the capacity to produce exponentially-growing degrees of freedom that become intertwined as we unite around their potency. Narratives are stale and lifeless, they exist in whichever form the anointed dictate, and they may be engaged with only in the prescribed manners that are dictated. They do not exist to generate unity nor do they invite universal access on our own terms, they attempt to capture generalized power through complicity, and the tactics employed are predatory and disingenuous.
Rather than examine stories closely to determine their nature, we can perform a relatively straight-forward assessment to assist us in clarifying this pretty quickly.
If it is persuasive on its own merits, encourages deference by all parties, contains clear and accessible wisdom, and leaves us feeling more connected, then it is a high-quality story that will likely contribute to human understanding. Collect as many of these as possible, and share them so we may discover where we stand relative to one another.
If it is fails to persuade in the absence of unspoken threats or emotional weaponry, encourages egocentric reference points, contains opaque wisdom or none at all, and leaves us feeling less connected or even divided, then it is a narrative, and it is not likely that it will contribute to human understanding. Even if it did, would it be worth all of the destruction it invites?
With this in mind, examining our views is extremely important if we are looking to prioritize common sense, unity, pluralism, and individual human worth.
Posted: 26 Feb 2023
