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Narrativity

Started by Golden Applesauce, January 12, 2010, 04:52:32 AM

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Golden Applesauce

The Discordian "Narrative"

"Because quotes are awesome, that's why."
          -Cain

So the other day I was watching this news program, pretty sure it was CNN.  And I say "the other day" but it was more like a few months ago because it was the day after that ridiculous Balloon Boy story; I meant to write this out sooner but You Know How It Is.

I want you to understand that this was a mildly unusual event for me.  I prefer to read news, either in print, for things that happened recently, or on-line for things that happened earlier today, or just listen to it on NPR, for things that are in the middle of happening right now.  I haven't seriously watched a news program since one day in elementary school when I decided that since I was a big kid now it was high time I started watching mature, grown-up television shows - and discovered that grown-ups must watch the news to Build Character (I was a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes) because there was no other rational reason to do it.  Come to think of it, I had much the same experience when I decided to stay through an entire mass rather than leave with all the other children halfway through to go to Sunday School.

Anyway, I had an hour break between classes and decided to hang out in a little lounge-y area near the classrooms.  The Computer Science classes and the various Business classes are all held in the same building, (which creates an odd social dynamic, as the MBA types think the only function of a CS major is to be one of their employees in the IT department, and the CS majors think the only function of a MBA is to make their careers more difficult with vague specifications that change the day before the deadline gets pushed closer a week.  But I digress.), but mostly it means that the School of Business, having actual money, gets to do the interior design.  So the lounge has three bigass flatscreen TVs, one which shows MSNBC 24/7, without sound or subtitles, one which shows CNN 24/7, with sound projected from the ceiling so you can't escape it, and one which does nothing but loop through a 3-frame PowerPoint presentation about some Elevator Pitch Contest or other.  What this means for me is that the only place I could wait for my next class without having to sit through CNN blasting from the heavens was in the bathroom or another building.  Usually I just walk back to my apartment, but like I mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph (If you got lost, I don't blame you - I had to go back to the beginning and figure out where all my clauses were too...) today I didn't feel like doing that so I just sat down and watched the news for an hour.  How bad could it be?  As it turns out, pretty bad, but instructive.

The first story they ran that hour was about a team of archaeologists digging up some ruins of ancient Babylon in present-day Iraq.  Which would have been interesting and informative if handled by a reporter who knew anything about, or at least was mildly interested in, ancient history.  Instead, the anchor made a big point about how this was the Babylon of Biblical times, brought up the Tower of Babel, tried to draw parallels between the Tower of Babel and the War in Iraq and generally talked about how the place has been a region of conflict since time immemorial.  I kid you not, the anchor of a mainstream US news outlet, and one of supposedly reasonable quality at that (FOX, sure, but this was CNN!), was trying to make the point that there has always been somebody fighting in Iraq, and that the current fighting is a continuation of the Biblical narrative, in which the Christians bring about the peace that was lost when Man tried to reach God back at Babel by conquering the shit out of everybody and homogenizing whatever's left.  To underscore that point, the next story involved a special guest, which the anchor interviewed, who had spent a long time in Baghdad.  The man's name was The Vicar of Baghdad (the media is apparently giving people superhero names now; thought that was just in comic books) and the story was about his running an Anglican church in Baghdad.  (Although they de-emphasized Anglican in favor of Christian, presumably knowing their audience likes the myth of a universal "unbranded" Christianity better than Anglicanism.)  Anyway, they talked about The Vicar of Baghdad's church, and how big it was, and how it was growing, and the Christian faith spreading, etc.  The anchor made it clear to the audience that this piece was to be understood in terms of the preceeding story, that Christianity was a uniting force that could smooth over the divisions created back when the Tower of Babel got knocked down.  The pair of stories was a simple one-two punch; explain to the audience that the problems in Iraq could be understood entirely through the narrative of ancient history in Biblical times - there has been and always will be fighting in Babylon, so the current troubles are neither new nor surprising - and that Western culture, specifically Christianity, could end that cycle.

The concept of a single narrative which can be applied to everything is hardly new.  All but a few religions that I know of have one, and a great deal of other worldviews beside.  The Marxists believed in a single story of struggle, with the oppressed always struggling justly against the wealthy and powerful until they one day will suceed in creating a true egalitarian state.  The New-Agers believe in a narrative of continuous spiritual evolution of humanity, where humanity, individually and as a whole, is constantly moving in the direction of self-improvement.  Conservatives have a central narrative where there used to be a Golden Age of some sort, back before we lost the wisdom that the people in a time closer to God or the Working Man or whoever.

So where does Discordianism fit into this?  I don't think it does.  This is not to say that a Discordian can't have a central narrative, but that it isn't a core part of the religion; The Principia, while on one hand claims a cyclical narrative with the Five Seasons, and a good beginning / bad end narrative with the Curse of Greyface (we need to recover our lost good humor!), also contains an strong argument against the whole concept of a central narrative in the Law of Fives and the Reality Grids.

Here's why I think this is interesting: people are more likely to believe (and remember, for that matter) something presented in the form of a story.  Discordianism intentionally avoids framing the world into a story, and furthermore suggests that someone who thinks the world has a plot might be reading a little to much into it.  Discordianism doesn't supply a universal narrative and then insult your intelligence by asking you to shoehorn your every experience into it, or to think of everything in terms of how it relates to this philosophy or that worldview.

I'm going to make some assertions now.  You can argue with me and with each other about their validity (or about anything else in this OP, for that matter.)

1. Discordianism recognizes that the universe is a lot more confusing, bizarre, and complicated than we like to pretend.
2. Discordianism recognizes that people are a lot more confusing, bizarre, and complicated than we like to pretend.
3. Attempts to simplify the world and the people in it can be useful in some circumstances and necessary in others, but one must always be careful to distinguish these simplifications from the world itself (if there is a world distinct from our understanding of it).  We can talk about people in terms of Discordians and Cabbages, Perverts and Normals, Wardens and Inmates, or whatever the dichotomy du jour is, but that's just a way of talking - people are infinitely weirder than that.  Likewise, there is more to the world than Black Iron Prisions, Horrible Truths, Emergent Systems, Rational Thought, and whatever other superstitions you believe in.
4. ANY attempt to describe or explain any significant part of the world in a countable number of statements is either wrong (e.g., "There are two kinds of people...") or doesn't actually explain anything (e.g., "The universe is composed of Chaos.")

So, let's discuss something mildly interesting rather than collectively PMS about magic and shit.  Please?
Q: How regularly do you hire 8th graders?
A: We have hired a number of FORMER 8th graders.

Jasper

I applaud this post.

It reminds me that a while ago I was toying with similar ideas.  Narratives are a purely forebrain activity.  I have a pet hypothesis that narratives are the basis for all moral thought.  Without a story about the consequences of actions, how do you have moral cognitions?

Anyway the idea came from reading the science of discworld, where a narrative substance is posited to exist in the discworld, but not in ours, which is why things happen for reasons in the discworld (but not in ours).  They argued that narrativium (the substance of narrative) exists in the minds of people, which has a sort of poetic truth to it.  What say you?

Epimetheus

POST-SINGULARITY POCKET ORGASM TOAD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

Brotep

I think world-encompassing narratives are pointless, but I deeply respect narratization when it doesn't overreach.

The nature of cognition is to collapse experience into something orderly, manageable.  We can and should create meaning for ourselves.  One of the most wonderful things about people is their ability to take the disarray of the past and construct a coherent story from it.  An identity.

While the narrativium shtick is a silly way of saying this, it gets the point across: because people treat narratives as reality, narratives become social reality.


The difference between poetry and regular speech, the difference between art and crap, lies in whether we put the cliches in the driver's seat.  Narratives and motifs constitute a kind of vocabulary.  We can weave them together skilfully or lazily, passively.  If there is no compromise between the inspiration and the medium, art cannot arise.

Salty

For me Discordianism is a method or example of how to remove the narrative.
We form our stories, our memories, and fit the world into them. I think the PD tried to show us that no matter how we do this we still make fools of ourselves.

That's a hard enough lesson for most people. However, I think the further point to be made, shown and modeled, dissected really, here is that the act of the narrative itself is flawed. In any fashion, but most especially when considered to be a measure of Truth.

Eh...

This is something that's been rattling around my head and isn't fully formed...

The OP mentions "The Universe is composed of chaos" as being meaningless, and I agree.
However, god this is going to make me sound like a hippy, I look at trees. Or skin. Or feet.
It's a cliche, and it's trite, but, Jesus the snowflake thing, no two are alike. That goes the same for everything.
Everything that is alive or is a process of life...moves in whatever direction is available. There are no limits to this. The action of life moving seems totally random to me. 

Like I said, not fully formed, but the seed of something.

I guess my point is, isn't actual life complex and amazing all by itself without the aid of narrative?

Feel free to point out any key factors I've missed in grating detail. It's the only way I'll learn. 
The world is a car and you're the crash test dummy.

Jasper

Quote from: Alty on January 12, 2010, 07:39:30 AMI guess my point is, isn't actual life complex and amazing all by itself without the aid of narrative?

The narrative isn't about making life more complex.  You misunderstand what kind of narrative this is.  The narrative we are talking about (I take it) is closer to little tiny stories like "clouds mean rain" or "wearing a sad face in public is going to mildly distress other people".  These tiny little stories are basically about cause and effect, and they provide a shorthand for objective causality in human terms.

I think.  Do other people get that?

Golden Applesauce

Quote from: Brotep on January 12, 2010, 07:05:33 AM
I think world-encompassing narratives are pointless, but I deeply respect narratization when it doesn't overreach.

The nature of cognition is to collapse experience into something orderly, manageable.  We can and should create meaning for ourselves.  One of the most wonderful things about people is their ability to take the disarray of the past and construct a coherent story from it.  An identity.

It's a wonderful ability, but I'm not sure it's a good ability, or at least not an ability that is consistently used beneficially.  Because once somebody constructs an identity, they start thinking that that's who they Really Are, and they forget that it's an explanation of themselves.  A couple things can go wrong at this point.  They might start attempting to live in accordance with an identity that isn't quite right (if you believe you have a disability, you'll soon start acting as if you have it), or they might steadfastly refuse to ignore new evidence that contradicts their view of themselves, which denies them an opportunity to recognize and compensate for faults.  If they mistake their identity for their self (whatever that is) then they'll be unable to distinguish between threats to the identity and threats to themselves - look no further than those who made the belief that they were created by God to belong to this universe a part of their identity confronted with the notion that random chemistry created the species and reacted as if they were under siege.

The other thing is, people change.  Not just gradually over time, but people act differently in different kinds of situations.  (most people act differently around their friends, or families, or at work, while driving a car, etc.)  Claiming that a single narrative-based identity covers all of these is absurd and inadequate.
Q: How regularly do you hire 8th graders?
A: We have hired a number of FORMER 8th graders.

Golden Applesauce

Quote from: Felix on January 12, 2010, 07:45:52 AM
Quote from: Alty on January 12, 2010, 07:39:30 AMI guess my point is, isn't actual life complex and amazing all by itself without the aid of narrative?

The narrative isn't about making life more complex.  You misunderstand what kind of narrative this is.  The narrative we are talking about (I take it) is closer to little tiny stories like "clouds mean rain" or "wearing a sad face in public is going to mildly distress other people".  These tiny little stories are basically about cause and effect, and they provide a shorthand for objective causality in human terms.

I think.  Do other people get that?

Yeah, but I'm thinking a little broader than just cause-effect.  I'm including stories that give or change meanings or significance - the Egyptian creation myth of the gods creating the orderly world out of the watery abyss and continually defending it against encroaching monsters gives significance and meaning to the Pharoah - he's the guy who defends Egypt from agents of distruction.  Stories that explain what or how or why things are - "In the beginning, we had X.  Then Greyface came along and convinced everyone to do Y instead, which is why people still do Y which is why the world isn't as fun anymore." - identifies a certain kind of behavior as bad, and suggests a way to fix it (go back to doing X.)  Saying "Humans released a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere which affects climate patterns" is one thing.  Saying "Ignorant and selfish humans have been destroying the environment for as long as it was profitable to do so, and will continue as long as there is still money int it" places that in context, giving it (more) meaning and heaps on the value judgments, and also throws in a cause-effect (money -> destructive behavior), and descriptions of what a human is (a human is a kind of creature that breaks stuff for gain.)

Signing off, it's 3 AM in my timezone, I hope this post isn't too incoherent.
Q: How regularly do you hire 8th graders?
A: We have hired a number of FORMER 8th graders.

Golden Applesauce

Quote from: Alty on January 12, 2010, 07:39:30 AM
For me Discordianism is a method or example of how to remove the narrative.
We form our stories, our memories, and fit the world into them. I think the PD tried to show us that no matter how we do this we still make fools of ourselves.

That's a hard enough lesson for most people. However, I think the further point to be made, shown and modeled, dissected really, here is that the act of the narrative itself is flawed. In any fashion, but most especially when considered to be a measure of Truth.

Eh...

This is something that's been rattling around my head and isn't fully formed...

The OP mentions "The Universe is composed of chaos" as being meaningless, and I agree.
However, god this is going to make me sound like a hippy, I look at trees. Or skin. Or feet.
It's a cliche, and it's trite, but, Jesus the snowflake thing, no two are alike. That goes the same for everything.
Everything that is alive or is a process of life...moves in whatever direction is available. There are no limits to this. The action of life moving seems totally random to me. 

Like I said, not fully formed, but the seed of something.

I guess my point is, isn't actual life complex and amazing all by itself without the aid of narrative?


Feel free to point out any key factors I've missed in grating detail. It's the only way I'll learn. 

This is also thinking to small.  Sure, there are parts of life that are amazing... but there's a lot of stuff that really isn't all that great.  (I'm reading a positive connotation into "amazing.)  Like, tsunamis are cool, right?  They're so big, so much power packed into simple ol' water... and then they kill a few hundred thousand people.   :|
Q: How regularly do you hire 8th graders?
A: We have hired a number of FORMER 8th graders.

Ascoe

I'm .dotting this post to read it later... :D
.....

Reginald Ret

:mittens:  to this entire thread.
Lord Byron: "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

Nigel saying the wisest words ever uttered: "It's just a suffix."

"The worst forum ever" "The most mediocre forum on the internet" "The dumbest forum on the internet" "The most retarded forum on the internet" "The lamest forum on the internet" "The coolest forum on the internet"

Reginald Ret

Here's an attempt at a rewrite/condensation.
I hope i have made it a bit more like a coherent story.



OP: GA
Other contributors: Felix, Brotep, Alty





Narrativity



Nearly all religions(and other groups with which people easily identify) have a single central narrative.

Discordianism does have narratives, but they are plural and certainly not central to the beliefsystem.
In fact the Principia Discordia contains narratives that run counter to central narratives. (example: Law of Fives)

Discordianism is a method or example of how to remove the narrative.
We form our stories, our memories, and fit the world into them. The Principia Discordia tried to show us that no matter how we
do this we still make fools of ourselves.

That's a hard enough lesson for most people. However, I think the further point to be made, shown and modeled,
dissected really, here is that the act of the narrative itself is flawed. In any fashion, but most especially when
considered to be a measure of Truth.


1. Discordianism recognizes that the universe is a lot more confusing, bizarre, and complicated than we like to pretend.
2. Discordianism recognizes that people are a lot more confusing, bizarre, and complicated than we like to pretend.
3. Attempts to simplify the world and the people in it can be useful in some circumstances and necessary in others,
but one must always be careful to distinguish these simplifications from the world itself.
4. ANY attempt to describe or explain any significant part of the world in a countable number of statements is either
wrong (e.g., "There are two kinds of people...") or doesn't actually explain anything (e.g., "The universe is composed of Chaos.")
World-encompassing narratives are pointless, but narratization can be useful when it doesn't overreach.



Lets hypothesise that narratives are the basis for all moral thought.  Without a story about the
consequences of actions, how do you have moral cognitions?

The nature of cognition is to collapse experience into something orderly, manageable.  We can and should create meaning
for ourselves.  One of the most wonderful things about people is their ability to take the disarray of the past and
construct a coherent story from it.  An identity.

It's a wonderful ability, but it's not a good ability, or at least not an ability that is consistently used beneficially. 
Because once somebody constructs an identity, they start thinking that that's who they Really Are, and they forget that it's just another
description of themselves.  A couple things can go wrong at this point.  They might start attempting to live in accordance with
an identity that isn't quite right (if you believe you have a disability, you'll soon start acting as if you have it), or they
might steadfastly refuse to ignore new evidence that contradicts their view of themselves, which denies them an opportunity to
recognize and compensate for faults.  If they mistake their identity for their self (whatever that is) then they'll be unable to
distinguish between threats to the identity and threats to themselves - look no further than those who made the belief that they
were created by God to belong to this universe a part of their identity confronted with the notion that random chemistry created
the species and reacted as if they were under siege.

The other thing is, people change.  Not just gradually over time, but people act differently in different kinds of situations. 
(most people act differently around their friends, or families, or at work, while driving a car, etc.)  Claiming that a single
narrative-based identity covers all of these is absurd and inadequate.


The narrative we are talking about is visible in little tiny stories like "clouds mean rain" or "wearing a sad face in public
is going to mildly distress other people".  These tiny little stories are basically about cause and effect, and they
provide a shorthand for objective causality in human terms.
The narrative is ofcourse a little broader than just cause-effect.  Lets include stories that give or change meanings or
significance - the Egyptian creation myth of the gods creating the orderly world out of the watery abyss and continually
defending it against encroaching monsters gives significance and meaning to the Pharoah - he's the guy who defends Egypt
from agents of distruction.  Stories that explain what or how or why things are - "In the beginning, we had X. 
Then Greyface came along and convinced everyone to do Y instead, which is why people still do Y which is why the world
isn't as fun anymore." - identifies a certain kind of behavior as bad, and suggests a way to fix it (go back to doing X.) 
Saying "Humans released a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere which affects climate patterns" is one thing.  Saying
"Ignorant and selfish humans have been destroying the environment for as long as it was profitable to do so, and will
continue as long as there is still money int it" places that in context, giving it (more) meaning and heaps on the
value judgments, and also throws in a cause-effect (money -> destructive behavior), and descriptions of what a human
is (a human is a kind of creature that breaks stuff for gain.)
Lord Byron: "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

Nigel saying the wisest words ever uttered: "It's just a suffix."

"The worst forum ever" "The most mediocre forum on the internet" "The dumbest forum on the internet" "The most retarded forum on the internet" "The lamest forum on the internet" "The coolest forum on the internet"

Payne

Narrative is an essential part of being human - it's a necessary short cut to reasoning, so you don't have to sit and think shit out each and every time you need to take immediate action. You learn from similar "stories" from the past, events that either happened to you or others, and take the appropriate action. All well and fine when a tiger is about to turn you into kitty litter filler, not so good when you're considering your response to planes being hi-jacked and flown into commercial, political and military buildings (for an example).

Also, narrative is appealing to us in our sources of information. An example that Taleb used in The Black Swan of exactly this point is as follows:

John seemed happily married. He killed his wife.

John seemed happily married. He killed his wife to get the inheritance.

The second appears more 'true' to us, as it is more 'sensational' and we can relate it to stories we know well. However the first is actually more true because it sticks more to basic facts without the need of embellishment and can actually cover a hell of a lot more reasons and shades of grey than the second.

If we were to present Johns case before a court with the second statement, he would be fucked forever. If we were to present it with the first, there would be more need for proper investigation and getting to the truth would be more likely (though probably no more easier, and of course he could still have killed his wife for the inheritance).

History suffers from the same problem, in that anything written after an event will have some level of narrative implied in it even if only by the reader. For this reason Taleb recommends William Shirer's Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 over his seminal (and written after the fact) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The Diary still suffers from the narrative fallacy (due to the reader being aware of what WILL happen, and placing events in a narrative of their own), but isn't written with any kind of narrative in mind.

Kai

If we look at Discordianism as recognizing there is a dynamic balance between order and disorder in the universe, then we find the narrative relates to the cyclical nature of that balance.

For example, in human history we see no unrolling of morality or progress towards some lofty goal, just a continuous process of civilization into ruin and back again. The Discordian narrative recognizes this.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Salty

Quote from: GA on January 12, 2010, 08:24:47 AM
Quote from: Alty on January 12, 2010, 07:39:30 AM
For me Discordianism is a method or example of how to remove the narrative.
We form our stories, our memories, and fit the world into them. I think the PD tried to show us that no matter how we do this we still make fools of ourselves.

That's a hard enough lesson for most people. However, I think the further point to be made, shown and modeled, dissected really, here is that the act of the narrative itself is flawed. In any fashion, but most especially when considered to be a measure of Truth.

Eh...

This is something that's been rattling around my head and isn't fully formed...

The OP mentions "The Universe is composed of chaos" as being meaningless, and I agree.
However, god this is going to make me sound like a hippy, I look at trees. Or skin. Or feet.
It's a cliche, and it's trite, but, Jesus the snowflake thing, no two are alike. That goes the same for everything.
Everything that is alive or is a process of life...moves in whatever direction is available. There are no limits to this. The action of life moving seems totally random to me. 

Like I said, not fully formed, but the seed of something.

I guess my point is, isn't actual life complex and amazing all by itself without the aid of narrative?


Feel free to point out any key factors I've missed in grating detail. It's the only way I'll learn. 

This is also thinking to small.  Sure, there are parts of life that are amazing... but there's a lot of stuff that really isn't all that great.  (I'm reading a positive connotation into "amazing.)  Like, tsunamis are cool, right?  They're so big, so much power packed into simple ol' water... and then they kill a few hundred thousand people.   :|

I knew I'd come off like a hippy! :argh!:

I'm not so in awe of nature that I forget how quickly it can turn against you.
In fact, that kind of furthers my point, which is: the tsunami doesn't give a shit about those people's worldview, or narrative.* That aspect of nature, while horrible at times, especially for those immediately involved, is what I enjoy about it. Whatever constructs we erect, whether ideological or material or spiritual, fail against the onslaught of, like you say, water. Or snow. Or tectonic plates.

That's why I love where I live. If I'm not careful, I could die. Even if I am careful an earthquake could come and turn my life into rubble. Just a year or so ago there was a woman riding her bike late, some kind of midnight sun bike group. This was in Anchorage, one of the more tamed cities. She's riding down the paved trail, well within city limits, then BAM! a bear crawls out from some bushes, they crash and she nearly dies from the mauling.

If the wildlife doesn't do it, the simple cold is enough to remind you that no matter how you see your place in the world, no matter what your narrative for the world all at once is, reality or nature is there to remind you that's it's all in your head. The cold, on the other hand, is right there, ready to steal your life away.

Then again, you can fit that experience into your narrative for the future.

Example: Katrina and the ensuing mess.
The religious right knew exactly how that fit into their narrative. Gays and pro-choice people were clearly to blame and it was just another sign of the end times.

But that doesn't change the death toll. And it doesn't change the nature of...nature. More hurricanes will come, more tsunamis. And after, and in between, a multitude of things we won't see coming.




*I feel maybe there's a bit of confusion about that word still, at least on my part.
The world is a car and you're the crash test dummy.