Against Narrative: Are stories bad for us? Part 1

question is our story is bad for us? Uh? I asked this not out of nowhere, but I was turned onto this topic because I recently came across an interview in The Verge with the philosopher who's written a book about how the drive for narrative affects the way we understand the world. And this philosopher, who will name and discuss later, concludes that on the whole, stories might do

more harm than good on planet Earth. And I'm interested in this idea because I so viscerally hate it, Like I'm not sure it's wrong, but in many ways I feel that I sort of like live for stories, and if they are on the whole bad for the world, I almost don't want to know about it. But I guess that's also a sign that we kind of should

take a look. Yeah, it's a difficult thing to sort of contemplate, because, as we'll discuss, stories define us in so many ways, in so many obvious ways and so many um ways that are that are a little bit elusive to really, you know, wrap our heads around. And they've they've been a part of human culture the whole time. I mean they the oldest known written stories go back to the third millennium b C. And oral storytelling goes

even further back than that. I mean, we've just this is something that that is as old, is as old as human culture. And the idea that we should flee from that, or that that this is not the model on which we should be proceeding into the future. Uh, it forces us to reconsider something very basic about us

as a species. Well, I mean, one of the things that we might walk away from today's episode concluding is that, Okay, maybe there's no way to get rid of stories, and in fact, we wouldn't even want to, but we should at least be able to appreciate that they can do a lot of harm, and so we should know what that kind of harm is and maybe keep an eye out for it. I mean, I might end up kind of lashing out even if you could prove that stories

are on the whole bad for the world. It's like, I wouldn't want to live without them, and I don't care. I'll keep them even though they hurt. Yeah, And one of the curious things is if we try to imagine a world without stories, we have to imagine a world without stories. That meaning that we have to sort of create a story of an unstoried world, which is a

bit of conundrum. But certainly you don't have to dig far to begin to sort of see where some of the strife could occur when you start comparing real life to stories. I think one example from the past year so that it's going to resonate with a lot of people, when when the the Queen movie came out, Bohemian Rhapsody. Oh yeah, did you see it? I haven't seen it yet. I'm excited to see it because everybody seemed to most

people that I talked to seem to love it. And we have quite an immortal love for Queen on this show. Oh yeah, I love Queen. But you did see some criticism where people were saying, okay, well, you you know, you took things out of sequence, you put things, you rearrange things to make a better story, and I do think that you see that with a lot of biopictures, because ultimately it's rare for an individual's life to be

story shaped. Um. You know. I often go back to Neil Gaiman's excellent short story collection Fragile Things, which has some some wonderful tales in it, but in the introduction he discusses this, this desire for story shaped things in our lives, despite the fact that life itself is not

story shaped, or at least it rarely is. Um And when we turned to myths, comedies, dramas, and and tragedies, we we often do so in orders to sort of make sense of our life, to to give sort of a shape that we can squeeze our life into, even though again real life rarely matches the beats and the rhythm of narrative. It reminds me a bit of the Chinese notion of of a U n which is uh

structural completeness. And generally this is used to talk about the desired structural completeness in in the family, in the family structure, but I think we can we can also sort of look at narrative. Structural completeness in life is something that we we find ourselves longing for maybe not even you know, consciously, but subconsciously, and then we rarely

find it. Well, yeah, there's a we have a clear, strong desire to impose an aesthetic order on events, which in many ways, if you just like sample the moment to moment are quite random or structured in a way where things do not have emotional drive and significance. I mean, one of the problems is like defining what is a story. You know, people might differ on that, but I would say it's probably something like it involves characters, So some forms of people. They don't have to be humans, but

they've got minds. They's got characters with minds that have desires and goals, and you engage with them emotionally as they struggle to achieve their goals and face obstacles along the way. Right, And depending on what sort of story this is, and you know, from what tradition it arises, that individual may ultimately, uh you know, rise up from the abyss and and claim their reward, or they fall tragically short of claiming the reward, or they you know,

are they go mad after seeing an elder god. That's sort of thing, right, And whether the structure of your story is comedy or tragedy or elder che horror, and no matter what it is, there is sort of like a structural format that we come to expect and we get pleasure from seeing that format repeated. And when you're trying to adapt real events into this story shaped whole, you you end up kind of fun ing things a lot, right, You move things around in time, you leave out a

whole lot. You just focus on the parts that are important. But the funny thing is putting things in a story shaped hole can in fact dictate to us what parts of a sequence of events we think are important, when in fact they might not actually be the important parts. If we're trying to say, uh, trying to imagine what actually caused an outcome in a real world series of events, that might be very different than the things you'd focus

on if you're trying to tell an entertaining, emotionally engaging story. Yeah, that's an important thing to keep in mind as we go forward here, because we certainly have the more pure versions of narrative that I imagine most people were thinking of when we first brought this up, and that is the novels we read the myths we tell each other, uh, you know, often out of amusement, but sometimes to see

some sort of a you know, model of life. But then there are the narratives and the stories that we use to um to put a certain shape on the past, to put a certain shape on the present, and even on ourselves that are that can be a little bit more problematic. Yeah, so absolutely, stories can can perhaps distort our appreciation of how and why things really happen. Another reason people might oppose stories or more literature more broadly, let's say, might be that they just take issue with

what effects it seems to have. Like one great example would be Plato. You know, the Greek philosophers. They had so many bad takes. Arguably one of Plato's most unpopular takes is in the Republic when he um you know, he in many ways in Vase against the power of poetry. Like Plato thinks poetry should be viewed with extreme suspicion. He's he's not quite sure about poets and their role in the republic because poetry uses language to encourage antisocial sentiments,

and it can't be rationally argued against. It's not rational. It's appealing to you emotionally and sometimes the appeals it makes. He says, are are things that are not good for the state, you know. He he wants a state to be a place where everybody acts selflessly and courageously. And so he attacks Homer who tells these stories of characters who fear death and try to avoid being sent to hades,

you know, and Plato thinks, well, this is terrible. These stories just train us to suck at courage and have the kind you know, they train us not to have the kind of selflessness necessary for a strong state. Now that's Plato's kind of tyrannical, micromanaging idea of how a state should be. But you can see other examples, and we do see them all the time with people protesting the idea that hey, stories are out there showing showing people ways to live that are maybe not good. Yeah. Absolutely.

I mean at the very basis of this mentioning the Hades, thing you could you could frame this is like, Okay, here's a popular story that people are drawn to for a number of reasons, and it's pushing health theology. It's pushing this idea that that that we we must act of a certain way in this life to avoid something in the next Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess the hades vision being somewhat different there, because that's just where

pretty much everybody goes. But I absolutely see what your thing is saying, especially with like ideas of like h narratives that reinforce the idea of a punishment in the afterlife. And this is a big part of another thing narratives due for us is we get to experience vicarious justice

through them. Do you ever notice how people who don't believe in, say revenge or the death penalty or anything like that in real life they don't want to see people actually corporally bodily violently punished for the things they've done wrong. They still want to see it in narrative. You still want to at least see the villain get there come upance. Yeah, that's still is richly satisfying. Um Granted, I think in these cases you might maybe want a

more um organic come upance, you know. Yeah, but still, well that's the payoff you desire. Well. One of the beauties of fictional narrative is that it can be contrived. So, for examp, when the villain does something bad, uh, and and you want to see the villain punished. In a story, you in fact can contrive it so the hero doesn't have to kill the villain. Maybe the villain like does

something bad and seals their own fate. They end up falling off a cliff in the last attempt to you know, stab the hero in the back or something like that. This is one of my favor Yeah, one of my favorite tropes that you see in particularly, It's been used in one Pixar film of note. I'm not going to mention it just in case someone hasn't seen it. But then they have to pull off this exact same thing.

The villain is spared, but now the villain really wants to do something awful and then they act and then they die for their efforts. Yeah. Disney type films do this all the time. I mean, it's a great way to have it, have your cake and eat it too. Get to watch the villain get punished and die, but the hero doesn't have to do something vengeful and violent. Yeah,

or the hero gives them their second chance. Yeah. Um. I should also point out if if if you're into this discussion, a definitely check out our episode on masked killers in horror movies. October, because we spent a lot of time talking about this, uh at this sort of thing is that concerns Jason Vorhees, right though I think in that context in a much seedier type of desire to see punishment of others, maybe less having to do

with them actually committing crimes. Right, But I mean the Jason Vorhees story is is a reminder that it's like, when we're talking about stories that resonate, they're not all the Iliad. You know, granted there's a lot of bloody stuff that goes on. They're not all picks are They're not all picks are They're not all of refined works. Uh, they don't have to be. They can to to resonate with a culture. Well, let's get back to what these experts we're gonna be talking about today have actually said

about the power of stories. I guess for good and for ill. But specifically, we all know the goodness about stories. I mean, we hear about that all the time, we think about it all the time. What's really novel is to think that there could be some way that stories are really messing us up. Cool. Yeah, well, let's yea, let's get into it. Your um First, I want to mention uh a professor of anthropology history in Tibetan Studies

at the University of Colorado, Carol McGranahan. She was one of several different individuals that appeared on an episode of Ideas with Paul Kennedy, a CBC radio show. That's one of your favorites. Yeah, yeah, this episode aired several months back. You should be able to find out on their website relatively easily. It's titled Have I Got a Story for You? And in that she she discusses the power of certainly having a story, but also the detriment of being denied

your story. Uh, the empowerment of finally having a story to tell or more telling, and you know, for your story to suddenly have value in society, to be permitted at all. And one of the examples there are various examples you can turn to with as various groups, demographics, whole genders have been denied their story over the course

of history. But she also points out to Me Too movement as as a contemporary example of this of example where people felt, you know, we're finally emboldened to share these stories that were not permitted to be to be to be shared previously, be at an overt you can't talk about that, or just kind of a the societal cultural pressure of this story is not appropriate or not valued. So I think in this we we definitely see an

example of sort of the pros and cons of stories. Yes, it can be it can be empowering to tell your story or to and certainly to be able to turn to stories in culture that match your own and give you, you know, strength, But then also we can see the the negative of that. If if you are not allowed to tell your story, or you don't see your story reflected and say the popular storytelling in your culture, then then yeah, that can have a detrimental effect. You know.

It's interesting in this kind of context all the different things that the idea of a story or a narrative comes to mean. I mean, like in some cases it means literally like a chronology of events with main characters that face frustrations and this could I mean, in the case we're talking about here, these are true stories. Um so, like telling the story of your life. You're singling out the things that you think we're significant, talking about the

struggles you faced and all that. But we also in a public context we use words like narrative and stories to mean all kinds of things. You know, we use it to mean sometimes just like, um uh, your narrative might mean like the things you believe, or might just mean like a set of facts that you have in hand. Or sometimes narrative comes to mean like like a worldview. It's like, you know, it's like your set of starting assumptions. Yeah, and I think this is all valid. On the other hand,

I do agree with some of the sentiments. We're gonna explore later that the narrative is the word narrative. The classification of narrative is probably a bit overused currently. Yeah, um, it's I saw it to day, looking unfortunately at Twitter comments on somebody else's post. Immediately the criticism was, oh, you're pushing this narrative, this is your narrative. Um. And of course, the the implication in that is always that I am dealing with objective truth. I've got facts, You've

got a story. You have story, Yeah, you have a narrative. You're the one pushing every win and reality. I mean, we're all playing with narratives. Well, but the funny thing about even that usage, I mean, whether or not it's legitimate. I think that's probably often lobbed unfairly. But even if whether you're right or wrong, it suggests that we intuitively since that maybe there's something that's not always quite right

about using a story to view the world through. Right, You know that that we're sensing intuitively that maybe sometimes people use stories to get excuse view of reality. It makes me think that did you ever watch Jim Henson's

The Storyteller with the John Hurt I actually have not. Oh, it's a tremendous series, and there is a sense in that show, especially in one episode, that the Storyteller is, you know, a character to be distrusted by the powers that be because he's traveling around amongst the people and uh and and telling these tales. Oh well, as we'll go on to explore, I mean, narrative is quite powerful

and it can motivate action. I do want to throw in one more bit from McGranahan here, and that is that that she drives home that stories and even memories by necessity exist within a social context. So I think that's key to keep in mind here. You know that that connection is always going to be in place. Well, of course, I mean one clear example of this. Has you ever noticed how some stories really transcend to cultures

and others really don't. You know, some really don't You just you feel like I'm not part of the culture that produced this or the time that produced this, and thus I don't get it. Sometimes you look at some works of ancient literature and they don't feel like a story to you, right, yeah, or even if it's some sort of international cinema or they're also I think there are those cases where we only get you only get

half of it. There's so much that's of course either obviously lost to translation itself, or we're just not you know, just not getting the nuance of of what it should mean culturally. I've mentioned this before regarding various Chinese ghost stories, where yeah, you you you lose something when you lose the language. You lose something when you lose certainly like the literary references, you're still left with in many cases a really cool ghost story, a really cool monster encounter.

But but you're missing all the other things as well. And uh, and I think that's going to happen, or there's a there's a potential for that to happen. Anytime you take a story out of one culture and place it into another. All right, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we will discuss more about

stories than all right, we're back. So, as I mentioned at the top, I was inspired to talk about this today when I saw an interview published at Verge with a Duke University professor and philosopher of science who has written a book about the use of narratives in understanding history. And this philosopher is named Alex Rosenberg. I wasn't familiar with him otherwise. In this book is called How History Gets Things Wrong, The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories.

Now I'm to understand I wasn't actually able to listen to that Ideas episode. But Rosenberg's on that episode. Oh yes, yeah, he's one of three individuals that that they chat with and and he's extremely well spoken on all of this, uh and and very and humorous too, um because one of the things, like we we don't want to make it sound as if he is like railing against narrative, like he himself is a novelist as well. Oh yeah, he's written multiple historical novels. And he makes the point

that you know, he thinks stories are wonderful. Like, there's no denying that they bring us joy, they enrich our lives, and there's also little doubt that they're one of the most, if not the single most powerful ways of changing people's

minds about things and motivating action. Uh though of course, maybe this isn't always for good, right, And one of the things that he talks about at length, especially on the Ideas episode, is is the idea of self narrative, the idea of viewing our life as a story and ourselves as a character in that story, and indeed turning to uh exterior narrated narratives be at a you know, novel, movie, myth and then using that as sort of a a guide by which we might interpret our own life and

our own identity. But before we get to get to that, really like, there's like the idea of where narrative comes from, and and Rosenberg says that he sees self narrative is one of the oldest among various human adaptations that enabled us to survive the prehistoric world, to deal with predatory threats, and then work our way up the food chain. Yeah, I mean, I think you can clearly see self narrative as some variation on the same kind of adaptive value

as imagination. What is imagination good for You can like simulate something that might be dangerous before you actually try it, and turn it over in your brain and see if you can sort of practice without actually putting yourself at risk. And this is a lot of what narrative is too. You know, you're imagining ways stories in which characters face obstacles, maybe like obstacles you might face, but you don't have to actually face them yet, and it's sort of mental

practice runs. But then when you apply that to yourself, it has all these other interesting properties and valances. You can go, uh, you can mess around with time in your life exactly. And yet time, I think is one of the key lands mental time travel or chronesthesia, the ability to think, all, right, what what will happen if this occurs? And of course that's more overtly visible in

things like science fiction what will the future be? Like, Well, here's one version, it'll be Blade Runner right now, that sort of thing. But but also we we see that in like if you see a movie about uh, individuals dealing with say, um, oh, I don't know a tornado, you watch twister. Twister is on some level a chronoesthetic um exercise in storm preparation, Like you're thinking, what might actually happen to you next year when the big when

the big twister comes down the down the field. Yeah, yeah, sort of. But but then again, more to Rosenberg's point here, a lot of this comes back to theory of mind, that ability we have to create a rough simulation of another individual's mind state, their history, their goals, their ideas, etcetera. All those things that you know, if you've ever taken a writing course, the creative writing course with someone says, all right, here's a list of questions about your protagonists.

Answer them so that you can, you know, ground yourself in who they are. I mean, that can be kind of wrote, but it's also like, that's not a bad exercise. I mean it forces you to think. And also it's something that you ultimately want your audience to do. If you're trying to write good characters. I mean, yeah, if you if you just talk to like neurotologists, what happens when we get involved in a good story. You get

transported into it. You become part of the story. You empathize with the characters, and you try to share their mind. It's like you create a you know, a brain to brain link with that fictional character. Yeah, and if you find something there, some form in their mind that you have already or that you would like to have, then then you have that connection. So yeah, theory of mind,

it was. It was essential, he argues for our cooperation as a species, for us to able to engage in this sort of thinking and ultimately create self narratives that would guide our understanding. However, despite its usefulness in our survival and the importance of narrative in our lives today,

he criticizes its destructive uses in our understanding of other cultures, histories, religions, etcetera. Now, he does not mean historical scholarship here, like pure historical scholarship, but rather the looser narratives that push certain push certain destructive understandings of history, peoples, and places. So he's saying not so much that when history gets things wrong. He's not so much talking about historians, but the ways we make history into a story, right, Like, on some level,

to understand history, we have to create neartors. We have to create neartors, We have to at least create a sequential understanding, you know, because ultimately we're trying to say, well, what caused this, what caused that? But then again, and we've discussed this on the show before, like there's a trap in thinking that you're going to create a story shaped sequence of events. Well, I think the crucial thing would be coming back to what we were just talking about,

which is theory of mind. Right when you try to imagine that things in history happened because you identify with a character in history and you can simulate what they were thinking and what they wanted and why they did what they did. We did this all the time in history. We even simulate the minds of masses of people, not like individuals. We we like make what did the workers

in St. Peter's where want during the October Revolution? And it's like it's like you make them into a single person whose mind you simulate, and you think maybe you understand them, like they're the main character in a story. Yeah, and you can see where Like the basic argument here is this might be a very useful shortcut, uh in

a in in in a in a previous age. You know, if you're just dealing with the basic survival of of prehistoric humans, you know, trying again trying to survive predation, uh, and then the challenges of the natural world and work their way up the food chain. But you get into our more modern um challenges and this doesn't hold up. UH. For instance, he he talks about the situation of of looking at at science and story. So we engage in a certain amount of storytelling on this show when we

talk about science and UH. And it's you see this echo time and time again in science communication. Tell a story, tell a story. UM. I think Robert Cruel which give a talk about this years ago, saying, like, you know about how scientists need to be able to tell a story to relate what they're doing to everyday people. And and there's there's certainly a value in that. That's the

that's the pro. But then the the con the opposite side of the coin here is as as Rosenberg points out, you know, when it comes to science, we prefer the narrative uh to the raw scientific data. You know. And and this can this can be fine if you have a narrative that's there to support scientific consensus or to to help explain what the science actually says. But then when you have a narrative that is working counter to

scientific consensus. Then you start getting into problems. Well, unfortunately, the fact is that just reality tends to favor people who will cheat. So like, if you are not constrained by facts and by nuance and by trying to be really honestly and you know, trying really hard to understand what the science says communicated accurately, if you don't have those limitations, then you've got all kinds of room to tell the best kind of story you want. You know,

you can. You can make really compelling characters. You can say exactly why things happen that give great twists and turns and drama. It's a lot harder to shape a compelling narrative if you're constantly bound by realities that you cannot ignore and must be truthful about. Right. I mean you look at examples such as say Alex Jones, right, where Alex Jones is not going to say, all right with this particular problem that I'm talking about today, Uh, you know, it has a number of complex uh causes.

It's difficult to to to nail down exactly how it came to be. No, he's gonna say it's this, and they are literal demons, you know, and and that makes

for a better story. It does. I'm often self conscious, uh, on this very show, especially Like I mean, there are lots of cases where this comes up, but I would say a common one would be like anytime we talk about neuroscience, almost always there are there are simple, not very accurate stories you can use to talk about about things in neuroscience, like what a brain region does, this is the fear center of the brain, you know, Or what a neurochemical does oxytocin is the love hormone, when

in reality, what I feel like I always have to keep saying over and over again is like, well, you know, this brain region or subsystem or this neurotransmitter, it's uh, it seems to be involved in a lot of different things. It's complex. We don't fully understand its role yet. It's correlated with all these weird, diverse things. And I feel like I have to say that in order to be honest about what seems to be the case as far

as we know right now. But it's it's hard to tell a really like you know, gut wrenching story that way and keep people on the hook. I feel like we have to do it to be honest, But you know, they're all kinds of unscrupulous people out there who are gonna just be fine telling you a really simple pat story about oxytocin is love hormone and all it what it does is it makes you moral and makes you love loving and compassionate. And maybe they're you know, maybe

they're just trying to make you feel better. Maybe they're trying to sell you a supplement. But you know, the the the the actual motivation could be any number of things. Uh So one of Rosenberg's key points here, I think is that, you know, ultimately it's it's an example of the needs of modern humanist civilization outstripping the limitations of what our minds evolved to do. Uh. And he ultimately is arguing that, you know, it's not that we need to get rid of narrative. Uh. You know, I don't.

I for one, I don't think it's even possible. Of course not, but it's ridiculous. Yeah, But but to whatever extent we could increase awareness of narrative and what narrative does and then lean more towards what science does in those cases where it's applicable. Well, and I think another thing would be you can't beat it I think it's just impossible to get over the compelling power of storytelling uh in in driving people's behavior and shaping their attitudes.

So what has to be true is that people who want to spread the truth rather than lies have to work really hard and spend a lot of resources honing their ability to tell engrossing, compelling, emotionally engaging personal stories that still nevertheless communicate what we know to be true, instead of the lies that people are trying to sell with other stories out there. Now back to that interview

on the Verge that that was with Rosenberg. You know, he said one thing that I thought was interesting here. So he's talking about the use of narratives and understanding history. Um, and he says, quote, the problem is, these historical narratives seduce you into thinking you really understand what's going on and why things happen. But most of it is guessing

people's motives and their inner thoughts. It allays your curiosity, and you're satisfied psychologically by the narrative, and it connects the dots so you feel you're in the shoes of the person whose narrative is being recorded. It seduced you into a false account and now you think you understand. The second part is that it effectively prevents you from going on to try to find the right theory and

correct account of events. The third problem, which is the gravest, is that people use narratives because of their tremendous emotional impact to drive human actions, movements, political parties, religions, and ideologies, and many movements like nationalism and intolerant religions are driven by narrative and are harmful and dangerous for humanity. Uh.

And I think that's quite true. You know, I love storytelling, and I and I encourage people who want to spread truth and goodness around the world to use stories to do it. But we have to notice that like fascism is highly based on storytelling. It tells a story about a plot. You know, there are villains to it. Usually it alleges all these conspiracies and and you know, and there's a hero that's the leader, you know, who's going to be the only one to protect to you and

make everything great. I mean, most of the most of the bad, the worst religious movements in the world have a similar kind of like, uh, storytelling thrust. They've got a plot with villains that must be faced off in an ultimate battle. It's not hard to see why these ideologies are very attractive to people. I mean, they're they're like the movies we love the most. Yeah. Yeah, And and we're gonna come back to this idea as well, because this gets I think into the concept of the

terror of history. All Right, let's take one more break and then we come back. We'll discuss more about the idea of the narrative of self. Alright, we're back. So another individual that popped up on that ideas episode and uh And, who also wrote an excellent piece for Ian magazine titled Let's ditch the dangerous idea that life is

a story. Uh is a professor of philosophy University of Texas at Austin, Galen Strawson, and he takes issue with the notion that a self narrative as universal or even important. He thinks that it varies greatly from person to person how much stock they put in the idea of a personal narrative, and that even those of us who think we put stock in a personal narrative, it might not really hold up to a lot of close analysis. And but you know, this is the basic idea that like

I am a character in a story. My life is a story, and thinking of your life as such, and and so I I do think there are probably some people who who almost you know, very literally think that I, for myself like this made. I did a lot of self reflection after listening to him and reading his words on this, And I do feel like I tend to sort of casually think of myself as an as a character in a story. But then when I stopped to really think about it, I don't. I don't think I

actually do it all that much. I I think I consciously sometimes try not to. Um, this is something I might even I don't know when this essay was published in the end, but uh, I might have read it when it came out in any case, uh, whether or not I have, I mean, I've encountered ideas before about the pitfalls of telling this this story about yourself, that's the narrative of your life and you're the main character in it. I think that can lead to a lot

of self aggrandizing or self pitying, myopic thinking. Yeah, because you might be telling a great story about yourself, and that can be at the appropriate level, that can be very encouraging. Give you motivation. But if it's too great a story, well then you're getting into areas of overconfidence

or even delusion. Likewise, if you're telling too sad of a story, you know, a story that's too concerned with with you know, with misery, with you know, defining yourself by something that happened to you or or something that you did, then then that that's not a healthy exercise either. It's um. Yeah, there's so much room for error in this, absolutely so. I mean I tried it. It's not like

I succeeded this most of the time. But I think it's an ongoing project of mine at least to try to really believe the fact that I, as a self do not exist. I mean, my body exists and my brain exists, and I continue doing things. But the me, the version of me that I picture when I start getting into story mode, does not exist and is not real. Uh that the self is in many ways an illusion.

You are instead, you know, you're a body doing things moment from to moment, and you have this conscious appreciation of it, and you can tell whatever kind of story about that you want, But that doesn't mean it's true. Yeah, I will say that one thing that I do find myself doing a lot is taking another person's sort of another person's life and the sort of the story version of it, holding it up and then comparing it to

my life. And you know a lot of times it is going to be with people that we consider heroes of some in some form or another, right or oh, no, do you do the like, what did this person published by my age? That sort of thing? Or you know, what did they accomplished by the time Uh they were my age? Were they dead by the time they were my hates that sort of thing. I've fallen into this. Yeah, sorry,

what were saying? No, No, I'm just saying that I do find myself doing it, and it's it's ultimately kind of a dumb exercise because you're either or at least when I do it, I end up either using it as a way to beat myself up or to pat myself on the back, and it's like, oh, don't worry this, this person didn't get anything done in their life till they were sixty. A lot of times too, we're comparing

our lives to these just outright fictional narratives. And you know, how healthy is that if you're like you're you're comparing yourself to a character in a tragedy or or even if a character in a you know, some sort of an adventure story, that again is not going to really match up to actual life. So Strawson points out that that self analysis is important, and we see variations of the know thyself mantra dating back to like ancient Egypt.

But but there's ultimately a broad spectrum here. You know, we all tend to recognize the value of living in the moment rather than focusing on self or a narrative. But of course that doesn't mean we do it. And there's only so much of it we can do in our modern lives. So like you, you can't really just live in the moment all the time. We have to

engage in a certain amount of mental time travel. We have to we have to reflect, we have to look back on the past and and uh and and at least consider our mistakes and our traumas in order to move forward. But uh, you know, but he does stress the self aspect and all of this. A self narrative is in many ways inherently self interested and self focused.

And there's there's you know, there's certainly a lot of room for personal growth there, but there's also a great deal of room for again just egotistical self obsession and pride and just going me, me, me as you as you envision this story. Well. Also, I think whenever you imagine yourself as the main character of a narrative, you run the risk of thinking of other people in the

world as sidecaracs. In a story, there are supporting characters, but in reality, nobody's I mean, everybody's the main character of their own life, I guess, um so or. And then also villains, you know, like, oh yeah, totally. Granted, some of us are unfortunate enough to have encountered individuals that more directly fall into the villain um archetype, someone who is a direct, sometimes even physical danger to ourselves

that has to be dealt with or avoided, etcetera. But for many obvious we I think we do have a tendency to sort of manufacture villains absolutely. You know, you see people do this. They they've picked somebody who has become the villain of their life at this time, you know, somebody has a bad boss or something, and then they get into the mode of where they just see more and more evidence all the time of how awful this person is, and they're like just building the case that yes,

this is the villain. Yeah, and this kind of thinking is the kind of it can lead to things like viewing members of others, say socioeconomic classes, as being just default villains, or or other races as being villainous. Um. You know, sometimes even in just kind of uh, you know, more of a subconscious way as opposed to in an overt way. But anyway, Strawson, though, he ultimately argues that you know, there are many ways of living an examined life,

because that's what Socrates called for. He said an unexamined life is not worth living. But he says, you know, we don't have to depend on a bunch of quotes self directed poking around. Uh. He says we can instead read good novels and focus on other people. And he argues that being an ethical person is better executed not in focusing on your story sort of the overarching shape of your life that you're sort of hallucinating, but rather

in focusing focusing on immediate opportunities for positive action. Yeah. And again, by focusing on the overall shape of your life as a story, you're inevitably not really going to be thinking about it in a very clear way. You're you're automatically biasing you're thinking about yourself by doing that.

I do think it's interesting if you if you think of life as a story, there's plenty of room for for awful actions, so long as there's a you know, a redemptive um uh you know story arc involved, right, Like ebene'z or Scrooge, for instance, is an awful person for the vast majority of his life, but then he

turns it around at the very end. And of course, of course we see this in so many redemption stories, people who even today work a book deal or even a kind of career out of having the right out of darkness story or making a correction in their life. And I mean it's weird to sort of to judge that because on one hand, like that is inspiring, Like we should have inspiring stories of people being able to

turn their life around and make changes. Like ebene'z or Scrooge is ultimately a positive figure because he does turn it around at the end, But but then it also like discounts a lot of awful stuff early on. Well, you know, I feel like the redemption story is something that is is fine when it's backward looking, but not when it's forward looking, you know, like when somebody when somebody turns their life around. I'm not one of those people who thinks it's good to like continually say no, no, no,

there can be no redemption for you. We must harp on all the bad things you did in the past. But if somebody is currently doing bad things and planning to continue doing bad things, but thinking sometime in the future I could be better, obviously that's a that is a moral failure and that that's not commendable. Well, and I think this is where we can look to the idea that narratives in some cases can maybe have a

negative effect on our lives. Where we're thinking, my, okay, my life is currently falling into the shape of this redemption story. I'm entering the abyss. But that's okay because it's necessary. Like out of the abyss comes you know, a reformed character. Um. The turning point is always now. If you see the turning point, you should be turning

absolutely now. Another interesting point of Strawson's is that he thinks we can really blame a lot of our modern emphasis on narrative on some key big names and philosophy um In particularly, he points out Scottish philosopher Alistair McIntyre, who born in ninety nine, still alive as of this recording,

wrote After Virtue. Charles Taylor, one still alive as of this recording, wrote Sources of the Self and argued for the ethical necessity of thinking of yourself in a narrative way, and then French philosopher Paul Racour through two thousand and five who wrote Time and Narrative. But it's still something that is continues on to this day. Strawson points to Dan P. McAdams, a leading narrativest among social psychologists, and writing in the Redemptive Self Stories Americans Live by two

thousand six, Uh, they write the following quote. Beginning in late adolescence and young adulthood, we construct integrative narratives of the self that selectively recall the past and wishfully anticipate the future to provide our lives with some symblance of unity, purpose, and identity. Personal identity is the internalized and evolving life story that each of us is working on as we move through our adult lives. I do not know who I really am until I have a good understanding of

my narrative identity. Well, it's possible that's true. I mean, I don't know. So Strawson's arguing it's not actually necessary to think of your life as a story, and that you you can in some way avoid doing it right, and that many of us don't do it that like, it's not a universal thing, that there's a broad spectrum of how we deal with it. Uh. Yeah, I I don't know if he's right, or I don't know if it's right that you have to in some way think

of your life as a story. I mean, either way, I think it should help to recognize the negative capacity we have, uh to to distort reality and excuse our own bad behavior and encourage encourage negative patterns of thought that are unproductive by thinking of our lives as a certain kind of story and by thinking of other people as characters in our story that way, So that at least, I think, should we should think about and should give us pause. And a lot of this comes back to

to just the particularly flawed idea of self. Uh. That's one thing that Strawson points that out in that Ian magazine piece that I mentioned earlier. He invokes the work of developmental psychologist Eric Erickson and English more philosopher Mary Midgeley to make a case that there is no self, but that we are, in the words of painter Paul Clee quote, a dramatic ensemble. Well I like that. Yeah, I think that there's there's quite a few actors inside

all of us. Yeah. I mean, it's not just Jacqueline Hide. It's it's it's a you know, there's a there's a whole there's a whole array of people and Jackyl and Hide and the butler and the police inspector and Colonel Mustard and the whole crew. It was that guy Hide stomped on a bunch beat with a cane. I don't remember, it's been so long since I read that or watched

an adaptation. Well, he's in there, took old stomp. All right. Well, I think maybe we should call the first episode there, but we will be back in another episode where we explore the psychology and euro science of stories. That's right. And in the meantime, if you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, just go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where will find all the episodes, links out to

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