April 9, 2019 • 45 mins
It’s hard to imagine human beings without storytelling and literature. Surely, these are some of the very things that define us. Narratives give our lives and our world meaning, but what if there’s a dark side to their sorcerous power? In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick explore the storyteller’s potent spell.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And today I want to start with a question that
might make you think I'm kind of out of my mind,
but I come to this for a real reason. The
(00:24):
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
(00:45):
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,
(01:06):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:49):
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
(02:10):
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.
(02:30):
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
(02:51):
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
(03:12):
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
(03:34):
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
(03:56):
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
(04:16):
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
(04:37):
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,
(04:57):
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
(05:21):
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
(05:41):
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
(06:03):
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,
(06:26):
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,
(06:46):
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
(07:09):
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
(07:31):
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,
(07:55):
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,
(08:17):
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
(08:39):
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
(09:01):
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
(09:21):
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,
(09:47):
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
(10:08):
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
(10:30):
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,
(10:52):
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
(11:15):
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,
(11:37):
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,
(11:59):
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.
(12:22):
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
(12:44):
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
(13:07):
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,
(13:27):
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
(13:51):
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
(14:13):
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.
(14:36):
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,
(14:57):
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.
(15:20):
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,
(15:43):
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,
(16:05):
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
(16:27):
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
(16:48):
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
(17:10):
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
(17:31):
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
(17:55):
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.
(18:18):
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,
(18:42):
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,
(19:03):
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,
(19:27):
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
(19:49):
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,
(20:11):
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,
(20:32):
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,
(20:52):
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
(21:13):
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
(21:34):
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
(21:57):
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
(22:17):
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
(22:38):
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
(23:00):
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
(23:23):
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
(23:45):
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
(24:08):
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,
(24:30):
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
(24:51):
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
(25:11):
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
(25:37):
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
(25:57):
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
(26:18):
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
(26:42):
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
(27:05):
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,
(27:25):
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
(27:47):
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
(28:07):
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
(28:29):
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
(28:50):
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
(29:10):
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,
(29:32):
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,
(29:54):
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,
(30:17):
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,
(30:38):
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
(30:58):
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
(31:20):
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
(31:42):
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.
(32:02):
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
(32:23):
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
(32:44):
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
(33:05):
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
(33:27):
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.
(33:50):
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,
(34:13):
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,
(34:34):
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,
(34:55):
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
(35:17):
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
(35:39):
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.
(36:00):
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
(36:20):
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
(36:41):
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,
(37:03):
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
(37:26):
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
(37:48):
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.
(38:08):
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,
(38:30):
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.
(38:53):
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,
(39:17):
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
(39:40):
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
(40:03):
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
(40:24):
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
(40:45):
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
(41:06):
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,
(41:27):
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
(41:51):
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
(42:11):
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
(42:32):
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
(42:53):
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
(43:15):
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
(43:35):
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,
(43:56):
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.
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(44:16):
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(44:39):
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(45:08):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com. The big
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And today I want to start with a question that
might make you think I'm kind of out of my mind,
but I come to this for a real reason. The
(00:24):
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
(00:45):
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,
(01:06):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:49):
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
(02:10):
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.
(02:30):
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
(02:51):
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
(03:12):
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
(03:34):
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
(03:56):
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
(04:16):
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
(04:37):
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,
(04:57):
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
(05:21):
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
(05:41):
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
(06:03):
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,
(06:26):
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,
(06:46):
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
(07:09):
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
(07:31):
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,
(07:55):
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,
(08:17):
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
(08:39):
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
(09:01):
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
(09:21):
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,
(09:47):
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
(10:08):
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
(10:30):
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,
(10:52):
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
(11:15):
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,
(11:37):
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,
(11:59):
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.
(12:22):
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
(12:44):
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
(13:07):
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,
(13:27):
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
(13:51):
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
(14:13):
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.
(14:36):
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,
(14:57):
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.
(15:20):
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,
(15:43):
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,
(16:05):
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
(16:27):
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
(16:48):
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
(17:10):
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
(17:31):
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
(17:55):
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.
(18:18):
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,
(18:42):
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,
(19:03):
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,
(19:27):
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
(19:49):
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,
(20:11):
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,
(20:32):
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,
(20:52):
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
(21:13):
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
(21:34):
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
(21:57):
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
(22:17):
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
(22:38):
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
(23:00):
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
(23:23):
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
(23:45):
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
(24:08):
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,
(24:30):
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
(24:51):
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
(25:11):
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
(25:37):
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
(25:57):
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
(26:18):
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
(26:42):
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
(27:05):
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,
(27:25):
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
(27:47):
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
(28:07):
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
(28:29):
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
(28:50):
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
(29:10):
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,
(29:32):
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,
(29:54):
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,
(30:17):
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,
(30:38):
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
(30:58):
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
(31:20):
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
(31:42):
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.
(32:02):
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
(32:23):
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
(32:44):
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
(33:05):
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
(33:27):
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.
(33:50):
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,
(34:13):
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,
(34:34):
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,
(34:55):
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
(35:17):
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
(35:39):
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.
(36:00):
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
(36:20):
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
(36:41):
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,
(37:03):
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
(37:26):
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
(37:48):
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.
(38:08):
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,
(38:30):
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.
(38:53):
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,
(39:17):
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
(39:40):
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
(40:03):
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
(40:24):
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
(40:45):
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
(41:06):
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,
(41:27):
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
(41:51):
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
(42:11):
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
(42:32):
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
(42:53):
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
(43:15):
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
(43:35):
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,
(43:56):
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
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