House of Eratosthenes

I’ve been thinking a lot about narratives lately. By that I mean, descriptions of events that are pieced together toward the objective of surviving, and traveling far and wide, rather than for the purpose of promoting good decisions.

There is a reason I’ve been thinking about them, and on this reason I’d rather remain somewhat slithery and vague for the time being. My old “friend” from work, the one who likes to talk about politics a lot but has shown a consistent tendency to descend into conflict with people — and it’s always someone else’s fault. Yeah, he’s an Obamaton.

I’d rather talk less about him, and more about who, and what, he represents. This should be do-able because this type of person is commonplace. They don’t want to be negative people, I don’t think. Conflict follows them around because they lack the tools to deal with the conversations they want to have. They want to talk about their truisms, their narratives…global warming will kill us all, Obama is a smarty-pants and will fix everything, George W. Bush is a war criminal and a dummy. Conflict will follow them around because if they persist in having these conversations with people who see things the same way, they’re going to get bored. It isn’t that they want to argue. It’s that they want ideas to be exchanged. If you think George W. Bush is stupid, and I think Bush is stupid, ideas won’t be exchanged because there’s no reason to explore anything.

So they gravitate outward.

And they bump into people like me…who don’t want to do a lot of arguing either. But we live in a different world, one in which each conclusion possesses an attribute of likelihood. In our world, if we are to conclude something is so, then the requirements change for the underlying justification based on whether we’re concluding the thing is probably so, versus whether we’re concluding the thing might be so. And if you’re arguing that the thing must be so, then the rules change yet again. You say this guy, whom I’ve never met and am never going to meet, who is President of the United States when I’m not, and has fooled me along with everyone else with his phony election…is a big dummy? Are you saying that’s probably true or are you saying that’s possibly true? And what of Obama rescuing us? Solving all our problems? To the satisfaction of whom?

People who argue by narrative don’t think this way. “Obama is the Real Deal,” to them, is an idea that has come to maturity just as much as any other…because it is ready to travel. To endure, to propagate. It need not prove anything, and it need not rest on evidence of anything.

Someday, I must find a way to deal with these people. Ignoring them doesn’t work. Agreeing with everything they say, doesn’t work. Changing the subject doesn’t work.

I’ve told the story before, of this popular narrative that emerged a year and a half ago that this was a racist country that would never elect a black man as President…I ended up in trouble when it was discovered I was leaving this narrative in my “holding area,” waiting for solid evidence of it, refusing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I was inexperienced in matters dealing with our racial-relations problems, was the new narrative — and there is some truth in that. But whatever. In the end, it turned out I was correct not giving the benefit-of-doubt to that other narrative. It wasn’t true, and it probably hasn’t been true for a very long time.

But it has been a very popular thing to say.

That’s the trouble with thinking by narrative. You can certainly say, they are already being subjected to a meritocracy in the theater of ideas, for they would not proliferate if there was not some truth to them. That’s the weakness: Some truth.

This battle for survival is not sufficiently taxing, for the emerging victors to show a pattern of verity. To survive and spread, the narrative doesn’t have to be provably true, demonstrably true, probably true…not even conceivably true. The appearance of truth will be quite sufficient. It’s all based on the other fellow, that stranger over there — how ready is he going to be to hear it. That’s the lodestar.

Quite a lead-in for this film clip Rick found at the “Jack Lewis” site. And this film clip is quite a morsel of ugliness, some three minutes’ worth, to get to the end, in which the dimwit anchor says something that twisted Rick off pretty good, and rightly so in my opinion:

Those last three words: “On both sides.”

You tool. You stupid tool. Yes, I mean that as the insult. I find it fitting in your case.

Maybe there was something earlier in this newscast substantiating that there was an equal measure of hate and nastiness on the “Yes On Prop 8” side. Maybe. I don’t give a rip. This is arguing by narrative. This is what I’m talking about. It’s “Who ya gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes” stuff.

It has become such a convenient narrative that religious folks are bigoted and intolerant. Too many people don’t care if it’s true or not. They’re meeting people by spewing this tired trope, making friends, and that’s all that matters to them.

But I end up in conflict with them, the same way I ended up in conflict when I voiced my doubts that racism was still capable of swaying a presidential election. I doubt it. I doubt religious people are inherently nasty, I doubt they are statistically nasty, I doubt they’re even motivated in that direction more than the average bear.

Spare me your anecdotes. I’m sure you have one or two. But it speaks volumes that when the time comes to support the argument, the most popular anecdote is something called “The Crusades,” and the second most popular is something called “The Inquisition.”

I’m not supposed to think anything of Obama’s America-hating asshole friends, because some of the stuff that went down occurred “When He Was Eight” — well here’s a news flash. During the crusades, Barack Obama wasn’t eight yet — so why in the hell does anyone bother to talk about ’em?

And so this chestnut that religious people are intolerant, is being stored, by me, in that holding area. I’m still waiting to be convinced of it. That, right there, is enough to get some people spittin’ mad. It gets them mad because they’ve got this little sound bite they can trot out, and use to make new friends, nevermind if there’s truth to it or not…and when they meet someone who isn’t buying, to them it’s like they’ve met someone determined to be their enemy. I’m sure it might feel that way when you’ve become accustomed to something else.

But that just goes to show, they’re the ones generating the conflict. They make friends by twisting truth around, rather than regarding the truth as it exists. And the truth as it exists, in my experience at least, is that the religious people I’ve met have been very nice. I haven’t personally seen too many of ’em shun anyone over their sexual preferences…I’ve heard quite a lot about that kind of thing, mostly with the kind of vague outlining used to relay urban legends, friend-of-a-friend stuff, like the lady with black widows making a nest in her beehive hairdo. The religious people I’ve met possess not a monopoly, but something very close to it, in helping strangers who are less well-off and expecting no payment of any kind in return.

So mister airhead anchorman, kindly take your “On Both Sides” narrative — for that is all that it is — and stick it up your rear end where it belongs, until you have something more substantial upon which to hang it.

I am tired, exceedlingly, to the point of digust, of watching people attacked and ridiculed for their creed, within the borders of a nation that was founded expressly to provide shelter from exactly that. And supposedly, more often than not, in the name of tolerance. Cut me a megaton crystal-cadillac break.

Good post Morgan.

It’s a common mantra now, to blame both sides no matter what the reality is. It seems to be an attempt to diffuse any debate, which in actuality it does nobody any favors, even if the discourse has indeed become cantankerous.

There is right and there is wrong, present both sides, we can decide which one is which. To just say ‘Well both sides…” is a disservice to anyone who might want to actually think.

It’s the extension of the feminization of our culture. ‘Let’s not keep score, everyone’s a winner’ mentality that just disgusts me to no end.

It takes away, or at least attempts to, the cold realities that make up life. There are winners, there are losers, someone/something is wrong and someone/something is right. To nuance that is but a slow ride to some convoluted place I’d rather not reside. It’s a place where waterboarding three scumbags means the U.S. is a torturer and a man that has a past full of extremely questionable associations can become our president.

I guess the only thing we can do is to not let anyone get away with this tactic, be the enforcer of our own little spheres of influence.
- tim | 11/12/2008 @ 14:20
Morgan, tim, the both of you,

GREAT posts, in every respect. Tim’s point re the feminizing “let’s all play nice” drone couldn’t be more to the point about the egregious and infuriating “anchorperson’s” comments on the Palm Springs video.

My experience mirrors Morgan’s, by the way. I’ve met Christian people all over the country, sometimes when I looked like an orangutan, and I’ve always been shown tolerance and decency. I’ve also been verbally attacked by the hipnoscenti just for having a haircut and wearing nice clothes. This has been my experience, which in my world trumps pseudo-intellectual gotchas.

Thomas Aquinas wrote that the basis of Catholic philosophy was the primacy of Observed Truth. And earlier, Epictetus posited something along the lines of “Any opinion not based in directly observed reality is perforce bullshit.” Or words to that effect.

It’s also worth noting (and reminding every lefty religion-hater) that the Crusades were in fact originally a response by the Church to unprovoked Islamic aggression, which was ultimately turned back only at the gates of Vienna.
- rob | 11/12/2008 @ 16:19
This post and the comments hit directly on two of my biggest frustrations: The feigned fairness of the “on both sides” reflex, which is PURELY lip service, because nobody who utters it believes it, not to mention the fact that it’s really just an apology and a big “but please don’t hold me to that;” and the narrative as argument nonsense. “Everybody wants change (which implies that all change is good);” “eight years of failed Bush policies (which implies that you can name one – and I doubt you can, whether they exist or not);” etc.

As far as meekly throwing in a compulsory “on both sides” to every remotely controversial statement you make, I recall my own Fairness Doctrine:

“Anytime somebody starts a sentence with “in fairness,” or “to be fair [I’ll throw in “on both sides”],” he has either just said or is just about to say something decidedly unfair, and usually pretty sarcastic.

In fairness, I do it all the time.”

I seem to have plum run out of quotation marks.
- Andy | 11/12/2008 @ 18:38
I work with a guy like the one at the beginning of the post. He goes for global warming, and it doesn’t matter that I can run you a list of potential data gathering problems* based on five years working for the Oklahoma Mesonet. Al Gore Has Spoken, and I am an idiot.
Sarah palin is an idiot ( and let’s face it all Republicans are idiots to this crowd) he will believe Sarah Palin stories which would be immediately canned if said of Obama, and fiercely ignore evidence of Obama’s bad associations. It really has become mental illness.

*Most devolve to the problem of taking a delicate precision instrument and nailing it to a post in the wilderness and not coming back until it stops transmitting. Degradation over time, urban sprawl, insect/animal damage, taking one sample per 900 square miles. Someday I’ll write on it.
- Tom The Impaler | 11/13/2008 @ 09:57
[…] got me hot and bothered about narratives thirteen years ago, which would be just after our election of America’s First Holy President…but […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 06/27/2021 @ 09:11

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

NarrativesWednesday, November 12th, 2008

Narratives
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008