House of Eratosthenes

Over the last twenty years or so I’ve observed much and taken copious notes on narratives. Their importance continues to emerge, and surprise me, for I keep underestimating this. I think it not an exaggeration to say people are narratives, and narratives are people. Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, if you meet someone for the first time and are compelled by business or romantic ambitions to ensure things work out well, in order to get to know them, you figure out the narrative that drives them. It’s like a pulse. Everybody has one.

Some people can’t be around each other, even for a temporary term of time. That’s because they’re devoted to narratives that conflict. The narratives being incompatible, for the two to co-exist, one will have to give up the narrative so the other can keep theirs, and when neither one is willing to do this, that’s when people are incompatible. When their narratives are incompatible.

I noticed earlier that a narrative is a blend of the proven and unproven, of the true and not-so-true. But there has to be at least some truth. This is their seductive power. You don’t know for sure it’s a lie, and you don’t know for sure what parts of it are true; but there has to be at least something. If there wasn’t some truth to it, it wouldn’t come to be. On the other hand, as I mentioned, if it’s all the way true and all the way proven, it ceases to be a narrative. So there’s got to be something missing.

Does that mean a part of it has to be false?

I think the answer to that has to do with whether you perceive reality in the instant, or across an expanse of time — the static versus the dynamic. That’s a mouthful. I’ll explain.

The dictionary tells us a narrative is a story. It doesn’t go so far as to say it’s a synonym, but it comes close. Some dictionaries say the narrative has a point to it, and it’s presented in story form. This is one of those cases where the dictionary doesn’t work for us. It’s wrong.

Because the dictionary — correct this time — tells us a story is a sequence of events. An event is a meaningful occurrence, meaningful in the sense that the situation is changed. Imagine yourself writing a story. Hero walks into the room. Is that an event? No, not really. Now the hero is ambushed and taken captive. That’s an event. Prior to it, there was a situation in which the hero was free; subsequent to that, he is not. That makes it an event. Stories have to have events. If they don’t have events, they’re not stories.

A narrative is not a story, because if it has any events at all, they are antecedent. There is a narrative that we stole the land from the Indians. That’s an antecedent event. But we only care about the situation subsequent to that, which does not change. Narratives are mono-situational.

And this is where they fall apart.

There is a narrative that says women have been unfairly subjugated by men, and are now achieving equality. Have they done it yet? Are they going to be doing it a little bit off in the future? Maybe way off in the future? Back in 1974? In 1965? The narrative is fragile because if one of those answers is the right one, all the others must not be.

Narratives in general are not to be trusted because they’re static, while life is dynamic. Real life is a story, fully qualified as a story, with situation-changing events. Things are significantly different in the running-up to the event, than they are in the aftermath. We are dynamic people living dynamic existences in a dynamic universe. And that’s where narratives depart from reality.

“We’re prisoners today, but tomorrow we’re going to win our freedom.” That’s popular as a general form, but if it’s really true then there’s a win-the-freedom event, after which come some responsibilities. And you’ll notice, if you watch closely, very rarely do people accept those responsibilities. In the aftermath of Yorktown in 1781, they did. And they went on to settle other questions, Constitution, Great Compromise, Judiciary Act, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, all that good stuff. It was a right-wing, not a left-wing, revolution; had the balls to admit it had won.

The way things play out far more often, is that the revolutionaries — left-wing — continue to cling to the narrative. They refuse to accept the responsibilities that would materialize in the aftermath of the event. Haven’t got the balls to admit they won. And so we all find ourselves in these absurd situations, where some oppressed group is supposed to continue to win new rights it’s supposed to have won already.

It’s a static narrative measuring dynamic things.

A dead narrative assessing the situation of living people.

The truth is that activists love this weakness of narratives. It assures they’ll never have to give up the power that was entrusted to them. We’re winning the new freedoms…still winning ’em…winning ’em some more. The years come and go.

And the situation does not change, because it’s a situation sealed up inside a dead narrative, like a dead insect pinned to a wall in a collection. The situation remains, for anyone who asks about it, endlessly, C.A.L.W.W.N.T.Y. — “Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet.”

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Dead NarrativesSaturday, June 21st, 2025

Dead Narratives
Saturday, June 21st, 2025