Hi, I’m wondering what exactly you’re after. What if we each can find many such stories but you disagree? It might be an interesting conversation, but you seem very convinced of your point. What if I say that Moby Dick, The Invisible Man, A Tale of Two Cities, The Magic Mountain, the Moomin books were a voyage out beyond myself into a piece of the autobiography of the human spirit & places of communion? Or fairy tales in general, because they are all about agency and shared symbols & archetypes? Would none of that be sufficient according to you, and if so are you then really talking about stories or are you somehow confounding ritual & story? What are “the” few meaningful stories of agency & communion for you, beyond the Bible? It might be easier to understand what you’re after if you cite these.
Thanks for your message... and your more-than-fair criticism. I'm not entirely "convinced of [my] point," so I welcome your push back.
I find myself focusing on these words of yours: "... were a voyage out beyond myself..." I think those journeys are incredibly valuable. Reading stories about other people, fiction and non-fiction, certainly can capture aspects of the human experiene. The question is: What happens when you return from that voyage? Who are you then? What story or stories do you live within?
One answer could be: All of them. I am a human being who is an amalgamation of all stories. (I have a friend who is a Unitarian, and I think that's her position.) But I can take all the stories I've ever read, add them all up, and I'm not sure I can discern the plot line or where I fit in, except by offering my individual story to the mix.
Several years ago, I interviewed a narrative therapist who is very effective at helping people reimagine their individual stories. But when it comes to communal stories, he quickly runs out of gas. https://towers.substack.com/p/interview-harry-rieckelman
Re: my short list of stories that provide both agency and communion:
- The Enlightenment & The Liberal Democratic Experiment: Once we lived in the darkness of superstition and old-time religions. But then Reason took over the throne, and now we live in a rational, scientific world guided by the self-evident truth that we're all endowed with human rights. >> this is a story that you can engage as an individual and in a community via politics.
- Marx, Economics, and the Class Struggle: History is about the haves and have nots. Capitalism will eventually collapse under its own weight, giving way to a workers' paradise where each of us gives what we can and takes what we need. In this story, you're a worker in the world who will throw of your chains to unite in a glorious revolution.
- Race Supremacy and Blood-and-soil nationalism: Hitler was a very bad guy, but a great storyteller who narratied the fall and rise of the Aryan race. All racial identity movements cast you in a broader racial struggle based on the color of your skin.
- The Ascent of Man: We are all simply highly evolved apes. Darwin is the Great Narrator of our Story.
- Zen / Buddhism: History is the story of human suffereing which emerges from our desires. Stop desiring and you'll stop suffering.
I'm sure there are a few more I could add, but as I said earlier, it's a relatively short list.
Thank you, Alan, for this very engaging reply. I appreciate your time and thoughtfulness. You are pursuing an interesting theme, and I found your comment about the narrative therapist who can’t navigate communal stories fascinating and depressing, somehow. I think there are some deep, half-remembered, quickly fading shared stories that we would do well to recuperate, all of which, in one way or another, are about a profound, symbiotic connection between all of us, the natural world, and the larger mystery around us––stories that are being more and more validated the more we discover as regards neurobiology, fractals, consciousness, and so on, and yet they slip away ever more to the distant margins. This is more the stuff of conversation than a written piece, but it would seem to me that there is some sort of shared story to rediscover beyond the narrow confines of our contemporary rationality that concerns psyche/soul. As the great Austrian novelist/essayist/thinker Robert Musil put it: “We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little precision in matters of the soul.” Across time and place, in so many different ways and variations, we’ve been trying to tell the story of the one and the many, and this seems to be what you are after, too. Whether in Athens or through the Christian Trinity or through fairy tales, we have long been seeking a language for our individual singularity and our embeddedness in the one. As for the overarching narratives you cite, they seem abstract and reductive, each one making of us a cog in a wheel or more animal & machine than spirit, and so none allow us sufficient agency, perhaps because they are more or less blind to the dimension of psyche/spirit/soul. They do not sing through metaphor but reduce us through the implacable grind of metonymy, which makes of us all copies and structural elements. None of those narratives take up the theme of the one and the many in a way that provides any meaningful pattern or makes room for the mystery inside of us and around us, and on that account, they bestow no real meaning on life and give us no compass for our place within the cosmos. We think about these things as children and across our lives, but I wouldn’t know how to tease out details and to work out the patterns of our most true stories & even what “most true” means in these notes. But I’m glad too have bumped into your interesting ponderings! And I really appreciate the generosity of your reply.
Brilliant. Thanks.
Thanks very much, Barbara. I appreciate your overly generous review. ☺️
Hi, I’m wondering what exactly you’re after. What if we each can find many such stories but you disagree? It might be an interesting conversation, but you seem very convinced of your point. What if I say that Moby Dick, The Invisible Man, A Tale of Two Cities, The Magic Mountain, the Moomin books were a voyage out beyond myself into a piece of the autobiography of the human spirit & places of communion? Or fairy tales in general, because they are all about agency and shared symbols & archetypes? Would none of that be sufficient according to you, and if so are you then really talking about stories or are you somehow confounding ritual & story? What are “the” few meaningful stories of agency & communion for you, beyond the Bible? It might be easier to understand what you’re after if you cite these.
Hi Claudia,
Thanks for your message... and your more-than-fair criticism. I'm not entirely "convinced of [my] point," so I welcome your push back.
I find myself focusing on these words of yours: "... were a voyage out beyond myself..." I think those journeys are incredibly valuable. Reading stories about other people, fiction and non-fiction, certainly can capture aspects of the human experiene. The question is: What happens when you return from that voyage? Who are you then? What story or stories do you live within?
One answer could be: All of them. I am a human being who is an amalgamation of all stories. (I have a friend who is a Unitarian, and I think that's her position.) But I can take all the stories I've ever read, add them all up, and I'm not sure I can discern the plot line or where I fit in, except by offering my individual story to the mix.
Several years ago, I interviewed a narrative therapist who is very effective at helping people reimagine their individual stories. But when it comes to communal stories, he quickly runs out of gas. https://towers.substack.com/p/interview-harry-rieckelman
Re: my short list of stories that provide both agency and communion:
- The Enlightenment & The Liberal Democratic Experiment: Once we lived in the darkness of superstition and old-time religions. But then Reason took over the throne, and now we live in a rational, scientific world guided by the self-evident truth that we're all endowed with human rights. >> this is a story that you can engage as an individual and in a community via politics.
- Marx, Economics, and the Class Struggle: History is about the haves and have nots. Capitalism will eventually collapse under its own weight, giving way to a workers' paradise where each of us gives what we can and takes what we need. In this story, you're a worker in the world who will throw of your chains to unite in a glorious revolution.
- Race Supremacy and Blood-and-soil nationalism: Hitler was a very bad guy, but a great storyteller who narratied the fall and rise of the Aryan race. All racial identity movements cast you in a broader racial struggle based on the color of your skin.
- The Ascent of Man: We are all simply highly evolved apes. Darwin is the Great Narrator of our Story.
- Zen / Buddhism: History is the story of human suffereing which emerges from our desires. Stop desiring and you'll stop suffering.
I'm sure there are a few more I could add, but as I said earlier, it's a relatively short list.
Shorter version: I'm really talking about the intersection of worldview and narrative. If you're interested, there's more here: https://outofbabel.substack.com/p/the-biggest-picture
Does any of this help explain what I ramble on about here? :-)
Thanks again for reaching out.
Thank you, Alan, for this very engaging reply. I appreciate your time and thoughtfulness. You are pursuing an interesting theme, and I found your comment about the narrative therapist who can’t navigate communal stories fascinating and depressing, somehow. I think there are some deep, half-remembered, quickly fading shared stories that we would do well to recuperate, all of which, in one way or another, are about a profound, symbiotic connection between all of us, the natural world, and the larger mystery around us––stories that are being more and more validated the more we discover as regards neurobiology, fractals, consciousness, and so on, and yet they slip away ever more to the distant margins. This is more the stuff of conversation than a written piece, but it would seem to me that there is some sort of shared story to rediscover beyond the narrow confines of our contemporary rationality that concerns psyche/soul. As the great Austrian novelist/essayist/thinker Robert Musil put it: “We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little precision in matters of the soul.” Across time and place, in so many different ways and variations, we’ve been trying to tell the story of the one and the many, and this seems to be what you are after, too. Whether in Athens or through the Christian Trinity or through fairy tales, we have long been seeking a language for our individual singularity and our embeddedness in the one. As for the overarching narratives you cite, they seem abstract and reductive, each one making of us a cog in a wheel or more animal & machine than spirit, and so none allow us sufficient agency, perhaps because they are more or less blind to the dimension of psyche/spirit/soul. They do not sing through metaphor but reduce us through the implacable grind of metonymy, which makes of us all copies and structural elements. None of those narratives take up the theme of the one and the many in a way that provides any meaningful pattern or makes room for the mystery inside of us and around us, and on that account, they bestow no real meaning on life and give us no compass for our place within the cosmos. We think about these things as children and across our lives, but I wouldn’t know how to tease out details and to work out the patterns of our most true stories & even what “most true” means in these notes. But I’m glad too have bumped into your interesting ponderings! And I really appreciate the generosity of your reply.