It's the Narrative, Stupid
1/5/2019
Reader warning: The following discussion is LONG. It is going to get pretty much into the weeds about things like what is real, what is a lie, and assorted other esoteric concepts like "abstraction", "consensual reality", "imaginary reality" and evolutionary psychology. The point, at the end, is that the Left is promulgating a theory that human beings have the ability to make up stories or fictions that have an effect on what people believe. Consequently, creating narratives, fictions, stories are a way to change people and culture regardless of whether the narratives have any connection to the truth or not. Because of the existence of this theory, politics has become a battle of narratives. Below, I try to explain what the theory is, why it is wrong, how to differentiate false narratives from those based in reality. The Left is doing everything it possibly can to replace the American narrative which has been created from the bottom up by the people with a narrative that is created from the top down by the governing elite.
From narratives that attempt to convince us that equality requires us to define boys as girls and vice versa to narratives that declare the desire for national borders to be xenophobic and racist, the Left is attempting to replace the narratives in order to alter the culture and the country irrevocably. So, that's the gist of what follows.
To get into the weeds of my rant, continue on, but you have been warned
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I have been given a book for Christmas entitled Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Its subtitle is “A Brief History of Humankind”. Now, that title and subtitle alone should tip you off to the politics of Mr. Harari. He does not title his book Homo Sapiens, which is Latin for “wise man” and he does not speak of Mankind but Humankind. And, my guess is that if he could think of a way to take the “man” out of “human” he would have done that as well.
The author begins by making huge assumptions about the evolution of humans from apes. For example, “Like it or not, we are members of a very large and particularly noisy family called the great apes. Our closest living relatives include chimpanzees, gorillas, and oranguntans. The chimpanzees are the closest. Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees and the other is our own grandmother.”
As you can see, the author, a historian by training, is a strict evolutionist. He is also a clever writer who leaves out of his history parts of the story that are inconvenient to the narrative he is developing. He also depends heavily in his 400 page book on a relatively new field called evolutionary psychology which is the study of early mankind’s mind based upon archeological information available to us. My objections to all of it, the author and the book, is that the author began with conclusions and massaged available scientific information to explain his conclusions. In short, he created a narrative to fit the outcome that he desired.
In this book, the author outlines the evolution of man from the apes through the many varieties of the genus Homo that preceded Sapiens and begins his focus in earnest on Neanderthal man. He states that around 70,00 years ago, a pure accident of mutation which he refers to as “the tree of knowledge mutation”, “rearranged the inner wiring of Sapiens, enabling them to think in unprecedented ways and to communicate using an altogether new type of language.”
Harari then arrives at one of his main theses. He proposes the idea that the new language that suddenly mutated into existence resulted in an ability that changed humans and the world forever. And what was this ability? The ability to think abstractly? No. The ability to be aware of oneself? No. The ability to be able to put oneself in the place of another? No. These are things that scientists and philosophers have considered some of the main things that have differentiated man from other animal species. But not Dr. Harari.
For Harari, the ability that changed mankind and the world was the ability to imagine things that do not exist in reality, an event he calls the Cognitive Revolution. The ability to create "fictions" is, what Harari says, the main thing that differentiated Homo Sapiens from Neanderthals. Among those things Harari believes are merely fictions created by the human mind and that have "no basis in objective reality" are nations, borders, ethnicity, religion, corporations, and the like. All of these are viewed as “fictions”, mental or social constructs created out of nothing by the imaginative mind of Homo Sapiens. These things says the author, have no “real” existence in the the objective world. Harari goes even further and maintains that culture itself is merely a collection of fictional stories that we have been taught to believe in. Consequently, he believes the world and its cultural beliefs can be changed simply by creating a different set of fictions. On the one hand, the author seems to imply that one fiction is no better than the other since they are not real. On the other hand, he seems to imply that one can change the fictions and create a different world because the fictions profoundly affect the people of the world and their social and cultural contracts with each other.
As I read further, it became clear that the author had a conclusion and was working backwards to find data that justified his conclusion. And what is that conclusion? Why nothing less than the notion that only things that can be known with the senses are "real" and that everything else is a fiction, a mere creation of the human mind. What is implied is that if nothing else is real, then any story, any fiction, that can be created is as true and real as any other fiction. In short, there is no truth, there is only the subjective and creative mental fictions created by the human mind. Consequently, if you simply change the story that you tell the people and educate them to believe the story you tell them, you can shape and create the kind of human interactions and culture that you desire.
I am in complete agreement with Harari on this one point. Though it is far from being the major ability of the human mind, it is, indeed, an important ability. And, it is also true that what you believe profoundly effects how you view the world and the cultures that are created when large numbers of people believe the same thing.
In the current political climate, we refer to these stories as “narratives”. Examples of narratives would be “America is the land of the free and the home of the brave” or alternatively, “America is an oppressor nation populated by oppressors and victims.” Is there any doubt that belief in one of these two narratives will result in different cultural outcomes, different institutions being created and different leaders being chosen?
In a different time, the political mantra has been: “It’s the economy, stupid”. The point being made is that politics boils down to the economic condition of the voters. But can there be any doubt today that the economy is better than it has been in decades, that minorities and women are better off economically than perhaps ever before, that unemployment is low, wages are rising, businesses are thriving. Nevertheless, the administration responsible for this economy is seen by a vast number of people as failing.
It is no longer the economy, stupid, it is the narrative. So long as the economy is good, it is irrelevant. And it is irrelevant because we live in an information age. And who controls the narrative in an information age? Not the employers and the workers but instead the educators, the media, and the social network giants. And where are the biggest battles being waged over the narrative? In the schools, in the media, and on social networks.
And whoever controls the narrative and gets the most people to believe that narrative will control the people, the culture and the government.
Donald Trump is both popular and unpopular because he is a strong opponent of the Left Wing narrative. He opposes the “political correctness” of an educational system that will not tolerate alternative narratives to their own. He opposes the media as promulgators of the Left wing narrative. He is opposing big social media because of their tendency to silence those with an opposing narrative. And he is popular with those who share his narrative for those very same reasons.
The narrative is more important than the man, his behavior, or his morals. Those who attack the man, his behavior and his morals, in reality, don’t care one whit about any of those. They are attacking the messenger of the narrative. The fight is over the narrative.
The narrative coming from the Right is that America is and should continue to be great. America is Good and wins because it is good. The Constitution of the United States is a brilliant document and no better foundation of the law has been created. That America is a nation of laws. That the institutions established by the Constitution and the laws while not perfect, stand as a bulwark against tyranny. That Americans are compassionate people who believe in equality of opportunity but not equality of outcomes.
The narrative coming from the Far Left is that America, it’s culture and it’s values, have failed the people. The Far Left narrative is that America’s institutions must be destroyed and replaced. Borders, capitalism, the Constitution, the Electoral College, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gun rights, health care, the criminal justice system, and the rule of law are all deemed fictions. All are targets of the Far Left's new narrative that America must be changed because America’s institutions are “broken”. All the while, as with our borders, with political correctness, with gun violence in the big cities they control, and with so much more, the Left is working to overwhelm the existing systems. THEY are breaking the systems to justify the narrative. And they prepare a narrative—-a fiction—-to explain why "destroy and replace" is necessary. In short, they create a fiction to replace the historical basis upon which the nation was created and has been sustained.
The narrative of the Right has been the prevailing narrative for more than two hundred years. It has been the narrative that has created the United States. But there are those who see this narrative not as a truth but as a fiction. The Far Left sees the narrative of the Right as a fiction. And they wish to change the nation as it currently exists. And they know, far more than those on the Right, that to change the nation, they must change the narrative. People on the Right do not question the narrative so they do not see it as important. They fail to recognize the outright war that is being fought for control of the narrative.
Harari’s theory that Homo Sapiens has created fictions with no basis in objective reality is flawed because it ignores one very important thing. Human experience. Fictions or narratives can conform or not conform to experiences that exist within the people. Those that conform to the experiences of the people become accepted by the people. Those narratives that are not supported by human experience do not survive. For example, many of us were given the narrative of Santa Claus, reindeer, elves and the whole shebang. When we had little experience with life, we lay awake on Christmas Eve too excited to sleep at the prospect of Santa’s arrival. With more experience of the world and how it works, the narrative is revealed as false. It does not conform with our experience. Human beings are, indeed, capable of creating fictions but those fictions do not necessarily have the power to control our lives IF we test them against our experience. And test them we must if the America we have known is to survive.
However, the Far Left knows that experience is necessary to support the narrative, so they do things that create experiences that support their narrative. It’s no accident that TV dramas seem to parallel social issues of the day. It is a method of inculcating experiences that neutralize or alter the prevailing narrative. Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes not so good. Overwhelming the border with innocent people simply seeking a better life for themselves is an attempt to provide experience. Focusing on gun violence is an attempt to eliminate the Second Amendment by focusing on the experience. Creating large protests of unhappy dissatisfied people is an attempt to create an experience. When we are told that boys who think of themselves as girls are now females and that girls who think of themselves as boys are now males articles in newspapers then declare: "Boys can menstruate too" and "first male has baby". The new narrative is being pushed upon us.
If one has sufficient experience in the world, then something inside says "NO! No matter how many times you tell me the story, it will not fly. What you are telling me is not merely a different kind of story. It is a lie."
So what is the difference between a fiction and a lie? Harari attempts to address this question in 3-4 paragraphs of a 4oo page book. He writes: "An imagined reality is not a lie. I lie when I say there is a lion near the river when I know perfectly well that there is no lion there....Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world....Most millionaires sincerely believe in the existence of money and limited liability companies. Most human rights activists sincerely believe in the existence of human rights. No one was lying when, in 2011, the UN demanded that the Libyan government respect the human rights of its citizens even though the UN, Libya, and human rights are all figments of our fertile imaginations....Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees, and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations, and corporations." This is the thinking of Dr. Harari.
Let us first examine Harari's use of the phrase "an imagined reality is not a lie." An "imagined reality". My background has taught me that an imagined reality is NOT a lie; IT IS A DELUSION OR HALLUCINATION. If it is imagined, it is NOT a reality. So, in effect, what Harari is saying is that what most human beings believe to be true and real are actually delusions. We believe in things that do not exist.
But again he is incorrect because there is something called "consensual reality". We decide whether something is real if it exists not just for me but for others. When in graduate school, a professor put this thought experiment to us: If I put you and another person behind a one way mirror peering into a room and the other person saw there was a chair in that room that you did not see, how would you know if there "really" was or was not a chair in the room? There is no way to know without involving at least one and probably several other people. If only one sees the chair and the others do not, it is likely that there is no chair in the room. There is a consensus about what is real and what is not.
Harari sees consensual reality, what most people believe to be true, as a mass delusion. In fact, consensual reality is an agreement among people that something exists because there is experiential evidence possessed by many people that it exists. Harari, like those on the Far Left would have us ignore our experience and take the position that we suffer from a mass delusion and what we call reality is merely an “imagined reality”.
What he calls a fiction or an imaginary reality is, in fact, an abstraction. When there are many components to an experience, the human mind is capable of adding them all up together into a single abstract concept that encompasses all the various components. For example, if I make widgets that I sell to people who want widgets, and then I hire more people to make more widgets and then I automate my widget making and purchase machines and a building to house those machines, and then I expand and do the same thing all over again in another place, and then I pay taxes to the government, establish lines of credit and accounts at banks, etc. Eventually what I do is create an idea that represents me, the widgets that I make, the employees I hire, the machines and buildings, the lines of credit and the bank accounts and record keeping. That idea is called a corporation. It is NOT an imagined reality, it is not a fiction. It is an abstraction of realities that exist as products, employees, machines, buildings, accounts, and more. The human mind creates abstractions of real things in order to deal with many things at the same time.
While Harari would have you believe that the UN, Libya, and religion are not real things, he is being fairly simplistic and truly underestimating the magnificence of the human mind. The mind does not make up stories out of nothing. Even when one is actually intending to make up stories, it does so based on experiences stored somewhere in that brain of theirs. These are merely the deceits that the Left uses to confuse us so that their narrative can prevail.
We have all heard about political circumstances where we are told that certain facts have been omitted because those facts don’t fit the narrative. Harari has omitted from his thesis about man’s ability to make up “fictions” facts about man’s ability to abstract and facts about consensual reality, not to mention man’s unending desire to sort truth from fiction. It does make a difference what narratives prevail because some are based in human experience and some are not. Some are truths and some are lies. How might we differentiate the two kinds of narratives?
1. Does the narrative conform to other narratives or beliefs held by the person relating the narrative.
2. Is there an internal consistency to the narrative without internally conflicting aspects.
3. Can ulterior motives be ascribed to the narrator that may compromise the authenticity of the narrative.
4. Does the person (or people) conveying the narrative live in a manner consistent with the narrative.
5. Does the narrative conform to the listeners life experience of people, places and things; i.e., does it pass the "smell test".
6. Are "statistical and historical facts" in the narrative accurate and verifiable or skewed and distorted.
7. Does the narrative appear to exclude obviously important and relevant data.
8. Is the person or group delivering the narrative willing to discuss the narrative.
Consider the following narratives and the people who relate them in light of these 8 tests:
a. The United States does not care about people if it fails to open its borders to people seeking asylum.
b. A person's gender is determined not by biology but by what they believe about themselves.
c. Speech must be suppressed or punished if , as a result of hearing said speech, some people become offended, anxious or uncomfortable.
d. A wall does not deter people from entering an area and, regardless of effectiveness, it is immoral to build walls.
e. Socialism is an economic system that provides for all the people.
f. Kissing a person without explicit affirmative consent is sexual assault.
g. Donald Trump is not presidential.
h. Human rights, religion, and corporations are fictions, imaginary realities, that do not really exist.
i. Man-made climate change is settled science.
j. The world is made up of oppressors and the oppressed.
Today's politics is in actuality a battle of narratives. It is for that reason that the American educational systems and the media play such an important role in our politics. They are the important keys to getting one's narrative believed. It's no longer the economy, stupid; it is the narrative, stupid. And it matters not to many whether the story is true and real or a pack of lies and a made up fiction. Simply repeating the story often is enough to get the story implanted in the minds of those who have little time to question what they are hearing or are prevented from questioning what they are hearing.
And slowly but surely America is being changed by false narratives created by a small group of elites. Until the last 50 years or so, America's narrative was created from the bottom up out of the experience of her people. For better or worse, America's story was based on the melting pot of independent, self-sufficient people, who took responsibility for their failures and often gave their lives and wealth to correct those failures. The story of America was the story of those successes and failures.
But now there are those who want to rewrite the American narrative from the top down. They want to rewrite from a historical distance, using values and reasoning won at great cost by those who lived it, to indict the very people and nation that struggled to do the right thing. They want to say, "why didn't you do it sooner" because they can use today the hard won knowledge and values that emerged from that struggle then. And they want to by-pass the creative enterprise that is America by imposing through government THEIR belief of what is right and good upon the nation, precluding the debate and eliminating the struggle that results in true change rather than imposed change. Their narrative is based on restricting freedom to think and act as one believes. Whereas America was founded on the Constitutional principles of free speech, freedom of religion, small government, and personal liberty that permitted discovery on one's own beliefs, the new narrative is to impose beliefs upon the people by restricting speech, inhibiting religion, restricting liberty and extending government as far into the lives of the people as possible. The narrative is moving us from "I believe" to "You will believe".
The Left is creating fictions that are lies. Even as they oppress us by curtailing our liberties, they want to convince us that we must fight the oppressors. Our only salvation is to pay attention to our real life experiences. We must live not in the stories we are being told but in the experiences we are having daily. We must test the fabricated stories from someone's imagination against the real experiences that we have as Americans. Sadly, people are choosing the stories they prefer rather than realities they experience.
