The more time I spend thinking about it, the more I come to realize that Narrative Is the Enemy, at least where attempts to see and reason clearly are concerned. One heuristic has proven surprisingly useful time and time again, in efforts of rationality as well as creativity: don’t try to deliberately tell a story.
But narrative is our primary means for understanding; it’s where we get the context for situating our ideas. Even the ‘self’ is a story we tell ourselves, to give narrative unity to the disparate actions we take.
You’re absolutely right; it’s the overuse of narrative we need to be concerned about. Humanity can’t get by without it, but one inch too much and we’re in self-delusion territory.
The more time I spend thinking about it, the more I come to realize that Narrative Is the Enemy, at least where attempts to see and reason clearly are concerned. One heuristic has proven surprisingly useful time and time again, in efforts of rationality as well as creativity: don’t try to deliberately tell a story.
But narrative is our primary means for understanding; it’s where we get the context for situating our ideas. Even the ‘self’ is a story we tell ourselves, to give narrative unity to the disparate actions we take.
While many philosophers have written about this in recent years, I shall point to the one most likely to be respected here. Dan Dennett: The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity
You’re absolutely right; it’s the overuse of narrative we need to be concerned about. Humanity can’t get by without it, but one inch too much and we’re in self-delusion territory.
Agreed. At least postmodernism got something right.