Political Narratives Becoming Dangerously Homogenous

I was sitting as unobtrusively as possible in the back row of an assembly recently and observed an individual...around my age in his sixties...engaged in friendly conversation with another he had seen sitting in a row ahead of me.  It went a little nervously at first but then I noticed this man suddenly getting very loud as he laughingly proclaimed a very partisan, political statement meant to demean anyone with a different opinion...let me tell you, it was completely inappropriate for that solemn setting.  I'm afraid that this kind of behavior is only becoming more and more prevalent in our society, and depending on where you happen to live or be at any given moment in time, you could change the party labels of those involved and get the same kind of result.  It's all about people stuck in a particular narrative...and there are several narratives in a state of dominance right now...who are operating under the mass delusion that their adopted narrative contains all the truth and that those who disagree with it are themselves deluded, stupid, ignorant, or the enemy.  As an example just look at TV on competing channels and see Don Lemon and Tucker Carlson push their respective conflicting narratives.  This type of thing has been going on throughout our history, but its advent over the past few years...first of multiple specialized cable/satellite television channels, conservative talk radio, and finally, the Internet, political blogging and social media that have made narratives much less individualized and more homogenized within the different camps.  And I fear it's beginning to instill a new form of prejudice...

Usually when you use the word "prejudice" it means "pre-judgment" based on someone's ethnicity, gender, age, or faith.  Now since the mega-narratives of today tend to bundle together a number of different opinions on things, it's tempting to ascribe attributes to people based on little ways they behave.  So a dude walking in Publix without a mask MUST be a Trump-supporting fascist who denies he lost the last election and wants to keep minorities from voting, right?  Or somebody wearing a BLM tee-shirt MUST be "woke" and believe in taking away your guns and suppressing your right to speak your conservative thoughts on social media, right?  In other words, expressing a "piece" of a narrative is increasingly being interpreted as subscribing to that narrative in its entirety, and although our "brave new world" seems to be headed in that direction, I still think that as individuals we're more complex than that, each of us while often latching onto some to the narratives provided us still reserving the right to differ on some of their specifics.  But we are nevertheless going in the wrong direction.  As an exercise I suggest this: examine your own political beliefs and (temporarily) try to see things from the other guy's point of view...or at least try to find something genuinely complimentary to say about those with whom you fundamentally disagree.  You can always spring right back to your own positions, but I think if more folks did this they'd be more civil and respectful to their counterparts while preserving and strengthening their own crucial individual right to disagree on different details of the narratives foisted onto them by others... 

Just Finished Reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King (for the 4th Time)

For a book that came out less than nine years ago, Stephen King's time travel novel 11/22/63 has to be one of my all-time favorites...I just finished reading it, and for the fourth time at that.  This time around I checked it out from my public library's Libby site and listened to its lengthy duration at 2X speed...that comes in pretty handy at times.  Sometimes I wonder why a particular book will get a hold on me and with this one, I have to admit that it's very good in a number of areas.  But I am always intrigued by the notion of the "rabbit hole" or secret entranceway to another place or time.  What King pulled off here with his story is nothing less than genius: the special door from 2011 to 1958 has already been discovered, and Al Templeton has thought it all out pretty much as many of us would have: first explore around, then take advantage of what going back and forth in time can do for you...and then begin to think of more serious uses.  I don't expect any special, secret porthole to another dimension or era in my own material life, but I can expand what Stephen King presented into a workable allegory...

Paradigm shifting isn't as vividly dramatic as stepping through an invisible opening to another time, but you're still stepping through...albeit mentally...into another way of seeing things.  What I am talking about here is both intellectual and emotional empathy, whereby you deliberately shed your well-designed clothing of stances on issues and people and instead see things from the vantage point of another with a different take.  I actually do this a lot in my life, and furthermore I have come to the strong belief that there is a sizeable number of fellow travelers through life...and quite a few on social media...who are cognitively incapable of empathy, dividing everything they see only in starkly stratified terms: black or white, good or evil, worthy of idolization or worth of contempt.  And if we're talking politics, I'm seeing this inability or unwillingness to see things from the other guys' perspective on both sides of the ongoing debate.  You idolize Trump and scorn Biden?  Try criticizing the former and genuinely praising the latter.  You like Biden (I doubt many idolize him...to his credit) and despise Trump? Likewise criticize Joe and find something nice to say about our president.  And with the issues that people are so rapt up in, why not take a little time and see things from the other side's viewpoint...in their words, not just those of their critics...starting with the issues you feel the most passionately about.  I look at the different people in politics and the issues around me and I know that there are legitimate reasons to take the sides people take...but what I don't accept is the notion that those who disagree with me are evil or stupid dupes.  What I do accept is that people tend to become comfortable with their own narratives, which they sometimes wrap around themselves so tightly that they tend to confuse them with reality itself.  Why not take a break...if you're capable of it, that is...and step through the invisible passageway out of your own narrative and into a refreshingly different environment? Unlike with Stephen King's novel, it's really possible and no secret...

Starbucks, Masks, and Narratives

Back on June 28th I wrote about sitting in my nearby Starbucks and enjoying the resumption of an old tradition of mine, sipping on an iced coffee with my laptop and writing and studying.  At the time I wondered whether, with this resurgence of the coronavirus in my home state of Florida and others in the country, Starbucks might close its indoors areas again.  But I've been in here a number of times since and have always found the dining room relatively empty with no trouble finding a "distant" place to sit.  Although it's acceptable to take off my mask once I'm seated, I find it more comfortable to keep it on and momentarily lift it while taking a sip...I've noticed some other fellow customers likewise keeping theirs on as well.  One day a young couple that had been sitting across the store from me without masks (which was fine with me) turned toward me as they were walking out with bug-eyed, hostile stares...no doubt directed at me for wearing a mask: they were complete strangers and I was doing nothing to them, yet they felt somehow justified at throwing civility out the window over this one issue. I keep seeing Facebook posts by deniers who act offended if others expect them to wear a mask around them and who NEVER acknowledge that their usefulness is not so much to protect themselves from others but rather to protect others from themselves.  These people have doubtless heard this point repeatedly but simply refuse to receive it because it doesn't fit their bias and narrative. So instead they keep pushing this bogus "it's my body and I'll do what I want with it" victim-complex argument which avoids the fact that they are in truth demonstrating callous disregard for the health of others around them.  But I've discovered a major truth, which is that once people get a particular narrative stuck in their brains, then no amount of facts, logic, or mitigating input will ever convince them to either dispose of it or even to expand upon it a little: they'll accept information, no matter how spurious, that props it up...and either reject or ignore anything broadening or contradicting it...

Quote of the Week...from Billy Joel

Though we choose between reality and madness it's either sadness or euphoria.    ---Billy Joel

The above quote is a line from Billy Joel's 1976 Summer, Highland Falls, a track from his 1976 Turnstiles album.  This song's lyrics are a cognitive reverie in philosophy...I encourage you to listen it, which I just posted this past Monday as #393 on my all-time favorites list.  Before I go into what this quote meant for me, let me share that once in my eleventh-grade English class back in late 1972 we had a guest speaker, a poet of renown, to sit in on the class and discuss his craft.  I remember him stating that oftentimes he would get feedback from people who credited him with all sorts of revelations in his poems that enlightened them...but that he himself hadn't been thinking at all along those lines when composing them.  And then he said that the work stands on its own once it's out there and that even unintended interpretations are legitimate, as far as he was concerned.  So with that in mind I acknowledge that I may or may not be in total sync with Billy Joel's intended message here, but I'll give my own "feedback" anyway, for what it's worth...

If there's one word that I believe adequately describes these times we live in and the social attitudes epitomizing it, it is "narrative".  Art Linkletter may have said that "kids say the darndest things", but people in general believe the darndest things as long as they fit within their own personal adopted narratives about the nature of the world around them and their own perceived lives.  These narratives, which include past personal history, religion, politics, socioeconomic class, identity categories, economic status, consumption patterns (including that of drugs), and entertainment preferences, tend to reinforce themselves in their holders' minds through supporting input...be it true or false...while they tend to reject any contradictory information regardless of its truth value...to believe something patently false just because it fits your narrative to me is a feature of madness.  And behind each person's personally and tenaciously held narrative...each with its peculiar mixture of reality and fantasy...is the unrecognized cause for it: the narrative makes them feel better...

One thing that social media like Facebook and Twitter do very well is to reveal and encourage people's personally held narratives.  These forums feed into narrative bias by giving users access to just about any opinion source that supplies catchy slogans or "news" items propping them up.  I believe folks in general want to have a sense of order about their lives and what's going on around them, and since it comforts them more they will be willing to throw away any objective, respectful and skeptical treatment of the news or the diversity of viewpoints about a particular point and instead boil it all down to the good guys (who possess all of the truth) versus the bad guys (born liars, all of them).  It's frustrating for me to see this in others, along with their tendency to only reference the news sources that resonate with their narratives, yet in all honesty as a human being here along with the rest of us I'm also plodding along through my own life with my own tightly-held, cherished narrative...after all, it's either sadness or euphoria.  But I've noticed one thing ever since I began this blog more than twelve years ago: when I write about a particular subject I often finding myself taking on both its pros and cons and on a number of occasions end up with a message that I hadn't previously intended...and I watch and read all kinds of perspectives on what's going around us.  Why don't you start your own writing blog and share your views with the world as well?  I'd be interested in reading it, plus it may benefit you as it has done me by helping you to sort out your own narratives. Wordpress or Google's Blogger (which I use) are good places to start...

Quote of the Week...from Isaac Asimov

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.                                                    ---Isaac Asimov

Lately I have been rereading the late science fiction author Isaac Asimov's sequence of novels about robots, the Empire, and Foundation...I'm approaching the end with only a couple more Empire books to go through.  So it was natural to draw upon this prolific writer's thoughts for this week's quote...and it says a lot about human nature and how people adopt and tenaciously hold on to various narratives in their lives...

We're all subjective to a great extent, and those of us claiming otherwise are just fooling themselves.  The tendency for most people is to develop their own narratives of the way they believe (or want to believe) things are and to be intellectually dishonest about propping them up, first by assimilating any supportive information into the cherished narrative, be it personally experienced or from other sources...even sources that are not necessarily reliable, and second, by rejecting and/or disregarding any input...no matter how obviously true...that would be contradictory.  Another problem with folks and their narratives is that they are generally predisposed to refusing to see things from the viewpoint of others outside their "bubble", often ostracizing them with pejoratives and imputing sinister motives or even questioning their mental health and/or intelligence.  Although my discussion is more general in nature, let's just focus for a moment on the national political situation between President Trump and the Democratic Party challengers for his office.  If you watched the debates recently you'd see different candidates steeped in their own narratives, with fairness and justice being primary themes for the Democrats.  Trump, on the other hand, emphasizes prosperity, security and liberty in his narrative...are the two approaches mutually incompatible?  I'd like to have my own TV show with guests passionately committed to their own narratives...and have them assigned to argue the opposite side with a panel of judges sitting on the sideline to assure that they don't stray from their respective assignments.  I have a feeling that there are quite a few people who would be completely incapable of undertaking such an exercise of open-mindedness. Yes, a little bit of empathy can go a long way to reconciling ourselves with each other as opposed to this epidemic of name-calling and demonization.  Sadly, Isaac Asimov's above quote is probably going to ring true as long as humans walk on this Earth...