© Roger M Tagg 2012
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
A lot of people, especially children, are frequently inspired by stories. 'Stories' covers more than just the fiction of books, films and TV dramas; scientific theories and explanations, religious creeds and almost any 'isms' are all in some way 'stories'.
Of course in colloquial English, 'story' has another connotation, i.e. in that it may mean a lie, an exaggeration or a bending of the truth, as in the sayings "Don't give me that story" or "That's a tall story". In a religious context it can mean the Christian Bible, as in "Tell me the old, old story".
The marketing guru Seth Godin (author of the book 'All Marketers are Liars') observed that "Stories trump science every time". Others have made similar comments about 'Emotion' or 'Politics'. I take this to mean that most of us prefer a 'good story' to 'boring objective stuff'. This is natural, but have we got the balance right between the different types of story?
A recent article in The Australian told how two seemingly intelligent people were conned out of hundreds of thousands of dollars because they wanted to believe the story they were being told.
This shows that we face a problem. If we critically analyse every bit of information that passes our way, we soon realise that it is all an enormous muddle, with lots of inconsistencies. It may be difficult for us to get our mind round an issue, and it often "makes our brain hurt". So we yearn for some simpler, more direct and more human story. This is ideally one that fits with what we've grown up with - so we don't have to face uncomfortable change in our mindset.
One field in which people much prefer simple stories to an 'objective' and full analysis is that of 'cause and effect'. We naturally want to know a single cause for something that happens, rather than ten contributing factors (see my web page on this).
In journalism, it seems that a 'good story' is often much more valuable than the truth. It appears to pay the editors of some newspapers to publish a good - but untrue or exaggerated - story. A story gets published even when the editors know it is wrong. They factor in whatever they may have to pay in compensation when they eventually have to retract it (never enough to right the wrongs done to some people's reputations). See the chapter on the UK's Daily Mail in the book 'Flat Earth News' in this regard.
Often, people want to project their favourite stories into normal life. Sometimes this is valuable, sometimes it isn't.
|
Story |
Examples |
What's the 'story'? |
|
Ancient myths |
Aboriginal dreamtime, tribal culture, Semitic/Teutonic/Celtic/Greek/Roman pantheons |
These are rather like a soap opera, involving the exploits of a cast of mythical gods and demi-gods, possibly based on humans who once lived, but who are responsible for the natural phenomena that people can observe. |
|
Creationism |
Judaeo-Christian Genesis story |
A monotheistic (single god) version of the tribal myths above. Most modern religious leaders accept that it is allegorical and not an attempt at science. |
| Hindu religion | To some extent, the gods and demi-gods are still around, although the more philosophical schools propose the view that everything is part of one mind, not unlike Berkeley (see below). 'Karma' (reincarnation according to your merit in previous lives) is also a story. | |
| Buddhist religion | The story here drops the gods in favour of a personal history of the Buddha (somewhat like the Bible's New Testament) and his teachings. It's not so concerned with the nature of ultimate reality, but how one can escape from suffering. However Karma still rules; although because Buddhism advocates 'no-self', only 'mind' gets re-incarnated. | |
|
Plato's ideals |
There is another (metaphorical) world, containing the 'blueprints' for all the types of things we observe . We don't solve or resolve things, we always move on to the next problem. | |
|
Aristotle's |
What a thing really 'is', isn't so much the matter that it contains, but its (differentiating) structure. The atoms etc don't matter. As regards causation, there are 4 'be-causes' - what's the Material , what's the Form, what's Efficient in the environment and what's its Final purpose. And we should live a 'good' life. | |
|
'Holy Book' stories |
Christian Bible Old and New Testaments, stories in the Koran | Some are more like history than myth, but they still contain supernatural interventions, e.g. changing sticks to serpents, night journey, ascension. However because a committee decided many years ago that some writings were sacred - and a self-perpetuating hierarchy still endorses this - we are meant to accept them unquestioningly. |
|
Crusades |
Christian crusades, Jihad | We are all called to further (our) God's dominion over the world. If that means attacking and killing those who don't agree with our interpretation, that's too bad for them. |
|
Newton's laws |
Gravity | There are mathematical laws that describe how physical matter behaves and acts on other matter. They may not be 100% accurate, but they're good enough for most purposes. |
|
Berkeley's idealism |
Berkeley's philosophy, also the 'brain in a vat' in the film The Matrix | There isn't any external reality - just an infinite spirit (God) and us finite spirits He created. The world is God's language to us. |
| Popular fiction | Novels, plays, films; Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, Jane Austen, Goethe, Dickens etc | These don't follow a single 'story', although popular themes keep reappearing, e.g. Greek-style tragedy, comedies of errors or manners, poor boy makes good, eternal triangle, angst-ridden anti-heroics etc. |
| Hegel's dialectic | Left and right Hegelians, Marx | We are players in a continuing process of thesis (what we are doing now), antithesis (people are alienated about it) and synthesis (finding a way forward). For Hegel, it's all about 'Geist' or 'spirit'. In Marx's case, it's all materialistic and the end is a socialist utopia. |
| Darwin's evolution | All life forms have evolved, through survival of the fittest, over millions of years, from primitive organisms, through many chance changes in environment on planet earth. | |
| Nietzsche's superman | Pity, and concern for the unfortunate, deny the upward progress of evolution. We should not constrain the heroes who take things forward by requiring them to conform to rules developed for the masses. | |
| Einstein's relativity | Special and general relativity | Space-time is curved; time depends on velocity; provides a better description than Newton of things on both sub-atomic and astronomical scales. |
| Freud's psychoanalysis | Oedipus complex | Our psychological problems mostly arise through repressed sexual urges, particularly in regard to our parents. |
| Nationalistic stories | Joan of Arc (France), Robin Hood, Elizabethan era (England), Gallipoli (Aus, NZ) | These stories, based more or less closely on actual events, are hyped up as a means of encouraging national pride and loyalty, and to discourage nonconformity, discontent or even emigration. |
| State totalitarianism | Fascism, National socialism, Stalinism | The individual doesn't count so much compared with 'society'; we who are not part of the elite, 'party leadership', political cadres etc should do as we are told or be exiled or exterminated. |
| Accountancy | The state of things all comes down to the bottom line - if it can't be put into money terms, it doesn't matter. | |
| Nanny state | It's the state's job (a bit like a good parent) to look after us all in all that we do, to prevent us from any dangers and to bale us out of any difficulties. | |
| Global economics | Adam Smith, Keynes, neo-liberalism | The world is like a free marketplace; supply and demand rule, and everything is judged on its practical value. |
|
Soap operas (real as well as fictional) |
Film stars, royalty, and TV soaps (e.g. Coronation St, Neighbours) | It doesn't matter if you can't run your own life interestingly, you can always live vicariously. |
|
Human-induced climate change |
We're quickly damaging our environment and need to modify our economic activity and consumption (as long as we don't lose out because no other nations or groups comply). |
I don't think so - and I would not want to do so myself about any of those listed above. We may only be able to be sure a story is 'true' if we can find some information that corroborates it. However there will be more cases where we can only prove that a story is untrue, if it leads to contradictions or can be shown to be not in accord with observable evidence.
In this respect we could say that both the Biblical Genesis creation story and Newton's laws are 'untrue', but is it meaningful or useful for us to say so? The reasons for postulating them are not the same. They are not necessarily even silly. In everyday living we don't need to be concerned about exactly how the world we live in came about, so a simple story like Genesis may be good enough. Likewise if we are doing engineering, with things of normal dimensions and normal speeds, it's much simpler to calculate the predicted effects using Newton's than Einstein's formulas.
The trouble with 'accepting' or 'believing' stories is that we may slide into taking them beyond the circumstances they were intended for. They may be too simplistic - they don't consider some things that we know are an issue.
Some stories do fall into the 'lies', 'spin', 'exaggeration', salesmanship' or general 'bullshit' categories. We have to get smart enough to spot these.
Some stories are silly (e.g. those put forward by some Holocaust deniers). They clash too obviously with what we know otherwise.
Other stories are fanciful or fantastic (e.g. Peter Pan, Science Fiction). They can be entertaining, but almost no-one believes them.
If we are talking about 'stories' in the sense of religions, political 'isms' etc, it's very unrealistic these days to think that everyone will be satisfied with the same single story. However we might be prepared to 'go along' with them if it leads to a quiet life and avoids confrontation. But many people would be unhappy with this stance.
Possibly the best approach is to maintain some degree of 'healthy detachment' from all stories - while resolving to 'learn from' them if they contain helpful insights.
Index to more of these diatribes
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 21st June 2012
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .