[HN Gopher] The Power of Narrative
___________________________________________________________________
The Power of Narrative
Author : dnetesn
Score : 50 points
Date : 2022-04-10 11:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Creating one's own "reality" to foster a particular goal is
| nothing new. Does that negate other "realities", of course not.
|
| Arguably in recent years narratives have become the dominant form
| of management communication to the extent that factual bases are
| a not really required sometimes. Such kind of philosophical
| claptrap should be avoided and given a wide berth, I think,
| because it seeks to replace "reality" with something closer to
| "religion".
| evocatus wrote:
| I've been fascinated with this phenomenon as it pertains to our
| conception of our selves, and the role the Internet and social
| media have played in mediating this.
|
| In particular - how much of our identity is tied to, or even
| dependent on, our digital footprint? To what extent do we judge
| someone based on their Twitter bio, and whatever carefully
| curated selection of photos they have decided to expose to the
| public?
|
| ...and what of those who have dutifully abstained from social
| media all this time, sounding the alarm bell _almost a decade in
| advance_ of Cambridge Analytica and 2016? Are these people now
| without identities, personas - digital vampires without a
| reflection in the black mirror?
|
| How accurate is the reflection, anyway? Online personas,
| identities, are a construction; I would even go further to call
| them participants of Baudrillard's "order of sorcery" - mere
| brushstrokes, assemblages of pixels suggesting an actual person
| behind them, but on one extreme are faithful representations up
| to the fidelity of the medium (e.g. candid photos), and on
| another are pure personas, people acting out a role (e.g. an
| actor on screen). VTubers [1] are one particularly salient
| illustration of this logic taken several steps further.
|
| From the article:
|
| > Narratives shape our perceptions, which form our realities and
| influence our choices.
|
| Is it possible to seize hold of one's personal narrative, and
| thereby reinvent the self?
|
| > You can be whoever you want to be. You can completely redefine
| yourself if you want. You don't have to worry about the slots
| other people put you in as much. They don't look at your body and
| make assumptions. They don't hear your accent and make
| assumptions. All they see are your words. [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTuber
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
| uoaei wrote:
| Some more theorists about this:
|
| Debord, Baudrillard, McLuhan, Althusser, Deleuze
|
| The larger movement which investigates these ideas is referred
| to as "poststructuralism".
| motohagiography wrote:
| I've said before the culture gulf isn't political, it's now in
| theories of mind - and this Schwab piece defines it. They have a
| view that the self and the individual are just artifacts of
| language, and they can use narrative to reshape almost all of
| human experience.
|
| His argument reduces to separating people from "reality," then
| placing himself and his ideas as the centre of the ensuing chaos,
| and managing the conflicts his network has caused itself. He has
| a zero-sum view of the world based on power actuated by language.
| He's really bad news. They should call this The Nihilist
| Manifesto.
| evocatus wrote:
| This is an ancient phenomenon. I would posit that religions are
| its earliest manifestation.
|
| Reality is a consensual process. Societies are continuously
| negotiating and renegotiating, amongst themselves, the borders
| of the map we call our worldview. Sometimes this process
| involves wiping the slate clean as we completely re-imagine the
| territory.
|
| This is not a value judgment of this piece, or of this process
| as a whole.
| asplake wrote:
| Nihilist? I didn't get that impression at all. Meaning may be
| socially-constructed, but (almost by definition) that cannot
| imply meaninglessness or pointlessness. To the contrary,
| they're imagining a constructive process here.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Their process is destructive with the promise of rebuilding
| with a new vision, and he's trying to persuade people to aid
| in their own cultural destruction and hand his network the
| reins. He's running a very old hustle.
|
| The belief that meaning is exclusively socially constructed
| is in effect that it does not exist. WEFs mission is to
| impose a new order, not to create a new society. Further, the
| "but, this is just a critical tool," argument is only a
| justification for a solvent for ideas that doesn't produce
| anything and destroys what it is applied to. They just want
| your stuff.
|
| What I don't understand is how so many world leaders could be
| taken in by such a tawdry mesmerist. If I have to be the
| first to stop clapping to say it I'm willing to take the
| risk: his followers are marks.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Honestly, I think it is the last gasp of a failing class
| because the physical world is reasserting itself strongly
| and yakking is not a solution strategy but only one to
| claim some spoils or position. I would argue, the recent
| attack on Ukraine actually ended that kind of confusion
| between reality and language.
| clarge1120 wrote:
| Don't underestimate the power of a mesmerist: he promises
| utopia if everyone would give his ideas a try.
|
| This was the same tactic used by Mao to promote the
| Cultural Revolution. He spoke of freedom from the
| shackles of Chinese tradition, and blamed his opponents
| every time his policies failed by saying that if only
| everyone listened to him, and there was no dissent,
| utopia would be the result.
|
| A lot of people fell for it.
|
| When his leadership lead to 10's of millions of dead
| Chinese, his response was, "Our policies are 70 percent
| good, and only 30 percent bad."
| kodah wrote:
| > Don't underestimate the power of a mesmerist: he
| promises utopia if everyone would give his ideas a try.
|
| Is this not the construct that modern political parties
| have? Every _new thing_ we try is basically granted on
| this idea, sometimes lazily pointing to other
| implementations and saying, "see, it worked here!" while
| being measurably different in circumstance.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I agree/understand, but Schwab is done - the "Davos Men"
| are not coming back... There might be others, though
| farcaster wrote:
| I'd love to read about this view of the world as the power
| actuated by language. It is really a popular narrative nowadays
| everywhere you look (people censoring "bad" words etc).
|
| Which thinker is that from? Foucault? Marcuse?
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| He's proposing to make companies and central banks factor in
| environmental costs and climate change into their decisions. As
| opposed to the current model where the board is required to act
| exclusively in the financial interest of shareholders. He then
| proposed maybe incentivizing and paying for carbon removal.
| What exactly is so evil and nihilist about it?
| motohagiography wrote:
| While that's almost disingenuous, specifically, the belief
| that there is no truth, especially one that is separate or
| meaningful from official power narrative, is nihilism. A
| close relative of it used to be called "the banality of
| evil," which was about thinking in similar self justifying
| cliches.
|
| The climate narrative is just one movement his organization
| has co-opted and used as a host - one that originally opposed
| him when it was a part of the anti-globalization movement of
| the 90s that specifically called out his Davos cronies. Now,
| climate is just the logic of an idea, it is an exogenous
| threat that can be used to justify literally anything once
| you have decoupled narrative from accountability to truth.
| Most of it is just a bunch of gibberish theory designed to
| confuse, pacify, and above all, neutralize criticism and
| opposition to the underlying action behind it.
|
| I would ask: Why should central banks be accountable to him
| and the organizations he controls? Why are he and others so
| indexed on zero-sum redistribution of carbon "rights" instead
| of investing in developing new energy technologies and
| efficiencies? Why did he coin the phrase "great reset" in his
| rambling book of the same title, designed to leverage a
| global crisis to reshape the world in his vision? The answer
| is always the same: because it puts him and his network in
| the center of the chaos they create, and invents new
| conflicts for the sole purpose of managing them.
|
| It's straight political infiltration and demolition of
| existing successful economies using a network of fifth
| columnists he has groomed and orchestrated the installation
| of - which he has openly bragged about. His appeals to
| climate narrative are straw men, they have nothing to do with
| the technology and economics of energy use, and they all
| resolve to central global governance and a zero sum view of
| power over the entire planet. He, and his acolytes also
| believe there is no accountability to truth in discourse (I
| live in one of their countries), and they use words mainly as
| a distraction and a kind of perfidy.
|
| Who is going to "make" those companies and central banks
| factor in his agenda to their decisions? Sounds like a
| technocratic rule by people who have seized the underlying
| service mechanisms of the economy, and one that cannot be
| left or escaped.
|
| We live in a post-totalitarian world, and that means guys
| like this are going to periodically rise and be an ongoing
| threat to our species' ability to live and thrive. It is our
| responsibility to challenge them and call them out for what
| they are, because the 20th century showed us what the
| consequences of ignoring them until it was too late
| inevitably yield.
| bobthechef wrote:
| yboris wrote:
| A really wonderful TED talk from Tyler Cowen: _Be suspicious of
| simple stories_
|
| > he asks us to step away from thinking of our lives -- and our
| messy, complicated irrational world -- in terms of a simple
| narrative.
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/tyler_cowen_be_suspicious_of_simpl...
| uoaei wrote:
| Quite a simple narrative that's being presented here ;)
| yboris wrote:
| The speaker concludes with the self-referential comment,
| saying something like "and of course, here I am, giving you a
| narrative" implying we can't escape them, but at least we can
| slow down our thinking to contemplate whether we'd like to
| endorse any particular point of view ;)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-11 23:01 UTC)