(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . My Metaphysical Diary - part 2 [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-08-24 Part 2: Why history is mythology & why it matters. I would suggest reading part 1 of this diary for background assumptions: www.dailykos.com/… Assuming that you find the points I make in Part 1 to be plausible, then it follows that our knowledge of the world is very limited. Even our knowledge of “what has happened” (history) is very limited. All history is lies & all lies are art. Art is the most important endeavor in human civilization. Now, just because history is lies doesn’t mean it is bad. History is “lies” because it is not possible to tell the story of everything that came together to produce a given set of events. It’s like the old parable: “for want of a nail”…. (the kingdom was lost). Small details can have an outsized influence. For those of you who like classic movies, Rashomon is one of the best all time movies according to many critics & it deals directly with questions of witness & perspective: www.google.com/… When we see a particular event, we tend to believe that what we saw is how it was. I mean, it happened right in front of me! Right? Wrong! There is a significant body of literature that establishes that “eye witness” testimony is very unreliable. The human brain is fundamentally predictive in nature. We don’t “see” the world so much as look for evidence to affirm our predictions. There is a tendency to ignore evidence that does not conform to our prediction. www.psychologytoday.com/... OK, so we have our experiences & we interpret them based on how we are inclined to see the world (see Metaphysical Diary - part 1). When we relate those experiences to others, we are limited by (at least) four things: 1. Our limited understanding of “what happened.” 2. Our limited ability to communicate “what happened” (linguistics & communication is worthy of multiple thesis which I will not attempt here) 3. The listeners limited ability to comprehend our words ( &/or images) 4. The listener’s limitations as bounded by their biases. The likelihood that the “listener” will come away with an accurate representation of “what happened” is exactly “zero.” If we are good & they are intelligent, they may come away with an image which actually resembles “what happened” but there will always be discrepancies & often enough, huge discrepancies. Examples of this are rife in modern society, most clearly represented by American (if not global) politics. Let’s face it, politics is ALL about selling a particular worldview to the public so that they will support a politician’s agenda. What will the politician actually do? Who knows? But we hope that their true agenda somewhat resembles our understanding of what we believed that they said. Even so, two people will listen to a politician’s version of reality & hear tow different & sometimes contradictory versions of the politician’s story. Often enough, a politician’s words attempt to evoke a vision of a civilization that they claim to promote. Whatever we think of their vision, it is a given that every one of us will be interpreting it differently. There may be common ground in our interpretations or they may be world’s apart. Going back to my Quora post: qr.ae/... The way that we interpret the world is a result of subconscious renderings of past experiences. Primarily experiences which produced strong emotional reactions (the emotional response is part of the strongest “recording” process in our subconscious) & most of those experiences happened when we were small children first learning about the world. People aren’t rational as a rule. People are “rationalizing!” We make “rational sounding” stories to explain why we do what we do. All of these stories, collectively, combine together to give us a representation of the world. That representation is not the world. It is merely a representation which we create in our brains. When we create & share representations which are interpreted by others in ways that evoke strong responses from them, those responses create associations which may start to merge into a collective story (i.e. one that is frequently shared). When we really like that story, it may be determined that it tells us something about ourselves which affirms qualities we want to reinforce. There are many such stories associated with the USA’s Founding Fathers. There are other stories, s.a. the ones Hollywood made about “The West” or WWII which evoke qualities for us which we admire or want to emulate & then we go on to believe: “this is what it means to be American!” How many of us wanted to be like Gregory Peck in “To Kill a Mockingbird” or Henry Fonda in “12 Angry Men?” Sometimes those stories create positive associations for some & negative associations for others. Realistically, while we may think that we are experiencing the same story when we watch a movie or read a book, the fact is that everyone one of us experiences (& interprets) every story uniquely & the degree to which it resembles someone else’s experience is coincidental at best. This is why every person’s experience of the world has legitimacy while also being inherently inaccurate. Each of our stories is valid to us. It may be dysfunctional & unhealthy or it may be exhilarating & inspiring. Our stories are inherently real, while also subjective. True to the individual but typically much more limited in their meaning to others. When people learn about our stories, they may be influenced in a variety of ways, both positively &/or negatively. Sometimes a form of synergy takes place on the occasions when we experience someone’s story (or even share our own) & that story resonates with such a large number of people that they then begin to identify with significant elements of the story. Our popular artists are people who have a knack for telling stories that people find meaningful. Our great politicians are inherently people who are good storytellers. These “popular” stories begin to carry meaning that goes far beyond the originator of the story. Sometimes the collective story is actually contradicting the original message (consider Tom Fogerty's “Fortunate Son" or Springsteen's "Born in the USA") But of course, not everyone hears the same story the same way. That goes back to our first principle: None of us see the universe for what it really is. We see representations of the universe which are meaningful to us based on the experiences (usually from our childhood) with which we define who we are. It is also important to note that those definitions can change over time. 200 years ago, marriage was primarily an economic consideration. you should love your spouse but that was not a basis for marriage. Thanks in large part to a series of novels written 200 years ago (Jane Austin comes prominently to mind), a change in people’s thinking was initiated to the point where now, the notion that marriage should be primarily about love is considered the norm (at least in modern “Western” culture). This is an example of a story/myth which changed over time. This is why history, which, regardless of the resemblance to the factual occurrences, is more like mythmaking than courtroom evidence. Even when the story seems to be an accurate representation of events, we still select the events which are meaningful to us while tending to ignore those events which either contradict our meaning or are just judged as irrelevant. There are so many events that take place in any combination of occurrences that we cannot know. This is true for events that happened to you or I yesterday. What occurred last month, last year or centuries ago, is impossible to determine with accuracy. We will only know the particular details which a witness recorded (perhaps with numerous errors) & which some version managed to survive to come before our senses. The people who present this "history" to us are the storytellers, whether they present themselves as "historians" or openly as storytellers or even writers of fictional stories. All artists are fundamentally storytellers, regardless of the medium chosen to tell their story. Whether they are retelling purported events, or openly fabricating events, they are looking for a meaningful "mythology" which will resonate with the audience. The "mythology" of events which comes to us through the process of editing, embellishing, distorting, translating & so forth, shouldn't be judged according to its being a truthful representation of events. There is a place for trying to produce an accurate presentation of past events. Regardless of the basis in fact, what is more important is the ways in which we interpret it. An artist, who is fundamentally acting as a mirror, helps us to define who we are. It may or may not be connected to actual events experienced by another being in the past. What matters the most is how we interpret it & apply it to our own lives today & our aspirations for tomorrow. I am not advocating for treating history as fiction or for manipulating history to tell a distorted narrative. I am merely pointing out that distortion is inevitable. We are selective in how we “remember.” We should allow people to tell their stories as they remember them & in the process of openly sharing our stories, attempt to come up with a story, a mythology, which best helps us to create the world in which we want to live. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/8/24/2265504/-My-Metaphysical-Diary-part-2?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/