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Continuity and self-narrativisation

  
 
Tom Coates
09:06 / 17.08.01
OK - this is derived from a thread over in film at the moment: Continuity - is it important?

The thread in question is asking whether or not continuity is an important feature of genre fiction or whether it limits the ability of the story to develop. Is the 'consistency' of the fictional universe important for the success of the series (comic / tv / whatever).

So I was thinking about this, and it started me thinking about things like history, journalism, self-narrativisation and identity, and how the whole of our lives are based around composing stories and occupying them - that this is the approach that we take to everything from problem solving, to explaining our current problems and skills and historical movements themselves.

So, let's ask the question again. Is continuity important. And let's ask it in a different environment. Is having a unified character, having an investment in a 'true' history, tracking one's own psycho/sexual/social narrative important? Does it illuminate why we are the way we are, or does it limit us? Is contradiction the future? Is it the present? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing or a thing to accept or a thing to fight against?
 
 
Ethan Hawke
10:53 / 17.08.01
I think what you are asking, Tom, is is having a stable identity and a unified history a necessary thing? I think I'd answer a qualified yes, based on the work of two philosophers. Daniel Dennett, in his book, "Consciousness Explained," basically gives what he considers a useful, operational definition of consciousness as a "narrative center of gravity." That is, in order to engage the world on a human level, our brains are geared to see patterns in perceptions, and apply a structure to those patterns. If you accept this concept, identity is more or less the sum of continuity, a pattern among many possible patterns of perception. In some ways this is close to Reader Response critical theory, but I won't go there.

To this construct, I would like to adapt Thomas Kuhn's notion of scientific paradigms, to "the science of everyday life." Kuhn posits that science proceeds in starts and jumps. That is, one ruling idea or theory (newtonian mechanics, say) forms the basis of all scientific experimentation until the amount of evidence because irrefutable that it is inadequate. Then a new paradigm is adapted, radically changing the focus of science. Science is not a gradual, linear progression as many of the key scientific thinkers would have you believe. Applying this paradigm concept to identity would merely mean the following: A series of perceived patterns has created a narrative center for one's existence. When different patterns appear more frequently in the experimental results (living), one changes radically and adopts a new set of patterns for sorting experience. The same events in your past can obviously hold different meanings depending on your current paradigm/narrative focus/consciouness. Every day yields new results in the lab of the science of everyday life. You can choose to ignore those results if they contradict your reigning paradigm. But if more and more build up, you may find your paradigm changing in spite of your wishes.
 
 
belbin
13:32 / 17.08.01
The construction of a continuous consciousness is vital. The character in 'Memento' (whose condition is similar to several documented cases) can no longer create short term memories and lives in a perpetual NOW. He has no 'stable' narrative after he lost his memory, so he is forced to repeatedly reconstruct who he is.

So:

quote: Is having a unified character, having an investment in a 'true' history, tracking one's own psycho/sexual/social narrative important?
No brainer. To rephrase this in a way that's interesting: Do people differ in the importance they assign to unified identity/history and, if so, why? For instance, do educated Americans, brought up in a culture that fetishizes awareness, self-examination and individualism suffer more 'narrative insecurity' than those brought up in environments where Zen Buddhism is the norm?

quote: Does it illuminate why we are the way we are, or does it limit us? Is contradiction the future? Is it the present? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing or a thing to accept or a thing to fight against?
I think a "both...and" rather than an "either...or" approach is required here. I think complete loss of a stable self narrative would be catastrophic. But as these self-narratives are in a continual state of flux and reconstruction anyway, you may as well have some fun (conscious direction even) with them.

Who do you want to be today?
 
 
Tom Coates
11:01 / 13.08.05
I'm wandering through some older Head Shop threads and I found a few that I thought I'd resuscitate. This one struck a cord with me for some reason again, so I thought I'd expand upon it.

At the time I wrote this, I think I was still thinking a lot around my doctoral work in psychoanalysis, where people were contending that psychoanalysis was - in effect - a process of storytelling, where individuals' faulty self-narratives were fixed and their repressed memories brought into consciousness, allowing them finally to act rationally. Understanding oneself in this view was the same as being healthy and understanding oneself started with having a narrative arc that you could construct meaning around.

I'm currently going through some stuff in which I'm looking for my father and more and more I'm aware about how one's self-narrative alters and shifts over time - that your understanding of what happened to you when you were five is very different when you were five as when you're twenty or thirty. There's anothe see things that they don't understand and then years later figure out what they saw and are traumatised by them decades after the events actually happened. I suppose that's kind of the alternative of the healing process or something, where your self-narrative suddenly ruptures and collapses.

Anyway, my revised take on this thread is something to this effect - how much does it matter that your self-narrative is true? What effect does it have on our sense of self if we accept that we're continually rewriting our own personal histories to suit the present? Is it healthier to rewrite / recontextualise one's past as one goes or to stick to a monolithic model of the past as a solid object that you carry around with you? If memories aren't descriptions of things, but interpretations of things, then what does that mean about our sense of identity?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
09:49 / 15.08.05
In what way do you mean 'true', because I would have thought it's very difficult for someone to really 'live a lie' unless perhaps they were a spy or in denial about their sexuality, being the two most obvious examples I can think of.
 
 
Persephone
12:44 / 15.08.05
I don't want to say that there's no true and false, because there is. But there are so many shades of true --just to contextualize, I do this all the time. I have this "truth script" that I run, the point being that you can really widen your control over your range of shades. The key trope, though, isn't is/is not, but works/doesn't work. So for example, you could create a script for yourself like "I have a good time on vacations" & that's a fairly easy script to make work, even though you have the occasional shitty vacation. Whereas "I am descended from the Romanovs" --and I did know somebody who went around saying this-- is really unworkable, maybe because it's so patently false.
 
 
Persephone
13:32 / 15.08.05
Or in other words, I wouldn't say that truth is either immutable or mutable. Because obviously if you think of truth as immutable, then mutable comes to equal false, but things can change and be true. But all truth isn't mutable, because some things can't be changed. So I think that it does matter that your self-narrative is as true as possible, but I also think that immutable and mutable truths will be included in that.
 
 
Quantum
14:27 / 15.08.05
If your self-narrative/personal history is based on a lie, that's a shaky foundation for your present and also devalues the *actual* events and facts of your life by diluting them with fiction.
I think it's important that your history is a true history to you. Reinventing oneself is a risky business.
 
 
illmatic
14:52 / 15.08.05
I think Tom's putting forward a more complex line of enquiry than simply if something is a "lie" or "true". The way in which we "write" our personal narratives and consider our lives and memories, is vital to our sense of self, I think, and having good, solid "scripts" in place which reinforce our sense of slef-worth is vital. If the context around something that was once a cherished fact about our identities changes - say, the close relationship with a group of friends as we grow away from them - we can experience a lot of cognitive dissonace trying to re-write an acceptable narrative. I think a big part of the therapeutic process is people re-writing personal narrative in to a form that they can accept, rather than being one that's "true". And often, this might require making some painful admissions.

So, not so much that it's "true" but rather a provisional truth that's most acceptable at the moment - perhaps the one which causes you the least pain and dissonance with regards to other elements of self perception.
 
 
illmatic
16:20 / 15.08.05
.. and to add to that, using something you were conscious of as an explict lie, would I think, jar too much with self-perception. Looking back on your memories/sense of self, and seeing that you were lying/deceving yourself in some way is a different matter though.
 
 
Persephone
04:00 / 16.08.05
Not that I don't think it's fascinating when people ground their self-narratives on apparent outright lies, but it still leaves so much to discuss when we're talking in the range of acceptable truths. In this, the concept of self-narrativization itself tends to be suspect --as in the contrast between truth and provisional truth, as if self-narrativization necessarily is a step away from truth. One tends to think of truth as a natural product, and not as manufactured. Whereas self-narratives are manufactured, so they feel like strayings from the truth --specifically in the act of manufacture, and regardless of the actual truth-value of said narratives. So as it happens, the process of self-narrativization is pretty good for challenging the notion of truth --and if this leads to a more robust understanding about truth, then that leads in turn to a stronger self-narrative. But you know, big if --lots of things can go awry in this process, after all.
 
 
werwolf
07:19 / 16.08.05
this reminds me of that 'dice man' novel. bit ambiguous about the novel itself, but the ideas presented in there tie in nicely with this thread. [for those that don't know or haven't read the novel: basically its about a psychiatrist who one day decided to leave all decisions to the dice, even going so far as have the dice decide what personality who would show until the dice tell him different - this is the author's homepage... don't take it at face value...]

to me, having a 'true' self-narrative, has a lot to do with causality. almost everyone i've met (actually everybody, with the exception of 2 people that suffer from severe psychotic and schizophrenic disorders) view their history as a stringent, chronological series of 'events' that led them to where they are right now. most will also include exterior influence to a certain degree. this allows them to characterize themselves and have a rough idea of 'who' they are and why they are like that. of course, as has been pointed out before, this has a lot to do with interpretation. but all of these people will try to erase 'contradictions' from their interpretation of their past, making it more stringent and cohesive as they continue in life, thus solidifying their own basis as they go along. to me, this is probably where the 'problem', if you could call it that, lies.

look at the dice of 'dice man'. they are regular 6-sided dice, numbered and nothing else. so where did the decisions of the 'dice man' come from? obviously not from the dice. there had to be some sort of selection made by the individual before, assigning choices to each number. i think, that is what a 'self-narrative' really means for most people: it's a filter for them to sort out which choices they want to have in their life and which they won't. thus it can become something that limits us but also an empowering tool. we have the choice to either 'be who we are' and just take it as it is without much questioning it or reviewing our past (if need be even out of its chronological order or even out of continuity) and try to be more conscious about our decisions. so, i'd say yes and no: yes, having a true self-narrative is important, because it enables us to understand many of the filters and patterns that we have established for ourselves; and no, a self-narrative that becomes a universal 'because-clause' ('because i did this and that or this and that was done to me, i HAVE to be like this and do that, i have no choice.') will not get us any further.

[someone mentioned zen buddhism and it seemed to me that it was suggested that there is no stringent individual self-narrative in zen buddhism. i disagree: zen buddhism very much relies on cause and effect, which is nothing else but zen buddhism, the difference to our society is probably that we exclude the individual and see it as disparate unit, while the zen buddhist view the individual in a universal context, making the individuals 'self-narrative' part of the 'universal story'.]
 
 
Quantum
10:06 / 16.08.05
using something you were conscious of as an explict lie, would I think, jar too much with self-perception Ill'sexybody'matic
Some people (most?) are a lot less honest with themselves than you. Many people live in a constant state of denial or convince themselves of things they know not to be true to avoid that painful cognitive dissonance. (anecdotal example- my grandmother rewrites her history, and sometimes age, to appear more glamorous, despite the fact we were there at the time and know it's untrue. It's not age, she's always done it- her self narrative is a tissue of lies, she's happy that way. She simply describes her world the way she wants it to be, even as far as reassigning the gender of her cat to suit her.)

Is continuity important? I think so, I think the closer you are connected to your backstory (as it were) the more secure and stable your present narrative. That strength of identity is crucial in allowing change IMHO, if you're not sure who you are then changing yourself might make you even more confused. A strong sense of identity and personal history allows a confidence to accept changes, even huge ones, with relative equanimity.

Take gender reassignation as an example. I think those who have the least traumatic experience reassigning are those with the strongest sense of identity and personal narrative.
So I'm not saying people shouldn't change, or go through landmark personal revolutions etc. but a continuity with your past self is a rudder, a foundation, an anchor. If it's true (in the sense of veridical, matching the consensual perception) you have the support of those around you reinforcing your narrative 'Yep, that's what happened alright' as opposed to a story only you know the details of.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
14:51 / 16.08.05
i like the thread.

there's "truth" and then there's "fact."

facts, like "I was descended from the Romanovs" can be proven or disproven (with more facts, ie documents of autentification, witnesses 'what? no, he ain't one of us!', etc...)

truth on the other hand, is far more difficult to deal with, as there are always those rule-proving exceptions...

anyway - if nothing is true, then anything is possible.

I had this recent conflict with a friend of mine - recurring over a couple of months. It seemed that no matter what was said, we interpreted each other's behaviour according to our respective historical narratives - not exactly compatible visions of the world. In the end, our assessments were at odds, and nothing made sense.

time to rewrite? or time to move on?

like trying to combine a fairy tale with a murder mystery. it can be done, with a great deal of patience, effort, and release (letting all those self-defining moments drift away into distant memory, instead of clinging to them in self-affirming present).

Much of our common historical narrative seems to be reinforced with oft-repeated shorthand. things like "10% of people are gay," "Hitler was evil," "Greek civilization existed," etc...

although, taking a solipsistic view, what proof of any of that do we have? words on paper, and universities filled to the brim with legitimization.

still, never met Aristotle, never heard him speak, or met anyone who has (maybe in Temple, but not Head Shop).

We still have faith in our stories where they are true. Why should we chain them down to the mundane with fact?

ta
tenix
 
 
Persephone
17:28 / 18.08.05
Personally, I like the original abstract...

Is having a unified character, having an investment in a 'true' history, tracking one's own psycho/sexual/social narrative important? Does it illuminate why we are the way we are, or does it limit us? Is contradiction the future? Is it the present? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing or a thing to accept or a thing to fight against?

Here, continuity is the focus. I'm interested that true here is expressed as 'true' --which I am reading not as true qua true, but true qua continuous or consistent. This true is opposed to contradiction.

...better than the revised abstract:

How much does it matter that your self-narrative is true? What effect does it have on our sense of self if we accept that we're continually rewriting our own personal histories to suit the present? Is it healthier to rewrite / recontextualise one's past as one goes or to stick to a monolithic model of the past as a solid object that you carry around with you? If memories aren't descriptions of things, but interpretations of things, then what does that mean about our sense of identity?

Whereas here, true appears out of quotation marks. Is this true qua true? I'm reading true here as opposed to fiction, which is what is produced through "rewriting our own personal histories." Here seem to be sets of oppositions --viz., between true / monolithic / description and not true (or less true) / paradigmatic / interpretation. I would add photographic to the left column and perhaps painterly to the right column, if anybody wants to take that up?

To jump forward to tenix:

there's "truth" and then there's "fact."

I get what you're saying, but I'd propose for the purposes of this discussion that there's fact and there's interpretation & both of these can be true or false (or not true).

To jump back if we mean rewriting as --just to make up a term-- "refactualizing" our personal histories (like Quantum's grandmother), that puts us on a different path versus talking about "reinterpreting" our personal histories (more like what Illmatic and werwolf are saying). I like the original abstract because it seems to address how interpretations approach truth --e.g., through continuity or consistency, or through contradiction, or as werwolf proposes, through causality. It's more a proposition of "better living through better interpretation," if I could interest anybody in this? E.g., What tools and technologies do we have available for interpretation, and how do they work? What makes these tools and technologies available to us?

Whereas I can't imagine even being able to eschew interpretation...
 
 
Unconditional Love
13:38 / 19.08.05
Script, narrative, story.... text driven versions of the self, mcluhan makes the point about the linear sense of continuity that sentences and the structure of text gives to identity. I think he makes a valid point. When the self is realised in words and sentences it acts as if within words, giving it a sense of continuity.

when realised as image and sound, as montage, the self removes itself from the limitation of textual linear exsistence. security lies in the written word as it is impressed upon us at an early age. the linear flow of a sentence gives a sense of continuity in thinking, a continual progression of formation as the sentence comes into being.

Memory as sensory experience, dreams reflect this state, unmediated by textual thought it does not have time based continuity unless the imposition of a number based attribution system within an individual had a strong unconscious foundation. Alot of early education programs the linear numeric flow of consciousness, and the structure for the parametres of self identity.

montage which reflects the dream like nature of sensory consciousness, dream like as in quality, perhaps not in content, althou that too is debatable, could be likened to the self removed from static linear structures of picture, symbol and word. Althou even this format of self governence contains beginning and end which may or may not be valid. Self surstaining sensory montage of consciousness may at first appear to be disorder, yet arguably it just represents a higher degree of complexitiy, that script and word based consciousness cannot manage, but sensory based experential consciousness can when revitalised and word based consciousness is given less dominance in self organising structures.
 
 
Benny the Ball
05:32 / 20.08.05
On a personal note, I think that one of the most important things that I have faced up to of late, is that my memory is not as powerful as I once liked to think it was. It used to be a big deal to me that I could remember everything in tiny detail. Now I realise that this is weighted, and often part of the narrative that I chose to write about myself, so I have found myself more and more accepting that some of my own continuity is confused and probably not as romantic as I once liked to think it was. There is a definited sense from the people that I know and associate with of needing to develop and move on and prove that one has learned from mistakes, a kind of continuity of character. It is also well noted when someone seems to be stuck in a rut or taking steps back in their life. A good example of a break in life continuity being seen as a bad thing would, I suggest, be the idea of a mid-life crisis - seen as a terrible or embarressing thing - of someone going back, reverting or receeding to a past persona or trying to return to a younger self. Interestingly enough I was reading an article in Time the other day which talked of the empowerment for women of a mid-life crisis, speaking of how women used it as a means to strike out into a new direction in life, and right a wrong (ie do something that they had always wanted to do but hadn't had time to) where as for men it still seemed to imply that it was a bad, childish thing of trying to relive their past and a struggle against the aging process.
 
 
Unconditional Love
12:29 / 20.08.05
Any kind of breakdown in the myth of self can be a useful turning point, the self reflection involved in the process and review of past selve expression give a basis for planting new seeds so to speak.

When sinking in pooh, plant seeds for new growth.

Another great point that comes from self pruning is an acknowledgement of the process that goes into self creation, an awareness of the new models and modes of self that are absorbed from media and the interactions with others around you, also the assessment of the past selves and what is of use from there experience, what parts to build upon and reestablish and what parts to allow to become fertiliser for new growth. As this process unfolds some degree of the process itself remains accessible and may be personified so that it maybe reaccessed to make later changes when nessecary.

linear continuity starting from point a moving to point z doesnt allow for an editing function to remove an example from film, you can role it back, recut the experience, add a new soundtrack, even role it forwards.
Only when likening consciousness to text does it become limited by that structure. experience is imagination, that is where you concieve of it.

memory changes from moment to moment it contains no facts or truthes, just perceptions.
 
 
Unconditional Love
12:45 / 20.08.05
The importance placed on scripture or a book by many religous traditions is a telling sign of there linear character, also apparent in the attendent hierachies within them, this sets parametres of experience, giving a continuity of belief and self developement within the belief. also look at ritualistic practice again often formed in lines, much like text, the focus of ceremony straight forwards, a linear progression.

Things flowing forwards from start point to finish point, also embodies the conception of time and how time helps to reinforce the continuity of self, cycling around yet moving forwards. a bundle of habits and routines making progression,heh.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
17:30 / 20.08.05
Is having a unified character, having an investment in a 'true' history, tracking one's own psycho/sexual/social narrative important? Does it illuminate why we are the way we are, or does it limit us? Is contradiction the future? Is it the present? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing or a thing to accept or a thing to fight against?

(Aplogies if this *seems* antagonistis or trollish, but bear with me...)

"Who" wants to know?
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
21:06 / 22.08.05
Well, to a certain extent we generate narrative to convince ourselves and the world of meaning - our meaning - and it's more "interesting" or self-important to have a story in our heads than not to have one. Mythic journey concepts can get us to move forward or - on occasion - avoid sliding too far down into the dark place. I'm going through a poor period and the starving artist and all of that, but I can convince myself that the narrative I'm in demands periods of powerlessness versus periods of excess; it's maybe not "true" or factual, there might not be a driving force, but it makes it easier to handle and certainly gives me a reason to find the best in the situation.

And part of the narrative can be as simple as the image of shedding skins to evolve, which implies I have all kind of potential selves that could appear the next time I undergo a big change, so that prevents (at least from one angle) feeling "forced" into one linear narrative. Can always go off into another direction.
 
 
werwolf
10:53 / 23.08.05
wouldn't we have to make a distinction here between the 'narrative' itself and the interpretation of it, even if we are 'writer' and 'reader' at the same time?

instance: things we did as children appear to have a different meaning now, than they used to have at the moment of us doing them. the continuity, the causality is still there, our self-narrative is stringent - we DID do it back then. but our interpretation of it varies and changes.

if that should mean that we create our 'self-narration' always after the fact, then this would suggest that there is no 'true' self-narration at all ('true' as in 'non-hermeneutical') but only a 'history of who we are/were' as seen through our own interpretative tools, raising the questions already asked by Persephone:

[quote Persephone] What tools and technologies do we have available for interpretation, and how do they work? What makes these tools and technologies available to us? [/quote]

so, tracking back to tom's starting post, i'd have to add something to my opinion on what importance 'self-narration' holds for us:

the more we rely on our past and indeed having something like a past (a narrated history, a interpretative map of our life) the more value a 'self-narration' holds for us. the more we try to focus on now and here, the more interpretations of the past will fade into the background and become negligible.

this is a bit of an agnostic's approach probably.
 
 
Charlus
11:32 / 23.08.05
What constitutes a unified character? is this to be "autonomous"?
One can be of the belief that these values are important, they make up the views of the individual who projects a view of themselves, ultimately giving others in that society a view of themselves. Yes these values limit us, but they also don't. It isn't a bad thing, but it can be, it has good purposes and bad (it could lead to extreme obsession) Looking over history, do you think the importance of these values has lead to more benefit that not? These values can also be placed in any context -religious, artistic ect. They also seem to be very Freudian. Do you agree?
It is a vicious cycle.
 
 
Tom Coates
10:30 / 28.08.05
I've been thinking about this even more and have some more things to posit and suggest around the place. One of them is the relationship between quite a lot of the discussion that's been going on and the concept of 'The Blank Slate' (cf. Pinker's book on the subject). Basically it's become commonplace in recent decades to assume that one's personality and skills, one's 'self' is completely made during ones life as a sum total of one's experiences rather than something someone is born with and which is fairly immutable. In Pinker's book he talks a lot around this stuff, and indicates massive rafts of behavioural traits and personality traits that seem to be genetically predetermined.

My point here is that there's been really interesting discussion about people talking about their experience of the world as a series of discreet events that made them the way they are today. I guess that leads me to a few questions - is the process of self-narrativisation to explain one's self a relatively recent one, if it is not - is it a necessary biological / mental function to try and rationalise an underlying biological certainty that we have no choice over one way or another. To what extent, then, do life events really have an impact on our 'self', or is 'self' prebuilt and we make excuses for it by reference to events and history.

Which leads me in another direction at all - narrative, continuity and history. Does a culture that believes something incorrect but positive about its history suffer from breaks or discontinuities, or could the experience for its citizens be a good one? Again - is a solid understanding of history important for the health of a nation, is such a solid understanding even plausible? What's the role of myth-making in this enterprise? Something to be faught against? Something to be celebrated and embraced?
 
 
werwolf
07:23 / 29.08.05
[quote Tom Coates] I guess that leads me to a few questions - is the process of self-narrativisation to explain one's self a relatively recent one, if it is not - is it a necessary biological / mental function to try and rationalise an underlying biological certainty that we have no choice over one way or another. To what extent, then, do life events really have an impact on our 'self', or is 'self' prebuilt and we make excuses for it by reference to events and history. [/quote]

my knowledge of modern psychology is miniscule, but i'd suggest this: the 'self' is only so far biologically/genetically pre-built as our bodies dicatate our perceived reality.
the human body can do a certain number of things in a certain number of ways. many experiences will not be attainable for an average human - at least not through/by his/her own body, but perhaps through exterior augmentation. thus, the 'self' of any human will be built within the physical and sensual confines of our bodies. what we see, the way we see it, how it feels, how it smells, how it makes our bodies react - these are all things that play into our experience of ourselves and determine our 'personality'. since these things are genetically controlled, it creates margins within which our 'personality', our 'self', can evolve. for instance: we do not see colors in the same way as a fly does, we do not smell like a cat does, we do not feel things the way an octopus does.
of course, within these genetic traits there are various modifications possible and probably a sheer endless number of variations, which might make any one person inclined to lean towards a 'self-evolutionary' direction more, than another. so, while i think that our physical selves strongly influence our sense of self and while i also believe that various biological traits of an individual can lead him/her to tend more into one or other 'self-evolutionary' (or 'moral' or 'worldview' or 'personal' or whatever) direction, i do not think that biological presetting determines moral values or makes psychological situations immovable. these are all things that can and will be shaped by our experiences and by our own will. nobody is born 'good' or 'bad' or 'depressive' or 'manic' (excluding here physical diseases with similar symptoms).
we become these things (in relation to the world we inhabit) and can also change these things arbitrarily.

[quote Tom Coates] Which leads me in another direction at all - narrative, continuity and history. Does a culture that believes something incorrect but positive about its history suffer from breaks or discontinuities, or could the experience for its citizens be a good one? Again - is a solid understanding of history important for the health of a nation, is such a solid understanding even plausible? What's the role of myth-making in this enterprise? Something to be faught against? Something to be celebrated and embraced? [/quote]

i do not know what you mean by 'solid understanding of history', but i assume you mean a 'correct', 'faultless' understanding of it. i'd say: no. hermeneutics are unavoidable when reviewing past events - therefore there can never be anything like a 'true history' or a 'faultless view of history', there can only be an approximation thereof.
based on this i would presume that within a hypothetical society that has no exterior influence, there will never be any discontinuity in their own view of history. everything will be filled out and related accordingly to fit, the skill of interpretation stepping in. for the nation in question it doesn't matter whether there are any incongruities or myths in its history, as long as it has to relate to itself only.
but, as soon as there are relations to other nations, to the outside, these 'rifts' in their historical interpretation will be measured up against the reviewing of those other nations. at this point it becomes crucial how those myths, exaggerations, breaks and shifts within one historical view compare against the same in another historical view. to give a very crude example: some german people might have lived on happily ever after with the myth of adolf hitler being a great man that tried to unite the world and bring bread and work to everyone and see it as a failed chapter in their history. but other views of hitler included the genocide, the warmongering, the insanity and so forth, which makes german people question their own myth and also their own guilt. (case in point: you see the drastic results often in elderly people that still deny the existance of concentration camps and the exodus, because their belief in that myth is too strong for them to give up on.)
since we can not and do not live our lives shut off from everyone else, myth-making and contradictions within any historical view will imo indubitably lead to conflict and friction. whether that is positive or negative i dare not say.

[i feel that i have missed something... but after several re-reads i still don't know what...]
 
 
mucho maas
08:12 / 29.08.05
Well, as my username indicates, I'm a big Pynchon fan, and one of the central questions of "The Crying of Lot 49" for me is how important it is to have an explanation for items: which would be worse, a giant conspiracy existing in the world, or total randomness, where individual events are discrete, and don't form part of any meaning?

Narrowing it down to the individual, I would say, the question may not be so much whether having a narrative is important, but whether it's even possible to fight the narrative instinct - doesn't the mind immediately assign a story to your life, juxtaposing relevant items and throwing out things that don't 'fit', or are mundane?
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:11 / 29.08.05
Picking up on toms point, at what point is it that social myths (science,religion,politics,history etc)converge with personal myths? is their a seemless blending between individuals and social institutions or do the ideas pertaining to self identity create a barrier to a sense of inclusion within social mythology? How do we self define without social interaction, is it all possible to create a sense of self without social identification?

When institutions envision and propagate information that does not relate to the social experience of individuals within the community this does cause a sense of discontinuity within a certain portion of the society.
As forms of the presentation of communication become less linear discontinuity is a natural by product, as thinking makes the jump from word based narrative to cuts of vision and sound this will inevitably produce disharmony and disorder, especially in those that approach new media with a sense of alienation.

When social organisation is no longer built upon the units of the word, the linear narrative of society will collapse, with it the linear narrative of self will fold.
The interaction between social and self myth will reflect the discontinuous nature of the prevalent media forms that people create self definition from, self becomes a more mutable production than a fixed performance.
 
 
Unconditional Love
12:20 / 29.08.05
On my way to buy bread from the supermarket it became very apparent just how much of the culture around me was defined by lines and linear form, cars on roads,architecture, standing in a line of people, pavements in lines, packets in lines on shelves, shelving in lines rows and columns, like words the very social fabric is driven by script, scripture and the definition and shape and format that word provides, this is internalised on a daily basis as we interact with the social environment.

To clarify a previous comment, perhaps collapse is the wrong word, but growth is more fitting, as filmed media was founded first on sript and scripture reflecting the already exsisting social mythology, so the emerging medias have adopted the earlier formations, whats intresting to note for me are the newer phenomena such as reality based filmed media, where there is a limited script in the form of games/tasks, but the majority of the performance is unscripted, the social rules of television are now unconscious (or the experience of being filmed), they need no explanation, the growth and expansion of the cut sound vision culture has already grown internally to replace previous social scriptures.
 
 
Quantum
13:44 / 05.09.05
Here's a nice quote from Simone de Beauvoir that's relevant;

"My life would be a beautiful story come true, a story I would make up as I went along."
 
 
Rage
05:44 / 08.09.05
My answer would be that it limits us.

If you base your actions on your history you are limiting yourself. Giving ourselves any sort of identity-anchor is usually a bad way to view a full set of options. I guess it depends on if you believe in the concept of "being true to oneself" or not.

I think that the reason people define themselves in a solid way has to do with others. They feel the need to live up to a social sort of consistency so people won't look at them like they're a total freak.

If everyone was to be put a state of complete isolation for the rest of their lives, I doubt that anyone would be talking about their "true selves" and whatnot.

Social pressure causes us to limit our actions on the behalf of forming a solid identity.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
08:16 / 09.09.05
If you base your actions on your history you are limiting yourself.

My first reaction is that that's only true if you do it consciously; if you sit down and refer yourself to precedents, you are indeed limiting yourself to interpretations of your own past actions. It's weirdly reflexive, and it's somewhat like how legal systems work.

My second reaction, which I suspect is more pertinent, is that 'limitation' in this context, is an aspect of 'definition'. In other words, to have a self at all, you have to separate one aspect of the world (you) from another (the rest). 'Limitation' here is deliniation; your boundaries aren't constrictive, they create and define an identity.

To feed my first thought back in to this: your internalised history inevitably influences (or governs) your actions and responses now; you can't 'view a full set of options' without it, because it is part of the 'you' which is doing the viewing. It's quite true to say that humans monitor one another for coherence, but I'm not sure it's accurate to represent human self-identity as a response to a kind of panopticon. I think you'd find, if everyone was placed in isolation, that there'd be something of a collapse of the self.
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:09 / 09.09.05
Thought is limitation. Thought creates identity and seperation. communication further reinforces self identity.
 
  
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