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Wednesday 11 May 2022

Why the Narrative Always Collapses

 




A talk on mainstream media dishonesty by Wilfred Reilley - quite long but certainly worthwhile. 

From the YouTube introduction -

Author and Professor Wilfred Reilly joins Center of the American Experiment and TakeChargeMN to discuss how mainstream media push falsehoods about America, especially surrounding ideas of race, class, and crime.

4 comments:

DiscoveredJoys said...

The first paragraph from 'The Lady or the Tiger?':

Metaphor and narrative reassure us that things hang together, providing a
sense of coherence to the patterns and paths we employ for perception and
expression. Without the metaphorical process that allows us to gather them
up, group them together, and contain them, our perceptions would scatter like
marbles thrown on the ground. Without the ability to tell stories that link
discrete events together, place them into a storyline with a beginning and end,
and compose a coherent accounting, our lives would be constructed of “One
Damn Thing After Another.”


From which I gather that metaphors and narrative have uses - until they lose their predictive power and descend into disorder. I'd say that every narrative will fail because accurate prediction is tough to maintain. The narratives that last usually do so by morphing into fresh versions; the name stays the same but later versions are radically different. Think Christianity, The Enlightenment, The Conservative Party, American Exceptionalism. All have adjusted (so far) to events, but some of their foundational beliefs have been quietly dispatched.

A K Haart said...

DJ - I'm sure some current narratives will morph into fresh versions. Climate change could easily morph into sustainability and perhaps it already has but not all believers have prepared themselves for it.

Tammly said...

And we all believed that greater powers of communication would lead to greater understanding! Sheesh.

A K Haart said...

Tammly - yes, it seems to have diminished understanding. I'd like to think it is a consequence of mass media struggling to make themselves heard via gross exaggeration and distortion which will eventually settle down.