Narratives

Narratives

The stories we tell become our culture. The narratives define what we want, our belief systems, and the quality of our thoughts. Yuval Harari does a great job showing the magnitude and impact in Sapiens.

Exploring how narratives shape our world, social change, and culture. I randomly add to this list. It’s fairly up-to-date at all times.

This history of western culture, and its root narratives.

  • Guns, Germs, and Steel - A book of great scope and depth. Essential in understanding how WERID society came to be. “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves” […] “In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.”
  • The Origins of WEIRD Physcology - Great study - methodology and data are sound. This piece of the abstract says it all “We propose that much of this variation arose as people psychologically adapted to differing kin-based institutions—the set of social norms governing descent, marriage, residence and related domains. We further propose that part of the variation in these institutions arose historically from the Catholic Church’s marriage and family policies, which contributed to the dissolution of Europe’s traditional kin-based institutions, leading eventually to the predominance of nuclear families and impersonal institutions.”
  • The weirdest people in the world ? - My take away from this, is that WEIRD people tend to have the lions share of controlling narratives around the world. “Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world’s top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified?” … [...] Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity.”
  • The WEIRDest People in the world - Vancouver based professor summarizes massive amounts of others research (see above) and sets the book to pick up where Guns, Germs, and Steel stops. A thoughtful account of how evolution of both physcology and culture created the peculiar Western mind. Western societal firmware (innovation mindset, trust, government, family size, marriage, patience) is all derived from the Christian church in some way. It’s hard to believe at first, but enlighting when you realize that our most basic beliefs (family and children) in Western world come from the Church.
  • Family Ties - “We study the role of the most primitive institution in society: the family. Its organization and relationship between generations shape values formation, economic outcomes, and influences national institutions. We use a measure of family ties, constructed from the World Values Survey, to review and extend the literature on the effect of family ties on economic behavior and economic attitudes. We show that strong family ties are negatively correlated with generalized trust; they imply more household production and less participation in the labor market of women, young adult, and elderly.”

Interesting materials and resources exploring modern narratives.

  • Misses Institute - Non profit organization. Alternative perspectives on economics, government, and more.
  • Revolte of the Public - “When it comes to the flow of information, technology has categorically reversed the balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age—government, political parties, and the media” Technology has thus fundamentally altered the natural order of how narratives are communicated, believed, and enherited by future generations.
  • Gloval Evidence of Economic Preferences - “Global Preference Survey (GPS), the first global survey focused on measuring a set of fundamental economic preferences: risk preference, time preference, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust. The sample includes 80,000 individuals, drawn as representative samples from 76 countries around the world, representing 90 percent of both the world’s population and income. The paper shows that these preferences differ substantially across countries, but heterogeneity within countries is even more pronounced”
  • The Narrative Monopoly - “The Narrative Monopoly Podcast explores monopolized narratives and their consequences. Narratives are *the* driving force in society, making their exploration essential”.
  • The spread of Wokeness words - “Hypothesis: Although some newspapers can survive the switch to online subscriptions, none can do it and remain a politically neutral "newspaper of record." You have to pick a side to get people to subscribe.”
  • Woke Inc - “There’s a new invisible force at work in our economic and cultural lives. It affects every advertisement we see and every product we buy, from our morning coffee to a new pair of shoes. “Stakeholder capitalism” makes rosy promises of a better, more diverse, environmentally-friendly world, but in reality this ideology championed by America’s business and political leaders robs us of our money, our voice, and our identity.”
  • Memetic Desire - by Rene Gerrad - “Girard’s work is above all concerned with Philosophical Anthropology (that is, ‘What is it to be human?’), and draws from many disciplinary perspectives. Over the years he has developed a mimetic theory. According to this theory human beings imitate each other, and this eventually gives rise to rivalries and violent conflicts. Such conflicts are partially solved by a scapegoat mechanism, but ultimately, Christianity is the best antidote to violence.”
  • Wanting - “The consequences of mimetic desire are startling. Because people learn to want what other people want, they are easily drawn into rivalries and conflict. But mimetic desire does not have to be in control. We are free to choose. And those who understand mimetic desire have a tremendous advantage over those who don’t—they can use it for good or for ill.”
  • The Age of Average https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average- Why does everything look the same? Do we all want the same things, or do we believe we want to want the same things?
  • The Strausian Moment - “For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Sw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies, of magic sails, Pilots of the purpple twilight dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew From the Nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-strom; Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law” - Allfred, Lord Tennyson “Locksley Hall”
  • The Current Thing - “This first post in a three-part series describes how The Current Thing works. The second post outlines how The Bizarro Current Thing works. The third and final post discuses why both Current Things and Bizarro Current Things are impervious to rational conversations and nuanced debate.”
  • The Grey Lady Winked - Using prominent examples from history of how the New York Times and it's reporters mis-reported, got wrong, or deliberately lied about major events altering how it's readers were informed, how they reacted and ultimately how history unfolded.
  • Paul Graham - Explores how the use of language dictates the side of news papers.
  • Build for Tomorrow - explores and challenges the most common narratives from many perspectives. Recent works on
  • The Increasing Frequency of Terms Denoting Political Extremism - To conclude, we find rising prevalence in U.S. and U.K. news content of terms that denote left and right political extremism. Most news media outlets tend to use terms that denote far-right political inclinations substantially more often than those pertaining to the far-left. The rising usage of terms denoting political extremism in news media started prior to 2015 and is analogous to concomitant growing usage of terms denoting prejudice and social justice discourse in news content (see here and here).