Storytelling Is All
“Stories contain our existence; they are like gods. And the fact that we create them from living, experiencing, listening, thinking, feeling, giving--they remind me of what's great about being alive.”
I'm afraid I must admit two things right off the bat about this post:
- It's quite long, and
- Very few of the words are mine.
Life has been busy and tiring enough lately that I haven't had time to compose or publish, merely collect good thoughts as I come across them. I've read quite a few good things recently, so the collection is large. The range of topics is also large; the primary unifying theme is they all consider their topics from a particular frame and invite readers to adopt that perspective for understanding the topic. They are about topics, but even more so they are about how we talk about those topics, the stories we tell about them. When you get down to it, everything is storytelling.
I have always loved this meme about watching the lion eat the deer. That same event can be either good or bad depending on whether you are telling a story about lions or deer. The stories you tell control your perceptions, reactions, and morality.
“You are the observer and the observed. You are the documentarian and the subject. You are the author and the reader. This is how you create.”
One of the books I've read recently is Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor. I don't have a lot to share from or about it other than it is one of my favorites for the year.
This is a novel about a novel in which a novel saves the world, about
the power of stories. This is a story about the complexities of
relationships, of independence and interdependence. This tale is about
Artificial Intelligence, disabilities, physical augmentation, and what
it means to be human. This book is about an individual at the
intersection of tribes and cultures, pressed and pulled by all of them,
torn by expectations. This tells a story about family, consideration for
others and the collective good, and the needs of individuality. This is
a book about love and identity.
This is marvelous storytelling.
This is marvelous storytelling.
I have come to understand that author, art, and audience all adore one another. They create a tissue, a web, a network.
For a little more about it, here is the book description from Goodreads:
Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.
In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.
What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.
Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.
Rituals are essentially embodied stories.
Most people think of rituals as elaborate religious ceremonies or ancient traditions. But your life is actually filled with them.Waiting for everyone to be served before eating, giving presents for birthdays and holidays, saying “hello” and exchanging scripted pleasantries, clapping at the end of a performance — all of these are rituals woven throughout our days.Since the dawn of time, humans have used rituals to acknowledge one another, signal belonging, mark beginnings and endings, and more.In fact, I believe rituals are some of the most powerful technologies invented by humankind. Think of them as repetitive, patterned, often culturally transmitted “software” that serves psychological functions that go far beyond mere habit or tradition.When people face stress, danger, or major life changes, rituals provide a sense of stability through structured actions. Having something concrete to do when everything appears uncertain reduces anxiety and feelings of helplessness.This sense of agency extends to rituals’ broader social function: Shared routines make cooperation easier in times of stress. When a team huddles before a game, the action signals membership and commitment to the group.Rituals also help us make sense of life’s most challenging moments. They mark transitions — such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death — and help us navigate events that feel overwhelming. They also support us as we forge a new identity through rites of passage. That’s why graduation ceremonies don’t just celebrate achievement; they help transform a person’s identity from “student” to “graduate.”Lastly, rituals transmit culture across generations. Children learn gratitude from family dinner traditions, not from lectures about being thankful. Repeatedly doing something together works better than just talking about it.Rituals are like a software upgrade for your nervous system. They affect your brain and body in three specific ways:Calm. Rituals help quiet the brain’s threat-detection system, especially the amygdala. When that system calms down, we feel more grounded. This is one reason repeating familiar sequences of actions helps during chaotic transitions.Clarity. Predictable steps activate parts of the prefrontal cortex involved in planning, which reduces mental load as your brain doesn’t have to constantly decide what comes next. This makes challenging tasks feel more manageable, especially under stress.Connection. When people move or speak in sync, the brain releases bonding chemicals, such as oxytocin and endogenous opioids. These make social interactions feel warmer and more trusting. That’s why shared rituals create a sense of “us.”Most rituals are inherited from the culture around us — we simply adopt what we see others doing. But here’s the part I find most exciting: You don’t have to copy-paste rituals from others. You can consciously design rituals that serve your specific needs. . . .The most effective personal rituals are simple enough to remember, specific enough to feel meaningful, and flexible enough to adapt to different circumstances. Start small with one daily ritual, then gradually expand your toolkit.These repeated patterns of action will help you actively program your brain for resilience, clarity, and connection. Use them before exams, competitions, or challenging conversations. Keep experimenting and adapting them as you and your circumstances change.Your brain is already wired to respond to rituals — you just need to give it the right patterns to follow.
Think of rituals as repetitive, patterned, often culturally transmitted “software” that serves psychological functions that go far beyond mere habit or tradition.
This is a passionate and powerful plea articulated by a young
Palestinian poet and journalist who has grown up in war-torn Jerusalem,
his family having been forced to give half their house to Jewish
settlers from New York.
El-Kurd's writing is both personal and academic, focusing on one general argument: that institutional and internalized racism have dehumanized Palestinians in the eyes of the world--and in how we--and they--engage in conversation about the conflict. He is not arguing issues, policies, or politics, but the essence of the narrative that frames the entire conflict, the way "the West" conceives, talks about, and reports on the conflict. He wants Palestinians to be accepted and respected as fully deserving, understandable, sympathetically humans.
Whether readers agree or disagree with El-Kurd's politics--or are relatively neutral--in this book he provides an essential perspective that deserves to be carefully read, digested, and understood. Not for readers to have their feelings, opinions, or politics changed, but simply to understand. Because that is what he is asking for.
A sample:
El-Kurd's writing is both personal and academic, focusing on one general argument: that institutional and internalized racism have dehumanized Palestinians in the eyes of the world--and in how we--and they--engage in conversation about the conflict. He is not arguing issues, policies, or politics, but the essence of the narrative that frames the entire conflict, the way "the West" conceives, talks about, and reports on the conflict. He wants Palestinians to be accepted and respected as fully deserving, understandable, sympathetically humans.
Whether readers agree or disagree with El-Kurd's politics--or are relatively neutral--in this book he provides an essential perspective that deserves to be carefully read, digested, and understood. Not for readers to have their feelings, opinions, or politics changed, but simply to understand. Because that is what he is asking for.
A sample:
When I speak of dehumanization, I am referring to a phenomenon more implicit, yet far more pernicious and institutionalized, a practice perfected by our politest murderers. When I speak of dehumanization, I am referring to the West's refusal to look us in the eye.
It is the world's reluctance or incapacity to see our tragedies as tragedies and our reactions as reactions, its insistence on categorizing our normalities as deviance. Fundamental instincts--e.g., survival, self-defense--and the basic conduct intrinsic to life on earth become luxuries only they can indulge. . . .
Dehumanization has situated us--ejected us, even--outside of the human condition, so much so that what is logically understood to be a man's natural reaction to subjugation is an uncontained and incomprehensible, primal behavior if it comes from us. What makes some people heroes is what makes us criminals. It is almost simplistic to say that we are guilty by birth. Our existence is purely mechanistic; we are reminded, through policy and procedure, that we are unfortunately born to die. . . . We are not human beings, we are enigmas, infuriating, frightening enigmas, whose every action invites indictment and whose every sentiment is an embryonic threat.
-----
Here in the West, (whatever "the West" means these days), whether on television screens, university campuses, in public office, or in the public's imagination, Palestinians exist in a false--and strict--dichotomy: we are either victims or terrorists.
-----
Humanization, by design, restricts the range of sentiments and emotions we are permitted to express openly, the values, ideologies, and affiliations we can claim without retribution, and even searches in our thoughts and fantasies, in our inferred intentions and ignorances, and in our tacit beliefs for attributes to censor and reeducate. . . .
We are not human, automatically, by virtue of being human--we are to be humanized by virtue of our proximity to innocence: whiteness, civility, wealth, compromise, collaboration, nonalignment, nonviolence, helplessness, futurelessness. . . .
To illustrate: when the Israeli occupation forces killed fifteen-year-old Adam Ayyad in Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, the question was, Did he really throw a Molotov cocktail at the soldiers? Aren't the Israelis known for fabricating such stories? When instead the question should have been, Why are Israeli troops in Bethlehem in the first place? Why was Adam Ayyad born in a refugee camp? Why is "Molotov" in the headline of a story about soldiers killing a boy? So what if he throws a Molotov cocktail? Who wouldn't?
-----
Almost every time, anywhere I take the stage, it is an expected though unwelcome guest. Whether I am singing my usual nagging refrain about Zionism or talking to an auditorium about the "creative process" (i.e., stimulants and sedatives), someone will spring from their seat, tripping over themself to ask that million-dollar question, waiting to see if my answer will confirm their bias. To report more accurately, I am asked why I want to throw Israelis into the sea, not if. That I possess such genocidal intent is already assumed. Not so much an inquiry; rather, it is an attempt to implicate me in the inquisitor's worldview. A worldview where I am a savage, pathologically murderous Arab.
The most basic, powerful stories are all about who is "us" and who is "them." More explicitly, about who is one of us valuable humans and who is not.
Some additional excerpts from the book:
I have always wanted to become human. Or, to report more honestly, I have always been advised to want to become human. No manual teaches how to attain this sacred, sought-after status, so, naturally, one mimics. You observe things until you discern a pattern--in school, on television, on propaganda posters. Then you reproduce that pattern--on the page, when speaking to diplomats and reporters, in how you interact with your surroundings, in your internal dialogues.-----To make such ethnocentric demands is to abandon the Palestinians who do not have the training and resources required to evade the category of the dehumanized. . . . What about Palestinians who have not had the luxury to memorize the tropes one should avoid while agonizing? Those under the barrage of rockets or in solitary confinement? What is it to us if they can only obtain solace in expletives and hasty generalizations? What about Palestinians who simply do not wish to acquire and erudite lexicon? Those who refuse the rules of the game? . . .Our believability as subjects of colonial violence is reliant on the ability to play the suffocating role of perfect victims. . . .What promises to save you from dehumanization? Sophisticated degrees. The money in your bank account. The willingness to forgive. An unassuming gaze and unthreatening demeanor. Connections to the magazine editor who slanders your neighbors. At the bar, he asks his friend in the military to release you from the cell, as a favor, to go easy on you. You are worldly and politically correct. You are a prodigy--unlike the others. But what about the others? The others who suffocate under this shrinking definition of humanity? Those who were not privileged enough to go to a five-star university or be born into a line of feudal lords? What about those without halos, the angry men who wander the streets with mouths full of spit and venom, the children whose shoulders are burdened by the straps of rifles, the women who choose an explosive path? What about the poor? What about those who are cruel with the occupier and cruel with their kin? The not-so-gentle fathers? The reckless in our midst, those who would furrow the eyebrows of Europeans: the sister who "found her rage / in the kitchen drawer," and the sister "learning the anatomy of the gun?" Do they not deserve life? According to whose law?-----We can and should create a practice that is rooted in dignity: where we are not trying to convince the butcher to drop their knife, as we have for the past decades; where critical viewership and critical readership are essential; and where the Palestinian is not just a strategic object in a film or an article but a sovereign protagonist whose real story, no matter how it is received by foreign audiences, is reported accurately. Our testimonies have heft, whether published on Israeli websites or not. Our tragedies are real, regardless of whether they are broadcast. Above all, the Palestinian struggle for liberation is heroic--no qualifiers needed. We must not wait for Haaretz or the New York Times to arrive at the miraculous epiphanies we have long called common truths. We should purge their prestige in our minds, the prestige that renders a Times acknowledgment of an eyewitness account more valuable than the account itself.There are many ways to describe what I am demanding: decolonizing the press or controlling the means of production. Though one could ascribe to the reductive, identity-focused approach that says "Nothing about us without us," for me it is a lot simpler. Engaging in knowledge production rooted in respect for oneself, one's people, and one's craft. It is about artists and advocates refusing to become state secretaries. It is about storytellers triumphing over that boring formula, escaping the colonial gaze. It is about us talking to each other.-----Almost every time, anywhere I take the stage, it is an expected though unwelcome guest. Whether I am singing my usual nagging refrain about Zionism or talking to an auditorium about the "creative process" (i.e., stimulants and sedatives), someone will spring from their seat, tripping over themself to ask that million-dollar question, waiting to see if my answer will confirm their bias. To report more accurately, I am asked why I want to throw Israelis into the sea, not if. That I possess such genocidal intent is already assumed. Not so much an inquiry; rather, it is an attempt to implicate me in the inquisitor's worldview. A worldview where I am a savage, pathologically murderous Arab."Israelis" and "Jews" are usually used interchangeably by those posing the question and understood, irrefutably, as interchangeable. The responsibility to then make a pristine distinction between the two falls on me. The burden of pedagogy. But none of those words--"if," "why," "Israelis," "Jews"--is what interests me the most. None of those words play the starring role in that sentence. It is the word "want" that is most telling. Wanting is neither policy nor procedure, neither present nor material. Wanting is hoping, longing. Colonial logic says that if I were to have that mere desire within my heart; if I am fantasizing about cartoonish revenges, that alone negates my claim to justice. Thus, any testimony of the injustices I have witnessed and endured is unreliable. The brutality of colonialism, the very brutality that is institutionalized and legalized, can then be excused or even warranted, if I were to *want* such a turn of events. Such desires, according to mind-reading critics, linger deep within our psyche and should discredit the Palestinian. Our yearnings impugn our plight. The trouble here is not that our enemies employ this illicit tactic (that is what enemies do) but that we submit to it. We placate this fallacious logic instead of saying: Even if--even if!--my dreams were your worst nightmares, who are you to rob me of my sleep?To simply imagine Palestine without settlers, to simply imagine a sky without drones--that, in the Zionist imagination, is genocidal. If you stick with the "want" of the charge, the notion that Palestinians want to kill all Jews, you find that Zionism is at war with out future. It is at war with our ability to articulate, even if only through poems and protest chants, a future in which Zionism does not reign. For in the past one hundred years, Zionism has situated us in a condition of constant dispossession and premature death; our Nakba remains and renews. We are besieged in an inescapable, eternal present tense.-----I do not rank Zionist rhetoric high up on my list of priorities. I do not have an interest in restricting the psychic allowance of the Israeli public. Whatever helps them sleep at night. That our enemies serenade their children with myths to help them survive their neighboring nightmare, us, is not my concern. I do not care if I am a "human animal" in Israeli folk tales, or if they dream about drowning me in the Mediterranean. My concern is that they have the power to actualize their fantasies, fables, and theology. They have the tools to transform them into a macabre reality, much like they have done in the besieged Gaza Strip. I only care about their dreams because they have taken them to the Knesset.*(*"If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he has the power to lynch me, that's my problem," and "Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power." Kwame Ture, in 1968.)We are, after all, the villains in their stories, the fabric of their nightmares. For we exist in opposing universes: In ours, they have razed our homes and looted our towns, transformed us into populations of refugees and amputees. In theirs, we have acted senselessly, stabbing settlers and kidnapping soldiers. We have rained rockets on their prosperous, fenced-off colonies. The question of our motives is obsolete. Why their prosperous colonies are surrounded by poverty is a question I doubt they ever ask themselves or one another. The settler is self-deluded. The settler's gaze ignore the ruins atop which the settler town is built. Always in the settler's peripheral vision, rubble is both ubiquitous and unobtrusive, filtered out like our eyes do our noses.
What promises to save you from dehumanization?
This is highly related.
On a frigid December night, some 50 people crammed into Butterworth’s, a Capitol Hill restaurant favored by the MAGA elite, to celebrate the rerelease of The Camp of the Saints, which had gone out of print in English decades ago. The dystopian novel by the French author Jean Raspail depicts the destruction of European civilization by barbaric migrant hordes that arrive, uninvited, by boat. . . .I do not believe in suppressing books, this one included. The Camp of the Saints is not a good novel, but it is an important one. Dystopian fiction helps structure political myth; political myth helps structure policy. In the same way that The Handmaid’s Tale looms over abortion politics, or The Terminator lurks over artificial intelligence, The Camp of the Saints hangs over immigration politics-for a small but important stratum of right-wing thinkers and politicians. It illuminates much about the worldview of nationalist conservatives who are ascendant in America, France, and many other democracies. The problem is what that light shows: the profound fear that European-American civilization, which in this view is inseparable from whiteness, faces an existential threat from migration--and that extraordinary measures can be justified in response.The Camp of the Saints is an apocalypse story. Its title is borrowed from the Book of Revelation in verses about Gog and Magog, the satanic hordes who arrive at the end of days. Their “number is as the sand of the sea”; they “went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.” In the novel, the camp of the saints is Europe; Gog and Magog is a migrant fleet, 1 million strong, that sets sail from India. The novel’s infamy is due to its description of this horde as a mindless mass and as “the beast”; it does not have young but “monster children”; it reeks of excrement for miles (“the emigrating Ganges stunk, as never had carnal India stunk before”); its members are shameless people packed so closely together that “over the bodies, between breasts, buttocks, thighs, lips, fingers, ran streams of sperm.” The mass has essentially one speaking member, the “coprophage” (literally “shit-eater”), who leads the fleet while his demonic and deformed monster child sits on his shoulder. “It was thus that, in shit and lust—but also hope—the Last Chance Armada pushed on towards the West,” Raspail writes. He affords the foreigners no humanity whatsoever. They are on par with zombies or space aliens. . . .Raspail does indeed spend most of his novel skewering French elites. They are so addled by aspirations to universal humanitarianism, by guilt over colonization, even by Catholic social teaching about immigration, that they invite their own destruction. They cannot see that the migrants already in France are a fifth column that will aid the invaders in their quest. In the novel, the country’s hapless president notes that “there will still be genocide, but we’re the ones who will disappear.” One of Raspail’s heroes replies in the affirmative: “We’ll die slowly, eaten away from the inside by millions of microbes injected into our body.” The French army, thoroughly rotted from within by self-hatred, abandons its mission and deserts rather than open fire on the migrants. . . .Raspail’s dehumanizing depiction of migrants is impossible to set aside. “It’s very powerful for its imagery, so one cannot unsee those images once one has imagined them,” Corina Stan, a Duke University comparative-literature professor who has written about The Camp of the Saints, told me. The invasion novel was an established genre when Raspail wrote, but his, according to Stan, “offered a vision of migration that evoked a powerful emotional response. It inspired fear, and that fear could be used for political purposes.”The novel’s influence has grown in spite of its aesthetic qualities. Even the French characters, who are granted humanity and the power of speech, are thinly constructed: They are either loathsome liars or right-minded dissidents. The heroes of the novel seem to be Raspail in various costumes—here a literature professor or a naval captain, there a junior minister or a duke—all of whom happen to have had some centuries-old ancestor who battled the Ottomans or other invaders. Many of the villains are self-deceiving clergymen, politicians, and journalists who refuse to recognize their impending doom until it is too late. Most of them meet horrific, violent deaths; their female partners are typically raped before being killed. . . .The president of the United States employs similarly apocalyptic language about migration; Trump calls for repelling an invasion by immigrants who are “poisoning the blood of our country”; ICE is luring new recruits for the president’s deportation campaign with the slogan “Defend the homeland.” . . .This haunting image of immigrant-induced Armageddon is influencing not just America’s domestic politics but its foreign policy too. On December 4, the Trump administration published its National Security Strategy, which glossed over great-power competitors such as Russia and China but trained its ire on Europe. The continent’s “economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure” because of “cratering birthrates,” “migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife,” and “loss of national identities and self-confidence.” The administration fears that “the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” and calls upon “Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence.”
He affords the foreigners no humanity whatsoever.
This, too, is highly related.
When G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers asked ChatGPT to fact-check an article for him yesterday, the chatbot couldn’t get its head around modern America. It told him there were “multiple factual impossibilities” in his article, including his statements that “[t]he current Secretary of Defense is a former talk show host for Fox News,” “[t]he Deputy Director of the FBI used to guest-host Sean Hannity’s show,” and “Jeanine Pirro is the U.S. District Attorney for DC.”“Since none of these statements are true,” it told Morris, “they undermine credibility unless signposted as hyperbole, fiction, or satire.”
But of course, Morris’s statements were not “factual impossibilities.” In the United States of America under President Donald J. Trump, they are true.
Trump has always been a salesman with an instinctive understanding of the power of media. That sense helped him to rise to power in 2016 by leveraging an image Republicans had embraced since the 1980s: that the reason certain white Americans were being left behind in the modern world was not that Republican policies had transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%, but that lazy and undeserving Black and Brown Americans and women were taking handouts from the government rather than working.
When he got his disheartening fact-check from ChatGPT, Morris was preparing an article, published today, exploring “how cable news fueled the culture war and broke U.S. politics.” The article notes that most people care about and interact with the government through economic or affordability issues—prices, jobs, health care, social programs, and taxes—and that most laws are also about these issues. But, he points out, political rhetoric overwhelmingly focuses on issues like race, crime, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and guns: the so-called culture war.
Morris highlights a new academic paper by Shakked Noy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Aakaash Rao of Harvard that links America’s culture war to changes in the media in the 1980s. Their research shows that “a distinctive business strategy” in cable news led it to emphasize culture over economic issues. Noy and Rao found that cable emphasizes culture because it “attracts viewers who would otherwise not watch news,” and attracts more viewers than an outlet can find by poaching viewers from other networks that emphasize economic issues. Cable channels have an incentive to produce culture war content, which in turn influences politics, as “constituencies more exposed to cable news assign greater importance to cultural issues, and politicians respond by supplying more cultural ads.”
“In other words,” Morris writes, “when cable news producers decide to cover an issue more, voters subsequently say it is more important to them, and that issue is more predictive of how they’ll vote. TV news coverage, and cable in particular, has the power to choose which issues are most ‘salient’ for upcoming elections.” He notes that “this effect is almost entirely, or maybe even entirely, driven by Fox News,” and that right-wing politicians benefit most from it. Democrats get their highest marks from voters on issues not covered by cable news.
Morris concludes that “more than the Republicans or Democrats, left or right, it’s the companies that abuse our attention for profit that are the real winners of American politics.”
This conclusion echoes a 2006 conversation a reporter for Financial Times held with Fox News Channel founder Rupert Murdoch and chief executive officer Roger Ailes. In that conversation, when asked if running the Fox News Channel was “like running a political campaign,” Ailes responded: “No more than running a Dairy Queen. You have a customer, you have to market it to help them get to your product, the product has to be good, you can’t drop too many on the floor or in the sprinkles or you’ll lose money. All business is basically about customers and marketing and making money and capitalism and winning and promoting it and having something someone really wants.”
Ailes came to the Fox News Channel from his work packaging presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1968. One Nixon media advisor explained how they could put their candidate over the top by transforming him into a media celebrity. “Voters are basically lazy,” the advisor told reporter Joe McGinnis. “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand…. When we argue with him, we…seek to engage his intellect…. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable.”
Ailes presented Nixon in carefully curated televised “town halls” geared to different audiences, in which he arranged the set, Nixon’s answers to carefully staged questions, Nixon’s makeup, and the crowd’s applause. “Let’s face it,” he said, “a lot of people think Nixon is dull. Think he’s a bore, a pain in the ass.” But, carefully managed, television could “make them forget all that.”
Ailes found his stride working for right-wing candidates, selling the narrative that Democrats were socialists who wanted to transfer wealth from hardworking white Americans to undeserving minorities and women. He produced the racist “Willie Horton” ad for Republican candidate George H.W. Bush in 1988, and a short-lived television show hosted by right-wing shock jock Rush Limbaugh in 1992. It was from there that he went on to shape the Fox News Channel after its launch in 1996.
Ailes sold his narrative with what he called the “orchestra pit theory.” He explained: “If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?”
This is a theory Trump has always embraced, and one that drives his second term in office. He has placed television personalities throughout his administration—to the apparent disbelief of ChatGPT—and has turned the White House into, as media ally Steve Bannon put it, a “major information content provider.” What Trump does “is the action, and we just happen to be one of the distributors,” Bannon told Drew Harwell and Sarah Ellison of the Washington Post. The administration has replaced traditional media outlets with right-wing loyalists and floods the social media space with a Trump narrative that is untethered from reality. Communications director Steven Cheung says their goal is to create “FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE.”
Their attempt to convince Americans to accept their version of reality is showing now in Trump’s repeated extreme version of the old Republican storyline that the economy under him is great and that the country’s problems are due to Democrats, minorities, and women.
Since voters in November elections turned against the Republicans, citing their concerns about the economy, Trump has doubled down on the idea that the idea of “affordability” is a “Democrat con job.” In an interview yesterday with Politico’s Dasha Burns, Trump said he would grade his economy “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” Any problems with it, he and his loyalists say, stem from former president Joe Biden’s having left them an economy in shambles. But in fact, in October 2024, The Economist called the American economy “the envy of the world.”
As news cycles have turned against his administration on the economy—as well as the Epstein files, immigration sweeps, strikes on small boats in the Caribbean, and his mental acuity—Trump has tried to regain control of the narrative by diving into the orchestra pit. He has turned to an extreme version of the racism, sexism, and attacks on Americans who use the social safety net that have been part of Republican rhetoric for decades. He has gone out of his way to attack Somali Americans as “garbage,” to attack female reporters, and to use an ableist slur against Minnesota governor Tim Walz, whose son has a nonverbal learning disability, prompting imitators to drive by the Walz home shouting the slur.
The fight to control the media narrative is on display this week in a fight over a media merger. As Josh Marshall explained in Talking Points Memo yesterday, the media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, which used to be called Time Warner and includes news division CNN, had agreed to be acquired by Netflix. But, as the deal was moving forward, Paramount Skydance launched a hostile takeover to get Warner Bros. Discovery for itself.
David Ellison, son of right-wing billionaire Larry Ellison, who co-founded software giant Oracle, bought Paramount over the summer and appears to be creating a right-wing media ecosystem dominated by the Trumps. Part of the financing for his purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery would come from the investment company of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as from Saudi and Qatari sovereign wealth funds. Paramount told Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders they should accept its offer because Trump would never allow the Netflix deal to happen, and as Marshall notes, Trump appeared yesterday to agree with that suggestion.
The Paramount merger gave Ellison control of CBS, which promptly turned rightward. At stake now is CNN, which Netflix doesn’t particularly want but Paramount does, either to neuter it or turn it into another version of Fox News. Joe Flint, Brian Schwartz, and Natalie Andrews of the Wall Street Journal reported that Ellison told Trump he would make “sweeping changes” to CNN if Paramount acquires Warner Bros. Discovery. The Wall Street Journal reporters note that “Trump has told people close to him that he wants new ownership of CNN as well as changes to CNN programming.”
During the Gilded Age, a similar moment of media consolidation around right-wing politics, a magazine that celebrated ordinary Americans launched a new form of journalism. S.S. McClure, a former coffee pot salesman in the Midwest, recognized that people in small towns and on farms were interested in the same questions of reform as people in the cities. He and a partner started McClure’s Magazine in 1893 and in 1903 published a famous issue that contained Ida Tarbell’s exposé of the Standard Oil Company, Lincoln Steffens’s exposé of the corruption of the Minneapolis municipal government, and Ray Stannard Baker’s exposé of workers’ violence during a coal strike.
Their carefully detailed studies of the machinations of a single trust, a single city, and a single union personalized the larger struggles of people in the new industrial economy. Their stories electrified readers and galvanized a movement to reform the government that had bred such abuses. McClure wrote that all three articles might have been titled “The American Contempt of Law.” It was the public that paid for such lawlessness, he wrote, and it was high time the public demanded that justice be enforced.
“Capitalists, workingmen, politicians, citizens—all breaking the law, or letting it be broken. Who is left to uphold it?” McClure asked. “The lawyers? Some of the best lawyers in the country are hired, not to go into court to defend cases, but to advise corporations and business firms how they can get around the law without too great a risk of punishment. The judges? Too many of them so respect the laws that for some ‘error’ or quibble they restore to office and liberty men convicted on evidence overwhelmingly convincing to common sense. The churches? We know of one, an ancient and wealthy establishment, which had to be compelled by a Tammany hold-over health officer to put its tenements in sanitary condition. The colleges? They do not understand.”
“There is no one left,” McClure wrote, “none but all of us.”
If you want your stories to have power, it helps to control the main methods stories get told.
Myths are deep-seated, unconscious stories that guide our thoughts and actions.
Humans evolved to care, not just competeThere is a fundamental tension at the heart of human nature--we’re both inherently selfish yet also incredibly altruistic. We are capable of pillaging, oppression, and slaughter, yet we’re also capable of compassion, loving kindness, and self-sacrifice. While this may seem like a paradox, humans’ predisposition to be both selfish and selfless can be explained by understanding how evolution via natural selection has shaped our species’ psychology. . . .Collective action problems are situations in which there is a conflict between what is best for the individual and what is best for the collective. While everyone is better off if they contribute, the best outcome for any individual is to free ride by reaping the benefits of others' cooperative effort without contributing themselves (for example, think of a student who gets an A on a group project without actually having done any of the work). Collective action problems thus create an inherent tension between individual self-interest and the interests of the group. . . .Over hundreds of thousands of years, these evolutionary selection pressures gradually favored increasingly prosocial and cooperative traits. Individuals and groups who could successfully work together to overcome collective action problems were able to reap the benefits of cooperation and outcompete less cooperative individuals and groups. To achieve this, natural selection endowed us with a moral sense governing right and wrong, a capacity for empathy and perspective-taking, a deep concern for fairness, and the ability to acquire shared expectations of behavior--social norms--which allowed for the facilitation of complex cooperative behavior in groups.In this way, natural selection has shaped our species to be both highly selfish and selfless. While we are inherently selfish at the genetic level, we also possess a number of innate psychological abilities and cultural tools that have allowed us to overcome this self-interest, at least in part by engendering a deep concern for collective welfare. . . .Neoliberalism is a political ideology and policy framework that has greatly shaped modern capitalism, the predominant economic system of human society. Neoliberalism champions free markets, privatization, deregulation, fiscal austerity, and individual responsibility. During the 1970s and 1980s, neoliberalism emerged as the West’s predominant political-economic ideology . . .At the core of this ideology is the capitalistic assumption that humans are self-interested and that this self-interest can be channeled to collective benefits . . . In this framework, economic agents are assumed to be purely selfish, deliberative, and logical actors with the sole goal of maximizing their own utility.Neoliberalism complements human nature in an important way--it capitalizes on our inherent self-interest to drive non-zero-sum economic gains that benefit everyone, generating innovation, improving global living standards, and significantly lowering the cost of consumer goods. In other words, allowing individuals to pursue their own interests ultimately creates benefits for society as a whole. . . .However, at the same time, neoliberalism also comes into conflict with important aspects of human psychology. Namely, while neoliberalism identifies self-interest as the major driver of human behavior, it overemphasizes the importance of selfishness in human behavior by neglecting the many innate prosocial motivations that underlie human nature. . . .While rational choice theory is an incredibly influential and important assumption in economic theory, it is simultaneously a poor explanatory theory of human decision-making because it fails to reflect the fact that we are not purely selfish, rational actors. Rather, an understanding of human evolutionary history and psychology reveals that, while we can be selfish, we are also inherently cooperative and care for the welfare of others, not just our own. . . .While neoliberal economics captures human self-interest as a driver of innovation, it is frequently an inaccurate explanatory theory of human behavior. By prioritizing the role of self-interest in human decision-making, neoliberalism clashes with our evolved motivations for fairness, reciprocity and collective wellbeing. This mismatch with our innate psychology and moral values has in turn fueled rising inequality, alienation, and polarization, weakening the democratic institutions that manage large-scale collective action problems. . . .But neoliberalism is more than just a political-economic ideology; it’s also a normative framework for how we should govern society. In other words, it’s also a prescriptive theory of human behavior that’s concerned with how people should behave (not just how they do behave). Recent research highlights how neoliberalism shapes the public’s attitudes on the fairness of inequality, fostering increased tolerance for global wealth inequality. . . .Market logic has now permeated into many purportedly non-economic domains, including education, healthcare, and civic engagement, changing what we value in our society. For example, students are no longer learners pursuing knowledge for personal growth or civic engagement--they’re consumers paying for a commodity that will maximize their return on investment. We judge members of our society based on their productivity, skills, and market value, rather than their intrinsic human dignity or contribution to the public good and society. . . .Neoliberalism as a prescriptive theory of how we should behave is fundamentally at odds with our species' cooperative evolutionary history. Consequently, beyond being a poor explanatory theory of human behavior, it’s also a poor normative guide for how we should interact with others and society. This is epitomized by the fact that most people do not want to be friends with purely selfish, calculating rational economic agents. In fact, if we were to encounter a true rational agent in the real world, we’d likely view them as an antisocial psychopath, bereft of guilt, remorse, or concern for the well-being of others. Clearly this is not a model of human behavior that most people would endorse. . . .While self-interest is a major driver of wealth creation and innovation, it must be harnessed for the public good, rather than disproportionately benefiting the most wealthy and powerful. . . . To the extent we can align our self-interest with our motivation to help others, the stronger our societies and democratic institutions will be. . . .A political-economic system that reflects our concern for fairness and cooperation would foster trust in institutions and maintain democratic norms . . .An understanding of human behavior rooted in our evolved psychology does not endorse the wholesale discounting of self-interest in motivating human behavior. . . .However, at the same time, we need to balance self-interest with our species innate prosocial tendencies by putting in place constraints that limit the worst excesses of unfettered capitalism. By providing a strong social safety net, offering universal basic services, and enacting progressive taxation, societies can better take advantage of human self-interest while simultaneously ensuring that the wealth produced by a market system is allocated more equally and is consistent with our inherent concern for fairness, cooperation, and the public good. . . .Understanding how evolution has shaped our psychology for cooperation is key to building an economic and political system that works with, rather than against, human nature.
The stories that tell us who we are guides the ways we choose to interact with each other.
Relevant to the previous article is another book I just enjoyed reading: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth by Ingrid Robeyns
The limitarian ethos, in the end, is this: we should not want to hold on to more money than we need to lead a secure and good life, and beyond that we should heed the moral call to share what we have with the least fortunate.Ten million dollars (or each country's/situation's equivalent). That's where Robeyns would draw the line, the cap on individual wealth. She spends the book making a thorough and clear argument for why and how she makes that recommendation. She's not always the most scintillating writer, but she is always clear and thorough. I would like to say she is convincing, but I was already convinced before I started reading so I can't really say if it would sway anyone inclined to disagree. Nevertheless, this book is an important contribution to our collective dialogue about wealth and needs to be taken into consideration as we construct our shared narratives about power, equality, and money.
That's my brief review. Here is an extensive collection of quoted material, in sections:
Neoliberal ideology did not just fall out of the sky. It was the result of a concerted effort by intellectuals, businesspeople, and politicians to make us believe that governments are incompetent and corrupt, that public sector workers are self-serving, and that free markets are absolutely superior to anything else. These efforts have changed the mainstream media narrative, what children learn at school and in society, and the professional discourse that businesspeople and public servants use. Concrete social and economic reforms have changed our world into one where competition and greed rule. Neoliberalism has manifested itself in different ways across different countries, but everywhere it is real people who have chosen to impellent and strengthen this ideology. . . .In the end, the most important change is to abandon the mantras that "greed is good" and "the sky is the limit." They are wreaking so much havoc. That we have come to believe and enact them is shameful and, as we have seen, destructive.-----If a society has adequately provided the goods and services that everyone needs, then families will require much less money to cover their healthcare, housing, and education. Similarly, if a society provides the proper financial security that people seek, including insurance for old age, unemployment, sickness, or disability, then families will not need to stow away huge amounts for when they retire, or in case they find themselves unemployed, unwell, or parents to a child with an impairment or a chronic disease. In a society in which those basic public goods are provided, and those risks are covered, citizens don't need to amass so much private wealth in order to protect themselves against bad luck. The riches line in these societies--that is, in societies with a properly functioning welfare state and social-security system--will be much lower. There is simply no need to hoard money when the social safety net is working properly.-----We must be careful to distinguish between income and wealth. An heir to a fortune, an entrepreneur, or an investor, may have a very modest income, but hundreds of millions in stocks and shares. By contrast, the lower-middle class included people who may have a decent income, but do not own a house or have many savings, and hence their wealth is trivial.Income and wealth are experienced differently. The poor generally only have money in the form of income, while the rich have both income and wealth. Yet income alone does not allow you to plan for the future; it leads to a short-term mindset. Wealth, on the other hand, facilitates long-term thinking, helping its owner to plan for and reduce risks in the future. From country to country, we see that the biggest inequality is in wealth, rather than income.
What all these statistics point to, in the end, is an increasing conflict of interest among different socio-economic groups. We can't see these conflicts of interest merely by focusing on successful individuals, or by obsessing over the latest big story about some tech billionaire. The statistics reveal what we should really be talking about, something that remains largely absent from public debate: the relationship between money and power, and between different socio-economic groups, and the forces that are driving the ongoing shift in the distribution of wealth. In other words, we need to talk about class.-----It's not just that trickle-down economics has been empirically proven not to be true: there is increasing empirical support for the opposite view, namely that inequality hurts the economy.-----It is almost impossible to amass and maintain extreme wealth without some portion of it being dirty. Theoretically, yes, it could be done; in practice, though, even the most morally pure case of a rags-to-riches hero or heroine who is treating workers well, will be at severe risk of crossing over to the dark side as soon as they appoint a financial adviser. Clearly, only some cases of extreme wealth raise questions about direct violation of the law. But all extreme wealth raises questions about the harm that has been done as it has accumulated, the operation of accountants in the twilight zone of legality, and indeed, the unfair shifting of the boundaries between what is legal and what is illegal.-----Our ability to make genuinely collective decisions evaporates when extreme wealth enters the picture. This isn't merely a logistical problem, but a moral one. It undermines the core democratic principle of political equality.-----Almost wherever you are in the world, the better-off--and people with university degrees--are vastly over-represented in the political sphere. Meanwhile, those from the working class are massively under-represented, and have very little political influence. In many countries they rightly feel excluded and alienated from politics, leading some not to bother to vote at all. It is hardly surprising, then, that we see a pervasive political bias toward the interests of the rich and super-rich.-----Here's the biggest problem with philanthropy: it is deeply undemocratic. . . . Some philanthropic donations comprise huge sums, and thus come with huge power. And the people enjoying that power are not accountable to anyone. Philanthropists have no one they need to answer to. And the rest of us have no say over where they spend those vast amounts of cash. . . .The preferences of the wealthy are not representative of the preferences of the wider citizenry, so their spending will retain its plutocratic character. . . .Even if philanthropists use their excess power in a very good way--to counterbalance the lack of adequate action by the government--it is still the case that they have an excess of power. Large-scale philanthropy will always be problematic because of this power asymmetry.
Limitarianism rests on the fundamental philosophical insight that markets and property are social institutions. What does this mean? It means that, in the world as it is, there is no property, and there are no markets, outside the social context--these things cannot exist without a shared system of rules and norms in which a coordinating party, typically the government, plays a crucial role. We usually acquire property via market transactions; those markets are shaped, protected, and enabled by our governments. . . .Thus the idea of "the social contract" was born--the idea that it is rational for human beings to agree on a set of rules that govern our public life, in order to make life better for all. . . .Yet for the government to exist and to exercise these functions, it must have resources--it must collect tax. Without tax, the government couldn't protect our property, and enable transactions in the market (by defending us against fraud and theft during those transactions, for example).The fundamental philosophical point is that secure ownership of property cannot exist without taxation. There is no property (as we know it) without the state, and there is no state without taxation. . . .People who object to taxation, or denounce it as "theft," fail to understand that without tax--that is, without a social contract that binds people together--there would be no income or assets, no secure transactions and no smooth markets in the first place. There would just be chaos and danger. . . .Some degree of tax on income and wealth is always legitimate and just.-----Without collective institutions, public goods, basic infrastructure, and collaboration with other people, it would be impossible for anyone to become rich. . . . Extreme wealth is always built on a foundation that others have created. . . .American political scientist and Nobel Prize winner in economics Herbert A. Simon calculated how much wealth in countries such as the US or those of northwestern Europe could be traced back to "social capital," as he put it. According to Simon, at least 90 percent of income in those countries is made possible by collective institutions, such as technology or governmental structures.
The more money you have, the less any additional unit of money contributes to your quality of life. . . .The additional (or marginal) increase in welfare that money brings thus declines the more you have.-----For many people, the extreme wealth enjoyed by some and the deprivation suffered by others are fundamentally morally unacceptable. There is no need to come up with any further arguments than that. I agree. Other reasons are readily available--if we are willing to acknowledge that much of our own financial situation is tied to luck, historical injustice, or unfair trade and tax rules. But this is perhaps the simplest: the excess money of the rich and super-rich should be reallocated to meet the urgent needs of the vulnerable and suffering, because this shift of resources would clearly bring us all into a better world. It is the essence of morality that if we can prevent suffering at little cost to ourselves, we should do so. Excess money is money one can easily do without. . . . Why sit on that money if it can do so much good elsewhere?-----Since 2008, there have been subsequent experiments in which small amounts have been given to very poor people directly and the results studied by economists. The emerging body of research makes it possible to draw firmer conclusions about the effects of unconditional cash transfers in these extremely poor settings. We now know that giving poor people unconditional cash transfers has positive effects on their savings, on their possession of consumer durables (such as an over), and their overall quality of life. Despite the argument commonly used against unconditional cash transfers, that poor people will spend the money irresponsibly, researchers have found that these transfers do not increase the amount of money poor people spend on alcohol and tobacco.-----The bottom line is simply this: there is so much good our governments could do with the excess money of the super-rich. And taking it from them would probably not affect their welfare at all--not in any meaningful sense. If there is a slight drop in the luxury of their lifestyles, it would be massively outweighed by the gains to others, and the gains to the common good.
I won't wait to share it here, but I'm about two-thirds done listening to the audiobook of Matthew Desmond's Poverty, by America, which is quite similar to this book. I wrote about how I come to similar conclusions early in my life in Living Inside the Dreams of Dead People.
Somewhat related, but from an entirely different perspective. What happens when an externally imposed story doesn't fit with the lived stories already in place.
Liberalism hasn’t delivered on its promises in Africa. The alternative will be found in ideas rooted in Africa’s own soilWhen African nations such as Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Cameroon claimed independence in the mid-20th century, they inherited more than borders and fragile institutions; they also inherited a political philosophy. Liberalism, born of Europe’s Enlightenment, was presented as the universal grammar of progress. It came clothed in the language of democracy, development and human rights, promising that multiparty elections, private property, free markets and individual rights would secure for Africa a swift entry into modernity.Yet, decades later, the record is sobering. . . .This failure cannot be explained solely by poor leadership or weak institutions. It reflects a deeper misalignment: liberalism, shaped by Western histories of individualism and capitalism, sits uneasily with Africa’s communal traditions, relational ethics and socioeconomic realities. If Africa is to find a political path that truly resonates with its people, it must interrogate liberalism’s limits and begin the work of decolonising political thought, by drawing upon its own histories, values and philosophies to imagine alternatives. . . .Liberal ideas flourished in societies with particular historical conditions: the growth of industrial capitalism, relatively homogenous nation-states, and centuries of contestation over monarchy and Church power. When colonial rule ended, liberalism was exported wholesale to Africa, with little regard for whether it fit societies shaped by communal land tenure, diverse ethnic structures, and long histories of exploitation. . . .The liberal state in Africa, though draped in the discourse of freedom and modernisation, became the principal architecture through which imperial power was preserved under new guises. . . .Liberalism in Africa often produces institutions without substance – behind the façade of freedom something more colonial still lurks. While constitutions, elections and rights charters exist on paper, their ability to transform lives remains limited.The tension between liberalism and African thought is most evident in their divergent conceptions of the human person. Liberalism privileges the autonomous, rational and self-interested individual, viewing society as an aggregate of free agents constrained only by rights-protecting laws. . . .By contrast, African thought foregrounds relational personhood. The Kenyan-born philosopher John Mbiti’s dictum ‘I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am’ captures a worldview echoed in Ubuntu philosophy, which stresses interdependence, solidarity and communal responsibility. Personhood, in this framework, is not given but realised through participation in social life. It is earned through moral maturity and communal participation, not automatically given at birth. . . .These ontological differences shape political practice. Liberalism valorises majority democratic rule and adversarial economic/trading competition, whereas many African traditions favoured consensus. As the Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu observed, precolonial governance often relied on deliberation until agreement was reached, prioritising harmony over victory. Leadership was measured less by individual ambition than by the ability to sustain communal balance.The contrast extends to property. Liberal regimes commodify land as a transferable asset. In much of Africa, however, land is sacred, binding the living to ancestors and future generations. To commodify it is to rupture identity and belonging.The result is a deep incongruity: liberalism anchors freedom in individual autonomy, while African traditions insist that freedom acquires meaning only within community, with its particular location and history. . . .To ‘decolonise’ political thought is not to reject every Western idea but to interrogate their relevance and reshape them in ways that serve Africa’s needs. . . .Decolonising thought is thus not nostalgia, a naive desire to return to some alleged Golden precolonial age, but is a form of innovation that respects the best aspects of Africa’s past. These innovative interpretations of the African experience are gradually forming philosophical and ideological alternatives to liberalism. These African alternatives to liberalism are not static or completed systems of ideas, they are rooted in the lived experiences of the African people.If liberalism has faltered, what might replace it? African thinkers and leaders have long proposed some alternatives:Ubuntu philosophyUbuntu (meaning ‘humanity’ in languages such as Zulu) emphasises compassion, solidarity and interdependence. Politically, it supports participatory decision-making, restorative justice, and prioritising community over competition. South Africa’s much-admired Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1996 drew on Ubuntu values to emphasise healing rather than vengeance.African socialismFigures like Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, and Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, sought to build socialism rooted in African communal values rather than Marxist orthodoxy. Nyerere’s Ujamaa villages (from ‘fraternity’ in Swahili) aimed to promote collective ownership and self-reliance. While implementation was uneven, this vision of development anchored in solidarity remains a powerful critique of neoliberal capitalism.Consensus democracyKwasi Wiredu proposed ‘consensus democracy’ as an alternative to adversarial party politics. Drawing from Akan traditions, he argued for deliberation until agreement, ensuring inclusivity and avoiding zero-sum contests. In traditional African consensus democracy, no individual holds veto power; rather, decisions emerge through prolonged dialogue until near-unanimity is achieved. Consensus in this context implies collective harmony, not absolute agreement. Mechanisms like mediation by elders, appeal to communal values, and prioritising peace over victory prevent stalemate and preserve social cohesion in governance. This model challenges the liberal assumption that politics must be competitive and divisive.Pan-Africanism and anti-imperialismTogether with Fanon, the first president of Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara and the Guinea-Bissau revolutionary Amílcar Cabral emphasised that true liberation requires breaking economic dependency and asserting cultural pride. In office, Sankara pursued policies of self-sufficiency, land reform and gender equality, directly challenging the liberal development model. These alternatives are not perfect, but they illustrate that Africa need not be bound to one imported ideology. . . .What would a decolonised African political thought look like? It would not mean a wholesale rejection of liberalism, nor a romanticised return to precolonial traditions. Rather, it would be a creative synthesis: a democracy that values consensus and inclusivity over narrow majority rule; an economy that balances individual initiative with communal solidarity; a rights framework that binds freedoms to duties; and a politics of sovereignty that resists domination while engaging critically with global experience.
These African alternatives to liberalism are not static or completed systems of ideas, they are rooted in the lived experiences of the African people.
Our stories are ever transforming.
We all trust people and institutions all the time. The bus or train driver who gets us to work; the restaurant that makes our food; our banks. The digital behemoth that stores our photos; our pharmacists, elevator repairmen, pilots, and so on. The guy who might sell us something illegal on a Friday night – and perhaps especially him, given that no-one is regulating his products.We all trust in people we have never seen, and businesses whose workings we cannot begin to understand. In the course of a day, we will trust more of them than our ancestors could have imagined. For them, there were only two kinds of trust: the interpersonal, where certain people were trustworthy and others were not; and trust in God, or gods.We are different people now, and the vast advances we have made in the past few hundred years – in lifespan, health, wealth, equality and opportunity – are largely down to our willingness to trust institutions. Medicines are developed by scientists and manufactured by pharmaceutical companies, but without trust we would never have been able to trial them. Now that so many of us say that we mistrust or distrust things like Big Pharma and the government, we need to think about what the consequences of a breakdown in institutional trust would be. This elusive, slippery concept is not just a nice thing to have: it is vital to every aspect of 21st-century life.Trust is the glue that modern nation-states require. It enables people to lend money and buy goods made by workers they have never met, earn interest from a bank, and travel in machines whose mechanics they do not grasp. Democracy brought the opportunity for men, and later women, to decide whether they trusted the people who wanted to lead them. An individual could lead a nation not because their ancestors had, or because they had seized power through violence or cunning, but because of the trust that millions of citizens had placed in them. . . .Most of our modern ways of trusting rest on layers and layers of institutions built to craft and teach and enforce all sorts of regulations and laws, not just the police but all sorts of regulatory and professional institutions. Putting our trust in bodies that can take on that burden liberates us to do extraordinary things. . . .It’s also true that simply creating the institutions that enforce laws and regulations is just a start. Those organisations then have to show they are competent and effective, cracking down on bad practice and things that endanger the public. . . .We all agree that confidence in institutions is in principle good, but what if the institution is not worthy of our trust? Should we criticise corruption and demand reform, and at what point should a society stop being so trusting? The answer is not self-evident. . . .It is becoming harder for institutions like the police and health authorities to hide their failings. Anyone can film a police assault on a smartphone. The job of holding them to account used to be done, imperfectly, by the press. Now, social media enables almost anyone to publish about malpractice. There are many things to like about the democratic aspect of social media, but it is also bound to corrode institutional trust. Journalists have many faults, but they usually draw on more than one source, and at least request a comment from the subject of their stories. On social media, one-sided accounts, a partial grasp of complex issues and the selective use of data can quickly paint a damning and misleading picture.In 2002, 46 per cent of Americans told pollsters they trust key institutions. In 2024, it is just 22 per cent. In 2002, 59 per cent trusted the police. Today, 45 per cent do. . . .
The most basic, powerful stories are all about who is "us" and who is "them." Government can't work if all our stories make it not-us.
Yuval Noah Harari is one of my favorite thinkers about stories. Here he turns his thoughts to AI.
Why is it that even modern, very sophisticated societies in the 20th and 21st century have been as susceptible as stone age tribes to mass delusion and psychosis and the rise of destructive ideologies like Stalinism or Nazism?Storytelling has always been important from the stone age to the 21st century, whenever a large number of people are trying to cooperate on something, whether it is to hunt a mammoth or whether it is to build an atom bomb. . . .Now, if you just tell them the facts of physics that e equals mc squared, this is not going to motivate anybody to cooperate on this project. This is where storytelling comes into the picture. So what really motivates people is it could be religious stories, mythologies and theologies. It could be secular ideologies like communism or capitalism. It’s always the people who are experts in storytelling that give the orders to people who merely know the facts of nuclear physics. . . .Throughout history, for tens of thousands of years, the only entities that could invent stories, whether stories about gods, or stories about money were human beings. . . .Now, for the first time in history, there is another entity. There is another agent out there that can create stories, economic theories, new kinds of currencies, music, poems, images, videos, and this new entity is AI. What happens to human society? What happens to human life if we increasingly live our lives cocooned inside the cultural artifacts coming from non-human intelligence, from an alien intelligence. . . .Just think what it would mean to live on a planet which is increasingly shaped by the stories and the products of an alien intelligence. . . .We now see the rise of a new type of information network, which is inorganic, which is based on AI. It need not have any breaks, it never rests, and there is no privacy potentially it could completely annihilate privacy. Computers, they don’t care if it’s night or day, if it’s summer or winter, they don’t need vacations, they don’t have families they want to spend time with. They are always on. Therefore they might force us to be always on, always being watched, always being monitored. . . .AI is the first technology in history that can take decisions by itself. Until today, all our big information networks, they were managed, they were populated by human bureaucrats, whether it’s government offices or corporations, or armies, or banks or schools. All the decisions ultimately have to be made by a organic brain of a human being. Now, AI has the capacity to make decisions by itself. . . .There are of course, huge risks when power shifts from organic humans to these alien inorganic AIs. It just becomes more and more difficult for us to understand the decisions that shape our life. What happens if you can no longer understand why the bank refused to give you a loan, why the government or the army did this or did that? And this is the world that we are entering. . . .We could be in a situation when the richest person in the United States is not a human being. The richest person in the United States is an a incorporated AI. Another thing that the US legal system allows is for these legal persons to make political donations because it’s considered part of freedom of speech. So now this, the richest person in the US is giving billions of dollars to candidates in exchange for these candidates broadening the rights of AIs, the legal path to this. This is no longer kind of a science fiction scenario. The legal and practical path to this situation is open. . . .When we come to the challenge of AI, what we need, our institutions that are able to identify and correct their mistakes and the mistakes of AI as the technology develops. . . .Every large scale human system is based on an unlikely marriage between mythology and bureaucracy. . . .The biggest misconception about information is that information is truth; and information isn’t truth. Most information is not truth. The truth is a very rare and costly and expensive type of information. If you want truth, you need to invest a lot in getting it. . . .It’s very easy to create fictional information . . .If we just flood the world with information and expect the truth to float up, it’ll not, it’ll sink. The more we flood the world with information, unless we make the effort to construct institutions that invest in truth, we’ll be flooded by fiction and illusion and delusion and junk information.Most information is not truth and most information, what it tries to do is gain power by creating order, not by spreading the truth. If you want millions of people to cooperating on something, the easiest way to do it is to create some fictional mythology or ideology and convince a lot of people to believe in it. And the way to do it is to bombard them with more and more stories and images and so forth of your favorite mythology or ideology.This is how you gain power. And you need to know some truth. Again, a system that is completely oblivious to truth, it’ll collapse of course, but in this balance, how much truth do you need in order to construct the Soviet Union and how much fiction and delusions do you need in order to construct the Soviet Union? You need a little truth and a lot of fiction. . . .For human dictators, AI is an especially big problem because for an AI to take power in a dictatorship is much, much easier than to kidnap power in a democracy. Because all power in a dictatorship is already concentrated in the hands of just one paranoid leader. The AI needs to learn how to manipulate just this single individual in order to take power in the country. So the danger of AI taking power in a country are much bigger in dictatorships than in democracy.In democracy, a big problem is very different. Democracy is a conversation. The the whole meaning for democracy is that you have large numbers of people conversing about the issues of the day. Now imagine a large group of people standing in a circle and talking, and suddenly a group of robots entering the circle and start talking very loudly and very emotionally, and persuasively and you can’t tell the difference who is a human and who is a robot.That is a situation we are now living through, and it is no coincidence that the democratic conversation is breaking down all over the world because the algorithms are hijacking it. We have the most sophisticated information technology in history and we are losing the ability to talk with each other to hold a reasoned conversation. . . .If we want to ensure that we get the truth. The only way to do it is to invest in institutions like academic research institutions, like newspapers that invest a lot of effort in finding the truth. If we just expect that a flood of information will bring us the truth, it’ll not. It’ll overwhelm the rare and costly kind of information, which is truth, by a deluge of fake and junk information.
Every large scale human system is based on an unlikely marriage between mythology and bureaucracy. Just think what it would mean to live on a planet which is increasingly shaped by the stories and the products of an alien intelligence.
Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen slop as the 2025 Word of the Year. We define slop as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again.
I find the stories coming from quantum physics so fascinating and freeing.
The fundamental nature of living things challenges assumptions that physicists have held for centuries.Many of my colleagues in physics . . . have come to believe that a mystery is unfolding in every microbe, animal, and human—one that challenges basic assumptions physicists have held for centuries, and could answer essential questions about AI. It may even help redefine the field for the next generation. . . .Beginning in the 1980s, physicists (along with researchers in other fields) began developing new mathematical tools to study what’s called “complexity”—systems in which the whole is far more than the sum of its parts. The end goal of reductionism was to explain everything in the universe as the result of particles and their interactions. Complexity, by contrast, recognizes that once lots of particles come together to produce macroscopic things—such as organisms—knowing everything about particles isn’t enough to understand reality. . . .From a physicist’s perspective, no complex system is weirder or more challenging than life. For one thing, the organization of living matter defies physicists’ usual expectations about the universe. Your body is made of matter, just like everything else. But the atoms you’re built from today won’t be the atoms you’re built from in a year. That means you and every other living thing aren’t an inert object, like a rock, but a dynamic pattern playing out over time. The real challenge for physics, however, is that the patterns that make up life are self-organized. Living systems both create and maintain themselves in a strange kind of loop that no existing machine can replicate. Think about the cell membrane, which enables a cell to stay alive by letting some chemicals in while keeping others out. The cell creates and continually maintains the membrane, but the membrane is also itself a process that makes the cell. . . .Using these skills, physicists—working together with representatives of all the other disciplines that make up complexity science—may crack open the question of how life formed on Earth billions of years ago and how it might have formed on the distant alien worlds we can now explore with cutting-edge telescopes. Just as important, understanding why life, as an organized system, is different at a fundamental level from all the other stuff in the universe may help astronomers design new strategies for finding it in places bearing little resemblance to Earth. Analyzing life—no matter how alien—as a self-organizing information-driven system may provide the key to detecting biosignatures on planets hundreds of light-years away.Closer to home, studying the nature of life is likely essential to fully understanding intelligence—and building artificial versions. Throughout the current AI boom, researchers and philosophers have debated whether and when large language models might achieve general intelligence or even become conscious—or whether, in fact, some already have. The only way to properly assess such claims is to study, by any means possible, the sole agreed-upon source of general intelligence: life. Bringing the new physics of life to problems of AI may not only help researchers predict what software engineers can build; it may also reveal the limits of trying to capture life’s essential character in silicon.
From a physicist’s perspective, no complex system is weirder or more challenging than life. Bringing the new physics of life to problems of AI may not only help researchers predict what software engineers can build; it may also reveal the limits of trying to capture life’s essential character in silicon.
To switch gears a little from the nature of stories to the media we use for telling them . . .
If it's an option, I'll read the transcript rather than watch the video. Always, every time.
(i'm sorry to say this but if you wend me a tiktok of a person telling a story into the camera for 3 minutes i'm not fucking watching it. just in general ever. people need to start typing things up again because i can read so much faster than you can talk and i'm not wasting my precious time on this)
(the real generational divide is people who refuse to watch a video if it could be an article versus people who refuse to read an article if it could be a video)
Comments from when I shared this on Facebook:
Them: Video = accessibility. Fine to choose to read the transcript, not fine to bag on people who watch the videoMe: Oh, I support the option of video for anyone who needs or prefers it. I didn't see this as bagging on anyone, merely stating a personal preference and acknowledging that there are many with a different preference. In my experience, my desire to read instead of watch is in the minority, so if anything I see myself as the outlier not wanting to conform to the popularly defined better option; i.e. as the one "with the problem."Me: I especially appreciate the meme's acknowledgement of difference, that some would rather read and some would rather watch, and both are legitimate ways to engage. (The heart of the meme is not Cait's initial statement, but Kat's response calling me old.) As a librarian, I (literally) tell people all the time, "Don't think of libraries as providing books, think of libraries as providing stories and information in all formats and media they come in."Me: I'm sorry I gave offense by sharing it.Them: You did not - just speaking my piece 😊
In all honesty, I think this deserves 4 stars, not the 3 I'm giving it, because it is an exciting thriller that succeeds well at being gripping entertainment. An excellently time-twisted narrative coil that creates suspense, with lots of intrigue and an abundance of action. I am disappointed, however, that it is so purely a thriller, as I would have preferred more focus on character development and much more depth to the central theme of the power of words and language, which this merely skims and teases. So a good book, but not quite the book I wanted it to be.
Few of the intriguing ideas were developed enough to be worth sharing here, except the short list of creation myths from around the world related to humanity's diversity of languages. Here's the list from the book plus a few others I came across.
Confusion of Tongues Myths:
Tower of Babel - Judaic myth (Hebrew Bible) - According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shinar (Lower Mesopotamia),[b] where they agree to build a great city with a tower that would reach the sky. Yahweh, observing these efforts and remarking on humanity's power in unity, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other and scatters them around the world, leaving the city unfinished.
Enki - Sumerian Deity - The Mesopotamian god of wisdom, crafts, fresh subterranean waters, magic, and incantations. Numerous myths of Enki include the fragmentation of a unified language into many as part of a great flood story.
Great Dividing - Kaska origin myth - The Kaska (Dena; North American First Nations) myth of the "Great Dividing" or great flood describes how a massive deluge, accompanied by darkness and violent winds, scattered people across the world on rafts, leading to the formation of different tribes and languages when they eventually met again, explaining human diversity and separation after a world-altering event.
Hermes - Greek Deity - In Greek myth, Hermes, the swift messenger god, is credited with dividing the single human language into many tongues, causing discord but also enabling distinct cultures and nations, linking him to speech, interpretation, trade, and trickery, essentially acting as the divine "babelizer" who brought linguistic diversity and complex communication to humanity.
Jabbering Madness - Wa-Sania myth - The Wa-Sania (a Bantu people of East African origin) tell a tale that in the beginning, all peoples of the earth knew only one language. However, during a severe famine, a "madness" struck the people, causing them to wander in all directions, jabbering strange, new words. This dispersion and confusion of tongues is how the different languages of the world supposedly arose.
Vatea - Polynesian Deity - After a great flood, Rata and his sons built a tower to reach the heavens and see Vatea, a Polynesian creator god, but the angry god destroyed their tower and confused their speech into many different tongues, explaining linguistic diversity.
The Giant Xelhu - Aztec myth - The giant Xelhua, one of the seven survivors of a great flood, who began building a great pyramid to reach the sky. An angered god or the gods cast fire upon the structure, destroying it and causing the builders to suddenly speak in different languages, leading to confusion and their scattering.
Flood Myth - Toltec (Aztec predecessor) - Describes the destruction of the first world by a great flood, with a small group (often seven friends/families) surviving in a chest or boat to repopulate the earth and build a tower, leading to the confusion of languages and migrations.
The Wurruri Myth - Raminjerar (Aboriginal Australia) - Explains the origin of different languages through a gruesome tale of an evil old woman, Wurruri, who harassed people by extinguishing their fires; after her death, people celebrated by eating her body, and those who consumed different parts (flesh, intestines, etc.) developed unique languages, leading to human diversity in speech.
The Story of Warramurrungunji - Aboriginal Australia - About the First Woman who emerged from the sea, traveled inland, and established the diverse peoples and hundreds of languages of the continent by giving birth to children and assigning each group a specific language and place, celebrating diversity and linking language directly to identity and belonging.
Salishan Myth - North American First Nations - A disagreement over the high-pitched humming sound made by ducks in flight was so profound that the group fractured. Some people moved far away from the original community. Over time, as these separated groups lived in different locations, their ways of speaking slowly began to change. Eventually, different languages were formed, leading to the linguistic diversity found among the Salish peoples and neighboring tribes.
"Knowledge Tree" legend - Hindu mythology - The god Brahma cut down a giant tree meant to unite humanity, and its scattered branches grew into different trees (like Wata/Banyan) in various places, each giving rise to a new language and culture, scattering people across the Earth.
The Gaikho tribe - Myanmar (Burma) - Holds a tradition mirroring the biblical Tower of Babel, where God confounded human languages, causing people to scatter and develop different ways of speaking due to their pride in building a high tower.
Yuki Mythology - Indigenous people of California - A creator, accompanied by Coyote, creates language as he creates the tribes in various localities. He lays sticks which will transform into people upon daybreak.
The Ticuna Legend - Indigenous Upper Amazon - Tell that all the peoples were once a single tribe, speaking the same language until two hummingbird eggs were eaten. Subsequently, the tribe split into groups and dispersed far and wide.
Waata Tale - Oromo-speaking people of Kenya - In the beginning, the peoples of the earth knew only one language, but during a severe famine, a madness struck the people, causing them to wander in all directions, jabbering strange words, and this is how different languages came about.
What a delight! Informative, entertaining, beautiful, and profound.
Sedivy uses her own life to frame a meditation on human interaction with language over the course of a lifetime, how language is learned and acquired in childhood, used and confused in adulthood, and lost and transformed with age and misfortune. She delves deeply into science and sociology without even a whiff of the dry, technical language often associated with academic writing. Sedivy is a wonder with imagery and metaphor and word combinations that are full of energy and life. Her passion for language is embodied in every sentence she writes.
Starting with her wildly multilingual childhood and moving through her life to her current, near-elderly state having new trouble recalling words, discerning speech in noisy environments, and facing the fear of a stroke that damages the linguistic part of her brain, Sedivy covers a wealth of topics, including her professional work as a linguist, the differences between written and spoken language, poetry, sign language, and so much more. Chapters can vary in style, such as the reflection on her youth composed as a letter to her mother and the one titled "How to Be a Success!" that debunks many myths in that realm.
This is a great book for: anyone, such as educators and parents, who helps children acquire language and literacy; anyone who wants insight into better language for interacting with others; anyone who worries about language loss with age; anyone who writes; and anyone who loves reading. Highly recommended.
Sedivy uses her own life to frame a meditation on human interaction with language over the course of a lifetime, how language is learned and acquired in childhood, used and confused in adulthood, and lost and transformed with age and misfortune. She delves deeply into science and sociology without even a whiff of the dry, technical language often associated with academic writing. Sedivy is a wonder with imagery and metaphor and word combinations that are full of energy and life. Her passion for language is embodied in every sentence she writes.
Starting with her wildly multilingual childhood and moving through her life to her current, near-elderly state having new trouble recalling words, discerning speech in noisy environments, and facing the fear of a stroke that damages the linguistic part of her brain, Sedivy covers a wealth of topics, including her professional work as a linguist, the differences between written and spoken language, poetry, sign language, and so much more. Chapters can vary in style, such as the reflection on her youth composed as a letter to her mother and the one titled "How to Be a Success!" that debunks many myths in that realm.
This is a great book for: anyone, such as educators and parents, who helps children acquire language and literacy; anyone who wants insight into better language for interacting with others; anyone who worries about language loss with age; anyone who writes; and anyone who loves reading. Highly recommended.
Here is an extensive collection of quoted material, in sections:
A newborn's vocation is to find order in a world that advertises itself as a random assault on the senses. There is no curriculum. No prefabricated bricks of structure. But the baby is equipped with a dogged faith that language, indeed reality itself, *does* have order and structure, that it *wants* to settle and arrange itself into patterns and motifs. This faith is amply rewarded.In the child's mind, what separates the beloved language from foreign burble is the order stitching it together. The infant intuits structure from beneath every surface of language. Under the noses of adults who have no idea of the scholarship taking place in their presence, their child begins a secret, analytical love affair with the patterns discerned in languages sounds.Order begins at the pulsing center of language, as if a fetus were somehow conditioned, by nearness to its mother's heart, to seek out the regularity of rhythm that propels speech forward. Each language has something that sounds like a heartbeat, but its fundamental principles can vary. . . . Even newborns can hear the rhythmic differences between these languages, whether or not they have heard them before, and they group together languages that operate on similar principles.-----Babies intuit the pure mathematics of sound before they have tethered these sounds to meanings, perhaps even before they know for certain that they have meanings. . . .There was a time in each of our lives when we experienced language as sheer music. We felt its rhythms in our bodies, we recognized its patters and motifs, we could be soothed by its repetition, then surprised by its departure from pattern-----She understands, without being taught, that words describe the mental landscape of the speaker and not that of the hearer.And so, as children, we readily entered the minds of others. Language was the invitation. Through words, we were given hints that some things were especially worthy of attention. . . . Words were the Xs on treasure maps that led to an orderly understanding of this world, an understanding that we sensed already existed, buried deep inside the minds of others.
Languages can coexist in the human mind, but they are fated to live out an endless power struggle; languages that garner the favors and attentions of their host brain grow ever stronger at the expense of their fellows.-----Knowing a single language is a bit like being unencumbered by family. It comes with certain freedoms. One can move lightly and swiftly, without the burden of consulting others or the exertion of ignoring unwanted advice. The habits of others do not encroach. But these freedoms come with a narrowing of perception.A brain's allegiance to a single language is a form of selective hearing. Neurons learn not to respond to the sounds or patters of other languages. . . . The longer one spends hearing only the sounds of one language, the deafer one becomes to the subtleties of others. . . . familiarity with the sounds of multiple languages is a wedge that keeps the door of perception open. . . .The advantage of a monolingual mind, a mind that has dug a moat to protect one language from all others, comes down to this: it becomes highly efficient at understanding a diminished range of human speech.-----I may look and sound as if I have declared my sole allegiance to the English language, but in truth I am a cacophony of voices, influencing each other, at times assisting each other, at times getting in each other's ways, always vying for turf. I do not always agree with myself. Each of my languages comes not only with its own patterns of sound and methods for arranging words but also with its social habits and its judgments about what to forgive, what to condemn, and what to revere. They do squabble.This cacophony may seem like confusion, but what if it is really the natural state of being human? Who among us, regardless of the number of languages they speak, is subject to a single set of influences? Who can say they are of one mind about what they forgive, condemn, and revere, that they are never blown about in multiple directions? Does a person of uncomplicated allegiances exist, anywhere, in any language? Perhaps when our societies converge upon a single language, it is also a way of obscuring who we really are.-----It's a natural human instinct, I suppose, to fear chaos and contamination, whether they come from another language, a set of morals we can't comprehend, or invisible organisms that threaten to overwhelm our bodies. We order our lives and obey stringent routines of physical, social, and mental hygiene to tame these terrors. We believe we can erect borders between ourselves and all kinds of foreign elements, biological and nonbiological.But our habits of believing ourselves to be entities that can be kept separate from the muck and muddle of the world are catching up to us. New generations of experts are now warning of the perils of too much hygiene imposed on a human life. We are told that the strict regimens prescribed in the past have led to an epidemic of new allergies and immune disorders. We were wrong, it turns out, to have been overly scrupulous about cleaning, to have kept all pathogens and allergens away from our children. In truth, our bodies do not belong to ourselves alone; each of us contains multitudes. We are not taught that it is healthy to host a flourishing population of microbes; rather than trying to eradicate all alien organisms that live inside us, we are better off letting our bodies learn how to accommodate them.Perhaps it is the same with our minds and with our languages. A zealous hygiene may soothe us with the illusion that we are not hosts to a multitude of influences. It may feel as if we have managed to keep the dangers at bay, that we have prevented an inflammation of conflict by imposing strict rules and hierarchies. Nonetheless, we do host multitudes, even when we require all of them to speak the same language. The multitudes inside us must learn to reach a truce. Sometimes the negotiations need to take place in numerous tongues.
Like all sacred texts, dictionaries are not so much read as consulted for their authority. . . .Lexicographers know they do not legislate. They compile a history of our attempts to fumble our ways toward each other; they document our moments of linguistic convergence; they monitor the adjustments we make to our truces of meaning. They know that language exists only because humans are capable of crafting such agreements; no deity breathed it into us or inscribed it in stone for us. Language was created word by word, each word conceived in a moment of yoked attention, one person proposing and another acquiescing to a particular union of sound and meaning. Language is the totality of such moments, multiplied within the kaleidoscope of an entire community.Dictionaries tell only a partial truth, however. They do not log our moments of painful separation. They describe the containers of shared meanings, but not the idiosyncratic memories, experiences, and visceral sensations that spill over their edges. They omit the tensions that pull meanings in different directions, threatening to snap a word in two. As such, they can give a false impression of convergence. . . .Every linguistic exchange contains within itself the seeds of a discordant Babel.-----It is in our nature to imagine meanings, filling in the crevassed fields of language with a light snow of inference that leaves the surface appearing unbroken. What we think has been said is merely our theory of what the speaker surely must have meant by using the words she did, a theory that is grounded in our own beliefs about what a reasonable person would have meant by those words and in our beliefs about the words a reasonable person would have used instead had she meant something different.-----What we understand as meaning is really a calculation of what has been said against other possible ways of saying.-----The notion that our selves are enclosed within our own bodies and that our lives are individual strands is a fiction, or at best an oversimplification. . . . Our selves, much like our brains, are tangles of connections. Just as language reaches far beyond Broca's and Wernicke's areas, laying down pathways that link far-flung tracts of neural tissue, so do we, from within our own skin enclosures, set down our tracks in the minds of others. We think our brains are ours alone, but each time we talk with one another, we synchronize brain states: If I tell you a story, the patterns of brain activity that arise as I choose my words are closely replicated in your brain as you listen. If we speak often or with intense emotion, the synchrony becomes etched within us; our neurons become prone to firing in similar patterns.
There is much about reading that is unnatural, that pushes against our senses. In learning to recognize letters, children have to train their minds to believe that an object is strictly bound to a certain orientation; learning that *p* and *b* and *d* are different things is like asking the mind to believe that a cup becomes a different object if it is laid upside down or with its handle facing left instead of right. Such a way of seeing runs counter to the ways of the world.-----Reading allowed me to vault beyond the grasp of parents and teachers and their ideas of who I should be and how I should think. In retrospect, I find it slightly odd that the adults in my life, who professed to be concerned with my formation, smiled so benignly when they caught me reading and then left me alone. There were certain girls, not to mention boys, whom I would not have been allowed to bring home. But as long as they could be hidden between the covers of a book, I could smuggle any dubious companion into my room and shut the door. In solitude, I could revel in their influence, egged on by their scandalous lives and outlaw philosophies, free to think or feel whatever I thought or felt about them without the burden of commentary or moral guidance from the official authorities in my life.-----No one ever spontaneously utters a Jamesian sentence, presumably not even Henry James. It is strenuous enough to parse one, let alone compose it, impossible to assemble it on the fly.Is this not a part of its pleasure when reading it? To climb, sweaty and panting, to the peak of the sentence, and discover that the summit affords a view one never imagined from below. And then the realization that this view, this climb, this melding of effort and perspective was made for you--only for you, only for this windswept moment when your breath fails you--by a mind even more athletic and nimble than yours.
Hannah Arendt remarks that humans are the only beings on earth that are mortal--not because humans alone can die, but because we alone have the awareness of our individual lives as distinct from the rest of our species and the rest of nature. An individual life is bounded by birth at one end and death at the other. Unlike the life of a species, which continues through repeated cycles of death and renewal, and individual human life cannot loop back on itself; once we have lived a present moment, it is forever in our past, never to return. "This individual life," she writes, "is distinguished from all other things by the rectilinear course of its movement, which, so to speak, cuts through the circular movement of biological life. This is mortality: to move alone a rectilinear line in a universe where everything, if it moves at all, moves in a cyclical order."-----New technologies everywhere are rearranging the relationship of language to time. We are more awash than ever in text, but the lines between written and oral language are blurring. On television, we watch actors exchange dialogue that has been crafter in a writers' room. We read transcripts of interviews. We listen to novel over headphones, perhaps while cooking or jogging. Instead of speaking over the phone, we send each other texts--written snippets that are as informal and interactive as conversational speech. We type messages on social media, often as impulsively as we would blurt out a comment in "real time." . . .More and more, our uses of text are coming to absorb some of the properties of oral cultures. We are using text communally and cyclically; we sample, remix, transform, send it back into the pool of text that we've dipped into.An optimist might speculate that we will come to harvest the best of both written and oral cultures, or that this blurring will rein in some of the excesses of printed text--its imprisonment as a fixed and unchanging object, its separation of the author from the river of humanity. Perhaps we will become less rigid and more liquid in our uses of language, adept at the full range of expression between oral and written poles.A pessimist might worry that we will discard the best of both.-----When narrative speech is stripped of all disfluencies in the lab, listeners find it more difficult to understand or remember than when it is naturally seasoned with "ahs" or "ums." . . .These filler sounds allow speakers and listeners to sync up their minds with each other. Both interlocutors face the tyrannical demands of time upon language; each must decide how to ration their mental resources in proportion to the complexities of the moment. By revealing the slippage between speech and thought, a moment of stress in the production of speech, the speaker invites the listener to align his mental resources with hers. Precisely because of the vulnerability it reveals, and "um" has the capacity to yoke two minds in their joint labor of making and recovering meaning, united against time's efforts to erase it.-----A great deal has been written about how women speak in "powerless" language. Allegedly, we are prone to hedging, hesitating, qualifying, or tempering an assertion with a question tagged onto its tail or by an uplift in intonation, and all of this is purported to be evidence of our being unable or unwilling to speak with the voice of authority.As with filled pauses, the folklore around such language is alluring in its simplicity, but it misses the quiet work accomplished by these conversational elements. They do more than leak insecurity. A question tagged onto an assertion ("The meeting's running late, isn't it?") might well flag a person's uncertainty about the truth of the statement, or it might be a solicitous attempt to draw the listener into the conversation, an expression of solidarity, or an effort to spare the listener's feelings by softening the sting of criticism. . . .Uptalk, like filled pauses, can direct the beam of a listener's attention if they are alert to how it is interwoven with other cues: often it serves to hold attention on the statement that ends with the rise, perhaps to elicit some response from the listener, but if the lifted syllable is stretched out in time, it may instead shift attention to what will come next.
No wave of despondency breaks over my head the day I turn fifty. Instead, I'm given the gift of altered vision--of a viewpoint from which aging is not a series of inevitable losses, starting small and becoming larger, but a steady accrual of abundance. Becoming very old does not mean lingering in the dim twilight of irrelevance; it is to become an ever more valuable vault stuffed with experience and knowledge.-----Astute scientists have asked: If a sixty-year-old can recall only 90 percent of the thousand names she knows, while a sixteen-year-old can recall 98 percent of the hundred names she knows, whose memory is more powerful? What if the purported symptoms of a contracting lexicon are really signs of one that is expanding? Indeed, closer scientific scrutiny reveals that far from shedding words, we hoard them over a lifetime. Unless a person is afflicted by brain disease, her vocabulary continues to grow into old age, becoming a magnificent warehouse of words in which anyone might lose themselves.-----Elders contain an abundance of knowledge that young people lack. As in childhood, aging is not so much a string of losses as a series of trades, a growing into a somewhat different version of the self than one was at a younger age. Nimbleness and speed--so essential when one knows next to nothing--give way to skill and wisdom. Elders, who have already metabolized a lifetime's worth of experiences, have less need for raw computational power with which to efficiently digest new information.-----A simple auditory test, measuring the ability to hear pure tones at various frequencies, exposes hearing loss among more than two-thirds of Americans older than seventy. But long before this, many people strain to hear one another in noisy rooms or when several people talk at once. Before our ears fail us, our brains begin to have trouble peeling the sounds of speech away from sticky background noise or disentangling the strand of one speaker's voice from a thick cord of many. This work calls for attention to be bestowed upon certain auditory cues while a cacophony of others are discounted, and *ignoring* information, it turns out, is particularly difficult for older brains.-----Rather than focus on averting the losses of age, why aren't we determined to cultivate its gains? If age transforms you into someone whose mental power is determined by past knowledge more than by raw computational power--with the former having a far longer shelf life than the latter--a more productive goal would be to stockpile as much experience as you can, of as high a quality as possible, for as long as possible. If you are to become a person who can't help but drag their entire history into every intellectual task, your precious hours are best spent discerning what is true and insightful, in reading widely and deeply, in stuffing your vault with diverse and nuanced experiences that can inform everything you learn and read and think about thereafter. You might also spend time in your mental warehouse putting its contents in order. . . .To be an elder, I learned, it is not enough to be old. One must have filled oneself with valuable experiences.
And, finally, a poem.
Patricia FargnoliOf course, when I think about fun,I think of a man in a short buckskin skirt,shirtless, walking down the streetof the Bridge of Flowerswith a cross-bow, a quiver of arrows on his back.About fifty, an ordinary manI wouldn’t have noticedbut for the crossbow and his half-nakedness–in other words, his way of sticking outin the crowd of tourists going by.He was just walking, a man in a suitwalking beside him, both of themwith a sense of purpose,both obviously on the way to somewhere.The street slanted up a little and they bent forwardto accommodate it. That must have beentheir mission that day–onward and upward.The bow rattled on his back,the arrows quivered.His hair was white–if that helps.The problem with such funis that nobody explains it. It enters stage leftand goes off stage right into the wings.Then for years, it keeps going off in your mindlike flashbulbs. It takes on weight, metaphor:Father Death, Creative Spirit.Gosh, I wish I’d known the whole story–I could put the puzzle to bed then–if only I knew the meaning of it all.from #18 - Winter 2002
posted by Degolar @ 3:21 PM
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