Stories of stories

There's so much to convey. I wish I had more time. I wish I could write faster, better. To convey what I really mean in a sentence. But whether I like it or not, it's the volume and complexity that gives writing its weight. Well, the span of time actually gives what is written its punch. It's a reader or listener considering the words of others, playing with them, turning them over and over in the mind to try to figure out their possible meanings ... in different contexts, contexts you know, contexts you've experienced, contexts with such familiarity that they've become predictable and understood ... in context.

It's the extrapolation of words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs into a structure that gives the words their zap. It's the sequence of words that convey concepts, ideas, and the connections of those ideas within the structure of a story that gives rise to the complexity that expands the scope of consideration of possibilities. Underlying all of that is a sense of meaning-making, of attempting to understand patterns in order to bring one's self into harmony with those rhythms.

The problem is that those are the rhythms of stories rather than the rhythms of nature. We live in nature, we depend on interaction with it for our survival. The separation of human beings, through technology and institutionalism, from our actual relationship to the earth, to water, to food, to movement ... the separation caused by an imbalanced focus on abstraction ... is causing mass delusion. It's an ironic age where thinkers who have rejected religious thinking do not actually seem cognizant that they have shifted their focus of attention from one conceptual framework for belief merely to others. The structure is the same; it's still a belief structure rooted in institutional abstractions ever-more-complicated and ever-more-out-of-touch with human reality. It's still pattern-oriented, hierarchical, primitive, and coercive. It's still a maze, a maze with a different configuration, but still a maze nonetheless.

Why not claw through some hedges and find out what is beyond the maze, see if the maze can be restructured into a non-patterned dynamic thinking and feeling landscape. Or ocean. Or any analogy you would prefer to conjure. But stay grounded in the body in relation to all else in your surrounding environment. Conception can come in handy for imaginings beyond the immediate, but the immediate should always take precedence over the beyond. The immediate is here, now, present, interactive, participative. Your environment is longing for your attention. Your body needs your attention. How are you sitting? How are you breathing? Is your spine correct?

Those stories I mentioned earlier, the structures of them? Isn't it likely, knowing what is known now about the brain through neuroscience, that the synaptic pathways being activated in the brain, sequentially, corresponds in its own mysterious way with the sequential unfolding and structuring of a story? So if a story has a corresponding physical manifestation, should it be recognized as a real "thing"? After all, it's an actual process occurring in the real world, this ongoing story-telling, this perpetual myth-making. Does that make a story more or less meaningful? What do you think?

My thinking has always been, "What the hell are all of these people around me talking about? Honestly, who gives a shit whether it rains tomorrow or not? Are you always thinking about a time that is not now? Are you always telling stories to yourself about what is and trying to place yourself conceptually in relation to it?" It's just the weirdest fucking thing imaginable to see people hold fast to ideas that are so clearly distracting from moments shared. It's just a weird thing to go through life, day after day, year after year, with the same damn experiences of people saying "Hello. What are you doing this weekend? Oh, that's nice. We're going to blah, blah, blah." And then when I run into someone while blah, blah, blahing I'm asked where I'm from, how long I've been here, where I'm staying, what I do, and on and on.

Really? These are the things you want to know about me? For what possible purpose? To fill space in the sub-subplot in the story of your life? I could give a fuck. It's not that I don't care about you as a human being. It's that I don't care about any of the stories you seem to care about. It makes more sense to me to just start with where a person's body is. There are surprisingly few people comfortable with reality. Granted, reality does suck. But that's by design. By designs each person allows to happen through beliefs believed, decisions made, and acts willed.

You want a different world? Think differently. Recognize that everything you imagine about yourself is a story you've been telling yourself. The reason you never feel spontaneous (despite your protestations that you are spontaneous) is because you live in predictable, well-worn patterns. Those patterns provide functionality, sustainability. Your anxieties and stresses, though, are caused by the dissonance between what you imagine reality to be and what it actually is. You cling to stories and you damn reality as a fiction intruding into the "real world" (which is really just the world you want to exist but, to your chagrin, doesn't).

You pay attention to outcomes (before and after they've occurred; just moments like any other, but moments elevated in importance as seminal moments; they make up the peaks and valleys of stories) because they either justify or nullify your beliefs and conceptions of the world. You're living life like you're watching a horse race. The results sometimes come out as you predicted and sometimes you're proven wrong. But all the while you're focusing your attention on the horse race, fusing your identity with that of the horse you are following, that you want to win, and when the horse wins (or loses) you react as if you yourself had won (or lost).

And maybe you did. Not just because you had money on the horse. No, I mean maybe you did win or lose something when the horse won or lost (or whatever it is that you've been "rooting" for or against in life--and thus connecting with through the familiarity developed from routinely focusing your attention on the "story" you've been creating along the way). As I wrote earlier, your brain is going through physical changes that correspond to the story you are telling yourself as you process and interpret sensory stimuli. You don't focus on what is unimportant to your story. Well, you do. You hate it, though. You sometimes have to go to the bathroom. You stand in line for beer or a hot dog. You sit impatiently between races. You shift in your seat because you're uncomfortable. Your back aches a bit. It's driving you crazy. Some dope spilled beer on you when he walked by. Asshole. Didn't even apologize. You start a new story about what a dick that guy is. Based on a few seconds of interaction. You've made a decision about the totality of who the guy has been over the course of his life. You hope justice is done in the future, that karma comes back for revenge.

You scour the program to figure out which horse you like in future races. You reminisce about past races. Those are the moments in between the peaks and valleys. Those are the moments that get cut in editing. So, when the "buildup" eventually ends and your horse takes off, life begins again. In those moments, you're identity fuses with the horse and you feel your body language speaking with the horse or the horse speaking to the everyone around you through your body language. You want to will tour horse to victory, you possess the horse, you inspire the horse, you are the horse, you won the race, you came in last place, you broke your leg, your jockey failed you, you were bumped coming out of the turn into the final stretch.

Whether the horse you followed won or lost, you're exhausted. Panting. Exhilarated or dejected. Spent no matter what. That bodily engagement and emotional intensity gives that part of the story more meaning than other parts of the story. It's total sensory experience within the context of a story. You're engaged with life in such a moment. It's a meaningful moment for you. And you live for that rush of engagement with life. Everything else "in between" is tolerable only if there will eventually be more engaging, meaningful moments. That's what you're banking on. That's what you're nervous about. What if you lose? Yeah, but what if you win?

A desire for heaven, an aversion to hell. The structure is the same. Win or lose? Come on. That's the binary thought that limits what is possible to think at any given time. You think there's a randomness to your thoughts or that your thoughts are following the story of yourself? That's not the case. Your body is directly creating your thoughts. There's the tiniest lag between sensation and interpretation of emotion into feeling and slotted into "place" within an elaborate conceptual framework (the structure is the "subconscious" which must have a corresponding relation to the physical/chemical brain. Perhaps the synaptic patterns developed in a person's brain--over a lifetime--are the physical manifestations of subconscious activity. For me, there's little doubt. And yet ... I'm never too sure of the stories I tell myself).

Christmas is a perfect example. Doesn't matter if you are an atheist, Jew, Christian, nonreligious, whatever. If you live in the United States (and likely other parts of the world, particularly Europe), then even if you don't celebrate the holiday in any way, the patterns of your life are affected by the traditions that have been relived year after year in somewhat different forms, but always the same structure in terms of time of year and the public consciousness. Unless you are a recluse you're encountering this season in some way. And thus, even if you do not hold a belief in Santa Claus or the divinity of Jesus Christ, you still hold notions that Christmas has a certain "vibe" to it, things that identify Christmas as "Christmas." It's experienced because individuals choose to re-enact traditional types of thinking, decision making, and behavior that reflects "Christmas" year after year. It could be shopping for gifts, songs or television shows, conversations with coworkers, fellow students, friends, family, and others, or Christmas parties or ... it goes on and on almost forever.

So many story-lines. So many subtle variations possible within the story structures. But the structure is the same. Doesn't matter whether those stories are accompanied by subplot beliefs in creationism or evolution. Reality will play out as it does.

But the atheist complaints about Christmas and religion, then, are really complaints about traditions, about how time is spent not just during holidays, but all the time. And yet, that's not what atheists talk about or focus on. Well, those atheists with loud voices and media distributorship of the stories they're telling. They focus on the supernatural, about how the universe was created, about evolution, the scientific method, and so on. It's all part of a different story about life.

Still, it's a story. It's a conception. It's a belief. That's not something to be dismissed, though. That's the point. Belief does not put humans out of touch with reality--not really--because belief actually creates reality. Perpetually. People act on their beliefs. Or, people develop beliefs based on judgments about what they sense, what they experience, what they feel, what they think, what they choose, what they do. Belief is ongoing and ever-changing. The forms of belief. The structure remains the same. Experience informs belief which informs experience which informs belief which informs...

But if we know this cycle exists then wouldn't it make sense to allow consciousness to take our individual and collective storytelling into account when creating institutional structures which determine the rhythms of political, legal, economic, and social life (which then in turn determine the rhythms of personal lives based on one's position in relation to the institutional structures of a society--and by institutional I do not mean specific organizations but structural institutions such as criminal law, environmental regulation, commerce, fiscal policy, corporate personhood, etc.)?

I couldn't know what each person's reaction to such ideas might be. Maybe one person thinks "Hmmmmm, interesting thoughts. Some, eh. Some, I really need to consider" while another person thinks "Wait a minute! The story I've been telling myself about my life is ... delusional? Look, I'm going to need some time with this ... No, on second thought, how dare you? You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you, you smug son of a bitch. My stories are not stories. This is me, damnit. I'm not the byproduct of a system. I am inherently who I am. I've decided to be this person. Not based on stories I've told myself. It's based on what is true. What is right. Common sense. Science. Religion. Democracy. Capitalism. Socialism. Ism-ism. Punk rock. Literature. Philosophy. Justice. Ethics. Principles. Beliefs ... Wait a minute ... Fuck you!"

We've never really made it beyond that point. We're stuck there.

"I believe this."

"Oh, yeah? Well, I believe that."

"Harumph."

"Fuck you."

I think the most sensible human beings are those that turn away from these frivolous disagreements and instead look into the eyes of another. Recognition. A smile. Deeper breathing. A kiss. Grab a cloth and lend a hand with the dishes. Side by side. Washing and drying. Wordlessly. Fulfilled in the most mundane of routines by the presence of another.

Unless the house is raided by military or police forces. Either because you live in a militarized war zone or because the bank is foreclosing. Yeah, that thing I mentioned about institutional structures? Those are stories that deserve our collective attention. Well, if you believe my story, anyway.