Story Time!

All the time is story time with us. The truth (that’s small t truth) is we don’t know for sure where we came from or why we are here much less where we are going. So being story tellers, we came up with gods, goddesses and all kinds of fun myths. Moma earth and papa sky got busy and here we are! We cannot stand ambiguity. There has to be a reason for everything or at least a good story. This is the whole point of religion. It gives some of us a workable story to explain life. Be good and go to heaven or be bad and go to hell, what could be more simple and easy to follow? We individually create our own versions of reality based on all the stories we learn. Christians are not taught the stories of Buddha or The Profit Mohamed. I think religion is largely dependant on geography. Where on earth are people taught about all the major religions and then choose which one they will follow? No, we learn based on where we are born. Sadly, we are also told ours is the one True (capital T) story! Anyone with a few brain cells and a reliable internet connection can plainly see the problems this has lead to. But stories (narratives) determine so much of our lives.

Here in the United States we are taught a national narrative (known as history classes). For most it is a series of events, people and dates. The details add up to we being a free people who are a shining example to all on how everyone should live. We like the story so much we share it with others (often at gun point) thinking they are really Americans just waiting to come out! Majeed would be much happier working in a factory or owning a small store than working his own land. We are sure of it! Perhaps if we blow up his house, he will see it our way. Yes, this is an absurdity but is this not the underlying narrative behind our wars in the Middle East? Be like us (and sell us your resources at rock bottom prices) and everything will be just great! Most people here are only taught the “good guy” narrative of the United States and that’s why we continue to wage wars around the world. In Iraq we had to take out an evil dictator who was a threat to the region (oil supplies) and the rest of the world. Afghanistan was crawling with terrorist types who wanted to do us harm. Call in the air strikes and send in the Army Rangers! The narrative is simplistic and easy to follow, kind of like religious stories. Anything that contradicts the narrative of the USA as the “good guy” is all too often swept under the rug or written off via the “few bad apples” story line. We use stories here at home as well.

The average narrative goes something like this, study hard in school, stay out of trouble, go to college, get a good job working for the man, get married, buy a nice house, have kids and live happily ever after. This story has a title. It is called The “American Dream”. For many, that’s all it is- a dream. Those who do not follow the plot to the letter are given labels (another entry for a later time), criminal, deviant, weirdo and so on. Those who want to live another storyline are cause for fear and dealt with accordingly. They are often excluded (poor minorities), have fewer rights (so called gay people) subject to harassment (both poor and gays) and muted (not allowed to tell stories, marginalized). To see this in action, all one needs to do is take a trip to their closest Department of Social Services or local unemployment office and simply sit in the drab lobby for an hour or two. Look at who goes in to use these services. Also, pay attention to where these services are rendered. Chances are they in out of the way places in areas far away from “The American Dream”.

DISCLAIMER!! I pretty much live the prescribed narrative. That said, I’ve come to realize there are other stories out there.

Where do we get the stories / narratives that guide us? I think the answer is simple. They come from the most powerful who want to maintain things as they are. A good example is our election process here in the United States. Three hundred plus people are allowed to “choose” between only two political parties, Democrats and Republicans. Stan Goff makes a good argument here this is not much of a choice. He argues that not voting in an alternative way of bring about real change. How could either party claim a mandate to rule if only a small percentage of us turn out to vote? I think of it as voting by other means, with our feet. Both parties do little if anything to change the dominant discourse of neo-liberalism. Free markets can solve all of our problems if allowed to run free from interference. There is overwhelming evidence to the contrary; global warming, resource wars, crushing poverty, environmental degradation, and modern slavery just to name a few. The information is out there but one has to look for it. It will not come from the powerful who control the vast majority of media outlets. Neither party questions the neo-liberal narrative. As a result, we get lip service from the Democrats on global warming and out right denial from the Republicans. Both parties use the same techniques to continue unwarranted and unjustifiable wars and have done so for decades. You can simply google the documentary “War Made Easy” for another narrative about war and judge for yourself. I’m interested in the super-rich vs. the rest of us narrative because it seems to explain much of what goes on. But there are other explanations as well and mine may NOT be right.

Look, I could patter on and on about how we use stories in almost every aspect of our lives and I think it will be a good topic for more writings later on. If you have read this far, my hope is you will start to see stories everywhere and think about whom the writer is and ask why is it written and who is it written for, figuratively speaking.

Thanks.

-Paul