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https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-empathy-or-division-on-the-science-and-politics-of-storytelling-176679>
"Writers can’t always be trusted when they talk about the power and importance
of story. We have a vested interest and can get sentimental, promoting the
immense power of story, of narrative, as inherently benign.
Even when a writer is famously sceptical of narrative, such as Joan Didion, the
sentimentalists overrule her. As Zadie Smith pointed out recently in
The New
Yorker, one of Didion’s most famous lines – “we tell ourselves stories in
order to live” – is now quoted as if Didion is celebrating story rather than
warning about delusion.
“It is a peculiarity of Joan Didion’s work that her most ironic formulations
are now read as sincere,” Smith says of this line. “A sentence meant as an
indictment has transformed into personal credo.”
It is illuminating, then, to consider fascinating developments in thinking and
research on the effects of story from other disciplines, such as philosophy,
history and, most recently and surprisingly, perhaps even counter-intuitively,
neuroscience."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
