Who are without storytelling? That is the last question that needs answering. In the previous episodes, we discussed how
stories are fundamentally different from reality, and how, despite this difference, we increasingly began to project the structures
of heroic adventures onto our own lives, began to use it as a predictive template, as a way to set expectations for
the course of our lives. We saw how the original meaning and purpose
of the heroās journey became somewhat twisted because of this, how it became a pressure for people to compete with each other for ever more exciting adventures, how it became a source of serious disillusionment
for people whose lives turned out differently than they expected them to, who didnāt achieve the success they were after, who didnāt go through the meaningful transformation they wanted, or who didnāt find the love
they so desperately needed. We also saw how the heroās journey
can be corrupted by groups of people who use it to forge
their own cosmic destiny, who feel so entitled to a heroic adventure that
they victimize others in the process. While in episode 2, I focused on
the history of Western society, this obviously goes for all cultures which have
their own history of heroic adventures, and therefore their own views and biases that create heroes out of some, and victims out of others. Are you ready to fight?
- Yes Sir! Are you ready to fight?
- Yes Sir! It left me wondering if we are not better off
without heroic adventures, without those structures that only simplify
a complex reality, but is that even a possibility? Is storytelling not the foundation
of who we are? Is it not a result of the way we naturally
experience the world, and therefore maybe even rooted into
the larger principles of the universe? In this final episode, letās return to
the center of things, to our own experience of the world,
and of ourselves. Letās explore what can be reconstructed
out of the deconstructed, letās see if we can find the essence of
who we are without storytelling, not just to see who we are not, but also who we can be. Stories vs. Reality Episode 3: Identity Without Storytelling Part 1: Experiencing the Adventure Just because our lives do not unfold according to
the neatly confined and predictive structure of the heroās journey, that doesnāt mean we donāt experience
our lives adventurously. The existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
explored this subject in his famous book Nausea, in which the main character reflects on the
adventures he experienced in his life and wonders what it really meant
to have experienced them. While he is certain he has gone on adventures, he points out that many of the things considered to be vital parts of these adventures, such as unfamiliar places,
and mysterious strangers, werenāt adventurous in themselves. Foreign countries are not foreign
to the people who live there, and what is a stranger to one,
can be a close acquaintance of another. He therefore concluded that the content of
the adventure does not matter, it is the form that does. We turn events into adventures
by experiencing them as such. German sociologist Georg Simmel had a similar
analysis and argued that the adventure, or rather; the experience of the adventure, simply results from the process of familiarizing
yourself with the unfamiliar; a new place, a new person,
a new event or activity. As such, the adventure is always, to greater
or lesser extent, transformative. You engage in something new which then adds, removes, or otherwise changes some part of your being. As you can see, so far, this experience closely resembles
the hero in Joseph Campbellās heroās journey, who goes into the unknown to eventually become
a master of two worlds. Good morning!
- Morning! Another way to look at the adventure is as
a distinct way of perceiving time. When we go through our day to day life, time
is somewhat predictable, structured. Office hours, dinner time, nighttime, we generally have some notion of what weāll be doing during certain hours. The adventure then, is a break from this structure, and invokes the uncertainty, and excitement
of new possible futures. In this sense, a smile from a stranger could
suggest the beginning of a love story that will define the rest of your life. Or inversely, an extreme sports adventure
could mean a swift ending to it. Either way, to experience an adventure is
to perceive time differently. It makes the future feel uncertain, undefined, thereby making the present moment
more immediate, urgent. An adventure, however, doesnāt truly become
an adventure until it is completed and can be recounted as a story. For only then can we definitively distinguish
all the hypothetical adventures, all the potential futures, from the one that actually happened. Only then can we determine
the adventureās plot; the way in which the different experiences are connected to each other. And only then can we see the causal relations; how events impacted others and became transformative. As the existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard
once said: life must be lived forwards,
but can only be understood backwards. As such, no matter how you look at it, our
experiences always have a two-fold significance. First, there is the initial experience of something; the strangeness of an unfamiliar event, the excitement of meeting someone new, or the pain following a failure. And then thereās the meaning that those experiences take on as we retell them in a story, which has the power to change how we
initially perceived them. For example, the once admirable ambition of a partner might be recontextualized as selfish egoism as the relationship
falls apart into tragedy. Or the initial failure might become the stepping stone
to a more meaningful victory give and the story a triumphant ending after all. Here too we see the work of Joseph Campbell reflected as the elements of the heroās journey also have
a double significance; there is the event in itself, and there is the larger meaning of that event as it becomes recontextualized in the heroās journey
as a whole. The only thing is, when it comes to the stories
of our own lives, we are both author and character. In other words, we are telling our stories
as we are living them, which makes it pretty difficult to effectively capture our lives into one adventurous story, and especially into one that fits the exact structure
of the heroās journey. Because if our stories are ongoing as long as we are able to give shape to them, to change them, when do the individual experiences of
our lives take on their definitive meaning? When can you say that you have truly experienced
a full adventure? Part 2: Perpetually Unfolding Stories Even though we can experience life adventurously, for that feeling to become an actual adventure, it seems that we ourselves need to transform it into one. But this is easier said than done, because
while the potential for adventure is limitless, so it seems is the potential to re-frame it. Whether weāre trying to tell the stories of our entire lives, or just a tiny adventure within it, how do we give significance to that which is constantly capable of evolving? Just look at how often do we believe that
we are at the start of a grand adventure, This is Paterson, bus 23,
I have a situation. only for it to become something that just happened, and then passed without any discernible consequences? You acted so heroicly. Or on the contrary, how often have we made life-changing decisions that seemed so miniscule at the moment that we didnāt realize their importance
until decades later? And even then, can we truly trace those decisions
back to their source? Are the choices we make not tied to countless
invisible threads? Threads that have been unfolding and spinning
around since long before we were born? The same can be asked when it comes to
our collective adventures: when does a war begin? Is it the moment it is declared? Or is that just a consequence of a story that
had already begun much earlier? What is the history of a nation? A people? Where does our story begin? And, just as important, where does it end? What is often missing from our adventures,
as opposed to adventures in stories, is what Jean-Paul Sartre called perfects moments; moments that mark definitive resolutions in our stories. Right. We see such moments in invasion stories
for example, and in their often used trope called the mothership. The mothership is an object or figure that
represents the leader of the invading force, and that, when destroyed, instantly disables
all invading forces, thereby marking a clear and conclusive victory
for our heroes. We also see perfect moments in romantic stories, in which the grand climactic kiss is implied to carry the rest of the relationship without further conflict. And we see them in the form of plot twists; moments in which seemingly unconnected threads are suddenly revealed to be intertwined, in which chaos and confusion are suddenly replaced with order and understanding. Moments in which it all comes together. In real life, large scale conflicts, personal relations,
and quests for meaning are rarely defined or bookended by singular moments, especially ones that we experience as such
while they are happening. When it comes to historical conflicts,
we can define certain milestones in hindsight, the day of surrender, the signing of a declaration, but for those who have actually lived the story, itās probably hard to pinpoint the exact moment they felt things were back to normal. Take even our current health crisis, it is unlikely this
will be over after one defining victory, after one clearly perceivable moment, and is instead more likely to be resolved with a slow, almost inconspicuous return to a state that can be called ordinary. Looking at our relationships, here too we
will surely find important moments, the first kiss, the wedding day and other moments of
great personal significance. But again, these are almost never truly as definitive as the majority of romantic stories we see in films. There are some interesting counterexamples
however. The film Before Midnight for example shows
how a couple, years after them finding each other
in a dreamlike romance, have to face the reality of what it really means
to be in a relationship. If you want true love, then this is it. This is real life, it's not perfect,
but it's real. In doing so, it comes much closer to what
relationships are like in real life; a reality in which nothing can be taken for granted, in which every experienced moment can be redefined, or even, fall apart. And about the reality of plot twists,
or moments of grand revelations, well, to quote the pastor from Synecdoche, New York: āEverything is more complicated than you think.
You only see a tenth of what is true.ā We may create some understanding of things
over time but, what is this really if not just a temporary veil of wisdom over what remains a fundamentally unknowable reality, a brief moment of stillness in what remains
an ever-changing story? They're all leads in their own stories.
They have to be given their due. Is a fully formed, fully resolved story then nothing more than an ideal thatās forever out of reach? Is this the real difference between
stories and reality? Are we doomed to a state of perpetual storytelling? Of continuous narration without closure? To again refer to Synecdoche, New York,
are we like Caleb? Who spent years on his grand play that continues to grow bigger and bigger until he eventually passes away in the ruins
of his unfinished creation? Can nothing we do be set in stone? Part 3: Cosmic Salvation There seems to be an unresolvable conflict between constantly experiencing the potential for adventure, and actually being able to resolve one. The easy answer is to search for closure,
for absoluteness on a larger level. We can say that our stories begin when we are born,
and end after we die. A clear beginning, a clear end. But itās not exactly as simple as that,
because even after die, the entirety of our lives might be recontextualized
within a greater story, beginning with that of our family, our country, all the way to human civilization
and existence as a whole. And this brings us to some larger
metaphysical issues. For there is one question we also havenāt
really addressed, the question of why there is a monomyth, why we tell stories according to the same heroās journey? Is it simply because that is how we create meaning,
how we give structure to our experiences? Or is it because that is how we perceive the
structure that is already there? In other words, does it originate within us,
or is it a pre-existing principle of the universe? My Shepherd. Bring us to your eternal light. Itās a question that leads us into the territory of religion; the belief that there is a grand cosmic story, one that is authored by a higher force or divine being. The existence of such a creator would certainly resolve the difference between stories and reality as it would give our lives, our existence, the intentionality, structure and definitiveness
of the heroās journey. It would give us something to live for
as our lives become purposeful journeys from and towards this great creator. Joseph Campbellās own resolution has a similar
type of cosmic determinism as he advices us to follow our bliss. āIf you follow your bliss,ā - he wrote - āyou put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living
is the one you are living.ā While not explicitly religious, Campbell here does seem to imply that there is someone or something that has laid out a path for us. One that we need only put ourselves on for
a meaningful life. Itās a solution thatās worked well for many people,
and still does. But personally speaking, ending all this with
a leap of faith doesnāt satisfy me. Because even if there is some cosmic plot,
even if the tracks are already laid out, I still wouldnāt know how I fit in. I wouldnāt know how to let it guide
my choices, my story. I could try to follow my bliss, but that just seems like an invitation to mistake
vague intuition for absolute knowledge. In the end, I would feel like a replicant
in the original Blade Runner, chasing a creator for answers
Iām not going to get. You were made as well as we could make you. But not to last. Even if there was some purpose,
I could never attain it. The path laid out for me would remain obscured. And I would still die with the feeling that my life
was but a mere collection of moments, incoherent, unresolved, waiting to be lost in time. Like tears... in rain. Part 4: Freedom So, what is the way out of this? For while it might be frustrating to try and
live our lives as heroic adventures, to fit our experiences into clear and cohesive stories,
so too is the opposite. If we assume our lives to be without
any kind of structure, what is left but pointlessness? But even if that were the case,
we would still act in defiance of that fate, we still naturally create patterns,
constructions, storylines. Itās why today we are roughly the same person
as the day before, and the day before that, and so on. Itās why we can connect with others and
get a sense of who they are. If they're responding to your work
and your work is really personal, then reading you is another way of meeting you,
isn't that right? There seems to be an essence within us
that simply refuses nihilism, and that should mean something too. It is therefore that Jean-Paul Sartre proposed
a sort of middle ground between the nihilism of a life without
the structures of stories, and the frustration of a life thatās
too restricted by them. Basically, he suggests that we let go of the idea of coherence, of pre-determined structures, in favor of creativity. That we take our story into our own hands,
and really become our own authors. Weāve discussed how heroic adventures can put a pressure on the way we should live our lives, but they also put a pressure on us. We base so much of our identities on collected ideas
of what it means to be someone, what it means to be a man, a woman, what it means to be strong, to be weak, to be attractive, to be ugly, to be adventurous, to be boring. And in doing so, we create boundaries
to maintain coherence. We start acting according to the somebody
weāve cultivated ourselves to be, and we can become afraid to act out of character, both in the eyes of others,
as well as to ourselves. If we truly become the authors
of our own lives, the adventure could mean to try and be someone new. To become who we would otherwise
never dare to be. To break away from the patterns and norms
that kept us in place, that kept us small. As for why, well, the existentialist philosopher
Albert Camus argued that life is inherently absurd. As weāve seen, itās full of conflicts,
limitations, and contradictions. But thereās also a freedom, or at least,
a feeling of freedom within us. Although it is not the kind of freedom that allows us
to transcend the absurdity of existence, it is one that allows us to shape
our experience of it. It is the part of us that realizes we will never truly understand our cosmic purpose, that accepts it is, for all intents and purposes,
meaningless. But it is also the part that then sees a sunset,
or a smile, a tiny glimpse of something beautiful, and feels that it is not. It is however not a matter of rationality or logic,
itās something deeper, perhaps thatās the bliss Joseph Campbell
was talking about. It is the part of us that doesnāt just want to exist,
it wants us to live. It is the part that tells us that if I have to create
my own meaning, Iām gonna create as much of it as I can. If I have to tell my own story, Iām going to fill it with beauty. It is the part of us that wants to savor every moment, be it exciting and adventurous, or quiet and mundane. That wants to experience life, all of it,
with passion, with intensity. The part that wants us, as Camus put it,
to live to the point of tears. Perhaps this is why we turn the same stories. To help give shape to our own, to enrich them. To deepen our capacity to experience
the beauty around us. To give us courage and strength. To prepare us for the hardship,
the suffering and loss. After all, thatās the only journey thatās shared
between all of us. The struggle that we all have in common. An effort that is nothing short of heroic. As much as the heroās journey has come to
be seen as an individualistic concept, a way to give shape [to] and transform our own lives. I think that, in the end, what it really does,
or should do, is connect us to each other. To make us compassionate, and patient, and
supportive towards our fellow human beings following the same journey. To my big brother George, the richest man in town! As George Bailey realizes at the end of
Itās A Wonderful Life, no one is a failure who has friends. And what better way is there to become
close to someone, if not to open yourself up without fear or anxiety, and in doing so, invite them to do the same. If we let go of all the ideas of who we should be, and instead focus on who we can be,
who want to be, it can truly be a wonderful life. Because by embracing ourselves as storytellers, but letting go of the structures that demand cohesion and limit our creativity, what we would be left with is freedom, for ourselves, and for others. Freedom to break free. Freedom to be. I thank you all for following me on this 3-part journey, and also want to extend my gratitude to ExpressVPN
for sponsoring this final episode. ExpresVPN is a virtual private network that
encrypts your online activity to secure you from data harvesters, hackers
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LSOO is the greatest YouTube channel. Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to his part 3 coming up soon.
Edit: oh damn this is it!
For JP fans, I think LSOO's video on Its a Wonderful Life is probably the perfect encapsulation of the philosophy. It's what I send to people experiencing existential chaos, and always elicits a good reaction at least.
Disclaimer: if you haven't seen Capra's masterpiece yet, watch it beforehand. Changed my life, and LSOO just pumped it up to 100