The Story Is Key
Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about human beings is their devotion to stories. I don't just mean campfire stories, fairy tales, myths and legends, though those are included. We tell ourselves stories, large and small, moment to moment, throughout our lives. Our minds practically demand it.
What we're trying to do is fit our experiences, the raw facts and sensations of our daily lives, into some sort of larger structure. If we succeed, we'll say things like "that explains it" or "now it makes sense." Our entire mind, both the linear, logical side and the creative, big-picture side, actively participates in the process. The story, predetermined as it generally is, even acts as a filter, so that some of the input may be discarded, if it would conflict with the story, would not "make sense". Of course, the story can also change to adapt to new information that cannot be ignored, but less readily because of the filtering effect.
Clearly, that makes it important to be aware of the stories one tells oneself, if only to allow a more deliberate selection of material. Such conscious examination may also make the story more realistic, closer to the observed facts, but only if we choose that direction. One can just as easily delude oneself, if desired. The story itself is neither good nor evil; as with most psychic facts, it depends more on how one uses them.
In recent history, for instance, people have become more and more interested in scientific explanations of the world around us. The analytic, logical side of the mind has found a way to take its story (called a hypothesis) and test it more or less impartially against reality. Then the story is adapted to the results and the process is repeated. We all know of the tremendous advances in, well, story-telling, that this process has given us. For instance, you're reading my writing as a result of some of those advances.
But in the process, we've more or less ignored the big-picture side of the story, literally. Though we have uncovered many layers of "explanation", from sub-atomic particles to observations of the universe, we have yet to find anything fundamental, anything that really explains anything. It's still all "because of something else". There isn't any reason to believe we will, either. There are certainly people who hope we will, but in some ways that's comparable to the "insanity of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
Perhaps part of the problem is that the stories we're focused on are exclusively on the outside. Even when we think about our own thinking (what 'finding my way' calls "brain stories"), we're really looking at ourselves as if from outside, as thinking machines. Maybe at some level we are thinking machines, but it's an old cliché that we'll never be able to understand everything about our brains using only our brains. It would be like trying to open a crate using the crowbar packed inside.
And maybe that's what that other half of our minds is for, the one that's good at big pictures. It's worth a look, maybe.
At least, that's my story.
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