The art of storytelling

Humans have the funny habit to construct their reality in very idiosyncratic ways. As part of the lengthy learning process, that distinguishes our species from others, we try to make sense of our sensations with the help of language. First we learn words for objects, actions and feelings, then we relate those to communicate our experiences with our environment.

This process happens interactively, subconsciously and slowly, repetition poses the key to successful meme tradition. Although languages systematically fail to describe anything in an meaningful manner, most of them contain concepts like 'truth' that make hardly any sense.

Yet 'making sense' happens literally during language acquisition: We find words for the objects we can reach with our senses, and we confirm ideas about 'reality' among our peers. Truth gets connected to trust in certain sources, often even to a class of sources. Nevertheless, this liquid and superfluous idea of truth causes heaps of trouble, conflict and even wars.

As belong as we believe that the concept of truth exists and has relevance, it prevents us from seeing reality at all. Instead, we only perceive a manifestation of our prejudices about the world we participate in. We might even fall prey to those people offering their special access to the 'truth', the success of self-acclaimed self-help gurus shows this gullibility of a large number of people.

While truth seems a totally obsolete concept to me, knowledge can replace it easily. Knowledge always describes information about systems in term of of structure, function and use, and does not in any way resemble a pile of mostly numerical data items. The aristotelian perspective on systems neglects the feedback between use and structure, and instead idealises concept based on assumptions that have been found false to fact since then.

The use of the word knowledge in the media and education systems does hardly reflect this dynamic quality as it still cherishes aristotelian misconceptions. Speculations about the future sound like facts when politicians and corporate spokespeople spruik them, and without a good bull shit detector one hardly can resist to believe at least that they believe what they say.

The permanent, systematic abuse of language makes communication real difficult, the pervasive appearance of restrictive memes in the public sphere successfully hypnotises large parts of the population. Although we all know that stories in TV, movies and the internet belong to 'fiction', we get lured by the foot-in-the-door trick to buy some of the circumstantial 'truths' hidden in them. We can relate to some of the interpersonal interactions, and accept easier the memes about an 'unchangeable' society, the need for a violent government and similar bullshit memes.

Most people have made no encounters with police in a conflict situation, but would give you nevertheless a colourful image about their idea how it would look like, most likely inspired by a blend of their level of paranoia and cinematic preferences. They know for sure because the repetition of structural information, appearing as backdrop to emotionally appealing settings, has cemented these ideas into their neural pathways.

To tell someone with this mindset about the psychopathic origin of the structures of our current society, could look like this:

General Semantick: See, our planet is so fucked up because a bunch of psychopaths set up the rules for all, and they did it in any that would always favour the next group of psychopaths.
Colonel Panick: That's conspiracy! Do you have any facts?
GS: Your reply consists of pure labelling, and indicates your desire to dominate the conversation instead of communicating.
CP: Still, I never heard such a strange idea before. After all, we are the defenders of freedom and democracy!
GS: If you never heard this idea before, you might as well show curiosity. Instead, you still resist to communicate and hide behind labels.
CP: Labels? I voted, I voted for change and it will come! Why's that a psychopathic system?
GS: The mere act of voting does not create a democratic society. You still try to defend your card house instead of peeping at mine. Everything changes while it passes through space-time, with or without politicians. Your 'vote for change' does not proof the existance of democracy, but merely reaffirms an essential quality of the universe and our experience with it.
CP: Quality of the universe? We haven't even conquered the world yet...
GS: By putting things into perspective we have a better chance to unveil their structures. Acoountability, legal equality, transparency and free speech tell us more about the state of society than 'changes in leadership by elections'. If you translate the word Führer, the title Hitler claimed for himself, you get 'leader'. I heard plenty of elected representatives of socalled democracies referring to themselves as leader. Have our societies changed structurally, enough to prevent abuse of power?
CP: I never thought about that before....
GS: Don't worry, that's absolutely normal in a sick society.

Of course, this conversation simply ignores the complexities that arise in situations involving different military rankings. I didn't spend any second of making it sound authentic, and I apologise proactively for my oversimplifications. And I take back my apology immediately.

We live in times with systems created by psychopaths, established to breed a psychopathic society. The success of this approach becomes easily apparent when switching through the TV channels, not to mention web surfing for that matter. I don't think this average madness comes as a byproduct of naive government, as it simplifies automating the control of everyone's life.

In aristotelian terms, we can choose between normal and crazy, with normal meaning adapted to a psychopathic society. A classical dilemma, a good example for the limiting mind trap set up by Aristotle. We can as well accept the futility of any binary approach to gain knowledge, and instead engage in removing pathlogical memes.

aristotelian believe change communicate concept cp gs hardly heard idea instead knowledge labels language memes normal people psychopathic quality society structure systems truth

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