A followup to the "what genre is your life?" question

[xiphias]

I realized something else about myself, which that question brought up.

See, as you probably can tell, I've got a lot of really, really interesting friends, with really, really interesting lives. I mean, even my friends with what might SOUND like ordinary lives tend to live them, and conceptualize them, in really interesting ways.

And so, I tend to look at people's lives the way I look at art. As stories.

I really hope this doesn't offend any of you. When you go through tough times in your lives, I'm genuinely sympathetic for you -- but I'm also noticing and appreciating the dramatic and story twists in it. It's not in any way detachment, or lack-of-caring, or ANYTHING like that -- but I see it in terms of "story" -- I'm seeing you as a protagonist, as well as a friend.

As you might expect, this has effects on my philosophy and theology.

"Why do bad things happen to good people?"
"Dramatic irony."

Deep in my heart, I believe that. Horrible things happen to people because the fundamental nature of life is "story", and "story" involves loss, pain, tragedy, horror. That stories aren't guaranteed happy endings.

And I truly rejoice when my friends DO have happy twists in their stories. And I truly feel it when my friends have tragedies. But they both make sense to me, because that's what stories are.

Does that make sense? Is that disturbing? Is it offensive?

Comments

[temima.livejournal.com]

I often wonder if God is Rod Serling myself.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

Disturbing.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

I don't really have the sense of other people's lives as narrative so much, but I do get it with my own.

Like recently: The pregnancy went very smoothly, labor & birth went pretty smoothly, initial baby care went very smoothly... and I started to get this sense like We're being set up. Something awful and tragic will happen now. Probably the baby will die. And then the baby started crying more often and the sense of impending doom went away, which as tradeoffs go I can live with.

I am totally stealing "Dramatic irony" as it is obviously the correct answer to that question.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Krishnamurti was asked why there is evil in the world: "To thicken the plot."

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

This makes perfect sense to me. I am currently trying hard to maintain the same detached attitude with regard to my own life and situation.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'm absolutely NOT detached from this, any more than I'm detached from a book I'm stuck in.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

We're story-telling creatures; we try to make the events of the world string together into narratives. It's comforting, and it's usually useful, except when we over-apply it or get the stories wrong.

If you knew someone whose life was more or less without tragedy, would it break your mental model of the world?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

No, of course not. My own life is more or less without tragedy. It changes the nature of the story, but not the fact of the story.

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

I think that was the point of clarification I was seeking from this entry. Because initially it reads to me as terribly detached, in the most unfortunate of ways--superimposing an overarching structure instead of one that is random, and reframing your connections to other people in terms of their use value to you rather than mutuality.

Nevertheless, this post is deeply troubling. Books are stories you finish and shut before moving back into your regular life. I certainly enjoy my time spent in and with text, as seen by my choice of profession, but my life is not a story for your consumption. The most valuable memories I have cannot be represented in something so limited and subjective as text--nor should they be.

Frankly, knowing my posts are read like this makes me think seriously about whether or not you could be trusted.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It's not necessarily text. It could be music, dance, movie, or whatever.

I understand it in terms of narrative. I perceive life as story.

I don't have a "regular life" that's outside of everyone else's story to move back within. My story is a story about stories. I perceive myself as a secondary, supporting character in other people's lives.

I don't know that this makes me more or less trustworthy. I consider myself a character in your story, and in the stories of everyone else I know.

I don't consider everyone else's lives to be entertainment -- but I do consider them to be art.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I was about to say this, but less neatly. Narrative is built into the framework of how humans generally percieve events, from what I know of psychology. It's not actually built into those events, from what I know of causality, but it's part of how [most of] us see them.

[rymrytr.livejournal.com]

I find it reassuring, that you know, understand, feel and/or comprehend what I struggle to say, in part or in whole.

To live within a story of any kind and not be recognized, leaves one with a vacancy that can only be filed by the emotions of others. Whether the reader understands all the nuances of my story or not, I take succor from that, which is understood.

We humans are communal beings. We need and want understanding, companionship and tactile interaction.

[erin-c-1978.livejournal.com]

Neither disturbing or offensive (particularly since you specified that you don't see it as entertainment, but art, and art is IMPORTANT, dammit) -- quirky, maybe? Actually, I kind of like the thought. I figure we probably haven't interacted enough for you to be able to see my life as a story, but the idea that it might make sense to SOMEONE -- that it has some kind of internal structure, however obscure -- is comforting, actually. Each person contains a universe; it would be nice if it made sense.

[kiya]

brooksmoses and I used to comment upon the whims of the scriptwriters.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

I find it disturbing that people do find this disturbing or offensive. It's pretty much exactly how I see things, and it hadn't occurred to me that it would piss people off or make them distrustful.

What do people see their stories as, if not stories?

I don't believe dramatic structure is the "reason" anything happens to people (though I do think dramatic structure has a lot to do with the way people experience and remember life), but ... I think it's as good an explanation as any, and a lot more satisfying than some.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

...this isn't normal?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what "normal" is. I do remember the panel that you held at that con asking the question "How do people who DON'T perceive the world through story perceive the world?"

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Would you be interested in elaborating? Obviously, if you don't want to, that's cool, too.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Makes sense, not disturbing, not offensive. djm4 and I used to joke about narrativium; it ceased to be a joke for me some time ago.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

reframing your connections to other people in terms of their use value to you rather than mutuality.

FWIW, I don't think those overtones of "your life is a story FOR ME TO CONSUME" are at all present in what xiphias was saying. He was speaking about an archetypal narrative structure, a philosophical sort of construct.

Also FWIW, I rank xiphias among the most empathic and trustworthy people of my acquaintance.

[snippy]

I am afraid of the consequences I attribute to thinking of other people's lives as narrative or art of other kinds. I am afraid that when they look at my life, the justifications I use to keep going rather than give up will look like self-serving lies, and they will judge me harshly as a loser. I am afraid that the useful perspective I have, that bad things happen randomly and you have to work to add good to your life, will be defeated by the sensible analyses smarter people than I apply to my life.

I have often said over the years that what my life is most like is a soap opera: weekly catastrophes mostly out of my control, some very few due to bad decisions on my part. My life (like most people's) would not be believable as a fiction, because fiction has to make sense and my life doesn't make sense; because fiction rarely tolerates extremes of likelihood and my life is full of extraordinary chains of events; because fiction has a resolution to the problems presented by the plot and my life will not "resolve," it will end at my death.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

We already had this conversation once this summer.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Great art is rarely readily accessible in all its subtleties to the uninitiated, however sensible and smart they may be.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

It is, honestly, mildly offensive to me, but only in the same way and to the same extent that it is when my religious friends believe "everything happens for a reason", the implication in both cases being that it is somehow okay, worthwhile, redeemed, when bad things happen because they have this higher purpose. Or at least that it is, if not okay, at least better than if they had happened without that purpose.

Whereas to me, if that were true, it would be much worse.

I love stories, but they are only ethical to me because the characters in them don't really exist. The idea that anyone or anything would deliberately make art out of sentient beings' pain is, to me, appalling.

Of course, something can be appalling and still be true. And you are entitled to find it comforting, for yourself. But if you find it a comfort when faced with other people's pain, and you don't have reason to think those other people would agree with you -- that, I think, at least borders on problematic, to accept a consolation on their behalf that they don't, and perhaps even would consider an aggravation.

And if it's not deliberate, then it's not art, to me - not story, just sand weathering or drift wood or some other random action where the only pattern is in the eye of the beholder.

I have no problem if the beholder can get some bittersweet comfort out of appreciating the aesthetics of what they behold, but at that point I think we need to be clear that it is the beholder that is finding the pattern in events, not the pattern that is shaping the events.

I see faces in coat hooks because humans are programmed to recognize faces; that doesn't mean the reason there's a screw in the middle of the coat hook is because an essential need for noseness called it there.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It is, honestly, mildly offensive to me, but only in the same way and to the same extent that it is when my religious friends believe "everything happens for a reason", the implication in both cases being that it is somehow okay, worthwhile, redeemed, when bad things happen because they have this higher purpose.

Yeah, that makes sense, because, well, they're functionally equivalent, so it makes sense to be bothered equivalently.