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@ooojhot

Okay. Let's unpack this. I'm threading in

@iwelsh

and @ParadoxNow_ as they replied to me and I think replying to them as well would be good.

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and

@ParadoxNow_ talks about how storytelling can be a means for transformative growth, and how stories usually have some hidden truth.

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and

supports and underpins this view with his own experience & example. I think I agree with both of those things, as stated.

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and

What I'm struggling with here, is that it seems especially hard not just to get people to abandon stories (bad, for reasons I'll touch on),-

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and

- but that getting any traction at all in changing the thrust of those stories is nigh-impossible, even with empathy & opportunity.

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and

Storytelling is inextricably linked with survival. Without a story to tell, people die. No meaning -> no reason to live. No conflict there.

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and

So we need stories and I'm not saying we should get rid of those, just so we're clear. I don't think that's desirable.

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and

there's a point at which it may desirable to ditch all. But 99.99% aren't there. Heck, I doubt I am.

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and

Even if we ditched conscious stories about ourselves and others, I suspect stories/models are the underpinning of our thinking capabilities.

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It may be a baseline unit of sensory processing, but one, much like fear, that you don't need to be attached to per se.

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I feel like my own attachment to the stories (yet I'm still telling them) seems to be approaching 0, which makes them oddly hydralike.

7:35 AM · Aug 29, 2017Twitter Web Client

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and

My stories are constantly dying and forming new branches. They seem to do that without issue, keeping internal consistency remarkably well.

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and

Sometimes they retcon things, sometimes they rewrite them entirely, mostly they leave them the same and append some commentary to them.

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