Is “folklore mindset” nihilist if you believe that stories are valuable, but are still trying to figure out what stories are for?
Conversation
folklore mindset: evaluating cultural items that are “told for true” in literary and cultural terms, independent of their truth value
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I don't understand what "told for true" means here.
This idea sounds Taleban.
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it’s one way folklorists distinguish legends from fairytales - legends are told as if true, meant to be believed (like news stories)
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Ah so "told for true" is a sort of term of art for an assumed folkloric consensus that everybody politely pretends to buy?
No that does not sound nihilist to me. More like a sort of "don't think too much" faith.
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Is that in reference to participating in "told for true" stories themselves, or to taking an ethnomethodologically emic stance toward said "told for true" items.
The former seems non-nihilistic. The latter maybe non-nihilistic at a meta-level, and mostly pragmatic at story level
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I could answer that better if I felt like it was an available option to not participate in them!
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Sure it is. When foreigners intrude on a local told-for-true culture, they easily switch to explaining it in more explicitly symbolic/fictional terms. The suspension of disbelief is shallow and kinda instrumental. Like Huizenga’s play.
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Might be interesting to think of legal proceedings in these terms. People play-acting in silly wigs versus perpetuating a told-for-true judicial folklore


