Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Sunday, May 26, 2019

The Truth

This is an interesting take on why fiction is often more powerful than truth. Without having spent too much time delving into the argument, my surface qualification is that narrative is more important than truth. The story need not be true or false, but it must be a good story.  We've all been around people who can't tell a story without qualifying it and hedging and insisting on getting the facts right.  "Sally said...no, wait, it was Sarah...Sally came later to the conversation." Facts aren't important to a story, but that doesn't mean that "truth" in the broadest sense doesn't play a role in good narratives. If a story "feels" false, it won't land.  Take the end of Game of Thrones as a fiery example.

We tell ourselves stories to make sense of a chaotic world.

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