One of the most common and fundamental forms of aesthetic experience is when life takes clear shape as a story with a narrative logic, and not just a series of unrelated events. This story can relate to the pursuit of a goal; following a chosen, imposed, or slowly revealed path; confronting a conflict or adversity; solving a problem or uncovering an unknown; or discovering oneself and those around us. Whether the story is one we impose or discover ourselves or is one imposed by others is a key factor for the potential degree of aesthetic reward. The question is, does a life-story just disguise a more mundane truth--that life is really just episodic, a series of disconnected moments?
We are surrounded by stories. Parents read and tell stories, friends and family tell stories, we tell stories to others and to ourselves. TV and movies show us stories (nearly 10,000 movies each year are released), and hundreds of thousands of works of written fiction are published each year. Stories come in many other forms as well--in songs, in poetry, and in the openings and asides of good essays and editorials. News is stories--who, what, when, where, how, and tabloid news fills some heads with morality tales of the faulty rich and famous. Good public speakers include stories to help make their points more accessible and less academic. Commercials sell products by telling mini-stories about their benefits. Stories are fundamental to communication, and in fact, to knowing and understanding. We crave stories, and we create them, large or small, each day. But what is behind this craving?
Even though we intuitively know a story when we are presented one, it is probably useful to have a definition of a story, or more generally, a narrative. Like aesthetic experiences in general, they are more pervasive than you might think. Kenneth Burke (1945) attempted a basic definition of a narrative in his work to create a Grammar of Motives. His premise and conclusion was that a narrative is fundamentally a way of attributing motives to actions, and that the result always contains the following five components, at least implicitly:
An ACT: What took place in thought or deed.
A SCENE: The background of the act, the context or situation in which it occurred.
An AGENT: The person, or protagonist, who performed the act and received its repercussions.
AGENCY: The means or instruments of the act, how it was undertaken.
A PURPOSE: The reason, or reasons, why the act was undertaken.
The act is the WHAT, and the rest help to demonstrate motive. This brilliantly simple analysis of a narrative’s components describes almost any narrative, from the story of why we were late to work yesterday, what we chose to cook for dinner, our choice of careers, how we met our significant other, or the complex interwoven stories to be found within a great novel like Anna Karenina. We can use this five-part analysis to reflect on our own lives to help us understand our motivations to shape our self-image and future actions.
Pioneering cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner, who calls the self “the greatest work of art we ever produce” (Bruner, 2002), describes a similar set of qualities of a story, but his are more closely related to traditional literary theory: (a) a cast of characters who are free agents with (b) expectations about the normal state of the world, confronted by (c) a breach of this expected state. The story continues with (d) their efforts to cope or come to terms with this breach, and (e) an outcome or resolution. Note that Bruner adds the element of conflict, a breach of the normal, that must be overcome. This is the element that elevates a simple account of events to a real story, something worth paying attention to, an aesthetic experience, perhaps. But most interestingly, and most importantly, Bruner adds that the final component is (f) a narrator, a reason for narrating, and a particular perspective on the story. The narration, or the act of telling a story, is another layer of motive on top of the story itself, and can in fact can contain its own story: Why was the story told? What is the context of the telling? Who it telling it? How is the telling constructed? Given this final quality in particular, we are compelled to ask why we tell the stories in our lives to ourselves and those around us.
Assuming we agree that we all do tell stories about our lives, the question remains whether is this a good thing. Is life a naturally a story, or is this quality artificial, perhaps even detrimental to our ability to experience life for what it truly is? Is viewing life as a story simply a form of lying, hiding from the truth, or wishful thinking? Can a storied life bind us, make us prisoners of it? Can it set us up for disappointment when the bar it sets is too high for the constraints of our situations or abilities? The answer to these questions can on occasion be a definite Yes. How detrimental a life story can be depends on our active engagement in the process of telling it (accepting that we are, in fact, Bruner’s narrator when it comes to our own stories). It depends on our flexibility in allowing ourselves to grow with the unfolding story rather than remain closed-minded, and our willingness to actively reshape the story components while it also unfolds on its own.
Bad outcomes can result from sticking to a story. Atrocities are conducted based on the self-convincing stories that justify them. Lives can be ruined due to obsessive adherence to dangerous self-stories. Bruner outlines the famous and particular sad story of Christopher McCandless, the 23-year-old who died of starvation in the Alaska wilderness (see the book and film, Into the Wild) after convincing himself that he should live in complete self-sufficiency away from the world of people. His inspiration was a story he derived from the writings of American author Henry David Thoreau, whose call to “simplify, simplify” led him to isolate himself to the edge of Walden Pond, a full 2.6 kilometers from the town of Concord, Massachusetts--far enough to inspire an important philosophical book, but not self-destructive by any means. Much more common negative self-stories are those of victimization, low self-worth, or an unbreakable streak of bad luck. The success many achieve by practicing meditation stems from its goal to help us let go of our stories, if even for only 20 minutes at a time, as a way to relax and re-energize, and release new creative energy that might otherwise remain locked up in a fruitless self-story.
However, a life-story can be extremely positive too. It can be the driver behind our goals and hard work, our rewarding relationships, our connections to life, society, and nature. The narrative basis of ethics has been discussed by both Bruner (2002) and John Dewey (Fesmire, 2003). Bruner points out the intertwined nature of stories and law, the prevalence of stories about courtroom drama, and how stories are the basis for legal decisions, not just coded laws, because for each potential infraction a motive must be assigned. Dewey spoke our use of “dramatic rehearsal,” how we construct a story of potential outcomes to help us make moral decisions (or perhaps any decision for that matter). Stories are serious business. They are not just for entertainment.
As for the question posed in the title of this post, Is life an unfolding story?, most of those who have ponder it have concluded positively that our fundamental experience of life is founded in narrative. Some have even proposed that the near universal grammar of our languages, with their subject-verb-object structures, and the myriad ways of modifying those with adjective and adverb phrases, show that we think in narrative terms. Story is an important way of knowing, not just a pleasant veneer we impose. As Bruner (2004) puts it, “There is no such thing as life itself.” We naturally discern a narrative structure in the events we experience, attribute motives, and take actions based on those motives. Humans seem particularly good at this, but the famous four-year Gombe Chimpanzee War suggests that apes also maintain a historical, narrative view of their experience, and act on it.
This life story seems to have two levels (Breen & McLean, 2017). One is a generalized, master narrative that is culturally based, and which exists as a standard to which we measure the value of our own lives. There are many of these master narratives we might relate to--one about redemption for a past misdeed, or one regarding rising from rags to riches, for example. The personal narrative is the second level, and it is based on our lived experience interpreted through or in opposition to the master narrative. The master narratives can be seen as forming the basis of fictional genres as well. How much agency we assert in confronting master narratives is a good part of how well we use our aesthetic potential. Do we follow blindly, or do we take personal responsibility for composing a meaningful story of our own?
However, some have claimed that life as a story is not just a dangerous idea, but also incorrect. Strawson (2004) argued that life is in fact episodic, and that its narrative qualities are something that we (some more than others) impose on it. After all, a story does not account for the little bits of life that take up so much of our time--waiting for the train, having your teeth cleaned, filing taxes, washing the dishes. How can one feel part of a story while enduring these? So perhaps a story is just a facade imposed on the flow of mundane occurrences and habitual actions.
A life without a story is hard to imagine, if not frightening. Freeman (2017) describes his mother’s decline due to Alzheimer's disease, and the revealing stages of its effects. At first, the confusion caused by her growing inability to connect events was terribly frustrating. Her own self-story was becoming disassembled, no longer was she the independent, self-sufficient person she had been (she could no longer live up to the master narrative). Then, as the disease progressed, she became more peacefully accepting of the moment, which was all she had. Freeman even recounts his feeling of envy in her ability to enjoy simple pleasures, the sights and sounds around her, without the clutter of needs to think about. Finally, however, her state collapsed into one of near constant terror. She was unable to understand where she was or why. Not only was the master narrative gone, but any degree of personal narrative had become impossible. The aesthetic rewards of creating a life story appear to be not only rewards, but necessary to our being.
---------------------------
Breen, A.V. & McLean, K. C., 2017. The intersection of personal and master narratives. In Schiff, B., McKim, A.E., and Patron.S. (Eds), Life and narrative: The risks and responsibilities of storying experience. Oxford University Press.
Bruner, J. (2002) Making stories: Law, literature, life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Bruner, J. (2004) Life as narrative. Social Research, 71(3), 691-710. (Originally published in 1987.)
Burke, K. (1945/1969) A grammar of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fesmire, S. (2003) John Dewey and Moral Imagination. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Freeman, M. (2017) Narrative at the limits (Or: What is “life” really like?). In Schiff, B., McKim, A.E., and Patron.S. (Eds), Life and narrative: The risks and responsibilities of storying experience. Oxford University Press.
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| Photo by Patrick Parrish |
We are surrounded by stories. Parents read and tell stories, friends and family tell stories, we tell stories to others and to ourselves. TV and movies show us stories (nearly 10,000 movies each year are released), and hundreds of thousands of works of written fiction are published each year. Stories come in many other forms as well--in songs, in poetry, and in the openings and asides of good essays and editorials. News is stories--who, what, when, where, how, and tabloid news fills some heads with morality tales of the faulty rich and famous. Good public speakers include stories to help make their points more accessible and less academic. Commercials sell products by telling mini-stories about their benefits. Stories are fundamental to communication, and in fact, to knowing and understanding. We crave stories, and we create them, large or small, each day. But what is behind this craving?
 |
| Photo by Parker Knight, Creative Commons 2.0 |
Even though we intuitively know a story when we are presented one, it is probably useful to have a definition of a story, or more generally, a narrative. Like aesthetic experiences in general, they are more pervasive than you might think. Kenneth Burke (1945) attempted a basic definition of a narrative in his work to create a Grammar of Motives. His premise and conclusion was that a narrative is fundamentally a way of attributing motives to actions, and that the result always contains the following five components, at least implicitly:
An ACT: What took place in thought or deed.
A SCENE: The background of the act, the context or situation in which it occurred.
An AGENT: The person, or protagonist, who performed the act and received its repercussions.
AGENCY: The means or instruments of the act, how it was undertaken.
A PURPOSE: The reason, or reasons, why the act was undertaken.
The act is the WHAT, and the rest help to demonstrate motive. This brilliantly simple analysis of a narrative’s components describes almost any narrative, from the story of why we were late to work yesterday, what we chose to cook for dinner, our choice of careers, how we met our significant other, or the complex interwoven stories to be found within a great novel like Anna Karenina. We can use this five-part analysis to reflect on our own lives to help us understand our motivations to shape our self-image and future actions.
Pioneering cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner, who calls the self “the greatest work of art we ever produce” (Bruner, 2002), describes a similar set of qualities of a story, but his are more closely related to traditional literary theory: (a) a cast of characters who are free agents with (b) expectations about the normal state of the world, confronted by (c) a breach of this expected state. The story continues with (d) their efforts to cope or come to terms with this breach, and (e) an outcome or resolution. Note that Bruner adds the element of conflict, a breach of the normal, that must be overcome. This is the element that elevates a simple account of events to a real story, something worth paying attention to, an aesthetic experience, perhaps. But most interestingly, and most importantly, Bruner adds that the final component is (f) a narrator, a reason for narrating, and a particular perspective on the story. The narration, or the act of telling a story, is another layer of motive on top of the story itself, and can in fact can contain its own story: Why was the story told? What is the context of the telling? Who it telling it? How is the telling constructed? Given this final quality in particular, we are compelled to ask why we tell the stories in our lives to ourselves and those around us.
Assuming we agree that we all do tell stories about our lives, the question remains whether is this a good thing. Is life a naturally a story, or is this quality artificial, perhaps even detrimental to our ability to experience life for what it truly is? Is viewing life as a story simply a form of lying, hiding from the truth, or wishful thinking? Can a storied life bind us, make us prisoners of it? Can it set us up for disappointment when the bar it sets is too high for the constraints of our situations or abilities? The answer to these questions can on occasion be a definite Yes. How detrimental a life story can be depends on our active engagement in the process of telling it (accepting that we are, in fact, Bruner’s narrator when it comes to our own stories). It depends on our flexibility in allowing ourselves to grow with the unfolding story rather than remain closed-minded, and our willingness to actively reshape the story components while it also unfolds on its own.
Bad outcomes can result from sticking to a story. Atrocities are conducted based on the self-convincing stories that justify them. Lives can be ruined due to obsessive adherence to dangerous self-stories. Bruner outlines the famous and particular sad story of Christopher McCandless, the 23-year-old who died of starvation in the Alaska wilderness (see the book and film, Into the Wild) after convincing himself that he should live in complete self-sufficiency away from the world of people. His inspiration was a story he derived from the writings of American author Henry David Thoreau, whose call to “simplify, simplify” led him to isolate himself to the edge of Walden Pond, a full 2.6 kilometers from the town of Concord, Massachusetts--far enough to inspire an important philosophical book, but not self-destructive by any means. Much more common negative self-stories are those of victimization, low self-worth, or an unbreakable streak of bad luck. The success many achieve by practicing meditation stems from its goal to help us let go of our stories, if even for only 20 minutes at a time, as a way to relax and re-energize, and release new creative energy that might otherwise remain locked up in a fruitless self-story.
However, a life-story can be extremely positive too. It can be the driver behind our goals and hard work, our rewarding relationships, our connections to life, society, and nature. The narrative basis of ethics has been discussed by both Bruner (2002) and John Dewey (Fesmire, 2003). Bruner points out the intertwined nature of stories and law, the prevalence of stories about courtroom drama, and how stories are the basis for legal decisions, not just coded laws, because for each potential infraction a motive must be assigned. Dewey spoke our use of “dramatic rehearsal,” how we construct a story of potential outcomes to help us make moral decisions (or perhaps any decision for that matter). Stories are serious business. They are not just for entertainment.
 |
| By Unknown -
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042462/1905-01-01/ed-1/seq-4/ (Los Angeles Herald), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36561822 |
As for the question posed in the title of this post, Is life an unfolding story?, most of those who have ponder it have concluded positively that our fundamental experience of life is founded in narrative. Some have even proposed that the near universal grammar of our languages, with their subject-verb-object structures, and the myriad ways of modifying those with adjective and adverb phrases, show that we think in narrative terms. Story is an important way of knowing, not just a pleasant veneer we impose. As Bruner (2004) puts it, “There is no such thing as life itself.” We naturally discern a narrative structure in the events we experience, attribute motives, and take actions based on those motives. Humans seem particularly good at this, but the famous four-year Gombe Chimpanzee War suggests that apes also maintain a historical, narrative view of their experience, and act on it.
This life story seems to have two levels (Breen & McLean, 2017). One is a generalized, master narrative that is culturally based, and which exists as a standard to which we measure the value of our own lives. There are many of these master narratives we might relate to--one about redemption for a past misdeed, or one regarding rising from rags to riches, for example. The personal narrative is the second level, and it is based on our lived experience interpreted through or in opposition to the master narrative. The master narratives can be seen as forming the basis of fictional genres as well. How much agency we assert in confronting master narratives is a good part of how well we use our aesthetic potential. Do we follow blindly, or do we take personal responsibility for composing a meaningful story of our own?
However, some have claimed that life as a story is not just a dangerous idea, but also incorrect. Strawson (2004) argued that life is in fact episodic, and that its narrative qualities are something that we (some more than others) impose on it. After all, a story does not account for the little bits of life that take up so much of our time--waiting for the train, having your teeth cleaned, filing taxes, washing the dishes. How can one feel part of a story while enduring these? So perhaps a story is just a facade imposed on the flow of mundane occurrences and habitual actions.
 |
| Photo by Patrick Parrish |
---------------------------
Breen, A.V. & McLean, K. C., 2017. The intersection of personal and master narratives. In Schiff, B., McKim, A.E., and Patron.S. (Eds), Life and narrative: The risks and responsibilities of storying experience. Oxford University Press.
Bruner, J. (2002) Making stories: Law, literature, life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Bruner, J. (2004) Life as narrative. Social Research, 71(3), 691-710. (Originally published in 1987.)
Burke, K. (1945/1969) A grammar of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fesmire, S. (2003) John Dewey and Moral Imagination. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Freeman, M. (2017) Narrative at the limits (Or: What is “life” really like?). In Schiff, B., McKim, A.E., and Patron.S. (Eds), Life and narrative: The risks and responsibilities of storying experience. Oxford University Press.
