#55

We are (and become) the stories we tell ourselves.

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live… We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience." — Joan Didion, The White Album 

This email is our fifty-fifth letter together. You may have been on the mailing list right at the beginning, or joined us six months ago, or be foetal and signed up just the other day. Since we're over a year old, it's about time to consider why I write these and why (perhaps) you read them.

We each have stories upon which we rely, and entire cultures are knit from rich narrative wool. Any sense of patriotism, professionalism or hooliganism is an ode to a fabricated identity—an identity founded on stories that people tell one another. 

One story that I stumbled upon just over a year ago, but I return to every day, is that we are (and become) the stories we tell ourselves. A person who tells themselves they are happy becomes happy (or 'is' happy). Similarly, the luckiest people are those who consider themselves such. To some extent, it's psycho-cybernetics (although I did never finish the book—and won't ever admit to reading it). It's a tale of ambitions manifesting and a nice thing to believe. Moreover, it's reflexivity: Where the actors in the show shape the show's conclusion and the characters in the book decide where the chapter goes.

As the opening quote tells us, "we tell ourselves stories in order to live". This sentence is as accurate as I've ever read. In the last year, when I'm feeling particularly adrift, I suffer Vertigo.

Vertigo? Milan Kundera describes the sensation in The Unbearable Lightness of Being: "Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer Vertigo. What is Vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

At those Vertigo times, I sit down and write. As my pen presses the paper, the anxiety of existence evaporates. I am present, lucid, and promptly storytelling—creating the 'why' and the 'how' to my own story. Without writing, and to a similar extent without writing to you, I would fail to extinguish this anxiety.

Before this century, the stories we held were given to us by religion or our culture. This situation, however, has changed as we enter into the age of the individual (or perhaps, individual story). In the magnificent debates between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson, AD Harris, the chair, comments that we live at a strange time. For the first time in our species' history, tens (hundreds?) of millions of people have stopped believing in their god. Me included. 

Undoubtedly, religion had a formative role in the development of our society. Religion offers moral frameworks and answers to the great questions unanswered by science: What is our purpose? What is out there? What happens after we die? Without her religion, is the individual more alone than ever? The individual's answers to these questions are (while equally wrong) either less compelling, more confused, or prone to distortion. Sam Harris says of religion: "They're guiding fictions. But they're still fictions." Jordan Peterson returns, "They're guiding fictions. But they're still guiding." More of us are living without a guide. We are, therefore, left to come up with our own stories. And I believe these stories are important because we become them.

The rise (or isolation) of the individual, which The Sovereign Individual paints as an image of utopia, is, I think, the most important trend of our time. Individuals are said to be rising out of the chains of citizenship. This freedom (some say) will launch our societies into a new epoch of peace and economic boom. As we discussed back in August and September, the rise of the individual coincided with the decline of the relative power of the nation-state. 

But as you will recognise, an individual is not saved from being independent and alone. For many, the opposite may well be true. Erich Fromm realised in Escape from Freedom that "Primary bonds [read: religion and culture] once severed cannot be mended; once paradise is lost, man cannot return to it." He goes on:

"Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless. This isolation is unbearable and the alternatives he is confronted with are either to escape from the burden of his freedom into new dependencies and submission, or to advance to the full realisation of positive freedom which is based upon the uniqueness and individuality of man." 

On the political spectrum, the rise in desperate nationalistic sentiment may very well be due to our fear of being alone. Fromm again: "Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation." Fromm believes that circumstances, where primary bonds do not unify stories, allow nationalism and radicalism to bloom—as if people will accept anything over being alone. 

Therefore, we become the stories we tell ourselves, and those stories are increasingly told only by ourselves because we have lost the primary bonds. Our stories don't come from community or religion but from our lived experiences or the books we happen to read.

This logic then begs the question: What stories to pick? Which stories do we choose to parrot on about and become? And which do we let slip through our fingers? We can't carry them all without going mad. Our identities, which increasingly we form on an individual basis, must be constructed from something. And this is why I write. 

Writing down what I think helps me understand what I believe, and it fills in the blanks in the logic of my existence. Each line fills in a "why" to why I exist, but also—because of reflexivity—alters the destination. In June, we discussed Andrew Carnegie, who himself writes, "If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes." Writing creates the destination.

Moreover, writing helps to point out the holes in our rationalisation. As we discussed in May, in Anthony de Mello's book Awareness, he tells a story from the Blitz. A man, carrying an unexploded German bomb in a canvas bag, catches a double-decker bus in London. As he's sitting down, the conductor asks what's in the bag. "It's an unexploded bomb," says the man, "I found in my garden and am taking it to the police". The conductor responds, "Well, Sir, you don't want to have that on your lap! Best put it under your seat." De Mello's point is: Even when we know things aren't right, we rarely confront the underlying problems and get to the truth. For me, these emails help me to face the inconsistencies of my life.

We each spend our lives telling each other stories about ourselves. In doing so, we invent the futures we want. We reconcile disaster and fuckery with explanations that give us reason to be here. When faced with the overwhelming evidence that there is no meaning behind anything (how random is it that we are here in the first place?!), we dedicate most of our lives refuting this truth. "I fought for these reasons", says the soldier. "I gave because I saw the suffering of others", says the nun.

I'll happily admit that this letter is me prescribing reasons for the randomness of life as I blindly navigate the mangroves of existence. This is our fifty-fifth letter together, but I hope we get to our fifty-fifth year, too.

Live well,

Hector

PS. I’m in London w/c 22 November - let’s have tea.