2023/07/09

메멘토 모리 - 위키백과, メメント・モリ Memento mori

메멘토 모리 - 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전

메멘토 모리

위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전.

Braque Family Triptych closed WGA.jpg

메멘토 모리(Memento mori)는 "자신의 죽음을 기억하라" 또는 "너는 반드시 죽는다는 것을 기억하라", "네가 죽을 것을 기억하라"를 뜻하는 라틴어 낱말이다.

고대 로마에서는 원정에서 승리를 거두고 개선하는 장군이 시가 행진을 할 때 노예를 시켜 행렬 뒤에서 큰소리로 외치게 했다고 한다. "메멘토 모리!" [Memento Mori!] 라틴어로 '죽음을 기억하라'라는 뜻인데, '전쟁에서 승리했다고 너무 우쭐대지 말라. 오늘은 개선 장군이지만, 너도 언젠가는 죽는다. 그러니 겸손하게 행동하라.' 이런 의미에서 생겨난 풍습이라고 한다.

한편 이러한 맥락에서 17세기 네덜란드 정물화 화풍인 바니타스화풍도 영향받았다고 여겨진다.[1]

나바호 인디언의 메멘토 모리[편집]

나바호족에게서도 이와같은 "메멘토 모리"의 이야기를 들을 수 있다. "네가 세상에 태어날 때 너는 울었지만 세상은 기뻐했으니, 네가 죽을 때 세상은 울어도 너는 기뻐할 수 있도록 그런 삶을 살아라."[2]

같이 보기[편집]

각주[편집]

  1. ↑ 17세기네델란드이야기,냉이꽃
  2. ↑ 중앙일보-[윌셔 플레이스 '메멘토 모리'의 삶,[LA중앙일보] 발행 2014/03/11 미주판 23면 ]


===

메멘트 모리

출처: 무료 백과사전 '위키피디아(Wikipedia)'
모호함 회피이 항목에서는 고대 로마 경구에 대해 설명합니다. 그 외의 용법에 대해서는 「메멘토모리」를 봐 주세요.
메멘트 모리, 로마 시대의 모자이크 ( 나폴리 국립 고고학 박물관 )

메멘트 모리 ( 라 : memento mori )는 라틴어로 " 자신이 언젠가 반드시 죽는 것을 잊지 말라" " 사람에게 방문하는 죽음을 잊지 말아라 "라는 의미의 경구. 예술 작품의 모티브로 널리 사용된다.

역사 [ 편집 ]

고대 로마 에서는 " 장군 이 개선 식 퍼레이드를 했을 때 사용되었다"고 전해진다. 장군 뒤에 서 있는 하인은 “장군은 오늘 절정에 있지만 내일은 그럴지 모르겠다”는 계명을 상기시키는 역할을 담당하고 있었다. 거기서, 사용인은 「메멘토 모리」라고 말함으로써, 그것을 생각하게 하고 있었다.

그러나 고대에서는 그다지 널리 사용되지 않았다. 당시 '메멘트 모리'의 취지는 carpe diem ( 지금을 즐길 수 있다 )는 것으로 '먹고 마시고 쾌활해지자. 우리는 내일 죽으니까'라는 조언이었다. 호라티우스 의 시에는 " Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus. "(지금은 마셔야 한다.

이 말은 그 후 기독교 세계에서 다른 의미를 갖게 되었다. 천국 , 지옥 , 영혼 의 구제가 중요시됨에 따라 죽음이 의식의 전면에 나왔기 때문이다. 기독교 예술 작품에서 "메멘토 모리"는 거의이 맥락에서 사용됩니다. 기독교 문맥에서 '메멘트 모리'는 nunc est bibendum 과는 반대의 상당히 덕화된 의미로 사용되게 되었다. 기독교인들에게는 죽음에 대한 생각은 현세에서의 즐거움, 사치, 수술이 공허하고 어리석은 것임을 강조하는 것이었고, 내세를 생각하게 하는 유인이 되었다.

교토학파 의 철학자로 알려진 타나베 모토 는 지난 밤에 '죽음의 철학(死の弁証法)'이라는 철학을 구상했다. 그 철학의 개략을 나타내기 위해 발표된 논문이 '메멘토모리'라고 제목이 붙여져 있다. 타나베는 이 논문 속에서 현대를 '죽음의 시대'로 규정했다. 근대인이 살기의 쾌락과 기쁨을 무반성에 계속 추구한 결과, 삶을 풍요롭게 할 과학기술이 오히려 인간의 삶을 위협한다는 자기모순적 사태를 초래해 현대인을 니히리즘에 몰아 넣어 라는 것이다. 타나베는 이 궁상을 타파하기 위해 메멘트 모리의 계고(「죽음을 잊지 말라」)에 되돌아가야 한다고 주장한다[1 ] .

관련 작품 [ 편집 ]

묘석
미하엘 볼게무트 ( 영어판 )　『죽음의 무도』 1493년, 판화
부패한 시체를 표현한 무덤 ( 트랜지 )은 15세기 에 유럽의 부유계급 사이에서 유행했다.
' 죽음의 무도 '는 '메멘트 모리'의 가장 알려진 주제로 사신이 가난한 사람과 부자를 똑같이 데리고 있어, 이것은 유럽 의 많은 교회에 장식되었다. 그 후의 식민지 시대의 미국 에서도 퓨리탄 의 무덤에는 날개를 가진 두개골, 해골 , 촛불을 끄는 천사가 그려져 있다.
정물화
예술에서 ' 정물화 '는 이전에 ' 바니타스 '( 라 : vanitas , '공허')로 불렸다. 정물화를 그릴 때에는 어쨌든 죽음을 연상시키는 심볼을 그려야 한다고 생각되었기 때문이다. 분명히 죽음을 의미하는 해골(두개골)이나, 보다 섬세한 표현으로서는 꽃잎이 떨어지고 있는 꽃 등이, 잘 심볼로서 사용되고 있었다.
사진
사진 이 발명되었을 때, 친족의 시체를 사진으로 기록하는 것이 유행했다.
시계
시계 는 "현세의 시간이 점점 적어져 가는 것을 나타내는 것"이라고 생각되고 있었다. 공공 시계에는, ultima forsan (의에 의하면, 마지막 <의 시간>)이나 vulnerant omnes, ultima necat (모두 상처를 입히고, 마지막은 죽는다)라는 명이 찍혀 있었다. 현대에서는 tempus fugit (광음야의 과시)의 명이 쳐지는 경우가 많다. 독일 의 아우크스부르크 에 있는 유명한 카라쿠리 시계는 '사신이 시간을 친다'는 것이다. 스코틀랜드 여왕 메리 는 은의 두개골의 형태로 표면에 호라티우스 시의 한 문장이 장식 된 큰 회중 시계를 가지고 있었다 [ 2 ] .
문학
영국 의 작품에서는 토마스 브라운 의 ' Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial '과 제레미 테일러의 '성스러운 삶, 거룩한 죽음'이 있다. 또, 토마스 그레이의 「Elegy in a Country Churchyard」나 에드워드 영의 「Night Thoughts」도, 이 테마를 다루고 있다.

각주 [ 편집 ]

[ 각주 사용법 ]
  1. ^ 타나베 모토 (1964 (1957)) "메멘토 모리", "타나베 모토 전집 제 13 권", pp165-175, 쓰쿠마 서방
  2. ^ “ 'Memento mori' watch in the form of a skull, known as the 'Mary Queen of Scots' watch. ”. Science Museum Group. 2022년 9월 11일에 확인함.

참고 문헌 [ 편집 ]

관련 항목 [ 편집 ]

외부 링크 [ 편집 ]

위키미디어 커먼즈에는 메멘트 모리와 관련된 카테고리가 있습니다.
위크셔너리 에 관련된 사전 항목이 있습니다.

===

Memento mori

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the philosophical reminder of death's inevitability. For other uses, see Memento mori (disambiguation).
The outer panels of Rogier van der Weyden's Braque Triptych (c. 1452) show the skull of the patron displayed on the inner panels. The bones rest on a brick, a symbol of his former industry and achievement.[1]
Memento mori. Gravestone inscription (1746). Edinburgh. St. Cuthbert's Churchyard.

Memento mori (Latin for 'remember that you [have to] die'[2]) is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death.[2] The concept has its roots in the philosophers of classical antiquity and Christianity, and appeared in funerary art and architecture from the medieval period onwards.

The most common motif is a skull, often accompanied by one or more bones. Often this alone is enough to evoke the trope, but other motifs such as a coffin, hourglass and wilting flowers signify the impermanence of human life. Often these function within a work whose main subject is something else, such as a portrait, but the vanitas is an artistic genre where the theme of death is the main subject. The Danse Macabre and Death personified with a scythe as the Grim Reaper are even more direct evocations of the trope.

Pronunciation and translation[edit]

In English, the phrase is typically pronounced /məˈmɛntoʊ ˈmɔːri/, mə-MEN-toh MOR-ee. It is reconstructed as ideally pronounced as something like [mɛˈmɛntoː ˈmɔriː] if spoken by an ancient Roman around the beginning of the AD era.[citation needed]

Memento is the 2nd person singular active imperative of meminī, 'to remember, to bear in mind', usually serving as a warning: "remember!" Morī is the present infinitive of the deponent verb morior 'to die'.[3]

In other words, "remember death" or "remember that you die".[4]

History of the concept[edit]

In classical antiquity[edit]

The philosopher Democritus trained himself by going into solitude and frequenting tombs.[5] Plato's Phaedo, where the death of Socrates is recounted, introduces the idea that the proper practice of philosophy is "about nothing else but dying and being dead".[6]

The Stoics of classical antiquity were particularly prominent in their use of this discipline, and Seneca's letters are full of injunctions to meditate on death.[7] The Stoic Epictetus told his students that when kissing their child, brother, or friend, they should remind themselves that they are mortal, curbing their pleasure, as do "those who stand behind men in their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal".[8] The Stoic Marcus Aurelius invited the reader (himself) to "consider how ephemeral and mean all mortal things are" in his Meditations.[9][10]

In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality or prompt him to "look behind".[11] A version of this warning is often rendered into English as "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal", for example in Fahrenheit 451.

In Judaism[edit]

Several passages in the Old Testament urge a remembrance of death. In Psalm 90, Moses prays that God would teach his people "to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom" (Ps. 90:12). In Ecclesiastes, the Preacher insists that "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart" (Eccl. 7:2). In Isaiah, the lifespan of human beings is compared to the short lifespan of grass: "The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass" (Is. 40:7).

In early Christianity[edit]

The expression memento mori developed with the growth of Christianity, which emphasized Heaven, Hell, and salvation of the soul in the afterlife.[12] The 2nd-century Christian writer Tertullian claimed that during his triumphal procession, a victorious general would have someone (in later versions, a slave) standing behind him, holding a crown over his head and whispering "Respice post te. Hominem te memento" ("Look after you [to the time after your death] and remember you're [only] a man."). Though in modern times this has become a standard trope, in fact no other ancient authors confirm this, and it may have been Christian moralizing rather than an accurate historical report.[13]

In Europe from the medieval era to the Victorian era[edit]

Dance of Death (replica of 15th-century fresco; National Gallery of Slovenia); No matter one's station in life, the Dance of Death unites all.

Christian Theology[edit]

The thought was then utilized in Christianity, whose strong emphasis on divine judgment, heaven, hell, and the salvation of the soul brought death to the forefront of consciousness.[14] In the Christian context, the memento mori acquires a moralizing purpose quite opposed to the nunc est bibendum (now is the time to drink) theme of classical antiquity. To the Christian, the prospect of death serves to emphasize the emptiness and fleetingness of earthly pleasures, luxuries, and achievements, and thus also as an invitation to focus one's thoughts on the prospect of the afterlife. A Biblical injunction often associated with the memento mori in this context is In omnibus operibus tuis memorare novissima tua, et in aeternum non peccabis (the Vulgate's Latin rendering of Ecclesiasticus 7:40, "in all thy works be mindful of thy last end and thou wilt never sin.") This finds ritual expression in the rites of Ash Wednesday, when ashes are placed upon the worshipers' heads with the words, "Remember Man that you are dust and unto dust, you shall return."

Memento mori has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character by cultivating detachment and other virtues, and by turning the attention towards the immortality of the soul and the afterlife.[15]

Architecture[edit]

Unshrouded skeleton on Diana Warburton's tomb (dated 1693) in St John the Baptist Church, Chester

The most obvious places to look for memento mori meditations are in funeral art and architecture. Perhaps the most striking to contemporary minds is the transi or cadaver tomb, a tomb that depicts the decayed corpse of the deceased. This became a fashion in the tombs of the wealthy in the fifteenth century, and surviving examples still offer a stark reminder of the vanity of earthly riches. Later, Puritan tomb stones in the colonial United States frequently depicted winged skulls, skeletons, or angels snuffing out candles. These are among the numerous themes associated with skull imagery.

Another example of memento mori is provided by the chapels of bones, such as the Capela dos Ossos in Évora or the Capuchin Crypt in Rome. These are chapels where the walls are totally or partially covered by human remains, mostly bones. The entrance to the Capela dos Ossos has the following sentence: "We bones, lying here bare, await yours."

Visual art[edit]

Philippe de Champaigne's Vanitas (c. 1671) is reduced to three essentials: Life, Death, and Time

Timepieces have been used to illustrate that the time of the living on Earth grows shorter with each passing minute. Public clocks would be decorated with mottos such as ultima forsan ("perhaps the last" [hour]) or vulnerant omnes, ultima necat ("they all wound, and the last kills"). Clocks have carried the motto tempus fugit, "time flees". Old striking clocks often sported automata who would appear and strike the hour; some of the celebrated automaton clocks from Augsburg, Germany, had Death striking the hour. Private people carried smaller reminders of their own mortality. Mary, Queen of Scots owned a large watch carved in the form of a silver skull, embellished with the lines of Horace, "Pale death knocks with the same tempo upon the huts of the poor and the towers of Kings."

In the late 16th and through the 17th century, memento mori jewelry was popular. Items included mourning rings,[16] pendants, lockets, and brooches.[17] These pieces depicted tiny motifs of skulls, bones, and coffins, in addition to messages and names of the departed, picked out in precious metals and enamel.[17][18]

During the same period there emerged the artistic genre known as vanitas, Latin for "emptiness" or "vanity". Especially popular in Holland and then spreading to other European nations, vanitas paintings typically represented assemblages of numerous symbolic objects such as human skulls, guttering candles, wilting flowers, soap bubbles, butterflies, and hourglasses. In combination, vanitas assemblies conveyed the impermanence of human endeavours and of the decay that is inevitable with the passage of time. See also the themes associated with the image of the skull.

Literature[edit]

Memento mori is also an important literary theme. Well-known literary meditations on death in English prose include Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial and Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Holy Dying. These works were part of a Jacobean cult of melancholia that marked the end of the Elizabethan era. In the late eighteenth century, literary elegies were a common genre; Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Edward Young's Night Thoughts are typical members of the genre.

In the European devotional literature of the Renaissance, the Ars Moriendi, memento mori had moral value by reminding individuals of their mortality.[19]

Music[edit]

Apart from the genre of requiem and funeral music, there is also a rich tradition of memento mori in the Early Music of Europe. Especially those facing the ever-present death during the recurring bubonic plague pandemics from the 1340s onward tried to toughen themselves by anticipating the inevitable in chants, from the simple Geisslerlieder of the Flagellant movement to the more refined cloistral or courtly songs. The lyrics often looked at life as a necessary and god-given vale of tears with death as a ransom, and they reminded people to lead sinless lives to stand a chance at Judgment Day. The following two Latin stanzas (with their English translations) are typical of memento mori in medieval music; they are from the virelai Ad Mortem Festinamus of the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat from 1399:

Danse macabre[edit]

The danse macabre is another well-known example of the memento mori theme, with its dancing depiction of the Grim Reaper carrying off rich and poor alike. This and similar depictions of Death decorated many European churches.

Gallery[edit]

The salutation of the Hermits of St. Paul of France[edit]

Memento mori was the salutation used by the Hermits of St. Paul of France (1620–1633), also known as the Brothers of Death.[20] It is sometimes claimed that the Trappists use this salutation, but this is not true.[21]

In Puritan America[edit]

Thomas Smith's Self-Portrait

Colonial American art saw a large number of memento mori images due to Puritan influence. The Puritan community in 17th-century North America looked down upon art because they believed that it drew the faithful away from God and, if away from God, then it could only lead to the devil. However, portraits were considered historical records and, as such, they were allowed. Thomas Smith, a 17th-century Puritan, fought in many naval battles and also painted. In his self-portrait, we see these pursuits represented alongside a typical Puritan memento mori with a skull, suggesting his awareness of imminent death.

The poem underneath the skull emphasizes Thomas Smith's acceptance of death and of turning away from the world of the living:

Why why should I the World be minding, Therein a World of Evils Finding. Then Farwell World: Farwell thy jarres, thy Joies thy Toies thy Wiles thy Warrs. Truth Sounds Retreat: I am not sorye. The Eternall Drawes to him my heart, By Faith (which can thy Force Subvert) To Crowne me (after Grace) with Glory.

Mexico's Day of the Dead[edit]

Posada's 1910 La Calavera Catrina
Main article: Day of the Dead

Much memento mori art is associated with the Mexican festival Day of the Dead, including skull-shaped candies and bread loaves adorned with bread "bones".

This theme was also famously expressed in the works of the Mexican engraver José Guadalupe Posada, in which people from various walks of life are depicted as skeletons.

Another manifestation of memento mori is found in the Mexican "Calavera", a literary composition in verse form normally written in honour of a person who is still alive, but written as if that person were dead. These compositions have a comedic tone and are often offered from one friend to another during Day of the Dead.[22]

Contemporary culture[edit]

Roman Krznaric suggests Memento Mori is an important topic to bring back into our thoughts and belief system; "Philosophers have come up with lots of what I call 'death tasters' – thought experiments for seizing the day."

These thought experiments are powerful to get us re-oriented back to death into current awareness and living with spontaneity. Albert Camus stated "Come to terms with death, thereafter anything is possible." Jean-Paul Sartre expressed that life is given to us early, and is shortened at the end, all the while taken away at every step of the way, emphasizing that the end is only the beginning every day.[23]

Similar concepts across cultures[edit]

In Buddhism[edit]

The Buddhist practice maraṇasati meditates on death. The word is a Pāli compound of maraṇa 'death' (an Indo-European cognate of Latin mori) and sati 'awareness', so very close to memento mori. It is first used in early Buddhist texts, the suttapiṭaka of the Pāli Canon, with parallels in the āgamas of the "Northern" Schools.

In Japanese Zen and samurai culture[edit]

In Japan, the influence of Zen Buddhist contemplation of death on indigenous culture can be gauged by the following quotation from the classic treatise on samurai ethics, Hagakure:[24]

The Way of the Samurai is, morning after morning, the practice of death, considering whether it will be here or be there, imagining the most sightly way of dying, and putting one's mind firmly in death. Although this may be a most difficult thing, if one will do it, it can be done. There is nothing that one should suppose cannot be done.[25]

In the annual appreciation of cherry blossom and fall colors, hanami and momijigari, it was philosophized that things are most splendid at the moment before their fall, and to aim to live and die in a similar fashion.[citation needed]

In Tibetan Buddhism[edit]

Tibetan Citipati mask depicting Mahākāla. The skull mask of Citipati is a reminder of the impermanence of life and the eternal cycle of life and death.

In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a mind training practice known as Lojong. The initial stages of the classic Lojong begin with 'The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind', or, more literally, 'Four Contemplations to Cause a Revolution in the Mind'.[citation needed] The second of these four is the contemplation on impermanence and death. In particular, one contemplates that;

  • All compounded things are impermanent.
  • The human body is a compounded thing.
  • Therefore, death of the body is certain.
  • The time of death is uncertain and beyond our control.

There are a number of classic verse formulations of these contemplations meant for daily reflection to overcome our strong habitual tendency to live as though we will certainly not die today.

Lalitavistara Sutra[edit]

The following is from the Lalitavistara Sūtra, a major work in the classical Sanskrit canon:

The Udānavarga[edit]

A very well known verse in the Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan canons states [this is from the Sanskrit version, the Udānavarga:

Shantideva, Bodhicaryavatara[edit]

Shantideva, in the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra 'Bodhisattva's Way of Life' reflects at length:

In more modern Tibetan Buddhist works[edit]

In a practice text written by the 19th century Tibetan master Dudjom Lingpa for serious meditators, he formulates the second contemplation in this way:[28][29]

On this occasion when you have such a bounty of opportunities in terms of your body, environment, friends, spiritual mentors, time, and practical instructions, without procrastinating until tomorrow and the next day, arouse a sense of urgency, as if a spark landed on your body or a grain of sand fell in your eye. If you have not swiftly applied yourself to practice, examine the births and deaths of other beings and reflect again and again on the unpredictability of your lifespan and the time of your death, and on the uncertainty of your own situation. Meditate on this until you have definitively integrated it with your mind... The appearances of this life, including your surroundings and friends, are like last night's dream, and this life passes more swiftly than a flash of lightning in the sky. There is no end to this meaningless work. What a joke to prepare to live forever! Wherever you are born in the heights or depths of saṃsāra, the great noose of suffering will hold you tight. Acquiring freedom for yourself is as rare as a star in the daytime, so how is it possible to practice and achieve liberation? The root of all mind training and practical instructions is planted by knowing the nature of existence. There is no other way. I, an old vagabond, have shaken my beggar's satchel, and this is what came out.

The contemporary Tibetan master, Yangthang Rinpoche, in his short text 'Summary of the View, Meditation, and Conduct':[30]

The Tibetan Canon also includes copious materials on the meditative preparation for the death process and intermediate period bardo between death and rebirth. Amongst them are the famous "Tibetan Book of the Dead", in Tibetan Bardo Thodol, the "Natural Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo".

In Islam[edit]

The "remembrance of death" (Arabic: تذكرة الموت, Tadhkirat al-Mawt; deriving from تذكرة, tadhkirah, Arabic for memorandum or admonition), has been a major topic of Islamic spirituality since the time of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in Medina. It is grounded in the Qur'an, where there are recurring injunctions to pay heed to the fate of previous generations.[31] The hadith literature, which preserves the teachings of Muhammad, records advice for believers to "remember often death, the destroyer of pleasures."[32] Some Sufis have been called "ahl al-qubur," the "people of the graves," because of their practice of frequenting graveyards to ponder on mortality and the vanity of life, based on the teaching of Muhammad to visit graves.[33] Al-Ghazali devotes to this topic the last book of his "The Revival of the Religious Sciences".[34]

Iceland[edit]

The Hávamál ("Sayings of the High One"), a 13th-century Icelandic compilation poetically attributed to the god Odin, includes two sections – the Gestaþáttr and the Loddfáfnismál – offering many gnomic proverbs expressing the memento mori philosophy, most famously Gestaþáttr number 77:

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Campbell, Lorne. Van der Weyden. London: Chaucer Press, 2004. 89. ISBN 1904449247
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b Literally 'remember (that you have) to die', Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition, June 2001.
  3. ^ Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, ss.vv.
  4. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition, s.v.
  5. ^ Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book IX, Chapter 7, Section 38
  6. ^ Phaedo, 64a4.
  7. ^ See his Moral Letters to Lucilius.
  8. ^ Discourses of Epictetus, 3.24.
  9. ^ Henry Albert Fischel, Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy: A Study of Epicurea and Rhetorica in Early Midrashic Writings, E. J. Brill, 1973, p. 95.
  10. ^ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV. 48.2.
  11. ^ Beard, Mary: The Roman Triumph, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, England, 2007. (hardcover), pp. 85–92.
  12. ^ "Final Farewell: The Culture of Death and the Afterlife". Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri. Archived from the original on 6 June 2010. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  13. ^ Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph, Harvard University Press, 2009, ISBN 0674032187, pp. 85–92
  14. ^ Christian Dogmatics, Volume 2 (Carl E. Braaten, Robert W. Jenson), page 583
  15. ^ See Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and Holy Dying.
  16. ^ Taylor, Gerald; Scarisbrick, Diana (1978). Finger Rings From Ancient Egypt to the Present Day. Ashmolean Museum. p. 76. ISBN 0900090545.
  17. ^ Jump up to:a b "Memento Mori". Antique Jewelry University. Lang Antiques. n.d. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  18. ^ Bond, Charlotte (5 December 2018). "Somber "Memento Mori" Jewelry Commissioned to Help People Mourn". The Vintage News. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  19. ^ Michael John Brennan, ed., The A–Z of Death and Dying: Social, Medical, and Cultural Aspects, ISBN 1440803447, s.v. "Memento Mori", p. 307f and s.v. "Ars Moriendi", p. 44
  20. ^ F. McGahan, "Paulists", The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, s.v. Paulists
  21. ^ E. Obrecht, "Trappists", The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, s.v. Trappists
  22. ^ Stanley Brandes. "Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and Beyond". Chapter 5: The Poetics of Death. John Wiley & Sons, 2009
  23. ^ Macdonald, Fiona. "What it really means to 'Seize the day'". BBC. Retrieved 16 June 2019.
  24. ^ "Hagakure: Book of the Samurai". www.themathesontrust.org. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  25. ^ "A Buddhist Guide to Death, Dying and Suffering". www.urbandharma.org. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  26. ^ "84000 Reading Room | The Play in Full". 84000 Translating The Words of The Budda.
  27. ^ Udānavarga, 1:22.
  28. ^ "Foolish Dharma of an Idiot Clothed in Mud and Feathers, in 'Dujdom Lingpa's Visions of the Great Perfection, Volume 1', B. Alan Wallace (translator), Wisdom Publications".
    An oral commentary by the translator is available on YouTube
  29. ^ "Natural Liberation | Wisdom Publications". Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  30. ^ The English text is available here. Archived 2018-05-14 at the Wayback Machine The Tibetan text is available here. Oral Commentary by a student of Rinpoche, B. Alan Wallace, is available here.
  31. ^ For instance, sura "Yasin", 36:31, "Have they not seen how many generations We destroyed before them, which indeed returned not unto them?".
  32. ^ "Riyad as-Salihin 579 – The Book of Miscellany – Sunnah.com – Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم)". sunnah.com. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  33. ^ "Sunan Abi Dawud 3235 – Funerals (Kitab Al-Jana'iz) – Sunnah.com – Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم)". sunnah.com. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  34. ^ Al-Ghazali on Death and the Afterlife, tr. by T.J. Winter. Cambridge, Islamic Texts Society, 1989.
Posted by at

統合医療の哲学―ジャングルカンファレンス 理論編 : 弘人, 小池: 本

Amazon.co.jp: 統合医療の哲学―ジャングルカンファレンス 理論編 : 弘人, 小池: 本: Amazon.co.jp: 統合医療の哲学―ジャングルカンファレンス 理論編 : 弘人, 小池: 本





통합 의료 철학 - 정글 컨퍼런스 이론편 
단행본 – 2017/10/7
코이케 히로토 (지은이)
5.0 5성급 중 5.0 1개의 평가


271화
상품 설명

저자 약력 ( "BOOK 저자 소개 정보"에서)
코이케/히로토
일본 통합 의료 센터(JIMC)·코이케 통합 의료 클리닉 원장. 

일반사단법인통합의료컨퍼런스협회(IMCI) 대표이사. 군마 대학 의학부 비상근 강사. 1970년, 도쿄 출생. 1995년, 군마대학 의학부 졸업. 2001년, 동 대학원내 과학계 졸업. 박사(의학). 2004년, 애리조나 대학 통합 의료 프로그램 수료. 2007년, 코이케 통합 의료 클리닉 개원(2016년 일본 통합 의료 센터로 개변). 2016년 일본 대학 대학원 종합 사회 정보 연구과 인간 과학(철학) 전공 졸업. 석사 (인간 과학). 
일본 내 과학회 인정 내과의사·일본 임상 검사 의학회 임상 검사 전문의·
일본 통합 의료 학회 지도의·일본 동종 요법 의학회 전문의
(본 데이터는 이 서적이 간행된 당시에 게재되고 있던 것입니다)

등록정보
출판사 ‏ ‎‎헤이세이 출판 (2017/10/7)
발매일 ‏ ‎ ‎ 2017/10/7
언어 ‏ : ‎일본어
단행본 ‏ ‎ ‎ 271 페이지

5.0 5성급 중 5.0 1개의 평가


인생은 수행이다!
5성급 중 5.0 
2017년 10월 25일에 확인함

통합의료에서는 정통적인 근대서양의학뿐만 아니라 한방과 침구 등 장르를 넘은 치료법을 평등하게 검토하려고 한다.
근대 서양 의학 이외의 이른바 대체 의료는 어쨌든 수상한 치료, 근거가 없는 치료라고 파악할 수 있지만, 진짜일까.
본서 중 서양의학적 치료에서도 진정으로 통계적인 의미를 가진 이중맹검법으로 확인된 치료법은 10% 정도밖에 없다고 쓰여 있다.
즉, 의사도 환자도 믿고 의심하지 않는 표준 치료의 근거는 의외로 부족한 것이다.
소리가 들어서 등장한 면역 체크포인트 억제제도 그 유효율은 단지 20% 정도로 알려져 있다.

암이나 생활습관병 등의 만성질환을 확실히(대증요법이 아님) 치유로 이끄는 치료법이 거의 없는 상황에서 
의사도 환자도 통합의료적인 방법론을 진지하게 생각해야 할 시대가　되어 있다.
이 책은 통합 의료뿐만 아니라 근대 서양 의학의 위치를 ​​생각하는데 매우 확실한 가이드이다.
저자의 매우 넓고 깊은 지식과 경험에 근거한 기술은 각 장르의 의료를 이해하는데 매우 도움이 될 수 있다.

3명의 고객이 이것이 도움이 되었다고 생각합니다.


유용한보고서
Posted by at
Labels:

오비츠 료이치 (저) 홀리스틱 의학 [책들]

Amazon.co.jp: 大ホリスティック医学入門 : 良一, 帯津: 本





大ホリスティック医学入門 単行本 – 2017/8/25
帯津 良一 (著)
4.1 5つ星のうち4.1 4個の評価


〈人間まるごと〉から〈環境まるごと〉の医学へ。
最新の免疫療法の成果から，がん治療の新しい可能性が見えてくる。
初心者にもお勧めのホリスティック医学の入門書。

・出版年月日：2017/08/23

193ページ




====
ホリスティック医学私論 単行本（ソフトカバー） – 2017/10/1
帯津 良一 (著)
5.0 5つ星のうち5.0    2個の評価
===
홀리스틱 의학 사론 단행본(소프트 커버) – 2017/10/1
오비츠 료이치 (저)
5.0 5성급 중 5.0    2개의 평가
ーー
환자를 한 명의 인간으로 진단하는 것으로 인기인 오오츠 선생님이 인생을 되돌아보고, 앞으로 오는 의료 신시대를 지남하는 신작입니다.

최신의 의료 설비를 구사하는 식도암 집도의였던 오오츠 선생님이, 중국 의학에 흥미를 가져, 
환자의 자연 치유력을 높이기 위해 기공이나 그 외의 대체 요법을 도입할 수 있도록 개업의가 되어, 그 타구이 드문 행동력에 의해 다양한 힘을 끌어당겨 의료의 장을 호전시켜 온 경위가 되었기 때문입니다.

마이 니코 니코 미소가 트레이드 마크의 오오 츠 선생님이지만, 그 뒤에는 병에 대치하는 투지와 통례를 중시하는 사회와의 고군 분투, 상식으로는 생각할 수없는 이상한 체험 등이 숨겨져 있습니다. 네.

그러나 그것을 고생이라고 잡지 않고, 앞으로의 지표로 해 버리는 삶의 방법은, 80세를 넘은 지금도 건재. 인간 통째로 보다는 생명 통째로 진찰하는 의학을 「대 홀리스틱 의학」이라고 명명해 실천하고 있습니다. 항상 톱 러너인 계속하는 의료자의, 오는 방법·지금·가는 말을 정리한 1권입니다.
＝＝
상품 설명

식도암 수술에 새벽 속에서 서양의학의 한계를 느끼고 중국 의학을 겸비하는 것을 생각해 낸 것이 1970년대 후반…암 치료를 기인으로 병원 개설… 
시행착오를 거듭하면서 홀리스틱에. 이상을 추구해 온 30년여를 평가…
 「인간 통째로를 진찰한다」가 붙은 “진정한 치유”란…

저자 정보
1936년 사이타마현 출생. 61년 도쿄대학 의학부 졸업. 의학 박사. 도다이 병원 제3 외과의 국장, 도립 고마고메 병원 외과 의장을 거쳐, 82년 사이타마현 가와고에시에 중서의 결합에 의한 암 치료를 기인에 걸린 오오츠 산케이 병원을 설립. 한층 더 인간 통째로를 진찰하는 홀리스틱 의학의 길로 걷는다. 2004년에는 도쿄·이케부쿠로에 대체 요법을 실천하는 오오츠 산케이 학원 클리닉을 설립. 가와고에와 이케부쿠로를 거점으로, 기공이나 태극권의 실천이나 강연·집필 활동을 통해서 「공격의 양생」을 전국 규모로 밀고 있다. 일본 홀리스틱 의학 협회 명예 회장. 현재는 홀리스틱 의학을 더욱 깊게 하고 “대 홀리스틱 의학”을 제창하기에 이른다.
저서에 「암을 이기는 <식・숨・동・고」강건법」(코단샤), 「암을 치료하는 대사전」(편저, 후타미 서방), 「자연 치유력을 높이는 방법」(참깨 서방), 「 건강문답」(고기 히로유키와의 공저, 평범사), 「살아도 죽는 것도 이것으로 십문」(호켄), 「암 「여명 선고」에서도 포기하지 않는다」(매일 신문사), 「사람의 애도가 아는 의사가 되었으면 좋겠다」(이스트 프레스) 외 다수.
계속 읽기
등록정보
출판사 : Yuancaoshe (2017/10/1)
발매일 ‏ ‎ ‎ 2017/10/1
언어 ‏ : ‎일본어
단행본(소프트커버) ‏ ‎ ‎ 247 페이지
Read more »
Posted by at

The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down : Gottschall, Jonathan: Amazon.com.au: Books

The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them 
The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down Hardcover – 31 May 2022
by Jonathan Gottschall (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 64 ratings

Kindle
$35.99Read with Our Free App
Hardcover
$30.79
9 New from $30.79


Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.

In The Story Paradox, Gottschall explores how a broad consortium of psychologists, communications specialists, neuroscientists, and literary quants are using the scientific method to study how stories affect our brains. The results challenge the idea that storytelling is an obvious force for good in human life. Yes, storytelling can bind groups together, but it is also the main force dragging people apart. And it's the best method we've ever devised for manipulating each other by circumventing rational thought. Behind all civilization's greatest ills-environmental destruction, runaway demagogues, warfare-you will always find the same master factor: a mind-disordering story.

Gottschall argues that societies succeed or fail depending on how they manage these tensions. And it has only become harder, as new technologies that amplify the effects of disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, and fake news make separating fact from fiction nearly impossible.

With clarity and conviction, Gottschall reveals why our biggest asset has become our greatest threat, and what, if anything, can be done. It is a call to stop asking, "How we can change the world through stories?" and start asking, "How can we save the world from stories?"

=====
Review
"[a] thoughtful and entertaining investigation on a critical question: 'How can we save the world from stories?'... Fresh insights about the ways we understand reality."--Kirkus

"In this provocative and insightful book, Jonathan Gottschall shows us why dangerous stories spread so rapidly, and how they lead to division and distrust. But our storytelling instinct can also be harnessed for good, and Gottschall draws on a trove of research and compelling stories to show us how we can stop conspiracies, bigotry, and misinformation. The Story Paradox couldn't be more urgent."--Jonah Berger, Wharton Professor and bestselling author of Contagious

"Jonathan Gottschall has written a gripping and thoughtful book on a neglected but urgent topic: the dark side of stories. With crisp prose and an array of fascinating examples, he demonstrates how our innate ability to spin tales can lead to distortion, dissolution, and destruction. The Storytelling Paradox is a bracing call to action to become more empathetic and to deploy narrative as a force for good."
--Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive

"Jonathan Gottschall is not only the deepest thinker about the powerful role of stories in our lives, but a lively and witty writer. The Story Paradox offers much insight and many pleasures."
--Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and Rationality.

"This fascinating book explores the dark power of stories, arguing that they are an essential poison--necessary for human life, but too often a force for irrationality and cruelty. The Storytelling Paradox is provocative and original and a delight to read--and ironically enough, Jonathan Gottschall is a hell of a story teller himself."--Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology at University of Toronto, and author of How Pleasure Works, Against Empathy, and The Sweet Spot.

"We constantly modify one another's brains, and the surgical tool we use is storytelling. In this luminous and incisive page-turner, Jonathan Gottschall takes us deep into the world of stories: what we tell, how we receive, and why it matters so deeply for our world."
--David Eagleman, Stanford neuroscientist, author of Livewired
Book Description


Storytelling, a tradition that built human civilization, may soon destroy it
Read more

Product details
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 1st edition (31 May 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages

Follow

Jonathan Gottschall


I am a Distinguished Fellow in the English Department at Washington & Jefferson College. My research at the intersection of science and art has frequently been covered in outlets like The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, Scientific American, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nature, Science, and NPR. I'm the author or editor of seven books, including The Storytelling Animal, which was a New York Times Editor's Choice Selection and a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. I live with my wife and two young daughters in Washington, Pennsylvania.
====

Top reviews

Top review from Australia


Thomas Edmund
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth a ReadReviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on 15 January 2023

So, the first few chapters of Story Paradox were 100% write up my alley - an exploration of what stories mean to us socially, neurologically, and for society as a whole.

The next few chapters focussed on kinda the usual suspects for this sort of non-fiction, Socrates and Plato, there were quite a few insights and I enjoyed the strange balance between stream of consciousness of in depth analysis. The effect was kind of a paragraph to a few pages of a topic in quite specific detail but then an almost non-sequitur leap to a new topic. Not in a terrible way just in a sometimes surprising or hard to grasp the overall picture way.

As the book continued I did feel this flighty approach start to wear, its felt less like a powerful thesis and more like a philosophical riff on the subject. Still fun to read and overall pretty fine, perhaps just less than my hopes as I started this book.

====
Top reviews from other countries

Paris Wood
2.0 out of 5 stars Appreciated but deeply flawedReviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 4 September 2022
Verified Purchase

Gottschall is a phenomenal writer and he tells a great story. I read this book in two days in a borderline hypnotic haze and am a huge fan of his first book on story. I take his central premise on the dangers of storytelling for granted as just the truth. Most people don't take it seriously enough for the amount of sway it has in our lives. No matter what else I have to say, the man can paint a picture like no other, and his command of language allows him to turn some really creative phrases. That said, my overall judgement of the book is the following.

1.The author brings up historical material and philosophy that he is in no way prepared to handle thoroughly. Anyone pointing to the trans-atlantic slave trade as the sole reason race relations are like they are today is willfully ignoring the years of contentious history specific to America that includes legal precedent and policy that only ended in the 60's. The same can be said for anyone pointing out that African elites often participated in selling slaves like its some kind of gotcha. Gottschall presents the information like it's some bombshell, but it's both well documented and accepted by anyone who reads even the most milquetoast history on the subject. Which frankly says more about general historical education in the US than anything else. This book is so fixated on it, it gets its own half page notation assuring the reader that it’s both the truth and super relevant. This framing of the issue is not only redundant and uncontested- it misrepresents the problems surrounding conversations of American slavery. Case in point - did Africans write the laws that created the American racial slave/caste system? Did they write Jim Crow or enforce it? Did they pen exclusive housing covenants for our suburbs? No. They did not. African descendants in America fall under the broad banner of "Black". Even the mixed ones, and most of us are. Did that just happen naturally? Looking at the history of both law and culture, I can tell you it did not.
If I’m a bad person, but I’m in court to get justice for my murdered brother, is the subject of the trial the history of murder across the world or its commonality? Do I need to be an angel to get justice? The issue would be the specific event involving myself and the perpetrator. Not whether or not other people in my family have committed murder themselves. The entire section would have better been left out of the book entirely. It's not necessary for his broader explicitly stated project and does more harm via misrepresentation than any good. Also, and minor nit-pick at two of the implications. Most Black Americans have no idea where they're from absent a DNA test. America is the whole reason we identify as black rather than say, Yoruban. It's almost silly and cruel for Gottschall to say "who are you to judge when your ancestors might have been from the kingdom of Dahomey" in a "what about-ism" that hinges pretty heavily on that lack of knowledge. The comparison of a whole ass continent to a much more cohesive group of colonies turned states and an attempted broad indictment with the same logic is also mind-boggling. It's both thoughtless and irrelevant. Additionally, the Dahomey's victims were people "Of the time" and I certainly doubt they considered the date on the calendar a justification for their treatment. The same of American slavery. Where records are preserved, it is often not hard to find contemporaries in preserved primary sources who disagree with a practice that we look back and assume were just moral norms "of that time" - and victims thoughts are almost always lost to history.

Gottschall could easily have explored how powerful people have no incentive to listen to those they wield power over How we use narrative to project legitimacy despite any excesses that would be considered unacceptable among perceived equals across time. This phenomenon is fairly universal across cultures and time periods. Bonus bleak-pilled points to the implication in the book that for any group to progress out of a bad situation, a member of the ingroup needs to write a book first about the plight of the downtrodden. Couldn't just listen to the people affected. In any age, I'm sure they'd tell you if you asked, though it would be inconvenient for anyone invested in maintaining status at the top. That’s usually the problem.

2.Gottschall’s focus on atrocities and wrongdoings specifically in Africa has an aggregate affect of a "no angels" vibe almost explicitly walked up to in his attempt to calm things down with a "blood on all hands" conclusion mid way through. At one point, he mentions the Rwandan genocide and explores the way that after the bloodshed, narrative has been deliberately deployed to try and soothe tensions with some success. Here also however, he leaves out further context The event was heavily influenced by colonialism. He insists on bringing up this and events like it with a very strange bent to the framing. It's perfectly fine to bring up this kind of thing, necessary for the conversation in fact. To be clear, there are no angles on planet earth. I am not saying that atrocities committed by Africans should go un-examined. I just find his choices of cultures to focus on for these failures while leaving out critical context very strange, especially given the project of the book. Ostensibly, he's worried about the story sickness plaguing our species. So why the frequent return specifically to Africa? Then later on he basically says we should not overly rely on history anyway because it’s also a story that can cause a lot of harm. So my guy. Why did you bring up the specific events that you did with the framing that you presented them with?
He could have just as easily interrogated the way that Hollywood movies- with worldwide reach - also use depictions of interracial romance for the same sort of fence mending. The ways associations for different ethnic groups are built by media in our multicultural world for good and ill. I would love a book that actually looks at the ways story is deployed by our species to affect perceptions, mating preferences, etc across the world. Story and our perceptions of our roles are the ballast of the politics and the crazy crap in every person's day to day lives. Stories we tell ourselves in the US are not just at odds with each other across political lines, they are buck-wild in the ways they justify or de-legitimize systems of value. Very much worth a detached, (I'm not claiming objective) robust investigation. What does such a thing say about how our species in-group and out-group communicates and even finds ways to justify NOT talking to groups perceived as other? Gottschalls preoccupations of history without villains, blood on all hands (Even in Africa), the excesses of the right and the left, his very specific presentation of history and ultimate suggestion that we throw it out entirely (So why did you bring up so many pointed parts of it?) suggests a preoccupation not explicitly stated in the book We rarely know ourselves so well. I also think that Jon is dressing up a very specific brand of apologia in different clothing. Much of his focus in the book is irrelevant to the task of interrogating story sickness. You also don't have to try hard to convince people that there's violence on the African continent and among its people. You ever watch the 6 oclock news here?It might not seem that way if your life is on a college campus, but out here, you're selling sand in a desert bro. Don’t do me any favors.

Philosophy is lacking too. Gottschall is an atheist, meaning that he does not take a teleological view of the universe. It's not "for" something in this world-view. Ideas of "progress" or "moral arc" should become suspect. It should indicate that if we're "doing better" it's because of a specific set of circumstances that aren't just tied to the calendar. Since there's no linearity, "progress" can be lost. We can backslide. History is full of backslides, women's loss of social status in the switch to agrarianism being one major example he should be familiar with. There was a time in America's history when slavery itself was not thoroughly racialised. Doesn't make it better, but it signals a change in status that happened over time. A "Backslide" from better treatment to worse. So the idea that our descendants will be wagging a finger at us from a more informed moral ground assumes quite a lot about the "linear progress" of moral understanding. "The Golden Rule" is ancient. "Black" vs "White" are modern political classes, created only recently on the world stage. Even more ancient is the neural architecture that lets us intuit the frame of mind of others of our species regardless of color. Those realities do not keep those rights from shifting and never have. We're in a live fire exercise my friends, and its very easy to tell everyone else to shut up if you have no memory of being hit by a bullet.

3. No one has the same experiences in the world and I can't speak for anyone else. I won't pretend to, and there are good-faith actors who would disagree with many of my conclusions. I have argued with a lot of people who use the condition of the world to make judgments about the overall worthiness of "Black" people. That’s why I’m preoccupied with history and its presentation. Explaining this experience to anyone who doesn't know what I mean is as draining as dealing with the bigotry of low expectations day in and day out. It’s amazing to hear public appeals to individuality and convenient deployments of “content of character” and then not be extended the courtesy assumption of being an individual constantly. I’ve played xbox online with your kids. I grew up online. I know what people say under anonymity and in person under favorable circumstances. I’ve also travelled. We are not post racial. This is not a lecture on what that's like. I say that to say this: Understanding why something is the way it is might prevent you from judging it unfairly. If you look at crime statistics from a historically deprived group, you might land on the erroneous conclusion that that "kind" of person is just predisposed to violence. Side-bar, maybe there’s a cognitive consequence to having to defend your right to be in a space over an extended period of time and the ruminations the experience would come with. History is context, you can't just remove it without causing more problems than you're claiming to fix. You may also wind up having very unhelpful conversations like...

3. Sam Harris. The book takes the position that science is ultimately where we should focus to get out of our story induced madness. However, I have no reason to believe science is a better master in the world. Science itself is staffed by messy humans with our own motivations and it has itself been used to prop up pretty nasty stuff, like Phrenology and Eugenics. Just knowing that is why simply removing history as an important element of understanding the world is a terrible idea. For example, you might be a scientist like Sam Harris and step into an age old argument about the cognitive abilities of Black people. You might claim to be brave for having the argument and feel like a martyr, without fully recognizing that there is a wide swathe of people quite willing to hear exactly what you’re saying for all the wrong reasons. In some of the related discussions the man is preoccupied with protecting his reputation with absolutely no consideration that reputation might also apply to broad claims about entire groups of people. Like, Sam. Do you think someone is going to give me a DNA or IQ test before they make quick assessments of me? Our brains categorize things to save energy and it's part of the reason stereotypes exist. We kinda can't help it. The fact that he sees absolutely no danger in rushing to settle the science is one of the many reasons (including institutional incentive and funding) not to just accept that we should put all of our faith in the broad idea of science under which work many imperfect people.

The history and people like him in the now sure as hell give me pause. Science will inform policy and policy will always be political. I do not see that changing for our silly mushy species. So the solution proposed by Gottschall comes off as unrealistic. Naive even. Harris has also conflated "Dispassion" with reason in some of his interviews. A lot of people who laud "reason" uncritically do this. As someone who has gone though the process of challenging and losing some fundamental beliefs, I can say that's far from the truth. You ever lose your faith in god after being a committed catholic? How about as a Black catholic for whom the prospect of a deity making everything right in the end was like a warm fire in dark places? It's like burying a friend. Extremely painful and emotionally taxing. Anyone who understands that evolution did not craft us as animals with neatly ordered brains where "reason" and emotion are separated should intuit that reason hurts sometimes. If you come to a conclusion fully free of emotional reaction, it doesn't necessarily mean that you've reached that conclusion through reason alone or absent of bias. It might just mean you don't have a dog in the fight. Changing your mind, challenging important ideas, finding contradictions in your own thoughts takes an enormous amount of time and self reflection. We are often fighting the emotional reactions in ourselves this type of reflection will cause. Its not going to happen immediately on a public platform where you've put yourself in a position that throws up all of our built in social defensive mechanisms. It's not gonna happen via podcast. So all that said: forgive me for not trusting the high minded idealistic appeals professed by squishy humans that I suspect are too much like the rest of us to be trusted with a blank check that just reads “For science”. The only thing different about this movie is the title, and we’ve seen it all before.

Someone might mistake me here to mean that we shouldn't bother with science. Not at all my point. Science is amazing. I'm saying that we might want to approach ideas that have broad implications for policy with an overwhelming preponderance of caution that is aware of the context in which the information is being discussed. That type of caution would need to go far beyond the worries of one man focused mostly on the slights against his reputation (blind to that of others) and maybe shouldn't be teased as forbidden knowledge on internet radio. Reason is the result of an evolved cognitive heuristic. If it's not the key from god that gives us the golden secrets of the universe untainted by our own hardware biases. So I would hope for abundant tact and awareness from my public facing scientists.

4. The book treats inherited beliefs as static things and encourages a lack of judgement. Sure, admirable, but people change their beliefs. Book also takes for granted that the beliefs people claim to have in public are what they actually believe. However, belief in context affects social dynamics within social settings involving reward, punishment, acceptance, etc. At a certain point, someones actual held beliefs really don’t even matter compared to what they are incentivized to do for status and resources. We usually just do something and rationalize our actions to ourselves after the fact. Part of the problem is us taking for granted what an "individual" is, but you're nothing in a vacuum without relation to other people within a culture and systems of incentive. Normal people can be lead to do terrible things because of the context around them. Individuality is worth interrogating in the pursuit of understanding how story moves society.From my point of view, the concept as typically deployed is really just a social/political convenience. Tangent for another time. This is where his solution for news rooms and academic institutions falls apart. People believe things and claim to believe things in context and those outward postures are absolutely affected by whether or not they are monetarily incentivized to stand by those beliefs or represent a "team". We are status seeking creatures. The writer doesn't at all account for cynical actors or the human capacity for self delusion. He could just have easily suggested making school more affordable so students meet people from different walks of life. There were a million other ways to create exposure and community cohesion. Why the preoccupation with making sure college faculty represents both sides of a political argument no matter what the facts surrounding the arguments are?

I really REALLY wanted to like this book. I emailed Gottschall in 2020 because I was so excited by the idea of a sequel to The Storytelling Animal - a book I’ve read over five times. I was ecstatic for the sequel when I saw it. You could have sent a rocket to the moon with the force of my excitement, then brought it back to earth with the gravitational weight of disappointment. Story Paradox doesn't handle the stuff it brings up super well. Belief can just be a configuration of atoms in the brain along with the other configurations driving us to reproduce - if you’ve read the book you’ll know why I say that. The book’s solutions are very much lacking. Do you think it's a coincidence that a country of "others" that never really put in the genuine political work to become “US” is at this precipice 60 years after landmark civil rights legislation? Now gutted legislation by the way. If you want to solve the story poison that our country is showing at this point in time, you can't do it by just ignoring the past. We need to explicitly cultivate cultural practices around having hard conversations, listening to each other, and ensuring that the elites of our institutions are not atmospherically removed from the problems of those at the bottom. We are talking about power, and incentives and designing a world to balance them better. Incentive structures would have to change, as well as the values by which we assign status. Anyone dead set on the need for the status quo to remain precisely as it is will be blind to that. We have to explicitly plan against all of our awful, petty, human impulses and be extremely self skeptical. We need to listen to each other and then be encouraged to digest and act on what we’ve heard.

A good diagnosis is going to take medical history into account. A good treatment program will be based on that history. This book comes up short on the treatment suggested, and advocates throwing the history out of the window entirely. The primary issue with the book is that it appears to be status quo apologia focused mostly on a centrist appeal for two extremes to calm down. Not a book focused on story. The rise and fall of arguments appear to hinge on that goal, and their weaknesses break against the shortcomings that the position would create. Like the fallacious idea that "two sides" represent a theoretical horseshoe of equal danger. However, the legislator is way more dangerous than the screeching SJW and we’re seeing that clearly in 2022.

If you want a much better book that causes a deep sense of discomfort with just how flawed we are as an animal and how story reflects those flaws, I'd suggest "The Science Of Storytelling" by Will Storr. Much better book. More sober and less concerned with occupying a non-existent "rational and neutral" middle ground.
Read less

9 people found this helpfulRepor
R.M.
5.0 out of 5 stars Timely and Highly Recommended Book on StorytellingReviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 24 November 2021
Verified Purchase

This is such an important and highly recommended book for the times we live in. It’s an accessible, well-researched, easy-to-read exploration of the power, and danger of stories, and one of my standout books of the year. It’s also one of the most important books I’ve read on storytelling.

I enjoyed Gottschall’s previous book, The Storytelling Animal, which is about the power of stories and how we’re wired for story (homo fictus). The Story Paradox follows on from that, asking us to think about the fact that if stories can be used to change the world for the better, could they not also change the world for the worse? “Story science reveals that everything good about storytelling is the same as everything bad. Everything that makes storytelling wholesome is precisely what makes it dangerous.”

It’s because of this that Gottschall says, “The most urgent question we can ask ourselves now isn’t the hackneyed one: “How can we change the world through stories?” It’s “How can we save the world from stories?””

Gottschall approaches the topic unflinchingly, diving into everything from religion, political polarisation, and social media to a certain former American president. Gottschall argues that we tell stories to sway and shape the world more towards the way we want it to be. But due to an information and media overload, the stories we’re consuming are making each of us less tolerant and more set in our own ways. “Story used to drag us all to the middle and make us more alike. Now we’re all in our own little storyverses, and instead of making us more alike, story makes us into more extreme versions of ourselves.”

Our isolated technological bubbles of story are becoming narrower, more-defined and less accepting. This matters, because truth and facts matter. But stories supersede facts. This is why, for example, conspiracy theories hold so much sway over us.

When it comes to pressing issues such as COVID-19 and the climate crisis, this can have detrimental effects. From vaccine hesitancy to climate denialism, stories can be damaging for humanity. Take the climate crisis. Public awareness largely began after Dr James Hansen’s Senate Testimony in 1988. Yet 33 years later, and 26 COP climate summits later, and we still haven’t meaningfully addressed the issue with the urgency it requires. “The problem with messaging climate change isn’t that it makes an inherently bad story so much as an inherently deactivating one… In contrast to the abstractions of science, conspiracy stories about climate change can be highly activating because the good guys and bad guys are sharply drawn, and the problem is so much smaller.”

Working out where to go from here is a challenge, especially for authors. We clearly have a responsibility when telling stories, and not only that, but we’re seemingly up against a tidal wave of disinformation which shows no sign of dissipating. Stories have unified humanity in the past and also torn it apart. Now stories are threatening our ability to address civilisation-threatening issues. Our collective task is to work out how to get out of this mess. Perhaps the first step on that road is reading this highly informative book and then looking at what we’re putting out there and how it might be affecting society.
Read more

3 people found this helpfulReport


Sorrowful investigator
3.0 out of 5 stars DisappointingReviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 3 August 2022
Verified Purchase

I ran into Gottschall’s work by chance and thought it looked promising. I am gradually getting through The Story Paradox, which I find quite interesting in parts and a little tedious and disappointing in others. I thought it would explain more in scientific terms but Gottschall’s English Literature academic identity keeps him over-anchored in the humanities. He tries to be politically even-handed but inevitably leans left, even as he notes the dangerously leftist bias in academia. An early reference to antisemitic narrative (The Elders, David Icke, et al.) and a nod to the culture wars reveals his true interests and identity. Gottschall acknowledges his Jewish ancestry but not the fact that all five of his book cover testimonial authors are Jewish. I think this is important because the whole Judeo-Christian tradition is deeply rooted in story-telling purporting to convey truth, and Jewish authors have a massive influence on Western civilisation: outsized, as Amy Wax has called it. Neither Marxism nor Freudian psychoanalysis (and their myriad derivatives) deserve more than a place among social ‘science’ and psychotherapeutic just-so stories, whereas Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays certainly ranks highly as an advertising propagandist for capitalism. Plato is used here as a sort of lodestar, if negatively at times regarding his anti-poetry stance, and logic and science are seriously played down, I think, as simply alternative narratives rather than a different and often superior form of ‘story’. Much more could have been said about history and revisionist history than Gottschall says here, and a fawning inclusion of James Baldwin on American history hardly digs into this topic. A little Julian Jaynes, David Bohm or Iain McGilchrist wouldn’t have gone amiss in a work purporting to explain the evolutionary arc of narrative. Ben Shapiro features briefly but Jordan Peterson does not make an appearance at all. If Gottschall is ‘the deepest thinker’ in this domain, as Stephen Pinker calls him, God help us, since this is absolutely not depth! Perhaps one can forgive the author for writing a tepid middlebrow, journalistic book instead of a cutting-edge scholarly treatise, but please, Dr Gottschall, spare us the language-corrupting ‘bored of’ virus (p.97)!
Read less

2 people found this helpfulReport


Mark Arnest
5.0 out of 5 stars Eye-OpeningReviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 14 September 2022
Verified Purchase

In a June 2022 poll, one-third of Americans agreed with the statement that "members of Satanic cults abuse thousands of children every year." Gottschall's book will help you understand why such lunatic conspiracies
are on the rise. You may not like his conclusions - it's clear that he himself did not, and he seems a bit surprised by some of them - but the book is honest, plausible, and readable. Highly recommended.
Report


UncleChick Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars Why Story is at the Root of Destabilizing SocietyReviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 23 January 2022
Verified Purchase

Analyzes history of Story and how people use it for organizing disordered info about the world into meaning and order; how Story is morally neutral and can be used equally well for great good and great harm; how man is Homo Fictus and loves dark stories and that's not going to change; the sort of danger we're, post-truth, where no one can agree on one story of the reality all people share; how technology has accelerated the problem and made it exponentially worse; and how Communist China is effectively using this to the advantage of the Communist Party there, and why democracy has more trouble with this than authoritarian states do. He offers a little hope for fixing these enormous world-encompassing problems, by individuals fixing themselves, but not much.

4 people found this helpfulReport
See all reviews

===





The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down

Jonathan Gottschall

3.76
238 ratings48 reviews
Want to read
Buy on Kobo


Rate this book
Edit my activity
Storytelling, a tradition that built human civilization, may soon destroy it

Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.

In The Story Paradox, Gottschall explores how a broad consortium of psychologists, communications specialists, neuroscientists, and literary quants are using the scientific method to study how stories affect our brains. The results challenge the idea that storytelling is an obvious force for good in human life. Yes, storytelling can bind groups together, but it is also the main force dragging people apart. And it’s the best method we’ve ever devised for manipulating each other by circumventing rational thought. Behind all civilization’s greatest ills—environmental destruction, runaway demagogues, warfare—you will always find the same master factor: a mind-disordering story.

Gottschall argues that societies succeed or fail depending on how they manage these tensions. And it has only become harder, as new technologies that amplify the effects of disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, and fake news make separating fact from fiction nearly impossible.

With clarity and conviction, Gottschall reveals why our biggest asset has become our greatest threat, and what, if anything, can be done. It is a call to stop asking, “How we can change the world through stories?” and start asking, “How can we save the world from stories?”

GenresNonfictionPsychologySciencePoliticsPhilosophyNeuroscienceEvolution
...more



272 pages, Hardcover

First published November 21, 2021
Book details & editions




54 people are currently reading




826 people want to read

About the author


Jonathan Gottschall14 books128 followers

Follow



Jonathan Gottschall is an American literary scholar, the leading younger figure in literature and evolution. He teaches at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania. He completed graduate work in English at State University of New York at Binghamton, where he worked under David Sloan Wilson.

His work The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence and the World of Homer describes the Homeric epic poems Iliad and Odyssey in terms of evolutionary psychology, with the central violent conflicts in these works driven by the lack of young women to marry and the resulting evolutionary legacy, as opposed to the violent conflicts being driven by honor or wealth.

Literature, Science and a New Humanities advocates that the humanities, and literary studies in particular, need to avail themselves of quantitative and objective methods of inquiry as well as the traditional qualitative and subjective, if they are to produce cumulative, progressive knowledge, and provides a number of case studies that apply quantitative methods to fairy and folk tale around the world to answer questions about human universals and differences.

Gottschall was profiled by the New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His work was featured in an article in Science describing literature and evolution.
Show more



Displaying 1 - 10 of 48 reviews


BlackOxford
1,081 reviews · 68.2k followers

Follow
January 5, 2022
The Essential Poison

Sugar-coating hemlock doesn’t reduce its toxicity but I’ll bet it would be a real boost to sales. Perhaps this is the theory behind Jonathan Gottschall’s book about language. He makes his concern explicit. “I think of storytelling as humanity’s ‘essential poison,’” he says. By describing the poison in terms of stories and claiming we can tell the difference between better and worse stories, Gottschall implies that certain species-death is avoidable if we read the instructions on the label. Socrates, I’m sure, would object to the pitch on moral as well as health grounds.

Oddly, Gottschall doesn’t think scientists and mathematicians tell stories. This is because he dissociates stories from language, so that he can later claim a sort of priority for science in checking prose stories. But the specialised languages of formulas and equations are as much stories as The Story Paradox itself, including all the messy conclusions of self-referentiality. It’s part of his programme to make the medicine go down easier I suppose.

Gottschall also would like us to think that stories only became problematic with the internet and social media. This is, of course, ridiculous as the history of religion and its varied myths, all of which he cites, demonstrates so obviously. In fact Gottschall has got the chronology wrong. Stories created the internet. Language is the fundamental technology. Gossip is the killer app that allowed the species Homo Sapiens to survive in a world of stronger, faster, and more quick-witted predators. Language creates the collective human mind which is the most predatory instrument on the planet, perhaps in the cosmos. As Gottschall notes correctly:
“Behind all the factors driving civilization’s greatest ills—political polarization, environmental destruction, runaway demagogues, warfare, and hatred—you’ll always find the same master factor: a mind-disordering story.’

Gottschall thinks we can escape what he calls the magic of stories by knowing that they’re stories. Such an escape however would require some sort of final story about stories, an ultimate story like say that of the Catholic Church in its doctrinal statements, or the Fundamentalist’s Bible or the much sought after Theory of Everything in Physics. But these ultimate stories are just more of the same, that is, hopeless attempts to evade the hideous necessity of language through yet more language. Nevertheless Gottschall wants us to have hope, to think that he and we can discern better from worse stories. According to him, the solution is at hand, “We need more reason in the world.”

Where is such reason to be found? Gottschall thinks he knows: “Above all, we need to double down on our commitment to science because science is for standing up to stories.” Has he never heard of epistemology, that centuries-old failed attempt to identify better and worse scientific stories? In other words, his buck-passing solution to what he calls “a pandemic of conspiratorial thinking” has no credibility whatsoever. There is no vaccine (or anti-venom) that can cure us. His book is just another catalogue of useless, largely pornographic, anecdotes about QAnon, Trump, Hitler, Stalin and the various other nutcases who have committed atrocities.

I take the publication of this book as helpful in only one respect - evidence that the the quality editorial staff at Basic Books has deteriorated markedly over recent years.
aesthetics american epistemology-language
63 likes
18 comments
Like
Comment




Jaidee
590 reviews · 1,138 followers

Follow
October 1, 2022
2.5"glib, over-reaching, yet still worthwhile" stars !!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Perseus books for an e-copy. This was released November 2021. I am providing my honest review.

I want to describe to you how this book went down for me. It is a wednesday evening and there is an alumni continuing ed lecture that you are sort of interested in attending but you already know how it will go down. The lecturer has accolades coming out of his ying yang and in the audience will be the semi intelligent left leaning liberals that are financially comfortable oooohing and aaaahing and nodding their heads in agreement while sipping their Chablis but only half listening as they are exhausted from their mid management careers and would rather be Skyping with their extramarital affair. The audience is multicultural and very very woke but they are envious of their former classmates' larger homes and are distressed by the possibility of a mens' shelter being built two streets down.....do you get my drift...that is the narrative that came up for me during this read....

This is not an academic book but a presentation of strongly held beliefs held about the intersectionality of our human need for narrative, increasing isolation and the increasing influence of social media in our lives tied together by an entertaining array of soft science research, anecdotes and humor that only ladies with three glasses of wine would giggle at....


I am not saying that this did not open up ideas for me or I did not enjoy to a degree but the authorial voice and lack of organization led to this being a rather ho hum evening.

With a lot of work this could have been much more impactful and helpful...which I believe is what the author intended....

This is my story and I'm sticking to it....

two-ana-half-stars-books
56 likes
11 comments
Like
Comment



Nelson Zagalo
9 books · 322 followers

Follow
December 1, 2021
I cannot call a book something that is nothing but a jumble of ideas and phrases stuck together to manipulate whoever reads it. I can't even say that Jonathan Gottschall tells a story, because telling a story implies cohesion and discursive unity, and here we have anything but that. Gottschall grabs everything from everywhere - various scientific, technological and cultural areas - that can somehow support his premise, and sets up a house of cards to sell his ideas. He just forgot that rhetoric needs ethos to work, not just logic and emotion. It is almost painful to see Gottschall, someone who teaches in higher education, using research work by multiple colleagues, which are related to concrete issues, being cited distorted or summoning the results for what he is interested in, just to offer proof of authority to the discourse he constructs. This we call manipulative discourse, without any respect for the readers. If in his previous book, "The Storytelling Animal" (analysis VI), we already felt much of this, and which at the time I considered to be an "absolutist approach", in this new book, besides not adding anything, the approach slips into an attempt to inculcate fear and panic, hoping with this to attract the lights to sell more books.

--------------------------------------

Não posso chamar livro a algo que não passa de um emaranhado de ideias e frases coladas juntas para manipular quem lê "The Story Paradox" (2021). Nem sequer posso dizer que Jonathan Gottschall conte uma história, porque contar uma história implica coesão e unidade discursiva, e aqui temos tudo menos isso. Gottschall agarra em tudo de todo o lado — diversas áreas científicas, tecnológicas e culturais — que possam de algum modo suportar as suas premissas, e monta um castelo de cartas para vender as sua ideias. Só esqueceu que a retórica para funcionar precisa de Ethos, não chega lógica e emoção. É quase doloroso ver Gottschall, alguém que ensina no ensino superior, usar trabalhos de múltiplos colegas, que estão relacionados com questões concretas, que ele cita distorcendo ou convocando os resultados para o que lhe interessa, apenas para oferecer prova de autoridade ao discurso que constrói. A isto chamamos discurso manipulativo, sem qualquer respeito pelos leitores. Se no seu livro anterior, "The Storytelling Animal" (análise VI), já se sentia muito disto, e que na altura considerei como "abordagem absolutista", neste novo livro além de não vir acrescentar nada, a abordagem resvala para a tentativa de inculcar o medo e o pânico esperando com isso atrair as luzes para a venda de mais livro.

Comentário completo em português no Virtual Illusion:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
human_engage narrative_study
20 likes
7 comments
Like
Comment



Rossdavidh
512 reviews · 154 followers

Follow
March 18, 2022
When I was finishing my review of Jonathan Gottschall's last book ("The Storytelling Animal", see here), I lamented that, after having convinced the reader (well, this reader anyway) that storytelling is one of the most fundamental things about humanity, he didn't take on the topic of whether or not our storytelling impulse might be a source of trouble now, given the many changes in how we tell each other stories (media used, reach, etc.). In his newest book, Gottschall takes on the topic of the dangers of storytelling. I awaited the delivery of it with some excitement, and cracked the cover with a bit of mental preparation to have my mind blown.

Of course, I had overdone it. There is still, I think, too much we don't really know about how story works on the human mind, and Gottschall is forced to admit as much:

"Early in my research for this book, I spent a morning in the lounge of the college psychology department, eagerly perusing the tables of contents and indexes of about twenty recent textbooks from different subfields of psychology. I was scanning for references to any variant of the word 'story' or 'narrative'. I had my notebook out to scribble down ideas, concepts, and references to journal articles to run down. When I finished the notebook paper remained pristine. I got zero hits.

The science of story exists, and this book couldn't have been written without it. But it's still a very young science, where the known is dwarfed by the unknown. And far from moving toward its rightful place near the heart of the human sciences, story science hasn't even penetrated the textbooks...Excuse me while I whisper in the ears of ambitious young researchers: The tree of story science is heavy with toothsome, low-hanging fruit. Go feast yourself and grow fat in reputation."

So, while Gottschall does not have the fruits of that young science yet to present to us, he does have what I call the One Big Idea of his book, which is an idea about what 'story' is, and what it tells us about what language is. Language is not, primarily, used to communicate. Not really, not most of the time. We do, yes, occasionally say, "could you hand me the salt, please" or "turn left here", but the vast majority of our use of language is not for the purpose of communicating information. Instead, it's for the purposes of manipulating each other. We talk, to sway how other people think, rather than to merely convey some information. What is the term we use, to distinguish between something that merely conveys information, and something that instead (or in addition) sways our emotions, stirs our hearts, perhaps even calls us to action?

The term is "story". It's what's normally lacking in a textbook, and it's why they're mostly dull (and ironically as a result uninformative). It's what _is_ there in an excellent piece of popular science writing, and of course, fiction (which in most cases achieves the manipulation without even bothering with any information about anything real at all). Story is, therefore, both profoundly powerful and, as a result, profoundly dangerous. All the more so because it is so poorly understood.

There was a moment in the mid-20th century, when America (and perhaps other nations as well) had a bit of a legislative freak-out about the dangers of subliminal advertising. The fear was that our minds could be controlled by seeing or hearing advertisements too dim to be consciously perceived. It turns out that this is almost entirely bogus, but there is a similar problem in front of us, now and forever, so much more dangerous not only because it actually works, but also because we would greatly resent any effort to protect us from it. The difference is that, in nearly all cases now, the only covert message that the storyteller (movie director, script writer for a TV series, best-selling author, news journalist, politician) is actually trying to slip into our minds is:

"Pay attention to me".

Now, it is questionable whether the propaganda of previous ages, which certainly wanted people's attention but wanted it for some other purpose, was actually any less dangerous. Still there is most decidedly something chilling about comparing our own storytelling input to that of, say, a medieval peasant. They spent most of the day doing manual labor, mostly without saying anything, perhaps sometimes singing a work song but not ingesting story after story. For any century prior to the 20th, storytelling (and storylistening) had to wait until the end of the day, or the depths of the winter. In 2020, while Gottschall was writing his book, Americans (in part due to the pandemic) for the first time spent more time watching TV than working: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.... It ought to horrify us how much of our lives we spend watching fictional depictions of somebody else's life, instead of living our own.

Unfortunately, while Gottschall is able to tell a pretty decent story himself, he doesn't really have as much information in this book as I was hoping for, either. In some ways, this is not his fault; he's trying to convince us that storytelling is worth serious scientific study, not tell us what the discoveries and conclusions of such study might be. But I did find it a bit of a letdown.

But then there were moments like this, when he turns his attention to Facebook:

"[Facebook] hasn't thrived because it discovered a new way of capturing attention. In large part, its algorithm just independently discovered the oldest way of capturing attention - the universal grammar of storytelling - and figured out how to distribute it on a colossal scale. The intelligence behind the algorithm may be artificial, but the narrative psychology it exploits is entirely natural. To wish the negative externalities of Facebook away is a near thing to wishing away the universal grammar of storytelling. It's to fantasize that social media companies are creating demand for dark, divisive, and morally provocative material rather than responding to it. It's therefore to fantasize that a different algorithm serving as a router for narratives of truth, goodness, and positivity could perform almost as well. But no matter the business model (free, subscription, or whatever), social media platforms will naturally conform to the built-in regularities of narrative psychology, whereby the darker the narrative, the more it crackles with moralistic energy, the more likely it will win out in story wars."

That, is something you will not get by reading books from lesser minds. While I have little sympathy for Facebook, it is undoubtedly the case that much of our dissatisfaction with them, is much like our dissatisfaction with Congress being too partisan to get stuff done, or our dissatisfaction with fast food for not being nutritious: it is really our dissatisfaction with ourselves. It isn't ethical to cater to our darkest desires, but it is still a product primarily of our darkest desires, not Facebook's (or Congress', or fast food's). If we primarily paid attention to thoughtful, dispassionate, considerate, long essays, then the social media of our day would be serving them up to us. They don't want us to binge on anger and derision for others, any more than they want us to binge on pictures of cats. But they do want us to pay attention, as much as possible, and what works for that, is the nasty side of storytelling.

So, while Gottschall's book was not all that I hoped for, it was worth the reading, and if it is unable to illuminate a dark corner of the human mind, it is at least able to convey forcefully that it exists, and why we do desperately need it illuminated. I don't know if any of the "ambitious young researchers" that Gottschall refers to will read his book and accept the challenge, but I can only hope so.
red
15 likes
Like
Comment



Andrea McDowell
569 reviews · 321 followers

Follow
December 14, 2021
A short, effective book describing the upsides and downsides of the power of narrative on human beings and human society. As Gottschall points out: both the best and worst parts of our histories have been motivated by and founded on stories, whether good or bad, and we need to grapple with story's potential for harm as well as good. He also goes into how and why "bad" stories are often more compelling and shareable than "good" stories, given that there's no need for consistency with boring non-narrative facts and they can easily hijack very contagious elements like anger, outrage, and fear. Any number of covid conspiracy stories come to mind as examples.
2021 brain-stuff groundhog-day
8 likes
Like
Comment




Ietrio
6,618 reviews · 25 followers

Follow
November 24, 2021
There is no paradox here, only a weak story: the story of a entitled man who thumps his feet in a tantrum because the world doesn't heel to his ideal world whim.
junk
7 likes
Like
Comment



Kressel Housman
972 reviews · 225 followers

Follow
February 22, 2022
Sometimes, while reading a book, I think, “This is pretty good, but not fabulous. 4 stars.” Then I reach the ending, and it blows my mind. It casts everything that came before it in a brand new light. That’s how a book can earn a fifth star on the very last page.

This book was the opposite. All throughout, I was thinking, “Wow. This author is telling it like it is. 5 stars.” Then I reached the conclusion, and with a single word, the book lost me. That word was “hate.”

The author is a literature professor whose previous work has been on my to-read list for a while. It’s called The Storytelling Animal, and its thesis is that the human mind is constructed to process the world through stories. The current book revisits that thesis, but now that we’re living in a post-truth era where conspiracy theories abound, it’s clear why the author was motivated to explore the negative side of stories. Specifically, he pinpoints the need for a villain. Villainy is at the core of any conspiracy story. Psychologically, people need someone to scapegoat for the mess they find themselves in.

The thesis resonated with me for many reasons. First, as a Jew, I know all about being cast as the villain in someone else’s picture of the world. Early on in the book, the author recounts the events of the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. The perpetrator genuinely believed he was acting the role of the hero by ridding the world of some elderly Jews, as though we really are “the Elders of Zion” corrupting the world. It was similar for the young man who showed up at that DC pizza shop to liberate kids from pedophiles. He believed in a story he read online, and since nobody else was acting on it, he assumed the role of the hero vigilante. He went armed and prepared to kill the bad guys in his rescue of innocent kids. In his mind, it was a supremely moral act.

It’s easy to write these people off as gullible dupes, but consider how deeply stories affect you personally. I, for one, have a lifelong phobia based on some imagery I saw on TV at the age of four or five. Stories also inspired the games my sister and I used to play with our friends: Charlie’s Angels, Little House on the Prairie, Gilligan’s Island. I think that was the beginning of my hobby of writing fanfic, and I know I’m not the only one who “lives” in these stories. I’ve heard it said that Roger Stone is cosplaying the “wise guys” in mafia movies, and of course, a persona from reality TV made it all the way to the most powerful office in the world. Presumably, he bought his own act – perhaps not entirely, but enough to convince himself that he’s a patriot who’s been wronged. We’re all the heroes of our own stories. It’s our cognitive bias. We’re just wired that way.

So can we be heroes without having villains to fight? Professor Gottschall cites the movie “Babel” as an example of a villain-less story, but it’s the exception. People want happy endings, and above all, that means seeing that justice is served. It’s true even in love stories. Sure, we’re happy that Cinderella marries Prince Charming, but the ending is incomplete without the humiliation of the evil stepsisters. In the Grimms’ version, it’s pretty grisly. In order to fit into the glass slipper, one sister cuts off her toes and the other her heels. This kind of schadenfreude is baked into our sense of a good story.

As a writer, I’m having trouble with this myself. It’s probably one of the main reasons I took the book so much to heart. For over two years now, I’ve been working on a Beauty and the Beast (Rumbelle) fanfic. The basic Beauty and the Beast plot might be what Professor Gottschall would call “empathy for the devil.” My story includes a whole meta-narrative about it. One character is in a quarrel with the Brothers Grimm about villainy. (It’s seen most clearly in Chapter 20, if anyone’s curious.)

Workshopping the story has taught me a lot about people’s inner processes, and their reactions correlate with Professor Gottschall’s observations. The Beast is a hidden hero. He has to have a good side for Belle to be right about him. But when I make him too kind, people say I’m straying from the original. Then I give him an antagonist to punish, and readers hate him. . . except for the fans of the TV show. They love the Beast/Rumpelstiltskin no matter what. They want to see the antagonists suffer more. They’ve said it about Belle’s non-love interest Gaston, and they say it about the Grimms. One of the story’s intended messages is that revenge isn’t justice, but it doesn’t seem to be landing. I am caught in the story paradox.

It’s because this book addressed issues that I care so deeply about that reading the word “hate” in the conclusion was such a turn-off. Professor Gottschall states that while we shouldn’t hate storytellers, and that we must pity the people who fall for them, we should hate stories. I’m sorry, but I just can’t get on board with that. Yes, we should question and deconstruct stories, especially when they demonize someone else, but hate? If stories are so intrinsic to how our minds work, then story-hatred is no different than self-hatred. That’s not a recipe to rebuild a better society. It seems to me that in advocating story-hate, Professor Gottschall fell into the villainy trap. He, too, got caught in the story paradox.

6 likes
Like
Comment



Tim
83 reviews

Follow
March 2, 2022
'I thought if you told people facts, they’d draw their conclusions, and because the facts were true, the conclusions mostly would be too. But we don’t run on facts. We run on stories about things. About people.'
- James S.A. Corey, Babylon's Ashes

Suppose you have a cat that needs medication. Your cat will not take her medication. Your cat does not like her medication. Your cat is plotting to smother you in your sleep because you keep trying to get her to take this horrible medication. What can you do? You mix what she needs (her medication) with what she enjoys (her food). This is the traditional function of story as this book outlines it. It is trying to impart something to you in a way that power point purveyors simply cannot. A parable is an example of this concept. However, the author notes that story can also have a dark side. You have a vermin problem. For some unfathomable reason they are loathe to ingest poison. What can you do? You mix what they eschew (the poison) with what they will willingly receive (their food). Indeed, medicine and poison are in one sense the same thing: a foreign substance being introduced into your body. What differentiates them is their effect on you. One makes you better and the other makes you worse. Story can work like this by embedding ideas in your mind. It's basically the same idea as memes and memeplexes. While that terminology might be relatively new, the thought that it is conveying isn't. It has always been the case that the immaterial realm of ideas and information has required a physical medium to travel about in: squishy bundles of neurons, stone tablets, flash drives, interconnected computer networks. As the author describes it:

'It may help to think of the sway-making power of stories as the closest real-life equivalent to the force in Star Wars. Like the force, story is an all-pervasive field of dark and light energy that influences all of our actions. On the radio, on the news, on TV, on podcasts, on social media, in advertising, and in face-to-face yarning—we’re forever swimming through a turbulent sea of narratives, with rival stories churning against each other and buffeting us around.'

The contention of this book is that the original way of imparting ideas and information in order to change minds is still the best way because it does an end run around any barriers you might have in place to resist a particular idea or information cluster. Arguably the less overt they are, the more potent they are; people who recognize they are being manipulated usually respond by putting up a wall. The power of story isn't necessarily a bad thing but it is certainly more covert than overt in method. To use a word that is much in vogue in current online culture, stories are influencers.

Suppose you have some cause, crisis, or crusade you are amped up about and want to make people aware of. You might make a documentary that lists facts, figures, and have a voiceover by that one actor whose voice you recognize but can't put a name to. (You know the one I mean, right? Yeah, that guy.) The facts and figures approach is a more abstract approach. It might work or it might make people flick to the next channel. You could also pick a person integral to that cause, crisis, or crusade, craft the documentary around them and work all of the other stuff in along the way. Now people have a story. This is a more concrete approach. Another example. Suppose you wanted to demonstrate that people corrupt institutions and institutions corrupt people in a perpetual and seemingly never ending cycle, an overt way to do that would be to have a person stand at the front of a room and drone through a power point presentation filled with pie charts and bar graphs and historical records. A covert way would be to have them sit down and watch the HBO series The Wire from start to finish. Of the two, I know which would be more likely to make a lasting impression on me (Hint: It's not the power point presentation). To be fair, I will note a trade off here. The fictional narrative makes the point and underlines it. It gets your attention. However, the presentation (assuming no malevolent intent or ignorance of the facts on the part of the speaker) will be more accurate. It not only checks the veridicality of the narrative, it fills in all of the details. The advantages of story as summarized by the author:

'Storytellers enjoy a number of scientifically validated advantages over other types of messengers. First, and most basically, unlike some other forms of messaging, we love stories and the people who deliver them. Second, story is sticky (we process narrative much faster than other forms of communication and remember the information much better). Third, stories rivet attention like nothing else (think about how little your mind wanders during your favorite TV show or a novel you can’t put down). Fourth, good stories demand to be retold (think how hard it is not to spread that top-secret gossip or give away a spoiler), which means the messages in stories spread virally through social networks. And all of these advantages are driven by the fifth and most important advantage stories have over other forms of communication: they generate powerful emotion.'

Another point he makes is that everyone uses story to one degree or another to understand the world and themselves. That voice in our heads telling us about our past (where we have been), our present (where we are), and our future (where we are going) is much more than a clinical record of life events. We aren't cameras recording information to a hard drive. Your consciousness is providing a commentary track on all of this input. I don't think there are any exemptions to this narrative commentary, though perhaps there may be people not self-reflective enough to see they are not exemptions. In saying this, I am not saying that there is no such thing as truth, that no one can know anything about anything at all, that all knowledge is some kind of social construction, that any possible take on every possible issue is equally valid and worthy of consideration, or any of the other forms of applied postmodernism that are currently de rigueur . Are there any humans (myself included) that out of all humans have reached peak objectivity and are thus capable of placing themself outside of any possible framework that structures their existence and a set of moral values that is at least somewhat concomittant with it? It could be a fully articulated worldview or it might be some vague notions about – to co-opt Douglas Adams – Life, the Universe, and Everything but there isn't anybody that doesn't have a framework; there are just people that have a framework that is tacit and unarticulated and those that don't. Something being unexamined does not mean it isn't influencing your actions and behaviour, it just means the influence - like the framework itself - is invisible to you. It's kind of like culture. Culture is 'just the way things are.' Tacit frameworks are 'just the way I am.'

This book also tackles the hyperpoliticization of absolutely every facet of western culture and notes that while the problem may at times be a problem of facts, it is most definitely a problem of narratives:

Going from the pre-Guttenberg age in which formal storytelling was overwhelmingly consumed communally in smallish groups, to the mass audiences of the broadcast age, to the new age of story “narrowcasting” represents a sea change in human life. It amounts to a dangerous social experiment that seems to be going awry. Story has gone from being the great uniter, as James Poniewozik puts it, to the great divider. Story used to drag us all to the middle and make us more alike. Now we’re all in our own little storyverses, and instead of making us more alike, story makes us into more extreme versions of ourselves. It allows us to live in story worlds that reinforce our biases rather than challenge them. The end result is that everything consumed in our storylands just makes me more me, and you more you. It also makes “us” into more extreme versions of “us,” and “them” into more extreme versions of “them.” The sharp balkanization of American liberals and conservatives—with all the dire consequences for civic harmony and national cohesion—is largely a result of each side’s ability to live entirely inside the storyverses of the Left or the Right.

I am not sure if there is a solution to this problem. He talks about authoritarian nations imposing a top down approved narrative for the population. Gotta say – not a fan. In fact, I'm going to file that one away under solutions that are worse than the problems they are addressing. Diverging storyverses could be mitigated to some extent by using an aggregator. Social media and its daily dosage of outrage porn also discourages any sort of in-depth analysis. When our emotions are triggered at the expense of our reason it's kind of an uphill battle. Another part of the problem is whether one is inclined to approach narrative in terms of instrumentality or ontology. Should the best narrative win or should the truest narrative win? Should the end pummel the means into submission? Is the noble lie good because it is noble or bad because it is a lie?

All told, story is subversive, story is instructive, story is persuasive, and story is potentially divisive.

'To summarize, telling just gives us the meaning. Showing forces us to figure out the meaning for ourselves, and when we do this, we take ownership of that meaning. In this way, great storytellers play the psychological equivalent of the cuckoo bird’s trick: they make us feel that the notions they’ve laid like eggs in our minds are actually our own.'

While I don't think (most) people writing stories are actively deceptive as the bird in the analogy above is, he does have a point. Inasmuch as we are inclined to get anything more out of a story than escapism, I suppose we have to do the hard work ourselves: step back from the story, reflect on the story, and perhaps extract some general and abstract statements we feel it might be making from the story. And then, of course, decide if we agree. A quote attributed by some to Aristotle:

'It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain an idea without accepting an idea.'

Something our increasingly censorious culture could certainly take to heart.
2022 communication-logic-rhetoric culture
...more
3 likes
Like
Comment



Dora Okeyo
26 books · 172 followers

Follow
June 27, 2021
Now more than ever, we find ourselves consuming and being bombarded by stories from ever angle-and reading this book reminded me of the power of narrative.
In social media today it's more about the power of a hashtag or trend- and once everyone is talking about it, it's difficult to take time to sieve through the truth from the lies. This book looks at the story, the oldest form of communication of human beings, takes us back to history and historical events to best understand how the one thing we love and are good at can ultimately destroy us.
As a Reader and Writer, this book is a great conversation to have. The author does not immediately say "watch what you say" or "sieve what you hear," he takes you through the journey of stories and story telling and misconceptions of them as well.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

4 likes
Like
Comment



Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)