The Importance of Meaningful Narratives

What do you think the absence of these kind of stories, losing these

stories has done to people-

You know, we, we can't, we can't live in a world without meaning.

You know, we are, we are made for meaning, and meaning for us is mostly embodied

in narrative. If you want to know that something me- means something,

you want to

know what it-- where it came from and what it's leading to,

and therefore that it's

part of a story. So to deprive people of meaningful

narrative and

dismiss it just because you stuck the posh word matter in front of it and said,

"Oh, I don't believe there's a matter

narrative," there bloody well is.

But, uh, if you do, do that, you say to people, "Look,

you're just a bunch

of enzymes unwinding blindly. You're the

self-replication of a selfish gene.

Even what you think is a moral thing is actually no more than a survival

instinct

that happened by sheer random chance because it was evolutionary

preferred. Doesn't mean it's real or has any moral appeal."

If you teach that to

people long enough, and at the same time you say,

"You must be good.

You must obey the law. You mustn't steal. You shouldn't lie to your parents.

You really shouldn't, you know, go out and rape people just

because you feel like it." And at the same time you're saying,

"There is no

morality. Nothing means anything el- you know, even your slightest thing

is always

an oppression anyway from someone else." You know, there comes a point where, you

know, the disconnect, the, uh, what I believe they like to call

cognitive dissonance, becomes intolerable.

It becomes intolerable, and either you despair or

you become utterly lonely, or you do terrible things in

an attempt to kind of have an impact and make your own meaning.

And all of those things are happening both at an individual and a

civilizational level