Re:Why Fiction Beats Truth
by dalbasal on Monday May 27, 2019 @07:02AM
(#20021116)
I'm not disagreeing with the main points. There are things about our countries that we can't stomach.
My point is that to be meaningful politically, that stuff is likely to be narrative.. which is not the same as fact. "Cesar ended the republic" is a narrative sort of a statement not a factual one. Cesar crossed the Rubicon, named himself distator for life, marched on Rome... those are facts.
By narrative, I don't mean that it's false.
The Republic itself is/was a story, and the story changed and evolved constantly. Just like democracy, capitalism or whanot it's not a legible concept. It's more like "X is the better man for the job" than "X weighs more than Y." Whether the Republic ended or not only has meaning within the context of the story. There's no external test that declares a republic dead, outside of the narrative.
I recently read a Chinese history timeline. The jist was "China was an empire for thousands of years, until mao." Whether or not something is or isn't "The Chinese empire" is a narrative claim, not a factual one.
The first step towards a truthier world is recognizing the difference between facts and stories. Truth means something totally different depending on what you're dealing with. Apart from climate change, I can't think of major political questions where factual truths and falsehoods play a roles anything like role naratives play.
My point is that to be meaningful politically, that stuff is likely to be narrative.. which is not the same as fact. "Cesar ended the republic" is a narrative sort of a statement not a factual one. Cesar crossed the Rubicon, named himself distator for life, marched on Rome... those are facts.
By narrative, I don't mean that it's false.
The Republic itself is/was a story, and the story changed and evolved constantly. Just like democracy, capitalism or whanot it's not a legible concept. It's more like "X is the better man for the job" than "X weighs more than Y." Whether the Republic ended or not only has meaning within the context of the story. There's no external test that declares a republic dead, outside of the narrative.
I recently read a Chinese history timeline. The jist was "China was an empire for thousands of years, until mao." Whether or not something is or isn't "The Chinese empire" is a narrative claim, not a factual one.
The first step towards a truthier world is recognizing the difference between facts and stories. Truth means something totally different depending on what you're dealing with. Apart from climate change, I can't think of major political questions where factual truths and falsehoods play a roles anything like role naratives play.