Tyranny of Narrative

And now something I noticed whilst watching Treasure Island at the weekend. Isn't it strange how people can be murdering one another on all sides, and the story can select quite arbitrary who is good and bad. Cowboys killing Indians. They are both murders yet films call the cowboy good and the Indian bad. Could be just as easy the other way around. I call it the "tyranny of the narrative" because the narrative or story can be brutal to those who it doesn't like. Which reminds me also of the old testament style. Nothing particularly good about God's chosen: they murdered, raped, lied, commited adultery, cheated, stole yet those who God chose were good and the others (even those of better quality) were bad. There is no knowing the God of the old testament, and so it is simply luck if we choses you are not. Murder, don't murder it makes no difference: God moves in mysterious ways. But this is the power of the narrative also: to forgive even the worst and make the best look like criminals. Politicians use the tyranny of narrative quite unashamedly in every speech to condemn those who challenge power. Watch for it.

What is extraordinary if we review our knowledge of history is the horrific behaviour of people who we class as heroes. Conquerors laying siege to cities, killing women and children is common practice in the ancient times. Yet these people who built their early empires get happy mention in children's history classes: brutal compassionless murders one and all. Our own leaders who effectively command the murders of hundreds of thousands - they are great leaders. (I know the official narratives say it differently - but it's the same facts)

Yet the man down the street who pulls a knife in a fight and cuts just one person's throat: they are to be feared as much as death itself? Doesn't sound right. Say worse, cuts their throat and hangs them from a tree. Clearly insane, and dangerous. Lock this person away. Yet our own establishment decided this was good behaviour only a matter of centuries ago. In tune with modern sentiments: we lock someone away for a week. We are clearly insane: yet the government will go on to do exactly the same in response.

The only difference is the narrative. It is hard to provide a narrative for just ourselves. Much easier for the establishment to switch on the printing presses and fill our minds with clever stories to explain and justify what it does. Simply look as the narratives came and went over Iraq. Firstly Hussein was a bad man. Remember Colin Powell before the UN trying pathetically to convince people that trucks were evidence of WMDs? Then we were trying to help the people of Iraq. Two top level stories for the same gravely serious event - confusion? Now see the Chinese government trying pathetically the convince the world that the Dalai Lama is man of violence... and succeeding in China. This is the power of narrative. What must be hard for the Chinese to explain is that for 60 years and the majority of his life he has talked of nothing but Peace... clearly a long term (and pointless) strategy aimed at shielding him from blame for the only recent violence. If the Chinese are right, it tells us one thing only that the Dalai Lama is much better at this game of narrative than they are.

Locking people away, calling them mad, erasing their voice, not listening or accepting their narratives are all essential tools of the establishment narratives that put power in the hands of the powerful and take power from the hands of the many. I suppose my words here would be dismissed as madness and dangerous if the establishment saw them as a threat (which I hope it doesn't) because whoever is reading them (from the establishment) should have realised by now they are an individual with a choice who can perform a duty to the establishment if it is right, or not and ultimately resign if it is wrong; and so judge these words for what they are rather than a threat to some vapid non-existent ghost called "The Establishment".

And of course I have here rubbished establishment voices, not because it is hard but because it is easy (to mis-quote Kennedy). Establishment narratives are built of the same substance as any fairy tale, but when the fairy tale stops working then the bought people (for whom the fairy tale still works) will have to enforce power and then our "free" country becomes just as China, a brutal oppressor as the ITN camera man found out.

Behind the duelling narratives are the people who have to believe all this stuff and in that "lies" the truth, and the weakness of the tyranny of narrative for those who wish to use their own eyes and consciences to look.