page from prelim draft of “the dark gospel”, by f.k.omm

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our selves are narratives written out of (or into) our experience.

each self is a story, or a series of stories.

neuroscientist michael gazzaniga writes: These narratives of our past behaviour seep into our awareness and give us an autobiography .

this is not quite joan didion’s classic “we tell each other stories in order to live” line – it is less causal, less contentiously debatable, and more scientific:

the left hemisphere’s language areas draw on information in memory  (amygdalo-hippocampal circuits, dorsolateral prefrontal cortices) and planning regions (orbitofrontal cortices).

damage to these regions disrupts narration, leading to such things as unbounded narration (our narratives are unconstrained by reality) and denarration (we are unable to generate any narratives, external or internal).

john bickle and sean keating suggest the narrative self is written by “our little inner voice”. they specualte that as traditional narratives are joined by digital ones, our sense of self may see a corresponding change:

Digital technologies… are producing narratives that stray from this classic structure. New communicative interfaces allow for novel narrative interactions and constructions. Multi-user domains (MUDs), massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), hypertext and cybertext all loosen traditional narrative structure. Digital narratives, in their extremes, are co-creations of the authors, users and media. Multiple entry points into continuously developing narratives are available, often for multiple co-constructors.

even so, they concede that “Unbounded digital narratives, unconstrained by familiar temporal, causal ordering, seem psychologically implausible as sources for enduring, communicating selves.”

and yet, “the self as a story on social media” – where millions of people are both writing their own narrative selves, while being concurrently influenced and reshaped by other narratives – is a self that is fundamentally different to the selves that were possible before the digital age.

having said that, the kinds of narrative selves thus created do not necessarily deviate from pre-digital story arcs, of course. our urges, motivations, personal growth, dreams, conflicts, ideals, resolutions and melodramas still exist as before.

defining the self may still be a matter of projecting our experience onto “classic” narrative templates.

but perhaps digital intercourse and storytelling do create new storylines and templates. certainly there will be a greater drive to simplicity in the stories that become widely popular.

and this may be true of broader narratives, too – the ones about groups of people, not just individuals, but shared identities, or regions, countries and the planet – the purpose of (and our place in) the universe, even.

link to bickle and keating’s article in new scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/11/storytelling-20-when-new-narratives-meet-old-brains.html