Examining the Value of Socially Constructed Narratives

[DocWatts]

What is the value of culturally constructed narratives? And what should we as a society do when our social constructs begin to become untenable?

In the following passage of the philosophy book that I'm writing, '7 Provisional Truths' I explore both of these questions. What I argue for is a pivot towards a Reconstructive Epistemology that allows us to construct our cultural narratives in a more self-aware way. Rather than romanticizing the past or trying to do away with shared social narratives entirely, we'd be better off with narratives that are flexible, inclusive, and compassionate.

(For some added context, I propose 'Enactivism' as one possible candidate for a Reconstructive epistomology. Its primary emphasis is that minds 'enact', or 'bring forth', an experiential world in accordance with our living bodies and our environment. A central tenet of this viewpoint is the lack of any absolute or fixed boundary between ourselves and the world. As a consequence, both our minds and the world work in tandem to construct knowledge.)

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The Need For Reconstructive Epistemology

To understand the necessity of reconstructive epistemology, it’s essential to consider the outcomes for a culture when its stories and myths become untenable, without any suitable replacements to fill the void. What’s important to realize about these constructed narratives is that they serve an underlying purpose which transcends their specific content. Which is to supply individuals living alongside one another within a society with a framework for shared forms of meaning and identity.

These frameworks came to be especially important once human societies grew to the point that the close-knit social relationships of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes began to break down. In essence, there’s a cognitive limit to the number of human beings that we can relate to on a first name, face-to-face basis. This figure is known as Dunbar’s number, which is around 150 or so individuals. While most of us don’t find it unusual to be living in societies whose other members are mostly strangers to us, it’s essential to recognize that this is a far cry from the type of social environment that our psychology is evolutionarily adapted to.

In order to have functional societies that contain thousands and even millions of people, humans developed a number of social-technologies that would allow interactions with individuals that we don’t know to become routine to daily life. One of these social-technologies was the development of constructed social identities that can sustain social interactions in lieu of a network of extended familial relations to draw upon.

Precisely because we wouldn’t have the types of large societies that we live in today without these constructed forms of identity, we ignore their underlying role and purpose at our own peril. As such, the narratives that they sustain aren’t some holdover from the distant past. Human rights, democracy, money, and even science are just a few of the constructs that support our modern interconnected world. Accordingly, if people stopped believing in them they would cease to exist; yet it would be a mistake to think of them as ‘imaginary’, as their effects on us are very real.

For our present purposes, what’s worth noting is that constructed narratives will eventually begin to break down. This could be as a result of their own internal contradictions, mounting external pressure, or some combination thereof. We’ll refer to this process as Construct Collapse. When this happens (assuming that the society in question is still around), something will eventually move in to fill that vacuum.

Importantly, Construct Collapse isn’t a positive or negative development in and of itself. The degree to which it’s beneficial or harmful depends upon the context in which it happens, and what ultimately ends up replacing it. For instance, with the benefit of hindsight, very few people today would openly argue that the collapse of the cultural narratives that supported slavery was a bad thing. On the flip side, totalitarian ideologies which exploit Construct Collapse during states of crisis are an example of its inherent dangers.

More often, Construct Collapse may end up addressing an existing societal problem, while introducing a host of unforeseen consequences. For a vivid illustration of this, we can look to a well-known historical example whose effects are still being felt today. When the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously decried that ‘God is dead, and we have killed him’, what he was referring to was the displacement of organized religion as the ground of meaning and purpose in people’s lives. As a witness to the rapid social changes that were taking place in 19th century Europe, he predicted that the constructed cultural narratives that had sustained Western societies would become increasingly untenable. Swept aside beneath the march of science, industrialization, and secular values (otherwise known as ‘modernity’).

Correctly perceiving that people would still have existential needs around meaning and purpose which scientific and material progress isn’t a suitable substitute for, his concern was that cynicism, despair, and vacuous consumerism would come to occupy that void. Leaving aside that his proposed solution for this crisis was quite maladaptive and toxic, insofar as it recommended that we move ‘beyond good and evil’ to pursue our own egoic agendas heedless of ethics or morality, Nietzsche still deserves credit for identifying the potential for a very real problem.

Turning the clock forward from the 19th century to our own era, we find ourselves amidst a process of ongoing social fragmentation which has been called the ‘Meaning Crisis’. (All due credit to the cognitive scientist and philosopher John Verveake for popularizing this term). We can see evidence for this in the widespread adoption of conspiracy theories, political extremism, and bullshit in public discourse; all of which is having a disastrous effect on the civil societies that sustain democratic institutions. Moreover, social media platforms, whose business models push divisive content as a way of driving user engagement, have been adding fuel to this fire. While there’s a tendency to think of these as recent problems, in actuality they’re an acceleration of longstanding trends within profit-driven media, which has long understood that crises and fragmentation can be lucratively exploited for private gain.

In conjunction with this sharp increase in polarization, we’re undergoing an unprecedented mental health crisis in the West, which has left millions of people feeling alienated and lonely. In the United States, life expectancy has been declining over the last several years, due in no small part to ‘deaths of despair’ (i.e., suicide and substance abuse). Additionally we’re in the midst of an unfolding ecological crisis that’s poised to have profound impacts on human civilization over the upcoming decades, further feeding into this mental health crisis. These impacts have been especially pronounced among young people, where anxiety about the state of the world they’ll be inheriting is commonplace. With the youngest generation at the time of this book’s writing, Gen Alpha, not remembering a time before the dysfunctions of the hyper-polarized world that we’re living in today.

Of course, none of this is meant to downplay the leading role that endemic socio-economic dysfunction has played in these crises. For instance, it’s going to be hard to feel hopeful about the future if your economy is structured in such a way that buying a home, starting a family, and saving for retirement are all increasingly out of reach for ordinary people. Likewise, a great deal of polarization is driven by perverse incentive structures which enable bad actors to exploit existing societal divisions for economic and political gain.

That said, it’s important to keep in mind that economic and political dysfunction is downstream from culture. Focusing exclusively on these (admittedly, very real) political and economic factors is to miss a hugely important part of the story. Which is that in addition to these factors, we’re facing an epistemological crisis in the West. In essence, there’s mounting evidence that different segments of society are not inhabiting the same Reality. Beyond having different interpretations over basic facts that we can more or less agree upon, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to reach a foundational consensus for productive disagreements. Moreover, the proliferation of ever more sophisticated versions of artificial intelligence is poised to make this problem even worse over the upcoming decades.

These are dangerous developments, making it extraordinarily difficult to cultivate shared understanding with one another. This is incredibly important because the social dysfunction that we’ve been experiencing will only get worse as the epistemological crisis deepens. Which is why epistemological literacy is arguably more important now than it’s ever been.

Of course, it would be the height of folly to propose that Enactivism, or any other narrowly defined epistemology, is going to be the silver bullet that will deliver us from this crisis. But what perspectives like this one can accomplish is to help us cultivate more self awareness around the narratives we use to make sense of Reality. Enactivism is a reconstructive epistemology because it acknowledges that constructed narratives play an essential role in addressing our individual and collective needs. At the same time, this comes with a recognition that there are better and worse ways to construct narratives. And that we would be far better off if the ones we use are, on the whole, more flexible, compassionate, and inclusive.

Hopefully, it should be evident by now that reconstructive epistemology isn’t a call to return to the ‘good old days’ of a romanticized past that never truly existed. Rather, the reconstructive framework that we’re proposing isn’t interested in quick-fixes for complex problems, nor is it to be taken as a one-size-fits-all approach that’s dogmatically applied to every conceivable situation. Rather, Enactivism is meant to exist alongside other epistemological perspectives, in dialogue with them. Note that this isn’t an assertion that every type of epistemology is equally valid, so much as it’s a recognition that the perspective that we’re constructing is necessarily true, but partial.

Edited April 5 by DocWatts

[Cosmin Visan]

All fine and well, but you forget one crucial thing: 50% of people have iq BELOW 100. They have absolutely 0 interest in what you just wrote. They only want sex and food.

[DocWatts]

1 hour ago, Cosmin Visan said:

All fine and well, but you forget one crucial thing: 50% of people have iq BELOW 100. They have absolutely 0 interest in what you just wrote. They only want sex and food.

The same could be said for the vast majority of actualized.org videos where Leo spends 3 hours deconstructing topics from metaphysics and epistemology as well. Both are made for a rather specialized audience.

Edited April 5 by DocWatts

[aurum]

@DocWatts Another excellent post. Very timely for me, as I was just discussing the importance of ideological cohesion with other members of a group project I am working on.

I feel this is an especially important piece for those who have been at the Pluralist / Post-conventional/ SD Green stage of development for a while. There is such an emphasis at that stage on questioning existing social narratives that typically the downsides of Construct Collapse are not acknowledged. This is necessary for someone to break free from the Conformist / Conventional / SD Blue + Orange stage of development, but at some point its limitations need to be recognized.

Essentially, there is a deep reason why group-think and conformity exists. And it's precisely because groups of people can't function without some degree of it.

So while "critical-thinking" and autonomous meaning making are important in their own way, too much done too soon can actually lead to chaos. Imagine if everyone in a democracy had their own totally unique vision for the country. Nothing could get done, including defending itself from another nation that was able to generate social cohesion through authoritarianism. In fact, that's precisely the positive function of authoritarianism: get everyone on the same page.

[zurew]

19 hours ago, DocWatts said:

At the same time, this comes with a recognition that there are better and worse ways to construct narratives. And that we would be far better off if the ones we use are, on the whole, more flexible, compassionate, and inclusive.

Would you say that your whole argument is built on the premise of 'there is such a thing as moral development' ? If so, what argument(s) would you give to a person, who disagrees with that premise?

[DocWatts]

3 hours ago, zurew said:

Would you say that your whole argument is built on the premise of 'there is such a thing as moral development' ? If so, what argument(s) would you give to a person, who disagrees with that premise?

I'd say that my view is more pragmatically oriented.

On the whole, my own bias is that moral systems which are more flexible, inclusive, and compassionate are generally more desirable than those that are less so. Of course, this is an axiomatic assumption that there's no way to 'prove' in any absolute or objective sense.

But the larger concern is more about trying to ascertain which types of morality are a better or worse fit for a given survival context.

The emphasis is that morals are indeed socially constructed, but that doesn't mean that every system is just as good as any other (which is the trap of Relativism). Also socially constructed doesn't (necessarily) mean arbitrary, as these systems serve an underlying functional purpose.

Instead of one system being better or worse in an Absolute sense (which is the folly of moral absolutism), different moral systems will be better or worse for a given purposive context.

Which is why a set of morals which are perfectly well adapted for the survival conditions of a small agrarian village can be a bad fit for an industrialized global society; and vice versa. When the two are badly mismatched this generates social dysfunctions, which I argue is an aspect of some of the problems we're experiencing today.

Edited April 6 by DocWatts

[DocWatts]

15 hours ago, aurum said:

@DocWatts Another excellent post. Very timely for me, as I was just discussing the importance of ideological cohesion with other members of a group project I am working on.

I feel this is an especially important piece for those who have been at the Pluralist / Post-conventional/ SD Green stage of development for a while. There is such an emphasis at that stage on questioning existing social narratives that typically the downsides of Construct Collapse are not acknowledged. This is necessary for someone to break free from the Conformist / Conventional / SD Blue + Orange stage of development, but at some point its limitations need to be recognized.

Thanks!

And to be fair, it's worth keeping in mind that reaching any of the post-conventional stages is itself an accomplishment, since a majority of people living in developed counties will never even make it to the Pluralist stage.

Edited April 6 by DocWatts

[zurew]

1 hour ago, DocWatts said:

But the larger concern is more about trying to ascertain which types of morality are a better or worse fit for a given survival context.

Instead of one system being better or worse in an Absolute sense (which is the folly of moral absolutism), different moral systems will be better or worse for a given purposive context.

By morality in this context do you mean set of actions or do you mean cultural values or do you mean something different?

If I understand you correctly  - you are not talking about creating a system that suggests what one ought to do, you are talking about creating  a descriptive system that can be used to show what set of actions and or cultural values will be better for survival (depending on the context).

Also, defining exactly what is meant by 'being better for a given survival context' will be one hard part of the work. 

 

 

[DocWatts]

2 hours ago, zurew said:

By morality in this context do you mean set of actions or do you mean cultural values or do you mean something different?

If I understand you correctly  - you are not talking about creating a system that suggests what one ought to do, you are talking about creating  a descriptive system that can be used to show what set of actions and or cultural values will be better for survival (depending on the context).

Also, defining exactly what is meant by 'being better for a given survival context' will be one hard part of the work. 

I'm using aspects of both a descriptive and a normative approach.

A preference for cultural values which help rather than inhibit individuals from meeting thier material, social, and self-actualization needs is the normative aspect. (With a recognition that the content of these needs will of course vary in different types of survival contexts).

Edited April 6 by DocWatts

[Cosmin Visan]

The needs of humans is to be billionaires and dictators. All of them. What kind of organization can help that to be achieved ?

[aurum]

11 hours ago, DocWatts said:

Thanks!

And to be fair, it's worth keeping in mind that reaching any of the post-conventional stages is itself an accomplishment, since a majority of people living in developed counties will never even make it to the Pluralist stage.

For sure.

It's a tricky thing to criticize post-conventional stages right now. On the one hand, I do see people who could greatly benefit from questioning even some of their Pluralist stage beliefs. These are people who have been there for a while. But if we assume the numbers from the Susanne Cook Greuter paper are correct, then the vast majority of people still have a lot of Pluralism to embody.

[Leo Gura]

On 4/5/2024 at 6:59 AM, DocWatts said:

What is the value of culturally constructed narratives?

As always, survival.

Edited April 7 by Leo Gura

[sholomar]

Socially constructed narratives.... the fantasy we live to take away from the brutal fact that nature is savage. You'll get the gist of the video in the first 5 minutes. Either you'll enjoy what he's saying or not.  He's right in that there's a level of pessimism when you see the truth of what this reality is really like, unlike the socially constructed fantasies in which most people live to one degree or another. Then you need to find your inner peace...

 

Edited April 16 by sholomar