A Story about a story

In "Sapiens" by Yuval Harari he mentions that we create "fictions" that are the glue that allow us created tribes, cities, nations, civilizations, ... We can apply the notion of fiction to Harari's narrative. In a narrative, we decide what to put in the foreground and what to put in the background. His story puts as "individuals" in the foreground. However, we can create similar narratives with different foregrounds:

• Civilizations as foreground - the universe uses building blocks to create structures. First, the universe is created by the building blocks of particles, atoms, ....  Then, those create life, Life then creates more complex structures such as packs, tribes, cities, nations, civilizations, .... The trajectory here is that at some future point, the whole universe will be alive / conscious with these blocks that it is creating.
• Processes - when two cells communicate, they signal each other with some electrical, chemical, ... signals. Each cell interprets that signal and does its thing. There is a communication protocol - signal and what the signal means. Our languages are building blocks to create signals and communicate. These languages than become the blocks to create narratives / stories. With this process in the foreground, we can hardly say that the protocol is a "fiction". It is what is used to create more complex structures. Similarly, gravity is a glue that holds moons, solar systems, galaxies, together. We can't see it (intangible), yet we feel its effects all the time. Similarly, we don't see the glue (narratives) that bind us into groups, yet we feel their effects all the time. With this narrative, is it reasonable to say that the glue is "fiction"? Different glues have different attributes and capabilities. Sometimes we confuse the content of the glue with the "process" of gluing. The process is quite real as far as real goes for us.

As always, ymmv (your mileage/narrative may vary)

A Story

Our book club read "Sapiens" by Yuval Harari and had some interesting conversations about the narratives we create and how our current set of narratives seem to be leading us to an existential cliff. Waking up the next morning, another narrative arose within me.

YAN (Yet Another Narrative): We seem to be caught in a Lilliputian dilemma - which end of the egg is up. Deists have created god(s) in our image (pretty messy) that give meaning to everything. Atheists, on the other end of the egg, say our existence arises out of random fluctuations of quantum foam and has no intrinsic meaning (meaningless). Both sides lose sight of the egg. Here we are in this existence. And perhaps the real question is what are the attributes of the "egg"? The attributes of the egg are all around us, in fact there is nothing but the attributes of the egg. Here are a couple of attributes:

• "Infinite" diversity - wherever we look, high (big) or low (small), we keep discovering new forms, structures, processes, ....
• "Processes" - things unfold in a causal chain. Some unfoldings have good results, some not. How do we create better(?) processes with better(?) results? We do both. Some of our "greats" have said that processes driven by "love / kindness" have better outcomes. They have not figured out how to enact those processes except in small instances. Neither have we. Perhaps there is more to this process (narrative) design than we have yet figured out.
• ..............

As always, ymmv (your mileage/narrative may vary)