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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: "It's Life Of Pi: What story do you prefer?"
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
I can't say I was impressed by the apparent thesis of Life of Pi. It was a well written book and a well made film, but light entertainment, IMO.
Where I totally part company with this idea of the non-objectivity of fact, is that whereas with life of Pi, the story is quite dreamy and heroic and all that, not all stories are.
Many have liked the story that the native african races were cursed by Noah, or that the defeat of Germany was engineered by the Jews, as is "proved" by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Do people who have nasty stories not have the same right if there is no objective fact? And how do we demolish them, other than by careful attention to ascertainable historical truth. Which exists.
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
Posts: 2538 | From: UK | Registered: May 2006
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
A few more thoughts following on from Cottontail:
When my mother-in-law died, the care home manager told the family a "story" about how she died peacefully in bed in her sleep. When, coming to the funeral from abroad, we asked about viewing the body, they got a bit funny about it. To cut a long story short, it transpired from viewing the body and the post-mortem that she had died out of bed, probably having fallen, and that the night staff check-up reports had probably been fiddled to cover their lack of due care.
My wife and I were glad to find that out, to know the truth, and filed an evidence-based complaint against the home in the hope that other residents might get a better standard of care.
If the trend is just to let everyone believe the "story" they prefer, I think it offers far too much potential for wrongdoing and lies.
I wanted to come back to this comment by Cottontail, too:
quote:
'the better story' is a kind of eschatological imagining where, in the time between Eden and eschaton, we tell ourselves how something should have been, rather than how it 'really was'.
Eschatalogically, I think we end up with both. Joseph says to his brothers "God meant it for good" (which is the bit Christians seem to rejoice in quoting) but he also recognises that "you wanted to do me evil". In Heaven, we don't see a spotless Lamb; we see the Lamb who was slain. The risen Christ appears - but he appears with the marks in his hands and his side.
True hope is not about closing our eyes to evil, it's about the evil being faced and subsumed into a whole with which we can be reconciled. 'Stories' that don't get us there are delusions.
First of all, my sincere sympathies for what your mother went through, Eutychus. That is very distressing for you.
I would actually agree with what you have written here. The eschatological vision has to transform the evil - as Joseph says, "what you intended as evil, God meant it for good." All I am saying is that the act of imagining 'a better story' is part of our recognition of evil for what it is. My father should not have fallen from the roof; your mother should have died peacefully. To admit that is not to deny what really happened: it is in fact to face that what really happened is an abomination, and in direct contradiction to God's will for us. If we did not have this 'better story' to refer it to, evil becomes all that there is, and we are lost indeed. But the eschatological vision reminds us that evil, for all its seeming power, is a temporary condition which God will ultimately overcome. I am not advocating so much a denial of evil as a facing it down.
quote:
originally posted by Cottontail:
Yet the vision of what the world should be is an important one. The tiger story is in fact the more rational of the two, because it offers us beauty and relationship and courage and life, and these are all things that make sense. There is no meaning to the alternative story, none at all, however 'true' it might be. Therefore I would suggest that tiger story is not an untruth: rather, it is a glimpse of an ultimate truth. And without an ultimate truth to imagine and play at and aim towards, the more sordid truths of what we call 'reality' would be unbearable indeed.
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originally posted by Eutychus:
I have a lot more problems with this. I can sort of see the eschatalogical argument, but consider Life is Beautiful again. If it is accepted that the 'coping story' is 'ultimate truth', it seems to be edging worryingly close to holocaust denial. Supposing everybody accepted this 'ultimate truth'? If that were to happen, we might be 'happier' in the short term as a human race, but I think we'd be deluded, not enlightened.
I think we have slightly different definitions of 'truth' and 'reality' here. There is a sense in which evil is not the ultimate reality, but the ultimate unreality: Death and Sin (Paul personifies them) are pure destruction. They are the denial of things that are real; they set about dismantling all that is true and beautiful in God's world.
Milton captures this wonderfully and imaginatively in Paradise Lost. Originally, Lucifer is the most beautiful of the angels, and after his Fall he retains much of this beauty, which is a reflection of God's beauty. However, as the story progresses, the reflected light in Lucifer gradually fades, then goes out altogether. He becomes dark and ugly; he reduces in being; until in the end he loses reality to such an extent that he gets into Eden as a mist that slithers under the gate. In other words, he becomes a nothing, and sets about in his attempts to reduce humans to nothing as well.
So it is tricky, yes, to talk theologically about evil as 'nothing', because that can seem to deny the enormity of what evil does and has done. But when I say that the evil story has no truth in it, I mean 'truth' in the 'goodness and creative beauty' sense, not in the brute fact sense. And when I say that evil has no reality, I mean that it can only destroy, and cannot create, and that it is temporary, and not eternal. The three things that last for ever are faith, hope, and love: these are the ultimate reality.
That is what I mean when I say that the tiger story, and the 'Life is Beautiful' story, are 'truer' and 'more real' than the alternatives. And these 'better stories' are not wiped out by the brute facts, but are in fact what enable us to face the brute facts and not be destroyed by them.
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
Posts: 2377 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2007
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Yes, ok. Real with a capital R à la CS Lewis. I'm with you there. Maybe "current reality" might be a better term for this discussion.
(Oh, and in terms of "current reality", just to keep the record straight it was my mother-in-law. but yes it was distressing. And more so because of the insistence on the "nice story")
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Reality is often sordid, in keeping with the belief that all sin and fall short of the glory of God. Bed things happen to good people. Good people sometimes do bad things.
I guess it is at the heart of the Christian message that we hold together that we are born in the image of God and we are in some sense fallen away from that. So we hold both a high view and a low view of human nature simultaneously.
I've always believed, from "our story" that this high/low view is the most realistic way of looking at who we are and what we do, and what we are capable of doing. And in order to learn, to keep on a Christ-like course, we do not have the luxury of ignoring either the sordid or the noble in human behaviour. Particularly our own.
[ 25. March 2014, 10:36: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Fool on the hill
Shipmate
# 9428
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
No, but it applies to the "story" which leads to any such belief. If Christ did not rise from the dead than we are the unhappiest of men.
A few more thoughts following on from Cottontail:
When my mother-in-law died, the care home manager told the family a "story" about how she died peacefully in bed in her sleep. When, coming to the funeral from abroad, we asked about viewing the body, they got a bit funny about it. To cut a long story short, it transpired from viewing the body and the post-mortem that she had died out of bed, probably having fallen, and that the night staff check-up reports had probably been fiddled to cover their lack of due care.
My wife and I were glad to find that out, to know the truth, and filed an evidence-based complaint against the home in the hope that other residents might get a better standard of care.
If the trend is just to let everyone believe the "story" they prefer, I think it offers far too much potential for wrongdoing and lies.
I wanted to come back to this comment by Cottontail, too:
quote:
'the better story' is a kind of eschatological imagining where, in the time between Eden and eschaton, we tell ourselves how something should have been, rather than how it 'really was'.
Eschatalogically, I think we end up with both. Joseph says to his brothers "God meant it for good" (which is the bit Christians seem to rejoice in quoting) but he also recognises that "you wanted to do me evil". In Heaven, we don't see a spotless Lamb; we see the Lamb who was slain. The risen Christ appears - but he appears with the marks in his hands and his side.
True hope is not about closing our eyes to evil, it's about the evil being faced and subsumed into a whole with which we can be reconciled. 'Stories' that don't get us there are delusions.
God is the tiger part of the story. A companion on an arduous journey. But the meerkats and the island part of the story is implausible, no objective facts to uphold it. Fantastical. Impossible. Therefore, probably no tiger either.
All stories that fly in the face of objective facts are delusions. Sometimes we need delusions.
Posts: 792 | Registered: May 2005
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
The thing about metanarrative is that it is about epistemology, not ontology. Sure there is a reality that exists. The question is, can we know it, and in particular, how can we know it from the report (stories) of others?
Short answer: we can't. We can get closer or further away, and corroboration of story makes us think we're closer. But even in the scientific things, I have never done these experiments. I don't know the math(s) it takes to understand the microwave data from space. I must trust someone's story.
All we have is faith in other people's stories. And, as I said above, faith in eyewitness accounts is often misplaced. How many people have been exonerated of convictions by DNA evidence, when the "eyewitness" accounts all were sufficient to convince a jury? Eyewitness accounts are dodgy.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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