What’s a narrative ? A series, or a logical and plausible sequence of events which support an over-riding belief. It may or may not be supported by evidence or reflect the real world, or real events. And it may or may not be complete rubbish.

Christianity, in its many schismatic forms, provides many narratives. Islam provides many narratives. Every religion or ideology does. Usually a narrative is not, or is not necessarily, based on ‘truth’, or evidence, or any actual backing at all. It is BELIEVED, regardless of evidence - in fact, the mark of a true believer is to believe a narrative without any need for evidence: surrender to belief, to passion, ignore any need for ‘proof’.

Clearly, not every narrative can be ‘true’. From a non-believer’s viewpoint then, why believe ? Unless one is an ‘insider’ already, what is the basis for believing any plausible story over any other, and thereby be one the group ?

Would some evidence, one way or the other, strengthen a narrative ? After all, things happen and there is almost bound to be evidence of them, either forensic or documented. Evidence strengthens a narrative. But conversely, a sceptic would suspend belief unless he or she has just some scrap, an indication, that a particular story is ‘true’ - until some evidence is produced, and the more the better.

So, does one still believe, without any evidence ? Or suspend belief until some can be produced ?

Oral accounts, passed down even by the same person over decades, are liable to changes over time, bits that seem irrelevant are forgotten or dropped out, other bits ‘remembered’ or sort of re-fashioned. We’re all familiar with this from playing ‘Chinese Whispers’, or watching ‘Who Do You Think You Are ?’ Recipients of stories interpret them in their own way, and in their own times. Crave a royal ancestor, and one may well ‘appear’. These days, crave a convict ancestor and if you're lucky, you’ll find one.

It's the narrative of the Marxist mob I'm concerned about, Joe. Not much evidence or truth there. Religion used to be like that, but all the bogies and fear are now in the hands of the left, the left social engineers, who have infiltrated (or infested, if you like) everything we come into contact with: education, amusement and entertainment, the media etc. Their narrative is a 'siren song' that only the Alt Conservatives can resist. The old conservatives have, alas, been captured by it.

It is a mistake to Judge a belief by correlating its content with evidence. One should believe in a given narrative if and only if believing so can improve their character.

A narrative that helps one to become a better person, is never rubbish, but a thoroughly evidence-based scientific research that causes people to behave more like animals, is the ultimate rubbish.

What a good post, Joe!

I don't think it's possible to exclude the role of hypothesis in the mix as well. An hypothesis is derived from either extrapolation (outside what is clearly understood) or interpolation (logical reasoning within the bounds of what is certain) from known conditions. Knowledge advances on testing hypotheses from extrapolations and consolidates on testing interpolative ones. Both are important. The risk with only working within the bounds of what is known (purely deductive reasoning), however, is that it may leave us drawing conclusions that turn out to be wrong once knowledge expands to cover new ground.

For example, if I was to observe the sea conditions off Cairns during the winter months, I could collect a great deal of data and confidently state a range of expected wave heights, water temperatures, turbidity levels and so on. If I missed a few dates it wouldn't matter much, someone else could replicate the study next year or the year after, confirming my data is correct.

However, if a sailor planned to take a trip to Cape York during the summer months and relied on those findings to plan, the trip may well end disastrously. On the plus side, the data set would be expanded...

There's nothing wrong with the data, but in the wrong context (given the wrong narrative) it can be dangerously misinterpreted.

I think your religion analogy is really good as well. A great deal of religious dogma is essentially good data, but it is used to draw essentially faulty conclusions because it is applied outside the context in which the data was collected.

Thanks, this might be worth an article, you know.

Another view...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzLGPyd848w

Ttbn, yes, having been a Marxist for decades, I ruefully agree that Marxism provides a framework which may satisfy but ultimately doesn't really have a solid foundation based on reality: when its basic principles are tested, they either collapse or are qualified beyond recognition. The proletariat has NOT been constantly immiserated since the 1840s, not even on a world scale. The skills of the working class have NOT been constantly simplified and the proletariat become homogenised, quite the reverse. Any ephemeral dictatorship of the people has rapidly become the dictatorship of a Party, and thereby of the ruling group of a Party, and thereby of a single tyrant. I was named after one of them :)

Thanks, Craig, yes: because we can't know everything, we have to make inferences and propose hypotheses based on our pre-suppositions and suspicions. Of course, oppressed people, for example Indigenous people, may think that they have no way to investigate any suspicion and so would tend to build up an entire narrative, even an ideology, based on suspicions. Generally, if an hypothesis or stance seems reasonable, if it 'answers' our gut-feelings, our suspicions, then it will be seized on and built, brick by brick as it were, on further suspicions.

But there ARE ways of finding out, and certainly there are ways to test any hypothesis or suspicion about how and why conditions for Indigenous people are as they appear to be. In a sense, people work backwards: 'how do you explain current conditions for people (A) ? Because of B, C, D, ...... Why B or C or D ? Because of J, I, K, L ..... and ultimately back, in a pretty loose way, to colonialism, or capitalism, or white racism etc. Such a narrative may hang together very strongly, with each factor reinforcing the others, and without any need to be backed up by evidence.

But if

[TBC]

[continued]

But if one of those, A, B, C, D etc., can be shown not to have been so, by forensic or documentary evidence, then the narrative becomes a bit shaky.

For example, take the Stolen Generation narrative, which backs up the Dominant Narrative so well: how many children have ever been shown to have been 'Stolen' ? One, here in SA, in 1958. One. Of course, many children were taken into care (as many are today), so it should be no problem for any of them to access their file and take the matter to court and to prove that they were indeed 'Stolen'. But nobody does. That shows just a touch of bad faith, that people know, or have a suspicion, that many cases may not have been 'Stolen' but quite justifiably taken into care (as every State has the obligation to do), and probably for only a short time.

But evidence comes from surprising sources: at one settlement here in SA, children taken from the school were recorded on the School roll, and recorded again when they returned. Out of eight hundred kids ever enrolled between 1880 and 1960, forty seven were removed for short periods, usually a year or less, and from other records, it is clear that many children (140) had lost a parent, usually a mother (40), and the remaining parent was having trouble managing. In a handful of cases, the child was removed to a reformatory, and in three or four, to hospital. As far as I can tell, only one child, the child of a single mother who died of TB, was removed, to Colebrook, and didn't return. One out of eight hundred.

Evidence is rarely so conclusive but it can be indicative. But every hypothesis needs some evidentiary back-up to be worth spit, as my grandmother would say.

Joe

What worries me is that evidence provided by history is continually ignored. It is said that there is "nothing new under the sun". Society has 'been there, done that'. But successive generations never seem to learn from history. The young sneer at history, and most of the rest don't read it. Sadly, there are few, if any, oldies left who experienced the ills caused by the policies and the agendas which the discontented, power hungry Left, is trying to re-ignite. So, with the evil hand of the Left on the lever, history, experience and commonsense don't get a look in. A few Alt Conservatives in America seem to be the only ones on the ball when it comes to defence against the Left.

through the 1980's and 90's the regressives had a narrative that private life has nothing to do with public office. Suddenly with Trump the hypocrites have changed their tune. 'Not fit for public office'is the cry as if Clinton is.' For the regressives it is really about sides rather then their failed narratives.

Hi TTbn,

Sometimes I think that history is ALL there is. Provided, of course, there is evidence to back it up.

One forensic expert has suggested that, at any critical site, either something is there which shouldn't be, OR something is not there which should be. So it is with 'story', or narrative. .

My fascination is with the Indigenous Narrative: I want to believe it so bad, but this damn search for evidence gets in the way. People being driven from their lands ? At least in South Australia, where ? Who ? When ? Evidence ? There seems to be none, when there should be.

Missionaries stopping people speaking their languages ? Quite the reverse: evidence of missionaries learning the language, writing the first (and often only) books in the language of the group that they were working with - in other words, evidence of precisely what isn't suppose to be there.

But this counter-intuitive lack of evidence, evidence which should have been present but isn’t, can doom a narrative. For example, take the Rabbit Fence Story:

* the W.A. Rabbit Department employed hundreds of workers all along the fence (or fences) in the 1930s: none seemed to have reported seeing any young children following their section of the Fence. At knock-off time in the local pub, it seems that none of those workers remarked about seeing any girls to any local newspaper man who would have reported or sold his story to the ‘West Australian’, anti-government at the time of the supposed flight. Not a mention in that paper of the Story, ever.

And with a change to a Labor Government in 1933, and the mounting of a very comprehensive Royal Commission (the Moseley Commission, 1934, transcribed and indexed on: www.firstsources.info), there is no mention of the Rabbit Fence Narrative. A strident critic of the Protector of Aborigines, Mrs. Mary Bennett, said nothing about this story at the Royal Commission, and neither did the Protector.

Yes, maybe the Rabbit Fence Story occurred - but there is no evidence of it. That's the problem for the Narrative.

Joe

With any scientific, legal or forensic situation, you start with nothing and slowly build up a case, bit by bit, and may go up many blind alleys. You put the pieces of reality together until they make up a picture.

With Narrative, it works the other way around: you start with Belief, or Assertion, or Assumption, the picture, and either accept that picture without feeling any need to back it up with any evidence at all, or 'construct' the evidence in order to confirm the Narrative, ignoring anything which doesn't.

So scientific investigation, or forensic activity, proceeds from the bits of a puzzle, then moves to A, to B, to C ...... and finally to Z.

Narrative assumes Z, then, if a believer has half a mind, selects and fashions anything, F, P, B, V, whatever, which seems to corroborate Z, ignoring anything which doesn't.

Narratives have important functions, in religious societies, and amongst people who don't believe anything they read or hear from outside their circle. But not in complex, modern societies. And even if investigation and evidence are supported by a narrative, one still has to account for any inconvenient details: so often we see, in some crime drama, an innocent person accused, 'fitted up', as an effective dramatic sub-plot, usually around the three-quarter mark, before a better hypothesis, which uses all of the relevant pieces of evidence, identifies the real culprit - and trumps narrative.

Joe

Yeah, that pesky evidence thing just won't go away.

I think you're being a little unfair to narrative though, it can just as easily be properly evidence based as otherwise and all the best stories, even speculative fiction, are based on sound data.

It's when narrative is pressed into service as a tool to manipulate data in order to produce favoured outcomes that the problems arise. The problem of "p hacking" in research is huge.

Religion's unrealised lies... stated stories can be believed by many people while a percentage of other people don't easily believe stated stories. Non believers showing and/or expressing their disbelief to those in authority. Self-proclaimed leaders whom are paranoid about losing control, fearful of rebellion, have learnt how to manipulate populations using lies, passing on information down through ruling class generations, writing down how peasant classes can be threatened, how to repress peasant working class using religious “god said to do this, don't do that” lies and images, fears of god given rights powers to rule.

Centuries of observation have written down ideas on how to program children's six days of agricultural worked exhaustion, children's one day a week, Sunday rest day: awareness to images through vaguely explained religious ceremonies; sin forgiving prayers with symbolised hand movement cross signs across priest's chests; imaginative awesome presence of large glorifying church buildings. While peasants live in crowded dirt floor huts.

Turning adult's child-like desires into sins which can be used to impress child emotions of gilt and regret, turning gilt and regret into fear of unforgiven sins, sins that if not forgiven, leads sinners into a fiery pit called hell.

Because whatever conscious thought remains during and after daily hours of exhausting work, boredom is relieved by knee-jerk amygdala emotion prompting hippocampous to believe what is often heard and seen during restful environments to be truth.

Stories can be so foolishly imaginative that any humans capable of thought productive doubt can be detected by priests. Any believer's confession, whom believers are told to be aware of corrupting the soul heretics, keen to find and expose heretics, statements during confession, priests can write down statements for future inquisition questioning.

How people dress and colours of clothing determines the class, social status and power individuals have. Priests, nuns, lawyers and judges wearing black garments.
Queen Elizabeth the first era' Puritans prominent people expressly wear black clothing. Black being to colour of death, constantly reminds people of death is coming.

The Jesus story, created, altered years later to a manipulating sense of leaders, to allow children's intelligence to believe in the short happening event easy to understand, not aware of any threatening meanings, story.

Within the Jesus story, intelligent people could soon realise alternative meanings in the Jesus story, once alternative meanings have been brought to intelligent people's awareness.

Jesus resurrecting Lazarus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Lazarus

I remember, going back to early 1970s... An ABC Compass program, elderly women guest, said to be an expert in old Judaism religion traditions. The woman suggested that Jewish sects were obsessed about rituals.
My added reading from Encarta 98 on the meaning of the holly spirit. The holly spirit is the belief people have in a religion. Several notable movies have suggested gods power, gods existence depends on believers constant reinforced beliefs.
Religions turn rational explanation messages into Neanderthal peasant class believable magic. A rational message for spirituality is that spirituality is the belief people have in a particular religious sect brand of beliefs. If people chose to believe in another religion or stopped believing all together, people have lost and/or corrupted their spiritual soul.
The women mentioned above, suggested, Jewish sects excommunicating, expelling (healthy still alive) Jews out of their sect, expelling Jews were required to be held in a cave like tomb for a period, I am suggesting four days. Added hints by Christians having non-believing people committing to Christianity are said to be born again Christians. Jesus resurrected still living Lazarus who belonged to no religious sect... Jesus bringing Lazarus into Jesus's own sect.

The reason the Lazarus story is added to the Christian last testament bible Gospel of John, is that Jesus claim to resurrect himself after three days, Jesus believed his complaining to Jerusalem temple priests would only have him expelled from the Jerusalem Temple sect. He believed he would resurrect himself into his own sect. Jesus on the cross, saying “my god, my god, why have you forsaken me”
http://redeeminggod.com/why-have-you-forsaken-me/

My assumption that the reason the Monty Python 1979 movie “The Life Of Brian”, was banned from being shown in many countries, was that Brian who could represent any person and/or many people, Brian was complaining about being on a cross, wondering and/or hoping somehow he would be saved from dying on the cross. Brian ends up singing a song, “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”.
So the story of Jesus has an alternative humorous meaning, Jesus was delusional about being expelled out of the Jewish temple sect, instead Temple priests handed him over to Roman authorities as a human sacrifice.

The entire Jesus story is conveniently invented to threaten any person who defies established Catholic religion. Any person doing so will be accused of heresy and murdered under ideas that heretic's soul has been corrupted. Burning live heretics resembles the fiery pits of hell. Public burnings of heretics, threatens people whom don't keep up the belief in Catholic ideology. Believing fearful accusations of heresy adult parents, adult parents are going to spend many hours convincing their children “god is real and fires of hell is a very hot place”.

Reasons modern media tell murderous inquisition stories in books and movie documentaries are that stories are still being used to threaten people who complain about ruling class trickery. The Jesus heresy story: Judas kiss of death; rushed through night court using trumped up accusations of heresy are still being used to stop people from exposing establishment are tricking people out of their money and assets; crucifixion cross symbols, five wounds of Jesus, devil ram head fits inside pentagrams, reminds threats to people who were made aware of symbolised meanings.

Democracy and capitalism is merely developed propaganda (jobs and growth) replacement from religious extremism, building temple churches and big houses and/or palaces for living god rulers.

To get children to begin to believe all the lies, children not being forced to do agricultural hard labours, simplifying children's thinking processes. Children are forced to undergo classroom eduction irrelevant to human behavioural learning educational curriculum. Instead of religious doctrine, media provides many irrelevant to real life distractions: murders; sexual abuse; family violence; science magic and political economic propaganda, replacements to an afterlife soul.

All the mental illness society has to put up with, is the price society pays so ruling class establishment can govern without having more than mere words' defiant violent opposition.

Very worth while reading website page below:
http://www.psychforums.com/living-with-mental-illness/topic187100.html#p1938420

steve101.

Hi Craig,

Sorry, I've been trying to decipher Steve's contribution. Nope, still don't get it.

I agree with you that: " .... narrative .... can just as easily be properly evidence-based as otherwise ...."

Yes, indeed, (perhaps not 'just as easily' though), but a narrative with evidence is bound to be very strong, even if many people still don't want to accept it. Solid evidence is hard to deny, or explain away.

As you suggest, " .... all the best stories, even speculative fiction, are based on sound data."

Some may quibble: yes, but what is a 'fact' ? Stephen Fry brought it up last week. But there are such things: King George VI died on February 6, 1952, London time, of lung cancer (I remember they said 'heart trouble'). He once existed; he was a hell of a smoker, i.e. of tobacco; he died. When ? On a certain day, February 6, in a certain year, 1952. His daughter was holidaying in Kenya at the time. Sound like 'facts' to me. Somebody will probably deconstruct all that for us.

Cheers,

Joe