[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.