origin of _____
Chaco Canyon foundations from 860AD, New Mexico
John Henry Clippinger’s book “A Crowd of One.” has a bunch of interesting thoughts in it. However they are not really wound into anything in particular… just left hanging at the end of the book. Sometimes that’s how profound thoughts are: hugely overpowering to the author, such that they can’t really see the implications.
Anyhow, I just want to work on one idea: origin narratives, from his chapter titled The Power of Identity Narratives. Yes it is January 1st, 2010.
When telling a story, defining a word, identifying a group, starting a company there are four integrated and required components of successful communication:
- a formal meaning, like dictionary definitions
- a telic meaning, an explanation of purpose
- a agentive meaning, an explanation of history
- a constitutive meaning, a definition context
Human beings find understanding through these 4 criteria and thereby create useable cultural constructs. The definition of words, gives us the ability to communicate, which in turn gives us the ability to live in groups, which then enables us to create specialized technology, and so on.
These four criteria become the boundary conditions of any living component of civilization. They function through accuracy: disproving the meaning or definition leads to significant change. And thus more accuracy in the definition of an idea, or identity, has a longer life span. This is true for words and cultures: an identity narrative that values untested beliefs will not outlast a group of human beings who have richer technology based on causality and experimentation. This includes current myths in American exceptionalism, representational democracy, etc.
Words are limited as micro components. Cultures are built up of smaller components such as words and ideas, expanding to include “origin narratives.” The most influential origin myths include “the return of an entity form the past to vindicate present hardships, leading to a brighter future.” Such narratives often include strong boundary definitions: dress, behavior, dialect which become rituals through repetition. This is an attempt to build durability and hence v. The only drawback is that these are exceedingly wrong when tested over time.
Questioning long term identity narratives is often considered blasphemy because the identity narrative is the glue, providing trust and social cohesion, that holds the group together in the short term. Which suggests a better conception of the inter-workings of scale in the dynamics of cultural systems is required. Words actually last longer than cultures, as such this implies our definitions and identity narratives of cultures are not as good as our definitions and meanings agreed upon for words. We don’t fight wars over words, but we do fight wars over identity narratives… may the strongest survive?
Some religious cultures appear to resist the unending questioning, open and mutable social order of global capitalism; while other secular cultures resist questioning (US Congress is systemically ineffectual at introducing significant change) the supremacy of the current myth of “free-market capitalism” (actually manipulated by various government and private sector entities), and a non-group level individualized social order. Which is a better narrative? Most likely there exist other more dynamically consistent, living models of cultural systems. Such a hypothetical system would have clear boundaries that reflect the amount of accuracy and change given in various periods of time: words to individuals, and small groups up to large group identities.
The metrics from which to measure the success and causality of cultural narratives is justice. Justice encapsulates all of the 4 criteria into a cooperative system. Thus clarity of causality in the interactions of people, enables new systems to emerge; because of the obvious justice. Such a new system has to be scaled as any complex adaptive system: clear causality of justice from neighborly interactions to global interactions.
In short, it is more important to focus on fair and just operations (eliminating loop-holes, privileged powers, etc. both actual justice & public relations justice) between reputable identities, than it is to work towards sanctions, formal controls, coercion and punishment.