Наратив

Наратив — умне слово, яке вивчили правильні українці для вішання ярлика на все, що не вписується в їхній наратив. "Наратив" у правильних українців буває тільки прокремлівським. Наратив, який правильні українці розказують самі собі, називається правдою.

Що таке наратив, реально

Буквально, "розповідь". Це так перекладається. Ось так просто.

Більш концептуально, наратив — це смисл.

Просунутий читач знає, що смисл — це та сама розповідь. Тільки це розповідь, яку людська психіка генерує сама собі, аби дітися кудись від того, що всьо тлєн.

Не-мавп'яче вживання терміну

1

"...your hope narratives don’t need to be religious. They can be anything. This book is my little source of hope. It gives me purpose; it gives me meaning. And the narrative that I’ve constructed around that hope is that I believe this book might help some people, that it might make both my life and the world a little bit better.

"Do I know that for sure? No. But it’s my little before/after story, and I’m sticking to it. It gets me up in the morning and gets me excited about my life. And not only is that not a bad thing, it’s the only thing.

"For some people, the before/after story is raising their kids well. For others, it’s saving the environment. For others, it’s making a bunch of money and buying a big-ass boat. For others, it’s simply trying to improve their golf swing.

"Whether we realize it or not, we all have these narratives we’ve elected to buy into for whatever reason. It doesn’t matter if the way you get to hope is via religious faith or evidence-based theory or an intuition or a well-reasoned argument—they all produce the same result: you have some belief that (a) there is potential for growth or improvement or salvation in the future, and (b) there are ways we can navigate ourselves to get there. That’s it. Day after day, year after year, our lives are made up of the endless overlapping of these hope narratives. They are the psychological carrot at the end of the stick."

2

"Our values aren’t just collections of feelings. Our values are stories.

"When our Feeling Brain feels something, our Thinking Brain sets to work constructing a narrative to explain that something. Losing your job doesn’t just suck; you’ve constructed an entire narrative around it: Your asshole boss wronged you after years of loyalty! You gave yourself to that company! And what did you get in return?

"Our narratives are sticky, clinging to our minds and hanging onto our identities like tight, wet clothes. We carry them around with us and define ourselves by them. We trade narratives with others, looking for people whose narratives match our own. We call these people friends, allies, good people. And those who carry narratives that contradict our own? We call them evil.

"Our narratives about ourselves and the world are fundamentally about (a) something or someone’s value and (b) whether that something/someone deserves that value. All narratives are constructed in this way:

"Bad thing happens to person/thing, and he/she/it doesn’t deserve it.
Good thing happens to person/thing, and he/she/it doesn’t deserve it.
Good thing happens to person/thing, and he/she/it deserves it.
Bad thing happens to person/thing, and he/she/it deserves it.

"Every book, myth, fable, history—all human meaning that’s communicated and remembered is merely the daisy-chaining of these little value-laden narratives, one after the other, from now until eternity.

"These narratives we invent for ourselves around what’s important and what’s not, what is deserving and what is not—these stories stick with us and define us, they determine how we fit ourselves into the world and with each other. They determine how we feel about ourselves—whether we deserve a good life or not, whether we deserve to be loved or not, whether we deserve success or not—and they define what we know and understand about ourselves.

"This network of value-based narratives is our identity. When you think to yourself, I’m a pretty bad-ass boat captain, har-de-har, that is a narrative you’ve constructed to define yourself and to know yourself. It’s a component of your walking, talking self that you introduce to others and plaster all over your Facebook page. You captain boats, and you do it damn well, and therefore you deserve good things.

"But here’s the funny thing: when you adopt these little narratives as your identity, you protect them and react emotionally to them as though they were an inherent part of you. The same way that getting punched will cause a violent emotional reaction, someone coming up and saying you’re a shitty boat captain will produce a similarly negative emotional reaction, because we react to protect the metaphysical body just as we protect the physical."

3

"The values we pick up throughout our lives crystallize and form a sediment on top of our personality. The only way to change our values is to have experiences contrary to our values. And any attempt to break free from those values through new or contrary experiences will inevitably be met with pain and discomfort. This is why there is no such thing as change without pain, no growth without discomfort. It’s why it is impossible to become someone new without first grieving the loss of who you used to be.

"Because when we lose our values, we grieve the death of those defining narratives as though we’ve lost a part of ourselves—because we have lost a part of ourselves. We grieve the same way we would grieve the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, a house, a community, a spiritual belief, or a friendship. These are all defining, fundamental parts of you. And when they are torn away from you, the hope they offered your life is also torn away, leaving you exposed, once again, to the Uncomfortable Truth."