Well, it's not ideas, it's language abuse I'm griping over. Is "the alchemy of mind control" a helpful term in any way?
Wouldn't "as long as the techniques of narrative control remain the domain of the elite..." be better expressed as "while the elite use misinformation..." and perhaps ask what it is about the plebs that they'll accept being played? (if they are, which is semi-contentious).
Curious, on which specific interesting points are you referring to.
> Is "the alchemy of mind control" a helpful term in any way?
Maybe your criticism is less about this writer than about the imprecision of written language as a communication tool generally. In which case, bear in mind firstly that the writer is writing a quick post on a forum, not for a scientific journal. Also that imprecise language may seem imprecise to you, but may encapsulate broader meaning for others. Alternatively, a particular piece of writing might just poorly transmit meaning which itself is valuable. For example, I find Slavoj Zizek to be incomprehensible. But when he is well edited or I have read secondary texts, I have found his insights to be revelatory.
> Curious, on which specific interesting points are you referring to.
One of the common features of the ideas I mention is that they often garner an aggressive response, as people rightly dislike the idea that they’re enthralled by storytelling - but yet we are - it’s how we explain everything from the universe to other people, and likely originated with nascent theory of mind, sociality — lying.
So within us is the ability to sculpt narrative, to essentially deceive through attention manipulation or information selection, and also the response to that deception (anger, denial, pushback) - as they’re cultural ying and yang, the immune response and the illness.
It drives war when opposing stories clash, so great is the response that the wrong story, of which the story of stories is absolutely one, can evoke.
Anyway. I expect to be disagreed with. I may well be wrong and suffering under my own illusions - but my lived experience is that a good story is everything human.
> people rightly dislike the idea that they’re enthralled by storytelling
The fictitious narrative of free will could be the most potent narrative of all.
> but my lived experience is that a good story is everything human
I’m interested in the mechanisms by which narratives are conjured and mind control (this is too crude an expression for my liking but I don’t yet have anything better) asserted. Use of rhetoric, in combination with written and visual media are very powerful. This is well known. But the most powerful narrative web I believe can be created through the mechanism of introjection, where we don’t question our actions because this is simply what we see everyone else doing.
My underlying interest, I think, is the nature of reality. Peeling back the fictions of our own creation is a necessary ongoing part of that investigation.
Wouldn't "as long as the techniques of narrative control remain the domain of the elite..." be better expressed as "while the elite use misinformation..." and perhaps ask what it is about the plebs that they'll accept being played? (if they are, which is semi-contentious).
Curious, on which specific interesting points are you referring to.