The Bare Bones
Even in my isolation, I hear the stories of elderly people being beaten because they are helpless and the wrong color. I was a toddler during the Civil Rights Movement and barely remember when Dr. King was assassinated. Here are some of his words from "I have a Dream" speech.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Martin L. King
The bare bones of it is that the story you tell yourself is important. What you tell yourself and your meta-programming will determine what your actions are in this world.
Your story can be based on facts or based on perception. Your story can paint you as a victim or paint you as a hero. Your actions reflect the story you tell yourself. You act on your inner story.
For instance, in the most recent beat down of an elderly woman, the amazon driver, a young Hispanic female, truly believed that she was "defending herself from white privilege" when she hit the elderly woman in the face and head over ten times.
In the video the elderly woman had turned her back on the amazon driver to open the door when she was hit. In her story, she had no idea that anyone would assault her. She was just an old woman looking for a package. She was probably angry that the package wasn't there.
Here was two stories that collided.
In the bigger picture there are two stories colliding in our country. One story is that the founding fathers are murderers and founded this country in racism and the other is the founding fathers, although flawed, made a country that reflected the liberal ideas of freedom and liberty. As we see in the recent months, those two narratives have split the country. I boil them down to two ideas-- victimhood vs. personal responsibility.
Victimhood is the idea that the problems of the individual are caused by someone else. So the blame falls on someone outside the victim or some other group.
Personal responsibility is the idea that we take our problems and solve them ourselves, blaming no one.
It is easier to blame someone else, some other group, or a disease for our problems. I know that I deal with chronic illness every day and it is easy to blame my disease when I don't accomplish my goals. I do take responsibility to stay healthy by eating right, walking, and doing my dialysis nightly. I do home dialysis. It is a start towards personal responsibility.
So why is story so important? (or as the Left says-- narrative)
The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are the framework to what we do. If we think that we are down-trodden and will forever be serf, then we stay a serf. If we believe we are the hero in our story, then we do the things that heroes do. That is why proponents of victimhood retell the fairy tales. The propaganda of "fairness" and equity have reached all levels of our society.
Here is why fiction is important.
Even though fiction is entertainment, it is also a structure that takes the reader through a scenario they might never encounter. It also fortifies certain structures in our brains. A simple story line that appeals to women (Romance fiction) is boy meets girl, boy and girl struggle, boy and girl become partners. It is centered on the relationship of two people.
Adventure fiction which appeals to men have more explosions. I had a friend tell me that recently, which made me laugh.
Joseph Campbell studied story and came up with the hero structure. I won't say much more about it-- just that most of our fiction in movies and TV center around this idea. Star Wars used the heroes journey in the first three movies.
Anyway, I was asked once why anyone should read fiction when if you wanted to know facts and truth, you should read non-fiction. My answer was because it was fun and a good escape.
What I should have said is that there is truth in fiction that you can't find in facts.