讲故事与叙事2015aeon.co
“人生是一个故事”这一危险观念
The dangerous idea that life is a story
导读
这篇 Aeon 文章主张：把人生当成一个故事来理解是危险的。讨论区围绕“叙事投射”展开——故事套路并不等于现实规律，但人本身就是“讲故事的猿”，虚构的叙事恰恰是意义诞生的方式。对写作者而言，这是一次关于叙事因果、套路滥用与叙述者能动性的自省。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
分清叙事与现实的边界：圆满结局、正义、因果报应只是故事的投射，不是生活的规律，写故事时用它们要有自觉。
- 02
承认故事是虚构并不削弱它的价值——恰恰是投射本身让无意义的素材产生意义，不必为“编造”而心虚。
- 03
人天生是“讲故事的猿”，写作时要留意自己或他人对故事力量的滥用，那往往是操控而非表达。
- 04
与其被现成的故事套住，不如主动选择讲哪个故事、以及自己与这个故事的关系，把能动性留给叙述者。
HN 评论精选
叙事投射正是意义的来源；抽离的还原论掏空了生活，宁可要虚构的故事。
把生活变成故事，就是给它投射意义；若不把生活看作叙事，你的行动又有什么要紧？所谓“圆满结局、公平、正义、英雄、反派、转折、因果报应”，正是这些叙事投射，让生活即便在无聊与痛苦之间摇摆也显得有价值。原帖的论点与佛道两家的立场相合：不执着于一切心理构造，无论家庭、文化、爱、恨、美、荣誉、善恶、进步。我理解其中的逻辑——试图把生活还原为无可辩驳的真实；但这种抽离的还原论必然会导向“宇宙只是一片无意义物质”的看法。无意义的物质宇宙是真实的宇宙吗？也许，但生活感觉远不止于此。我更偏爱印度教的对应版本：最根本层面一切皆无意义，但出于某种奇迹，意义通过我们对它的体验从无意义中涌现。心智赋予不真实以实在，而这是好事。我们投射的叙事或许是虚构，但没有它，物质宇宙只是一本空白的书。如果生活是虚构，那就给我虚构吧。
hodwik查看英文原文
To make life into a story is to project onto it meaning. If you don't view life as narrative, what do your actions matter? The "happy endings, fairness, justice, heroes, villains, turnabouts, karma" JoshTriplett lists are the narrative projections which make life feel valuable in spite of life's trending towards wavering extremes of boredom and suffering. The OP's argument coincides with the Buddhist and Taoist positions, who prescribe a lack of attachment to all mental constructs -- be that family, culture, love, hate, beauty, honor, good, evil, progress, and so on. I get the logic behind it, it's an attempt to reduce life to the unassailably true. However, I think that sort of detached reductionism invariably leads to the view of the universe as a meaningless expanse of material, with an ordered procession of predestined material actions and reactions. Is the meaningless material universe the true universe? Perhaps, but life feels like much more than that. I prefer the ancient Hindu philosophical counterpart. They also believed, as the Buddhists and Taoists do, that at the most fundamental level it's all meaningless, but that by some miracle the meaningful emerges from the meaningless by way of our experience of it. The mind gives reality to the unreal, and that's a good thing. Sure, the narrative we project onto the world may be fiction, but without it the material universe is a blank book. If life be fiction, give me fiction.
生活不服从叙事因果，别把故事套路当成现实规律。
把生活当作故事，危险之处在于开始把故事套路套到生活上。生活本身并不天然拥有圆满结局、公平、正义、英雄、反派、转折、因果报应或任何其他套路。你可以试着把自己那一角变好，有时甚至能让很大一部分变好，但生活并不服从叙事的因果律。
JoshTriplett查看英文原文
The dangerous thing about thinking of life as a story is starting to apply story tropes to it. Life doesn't inherently have happy endings, fairness, justice, heroes, villains, turnabouts, karma, or any other tropes. You can try to make your corner of it better, and in some cases you can make quite a lot of it better, but life doesn't obey narrative causality.
人是“讲故事的猿”；理解故事的力量并识破其滥用，才算真正的智慧。
这让我想起普拉切特等人提出的“叙事素”（narrativium），我大概很早就吸收内化了它，以至于成了这种“给生活写故事的人”。“我们不是智人（Homo sapiens，智慧的人），而是第三类黑猩猩。使我们区别于普通黑猩猩和倭黑猩猩的，是远比那三倍于体重比例的大脑更微妙的东西——是那颗大脑所成就的能力。而大脑对宇宙最重要的贡献，是赋予我们讲故事的力量。我们是 Pan narrans，讲故事的猿。……如果你理解故事的力量，并学会识别对它的滥用，你或许才真正配得上‘智人’这个称号。”
rkroondotnet查看英文原文
I am reminded of Pratchett and co's ideas on narrativium, which I apparently imbibed and internalized early enough that it has made me one of these life-writers. "We are not Homo sapiens, Wise Man. We are the third chimpanzee. What distinguishes us from the ordinary chimpanzee Pan troglodytes and the bonobo chimpanzee Pan paniscus, is something far more subtle than our enormous brain, three times as large as theirs in proportion to body weight. It is what that brain makes possible. And the most significant contribution that our large brain made to our approach to the universe was to endow us with the power of story. We are Pan narrans, the storytelling ape. (II: 325) ...if you understand the power of story, and learn to detect abuses of it, you might actually deserve the appellation Homo sapiens." http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Narrativium
关键是选择并掌控自己的故事，而不是被故事所定义。
我觉得“拥有一个故事”没问题，但“成为一个故事”要危险得多——主要因为你会对它失去控制、选择权和能动性。答案不是抛弃故事，而是选择你的故事，以及选择你与它的关系。
ThrustVectoring查看英文原文
I think having a story is fine, but being a story is much more dangerous - mostly for reasons like lacking control, choice, and agency over it. The answer isn't to abandon the story, but to choose your story and how you relate to it.
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