It’s damned near a certainty, that any story you’ve ever heard is rife with errors and omissions. The errors are a result of the incompetence of the storyteller. The omissions are a result of the perspective of the storyteller. Combined, those mistakes and lack of objectivity ensure that the stories we hear are sanitized and therefore incomplete.
I’m not talking about deliberate fiction. A fantasy novel is indeed a story, but it was never intended to be a description of a genuine occurrence. Consider any movie you’ve seen that rolls a caption through the credits that states, based on actual events. What you’re seeing is a realization from screenwriters that the real story isn’t entertaining enough and needs some embellishment.
As it is with movies, so to is it with the stories we tell to others and to ourselves.
I think that Mr. Trump has realized inadvertently that people don’t want a just the facts narrative. The truth is boring and often in direct conflict with what some people want to hear. The truth isn’t entertaining enough and might be uncomfortable. The truth might oblige a person to accept some responsibility and that’s rarely desirable. People watch reality television like The Apprentice, or The Housewives of wherever, to escape the responsibility of the real world,. The illusion then becomes delusion, and delusion prevents us from grasping the irony that what they’re watching is in fact, unreality television.
The reality of reality television is that it’s bread and circus absurdity, pretending to be entertainment.
It’s no wonder then, that the concept of fake news was so warmly received. If you spend all of your days believing that wrestling is real and climate change is not, then the notion of an alternate truth isn’t much of a stretch at all. In fact, in no time, and with minimal effort you can convince yourself that any story you don’t like is fake.
It’s easy and we’re big fans of effortless.
I think too, that a good part of the reason we’re so willing to accept incomplete stories is because we’re complicit story tellers ourselves.
Think about the last story you told. It could be innocuous, and if so, then the story is likely to be relatively accurate. However, if the story has any hint of injurious to it’s theme, then accuracy is unlikely because we’ve added a villain to our story.
The villain never gets a fair trial in our stories. It doesn’t matter if the reprobate is a dick driver or a co-worker. We”re right and they’re wrong and that’s the end of the story. But it’s not the whole story. The driver that cut you off will probably have a story about the lowlife that wouldn’t allow them to merge. So, if you combine both stories then you have a truer explanation of what occurred. Neither of the story tellers will agree though, because that’s not how things went down in their version of the tale.
And then there’s the co-worker fables.
Anyone who has ever worked has an anthology of miscreant co-worker stories. I’m no exception, but on occasion I wonder how many work stories have been told where I’m the asshole. I held some management positions, so I’d be shocked if I wasn’t the villain in a few dinner time stories that recounted another day at the office.
Anyway, co-worker stories.
Most workplaces have a hag from H.R. or an asshat from accounting, a malignant manager and an incel from I.T .But, every workplace has a calculating, competitive, prick, co-worker. These people are regular characters, featured in our dinner time dissertation that follows the standard, how was your day query, from whomever is sitting across from you.
So, the question that comes to mind is, how many of those stories that we tell are accurate? How many details have we left out regarding our own behavior and the circumstances that swirled around the office asshole of the day?
Lots.
We’ve left out details from the events of that day, as well as any pertinent history that makes us look bad. It’s what we do. We vilify the villain and we sanctify ourselves, because that’s the format for good story telling. A truthful and thoughtful dissertation is boring, and we’d much rather be entertained with errata than enlightened with education.
The entire history of humanity is comprised of entertainment posing as facts. That’s why we prefer made for t.v. movies over documentaries. We like fables, fairy tales, and myths.
They make better stories.