Greetings gentle reader, my name is Prester Jane and I would like to
welcome you to a very fascinating and ongoing discussion about the
present political situation in the United States. To explain why this discussion is so
interesting I will have to provide some background both on myself (the
primary author of the Narrativist Framework) as well as explain the
context and conditions under which this discussion evolved.
Over
the years I have learned that with a history like mine the only viable
approach to explaining it is to be frank and direct. So without further
preamble I was raised in a cult that had its own k-12 school, and I
either attended this school or was homeschooled under the supervision of
this cult until I turned 14. At which point I went out and got a Social
Security Number of my own volition (SSN's were a precursor to "the mark
of the beast") and enrolled myself in a public school.
In
my high-school years and for approximately a decade afterwards I become
involved in a series of small cults. Also during this period I slowly
developed schizophrenia. The net result of these two factors was that I
eventually hit my personal rock bottom and checked myself in to receive
professional mental health help. I shortly thereafter received a formal
diagnosis (schizoaffective disorder) as well as extensive medication
support and therapy.
In the course of my recovery and
deprogramming (which as you can imagine involved rather a great deal of
therapy) I began to develop my own personal framework for understanding
the mindset and behavior of the extremists groups I had spent so much
time living in and amongst. In 2015 I began publishing pieces of this
framework on a paywalled discussion forum.
The
community that I chose to publish on permitted an unusual experiment in
collaboration. I approached the community very openly about my
schizophrenia as well as my lack of formal education. I was also very
open about explaining that the source of these ideas was an artifact of
how my mental illness altered the way I think. Under these conditions
the community was able to engage with my ideas as a sort of collective
experiment in directing the freewheeling nature of a schizophrenics
thought process and was very honest but fair in its
reactions/disagreements/critiques, and
as a result a (rarely seen on the internet these days) spirit of
collaboration became the underlying groundrule for the discussion.
In
short I approached the conversation well aware that I was both a
schizophrenic (as well as lacking in a formal education) and that I would need to be on guard at all times for how
my illness can impact my thinking, and the community approached my
material by investing enough of their own time/energy to be able to
discuss my ideas in my own (often very schizophrenic) terms. In general
the discussion proceeded by my introducining a new concept (often with
its own associated vocabulary) along with a some supporting examples
culled from media and my best attempt at a rough explanation of what it
meant and how this concept fit in with others. There would then follow a
great deal of back and forth discussion as the thoughtful reactions of
many other participants allowed me to hone both my own understanding of
the concept as well as how to better explain it to others. Then there
would follow a discussion about the refinements themselves and so and so
forth.
One of the fruits of over two years of this unusual experiment is what this paper is primarily about: The Narrativist Framework.
Before I delve deeply into that discussion just yet though I must
further beg the gentle readers patience by first providing a discussion
on exactly what I feel this framework describes- and what it does not.
(The import of making these distinctions early will become obvious over
time as the reader delves into the body of this work.)
The
Narrativist Framework is a description of a particular set of behaviors
and the social environment that individuals exhibiting these behaviors
tend to recreate whenever they reach a sufficient threshold of influence
in society. These behaviors (and their underlying causes) are
ultimately apolitical in nature: They are explicitly and emphatically
not inherently right or left wing in nature. Any individual or
organization can potentially exhibit these behaviors regardless of their
political leanings.
The Narrativist Framework is also primarily a description of the structure
of the beliefs that Narrativists/Narrativist organizations embrace. The
nitty-gritty specifics of the beliefs any group discussed here are not
nearly as important as how those specifics all conform to an identical structure, a story-like format that I have named the Grand Narrative.
Finally
the Narrativist Framework is (and I must emphasize this here) not an
attempt to pathologize the right wing, it is an attempt to describe a
particular set of behaviors exhibited by individuals whom within the
present American zeitgeist tend very frequently to be right wing
oriented- this is a result of historic forces with the Republican Party
itself (notably the backroom dealings of Barry Goldwater) as well as the
logical consequence of utilizing the particular public relations
strategy ("dog-whistling") that the GOP has embraced for several decades
now. I want to state very clearly that in my view the present insanity
we see playing out in the Trump administration could just as easily had a
D next to its name if the Democratic Party*** had made the same sorts of decisions.
***In
fairness to the Democratic Party, despite this Millenials' personal
criticisms of the DNC (and they are varied, nuanced,
detailed, and acid edged) the Democrats as a whole have not engaged in
the sorts of political strategies that court Narrativism, and as a
result left-leaning Narrativists in the US are a rare and mostly
toothless breed, although pockets of them do exist. (TERF's, Tankies, "Tumblrina's"
various tiny Marxist cults, etc.)
And last of all I
would like to take a moment to thank the numerous community members of
SA that have made significant contributions to this work, and in
particular I would like to thank poster Fuschia Tude for taking the time
to condense a great deal of material into the present format, as well
as taking the time to clean up many of the particular artifacts that my
illness had on my earlier writing.
Authors
Note: The structure of the ideas and their meaning is mine, but much
credit is owed to the SomethingAwful.com Debate and Discussion community for making numerous
contributions to the descriptions contained as well as the naming
conventions used herein. Further this present work represents a first
attempt at uniting the entire framework into a single cohesive whole. As
a result I have struck the supporting arguments (which are considerably
larger than the definitions themselves) presented for each of these
terms, as some of these terms have individually resulted in 10's of
thousands of
words worth of debate in and of themselves. The following Glossary
therefore represents the easiest path to learning the basics of the
Narrativist Framework without diving into the (incredibly interesting
but nonetheless lengthy and tedious) underlying discussions that spawned
many of these terms.
Continue on to "Narrativism/Narrativist".
Full Glossary of Terms.
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