Outer Narrative

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play.. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." - Sartre

"You start out in 1954 by nigger nigger nigger. By 1968 you can't say nigger- that hurts you it backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights and all that stuff. And your getting so abstract now that your talking about cutting taxes, and all of these things you are talking about are totally economic things and the byproduct of them is that blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it." - Lee Atwater, Campaign Manager for Ronald Reagan.

Outer Narrative: The Outer Narrative is what a given Narrativist (or group of Narrativists) claims to believe. "Jesus is Lord!" "Tax Cuts Increase Revenue!" "We are just a concerned citizens militia asserting our 2nd Amendment rights!" etc. Whatever it is that an Narrativist will not shut up about, that is the Outer Narrative.

The Outer Narrative is not the totality of what an Narrativist group believes; it is only the watered-down version, acceptable for public consumption. Whatever it is that an Narrativist proclaims as sincerely held beliefs in public is always going to differ from what gets discussed behind closed doors. Curiously, Narrativists are completely oblivious to this fact. Each Narrativist group believes itself the sole possessor of some great knowledge or insight that makes their group special and uses this as a justification to deliberately obfuscate their real beliefs. However, each Narrativist group judges every other Narrativist group solely by the other group's Outer Narrative.

Another interesting facet of the outer narrative is how often it is used to shield the Narrativists' beliefs from criticism. Broadly speaking, attacking the outer narrative with facts or logic has little result primarily because you are not attacking what the Narrativist actually believes. This is why debating an Narrativist often seems so fruitless; nothing you say seems to make a dent.
Outer Narratives can also be used as coded language to communicate between different groups of Narrativists. If an inner narrative is too socially dangerous to be spoken in public, then outer narrative's will be used in their place. The most ready example of this would be white supremacists using coded language and/or coded arguments when speaking about black people.
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One final important aspect of Outer Narrative's is their utility as "dog-whistles" or coded language used by Narrativists to signal or communicate with each other in a covert manner. In social situations wherein a Narrativist is unable to openly communicate their Inner Narrative to another Narrativist they will instead utilize Outer Narrative's to communicate their true intent. In other words in a situation wherein two Narrativists are speaking with each other in a public setting wherein they cannot openly discuss their Inner Narrative both Narrativist interlocutors will utilize mundane Outer Narrative's whilst mutually recognizing the disingenuous nature of the statements they are making.




Continue on to "Inner Narrative".