I'm interested in the way that identity is entangled with worldview. It seems to me that any metanarrative or grand metaphysics carves out a place for the bearer of that metaphysics. — syntax
Any thoughts on this, team? Do you agree or disagree that identity is tangled with worldview? Do you reflect on this in your own case? Do you think we choose our worldviews? Or does life beat us into a certain shape? — syntax
an overarching account or interpretation of events and circumstances that provides a pattern or structure for people’s beliefs and gives meaning to their experiences.
Do you agree or disagree that identity is tangled with worldview?
JF LyotardThus the society of the future falls less within the province of a Newtonian anthropology (such as structuralism or systems theory) than a pragmatics of language particles. There are many different language games a heterogeneity of elements. They only give rise to institutions in patches-local determinism.
Do you agree or disagree that identity is tangled with worldview? — syntax
Do you reflect on this in your own case? — syntax
Or does life beat us into a certain shape? — syntax
if indoctrinated into the materialist paradigm, it then becomes a meta-narrative of cultural materialism, and thus the ‘addictive’ need to attain more and more materiality, and carnal satisfaction, in order to feed and fulfill that corporeal identity and its cravings. — snowleopard
My own metanarrative is that metanarratives are tools and identities. — syntax
For whatever reason I tend to be a loner and not a joiner, so meta-narratives tend to not hold much weight for me. — praxis
Imagine that you become aware that you're acting out a role in a play. You peer around trying to get a sense of this play. What's the tone? Where are you in the dramatic arc? How is this the same play that's forever been played? How is it unprecedented?
I think that's what it's like to try to see your own worldview. — frank
Who are you to ask who I am? I definitely don't want to get tangled up in somebody else's metaphorical metanarrative. — Bitter Crank
So, what's the difference between a metanarrative and a world view? Is it that, with the metanarrative, I'm in the picture? It's a story about me and how I fit into the world. I'm thinking now - "So, what is T Clark's metanarrative?" Am I the only one who can write my metanarrative? Can I write yours? — T Clark
When push comes to shove, metanarratives are illusions. As a person who has lived most of his life mired in illusion, I think they are probably self-destructive. They're lies we tell ourselves. We have no stories. I think maybe poetry would work better. I think life is more about tone, mood than it is about meaning. — T Clark
but even then it can become an identity of 'I am one who is non-attached', with some attendant story attached. Seems to be our story-telling destiny. Perhaps all I really know for sure is this presence of awareness, while all else is story time ... End of story :wink: — snowleopard
I think every living moment of a human being’s life, unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death in some other way, is controlled by a concern for status. — Tom Wolfe
I don't think there is a "worldview", "an overarching account", rather there are many narratives that intersect, combine, diminish, accentuate, are modern, postmodern, anachronisms... all part of our language game. — Cavacava
The fragmentation of the overarching meta narrative, has lead us to the fragmentation of the autonomous self, into our schizoid personalities. The neutrality of the ego as witness and role player who plays multiple parts but without full absorption into any of its roles. This is the difference between parody of an officially designated style, and pastiche where there are many styles and none of them are official. — Cavacava
Most def. Meta-narratives mostly serve to bind groups in common values/purposes. It is important to identify with such groups in order to be bound to them. — praxis
Sure. For whatever reason I tend to be a loner and not a joiner, so meta-narratives tend to not hold much weight for me. I'm naturally drawn to those that express my values and goals, however. — praxis
Isn’t the term ‘meta-narrative’ just another word for a belief system? Lately I’ve been pondering this idea of being ‘addicted’ to a paradigmatic mindset. It does seem, in a sense, that once indoctrinated, or bought into a given prevailing collective meta-narrative, oblivious to any alternative, it could be said that one becomes entirely dependent and fixated upon that mindset, through and from which one then derives a filtered interpretive understanding of one's experiential domain, and the meaning of one’s relational role within it. So it surely seems that, in effect, one’s identity and purpose in life becomes inextricably linked to that. So, for example, if indoctrinated into the materialist paradigm, it then becomes a meta-narrative of cultural materialism, and thus the ‘addictive’ need to attain more and more materiality, and carnal satisfaction, in order to feed and fulfill that corporeal identity and its cravings. Likewise, one can be indoctrinated into a religious or sociopolitical or militaristic meta-narrative, with its own problematic addictive implications. No doubt there are many examples of more extremist identifications from religious fundamentalists to neo-Nazis to militant fanatics of all types. — snowleopard
But if you're not *really* the 'persona' - then what else could you be? A meta-person? — Wayfarer
I suppose in cultural terms, our 'defining meta-narrative' must be something modelled from a composite of your occupation, your family ties, and artistic or professional aspirations. In the absence of an meta-narrative, what else is there? — Wayfarer
But isn't this a grand narrative too? You are person who lived much of your life in an illusion, the illusion that there was a narrative or a plot. Now you see the truth on tone and meaning. I like this and can relate, by the way. I'm just saying that I'd count it as a worldview. — syntax
Of course I'm just playfully trying to communicate what the concept means for me. As far as I can tell, identities come largely in narrative form. We know that we have evolved, and we tell the story of that evolution to ourselves and others. And we are doing this already as teenagers. So telling the story of our lives is also telling the story of all the stories we have told about ourselves about ourselves throughout those lives. — syntax
I love the reply, but you ain't foolin' me with that rhetorical strategy. :smile: I think you've painted very well the kinds of things that aren't central to identity. They are charmingly concrete and abstract. They are flesh on the bones of the big narrative. Novelists use them to emphasize 'incarnation.' Our bright, universal fantasies of ourselves are entangled with a background of master-plan-neutral detail. — syntax
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