“Who are we but the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and believe?” – Scott Turow
Stories that are successful appeal to something inside of us. That “something” can be hard to define but it is powerful. Stories are not creatures of data but are unpredictable; conventional wisdom on storytelling is regularly upended by an author or director that goes against the grain and achieves phenomenal success. Stories inspire us, they help us empathize with people who never lived. They also teach us. Fiction is one of the best teachers we have because it is like running a simulation… except, ya know, not boring.
But fiction has a problem in our country today. Well actually, two problems. The first is that the left desires it to be woke in all mediums: books, movies, videogames, and of course children’s cartoons! The second is the manner of interpretation. The people who produce fiction and now the people who tell everyone else what it means are all progressives (if not outright antifa thugs or card-carrying communists).
Just to be clear: this is an insidious tactic. It is nothing less than propaganda. Essentially, they say, “Oh, you liked that book? So did I! It really affirms my *insert nonsense political belief*.” But what if everyone says that? Suddenly, good becomes problematic and up becomes down.
Here is a great example of people twisting Tolkien’s work to support their woke nonsense and thankfully people standing up against it. The woke left will retroactively apply their lies to whatever they can.
Interpretation matters; religious fanatics have killed each other over simple differences in textual interpretation. The left must not be allowed to be the sole voices talking about the meanings of our stories.
“Until recently we’ve only been able to speculate about story’s persuasive effects. But over the last several decades psychology has begun a serious study of how story affects the human mind. Results repeatedly show that our attitudes, fears, hopes, and values are strongly influenced by story. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than writing that is specifically designed to persuade through argument and evidence.” -Jonathan Gottschall
This newsletter’s goal is to talk about the stories we tell ourselves and what we can learn from them, along with how they intertwine with the political madness of our current state. The left has created a world where only someone’s feelings about a piece of media matter. It’s time to turn that against them and be subversive.