I’ve been reading “Underground” by Haruki Murakami, about the Aum-sect poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway in the 1990s.
[Historical note: Alpha just missed taking one of the trains that was attacked because her colleagues wanted to take a taxi that morning, making these stories extra-interesting to me.]
Alpha cooked a big pot of lentils for dinner yesterday, providing an extra element of realism.
Anyway. Murakami. I like him a lot. Speaking of the Aum cult members (and by extension the rest of us) he writes,
- Haven’t you offered up some part of your Self to someone (or some thing), and taken on a “narrative” in return? Haven’t we entrusted some part of our personality to some greater System or Order? And if so, has not that System at some stage demanded of us some kind of “insanity”? Is the narrative you now possess really and truly your own? Are your dreams really your own dreams? Might they not be someone else’s visions that could sooner or later turn into nightmares?
He was talking, see, about how we are each of us storytellers, each with our own “narrative that you call your Self… You are the whole and you are a part. You are real and you are shadow. “Story teller” and at the same time “character”. It is through such multilayering of roles in our stories that we heal the loneliness of being an isolated individual in the world… Yet without a proper ego, nobody can create a personal narrative, any more than you can drive a car without an engine… But once you’ve consigned your ego to someone else, where on earth do you go from there?”
Personally, I am fascinated by thr inextricability of narrative from human nature. Our entire understanding of the world is derived from narrativity. The notion that we co-exist inside literally billions upon billions of different narrative constructs is almost incomprehensible. But because we do (and, it seems, we must), it is easily more imaginable to conceive of the situation where one might consciously exchange narrative realms (if you will). I believe it’s impossible to completely remove yourself from your own narrative context, but I do think people willingly engage other people’s contexts from time to time and to greater and lesser extents.
My understanding of Murakami here is that all of us, to a greater or lesser extent, abandon important parts of our selves, or our narratives, to those of someone else – subjugate our selves to a system of one kind or another, which I see as a negative, or at least dangerous, thing. Engaging other people’s contexts, as I understand it, would be on the other hand positive.
Driving to work today, which is where I do most of my thinking, I thought my current post-holiday blah problem was a lack of narrative, and I thought about how this was a chronic problem. Then I realized that in itself was another narrative. My misanthropy, my this, my that – all these images I have of myself are my narrative, to which I cling for a sense of self.
If I said that I had exactly the samethoughts this morning, would it threaten your sense of self?
Don’t worry, I didn’t.
Anyway, Murakami = good. I’d forgotten about this one… must look for it.
Your experience in the car speaks to the inescapability of narrativity.
I think the idea of surrendering to others’ narratives can either positive or negative. We really have no choice but to surrender to some other narratives because we interact with so many people on a daily basis. But you (and Murakami) are right that there is some threshhold where this becomes dangerous to the individual. I tend to believe that threshhold is very deep within one’s consciousness so that most people would never really get there, but thorough self-awareness is not probably as widespread as I might think, I suppose.