All decisions are based on narrative.
What about quick decisions?
Or ones made based on memory?

The polar bear story shows gender bias.



narrative
rational
authoritarian traditional

This is the second time I have lost this post.
I suggest composing it in a text document and pasting it here later.
I'm telling a story about how I have done a lot of work on this post, but have nothing to show for it.

Facebook

I signed up for facebook the other day.
My girlfriend Julia said I should join because one of her friends wanted to message me.
All of a sudden a crowd of people were inviting me to join their network.
wow the pressure.
Will someone be upset if I don't add them as a friend.
Will I eventually feel like I have too many friends, and feel like I need to disconnect from a few.
Will they take it personally.
So people can go to my profile and add pictures or say things that will be available to everyone.
It's way too open for me.
I can't describe how traumatic it all is.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was inspired to do it because blogging for this class has been stimulating and I thought maybe facebook will be similar.
We'll see how it goes.

Ice-fishing

When we retold the story in class from someone else, we insert a moral into it. For our final story we have to do the same thing, make it "intentional."
I was thinking of talking about ice-fishing from when I was a kid.
But now that I have to make it intentional, it seems trickier. I was just thinking of informative, because I figure alot of people from CA don't know quite what ice-fishing is.
In English class and speech class, it's common to do informative and then persuasive. Not that I need to "persuade" in the story, but at least have a stronger purpose.
What to do?
theme
goal
intent
purpose

Def Man (Author Unk)

I take it that clause one is "symbol using animal." In the conclusion, it states that we develop symbols about symbols. The author seems to be referring to meta-symbols. symols about symbols.
Someday I want to write a sarcastic essay called "Meta-meta."
Because I think that meta is overused and too clever for its own good.
For example, meta communication is comm about comm. That's not deep. If I try to say that all communication is really metacommunication and there is really no metacommunication I will be pretending to understand something that I am saying cannot be understood, and being clever about something I think people are too clever about.
Let's feta-talk. You know, talk about feta. Beta-talk. When I talk about those beautiful fighting fish.
If meta symbols are so complex, how could we prove animals don't think in terms of meta symbols?
Like the bird trying to fly away by going up toward the ceiling. It would have to be a really deep bird to think that flying up into a solid object translates into open skies. And if that is what they think, then doesn't that mean flying up is a symbol for that which the bird desires, open skies, and open skies is simply representing other things that it wants, to see food, and seeing food is symbolic for other things that it wants, to eat food and eating food is symbolic for other things, feeling full, and feeling full is necessary to relax and relax leads to go to sleep and go to sleep means not to do tiring actions like bumping our head against the ceiling.

maybe humans are tame animals and any animal that is tamed becomes human.
meta-animal means animal about animal or really excited about dogs.
meta-dog means dog about dog.
like dog tired or puppy love
bored about dogs or excited about dogs.

metametametametametametametametametametameta
metametametametametametametameta
metametametametametametametametametametameta
Do you see what I see? A A A A
between t and m
with a something something something.

Class Activities vs theory

I enjoyed the class excercise last tuesday of telling someone else's stories. I found that as a listener I often forgot that someone was telling someone else's story. I also thought it funny how sometimes we wanted to hear the story behind the story. Which one is the real story? We think the first one was real, but real is only what happened. I know the story I first told was not quite real. I was also surprised at how much of my story I lost.
Assigning the moral to the story was a nice touch. I assigned the moral of police are incompetent, or unable to do what police are promised to do. They cannot serve and protect. I was surprised at the ways I was able to introduce that theme into a story that was given to me without that theme. But I guess I do it all the time. i hear a story and interpret it outside of its intended purpose from the speaker and then retell the story to make my own point.

I find it ironic that in communication classes that I have taken, we don't really spend much time communicating.
Our class seems like an exception to that and I think that the activities that we do that give each student the floor are at least as important as understanding what comm classes usually focus on, which are the theories thought to be at the root of communication.
On the other hand, we communicate everyday in our lives and how much more can we really learn from mock situations in class. why not use all of the class time to do what we rarely do out of class, discuss theory?

Traditional Narratives

An interesting point was made last week about the use of stories to scare children into staying home and preventing them from making deadly mistakes. The same logic could be used for justifying the creation of religions and monarchies. In primitive cultures, the tribe had to work together to prevent their extinction amid highly competitive rivals and harsh environments.
Even if we cannot prove the exact causes or motivations of such constructions it may explain the perpetuation of narratives.
To perpetuate a narrative it must be adaptable to changing environments and peoples. Only adapted versions of stories survive introduction to new cultures.
The Hebrew religion was adapted into Christianity for European cultures and into Islam for non-hebrew middle eastern cultures.
Looking at the narrative texts themselves the Old Testament was adapted to the New Testament, and the Koran. and the book of Mormon.
There also seem to be ifluences from Plato's writing in the New Testament.

Talk to Me

Please reply to this post.

Sperber and Wilson according to Bruner on bottom of page 10 of The Narrative Construction of Reality say that we assume other's replies to our statements are relevant and we interpret them to fit in with the conversation.
I feel like like 50% of class comments in any given class in any given subject are not relevant to the preceding discussion. Even teachers seem to respond to questions from students in a disconnected way. Most questions don't get answered because we don't want to belabor the conversation. We want everything to keep running smoothly.

What do you all think?

Narrative Construction of Reality

Jerome Bruner uses War of the Worlds as an example of narrative seduction in which listeners are seduced into accepting only one interpretation of the story.
Actually I think a minority of listeners thought the story was genuine. What kind of research was conducted to determine how many interpretations were accepted? How do we measure this?
It does not make sense to say that some people had no other interpretive choice because the story was so well crafted. Bruner claims that interpretation can be forced on us by ambiguity, illusion, or banalization. Just because a story is banal does not mean we had to be lazy in interpretation. It is the listener's choice as to whether or not they wish to remain "hermeneutically alert" or not.