Philosophy

Approaches to Discussion

Posted by Aibird on July 29, 2017
Posted in: Author, Blogging, Feminism, History, Philosophy. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Discussion with my cat

This idea for a post has been haunting me for some time, but it’s taken me quite awhile to bring it together coherently enough to compose my ideas on paper. So, after all this thinking, researching, and meditating, I’m going to complete this and release it into the wilds of the Internet. I hope it helps folks as much as it’s helping me recognize ways to be a better person.

To begin, it often feels that when people engage in discussion, there’s hidden rules and approaches that must be held true by both for the discussion to not end in hurting another. In America, where I live, this seems more true than ever before as our country becomes more polarized.

What are these basic approaches?

  1. Approach 1 focuses on verbalizing any opinion regardless of what they are. As long as it is said without emotion, done rationally, and is on the discussion topic, then it is rational and valid and must be respected. The focus is that all opinions are on an equal playing field, and discussions are a game of intelligence and debate skills. In this approach, there are winners and losers.
  2. Approach 2 focuses on respect and basic human dignity and how that comes first before opinions. This approach recognizes that not all opinions are equal or healthy, that some people hold more risk and stakes than another. Respect and acceptance of a person’s humanity, their stakes and risk, and the differences in privilege must be acknowledged first before opinions can be shared and treated with validity. In this approach, discussion is not a game of debate, but a shared experience in which to grow. For this approach, there are no winners or losers.

These two approaches are the predominant ones in American culture today. They are not all the approaches to a discussion, yes, but for brevity and relevancy, I’ll focus on these two approaches. Of the two, I believe the first is often deadly and toxic.

Why?

Approach 1 makes several false assumptions:

  1. Emotion is invalid, and showing emotions means the argument that person made is not rational or to be respected.
  2. Rationality with no emotion is the only way to have intelligent discussions, thus cementing the idea of rationality and emotion being at war with one another, and rationality being equated with intelligence.
  3. That all opinions are on an equal playing field, and people’s opinions stay valid as long as they are rational and emotionless.
  4. That discussions are a debate game to be won.

Let’s tackle these one at a time.

Emotion does not render an argument invalid. It simply does not. We are human beings, where emotions are a huge indicator that tells us important things about ourselves, our environment, and our safety and well-being. They play a role in determining when to disengage, when to engage, and can fuel a passion that can make discussions more interesting or instructive (or could also make them destructive too). Emotional intelligence is just as important as any other facets of human intelligence.

Emotions have their pros and cons, but rendering any argument invalid because emotion is present? That is a silencing tactic. It is also a logical fallacy, where the other is outright avoiding the issue present by using the person’s emotions as a way to silence and distract.

Rationality is not at war with emotion. Rationality does not equal intelligence either. Being rational does not make the person’s argument superior to someone who had emotion slip into their words. This assumption in of itself contradicts the idea of an “equal playing field.” Secondly, it assumes that one cannot be both rational and hold emotions, which is a false premise. It is possible to do both. Third, it puts those who have no risk in the discussion on a deadly pedestal, where they can use words in a destructive manner but escape consequences by hiding behind the idea of rationality = intelligence = validity, and thus should always be respected.

What do I mean by risk? Risk generally incorporates the amount of energy — emotional and physical and mental — a person puts into an activity and balances it against outcomes that may negatively harm their health — mental, physical, or emotional – or their functionality and existence within the world.

I am a transgender person. In discussions about gender, my risk is at a high level as I may have to discuss topics related to my very identity, where I may have to defend my existence and such a defense? Is always exhausting. If a person’s opinion outright invalidates my humanity — such as claiming trans people need to accept their birth gender as that’s just biology — this is an attack on my identity and humanity. Verbal attacks bring on a panic attack for me, and it limits my functionality to exist, hurts my health and violates safety.

To ignore such risks and stakes, is to ignore the humanity of that person and to ignore that their needs are just as valid as the other person. Respecting one another’s needs also means respecting what boundaries they may put into place to keep themselves safe and to keep their health stable. Respecting someone’s needs and boundaries is often hard to do, and any of us may fail at it, even when doing the second approach.

(Side note: How to respect one another is a post I may have a different day, but I will say that it involves taking responsibility of one’s words and actions regardless of one’s intent and be willing to apologize and listen (for all involved). I admit, this is something I work on just as much as everyone else — no one is perfect at this.)

To continue, people who have no risk in the discussion do not exist on an even or equal playing field with those who have a lot of risk. Thus, approach 1 by those with no risk, makes any opinion fair game as long as it is done rationally, emotionless, and to further the ‘game.’ If the other person’s needs, boundaries, and stakes in the discussion is not respected, then words are not carefully chosen. Instead, to those who hold no risk in the discussion, the focus is the game, an “intelligent discussion where all opinions are valid,” where words are just words.

They ignore the reality that words are not “just words.” Words can be violent weapons that destroy just as much as they can be powerful sources of healing. Words matter. Words and gestures and emotions are how we communicate with one another. There is simply no such thing as a discussion that holds no risk for all involved.

Failing to recognize the risk others may hold? Failing to recognize what is at stake? Failing to respect those who have much at stake? This is a dismissal of a person’s experiences and identity, and how those influence and shape discussion as much as the facts and opinions shared. It can easily break boundaries and cause harm, and a discussion that causes harm? That is not a healthy discussion.

No person can ever completely erase themselves from a discussion. We all hold biases that unconsciously affect us. Often times, in Approach 1, the idea of rationality is to rise above biases, where those speaking rationally with no emotion hold no biases. This assumption that biases are negligible or nonexistent in ‘rational discussions?’ And/or rational discussions with no emotion is more valid? And/or there is no risk in a discussion because it is all ‘just a game?’

That’s not rational or healthy assumptions. Instead, they are smokescreens and distractions meant to avoid the issue at stake in the discussion. And that’s dangerous, destructive, and not at all instructive. One cannot have a discussion if the these approaches are at odds with one another.

In my view, the only way a discussion can be valuable and instructive for all involved is if everyone approaches it with respect of a person’s humanity, the stakes they have in the conversation, and the power of words themselves. But to do so, we must recognize that not all opinions are equal in power or validity.

Let me repeat: opinions are not all equal in power or validity. Let us look at history to remind ourselves of the power of words. Some opinions have led to the deaths of millions. Until people can recognize these two different discussion approaches and the dangers inherent in the first approach, then discussions about hard subjects will tend toward those who hold the most risk, the most stakes, being harmed or worse.

A good example of this is the idea that a group of beings is worth less than another. This is an opinion, but it is rooted in the oppression and violation of a fellow human being. There is no even playing field as the opinion starts out violating the basic rules of trust and respect when engaging in conversations. And these opinions, that view others as less than, has influenced powerful legislation and movements that have resulted in oppression, destruction of liberties and lives, and outright genocide. There’s many examples of this throughout history. I’ll list a few:

  1. Nazi Germany and the concentration camps.
  2. Scapegoating communities, leading to higher violence against them.
  3. The genocide against various indigenous tribes around the world.
  4. The government-based racist oppression, where black people were not allowed to exist in majority of public spaces.
  5. Homophobic and Transphobic legislation that makes it hard if not impossible for LGBQTIA people to receive healthcare or exist in public.
  6. Slavery of any sort.
  7.  Wage entrapment, where a person doesn’t earn enough to speak up against abuse by their employer without fear of homelessness or starvation and/or mass incarceration for petty crimes to get free or low paid labor.

As much as people try to claim remembering history is a fallacy, it truly is not. It is important to remember our history, and how words, the approach to discussion, and premises on which those words stand hold power. People may say that one person doesn’t do much, but it’s never just one person.

There are people in the US who still do not believe Climate Change is real. Some may claim their opinions are equally as valid as those who believe in Climate Change, but that is numerous logical fallacies: it ignores the facts, it suppresses evidence that counters one’s opinion, and it causes harm as it makes it harder to move forward with for legislation and technologies to stop Climate Change. Facts about climate change — the science behind it — is firm. Thus, opinions on whether to “believe it or not” are avoiding the issue, a fallacy.

Folks may say, “Well, discussions between friends aren’t like this.” But are they? Any time these two approaches clash, people end up hurt. Different groups in society value one approach over another, and if one of these groups who value the first approach are in power, this can lead to dehumanizing legislation. Attempts at protesting or other forms of discussion about that dehumanizing legislation, often ends up twisted up in the fallacy that emotion = invalid, where protestors are dehumanized, and thus violent and/or callous actions toward protestors is often argued as valid and good in order to bring order.

Discussions between two people isn’t separate from the discussions had by society as a whole. Society is made up of people. Each of those people have their needs, boundaries, identities, and opinions. Sometimes they intersect in healthy ways, and sometimes in detrimental ways.  There are many components that make up society, but to name a few: it is our discussions; how we work together or against each other; our apathy or action; our ability to respect or not respect others; ways we honor or don’t honor boundaries; the ways we vote those in power that align with our opinions in power — these all make up society and is the basis of society.

So the questions I must ask:

  1. Is the discussion truly more important than people’s humanity and their risks they must deal with on a daily basis?
  2. Is it more important to stay neutral no matter what, regardless of the stakes and humanity of those involved?
  3. For those that do intervene, who are they protecting?
    • Do they protect those that “spoke rationally” and were “just having a discussion”
    • Or do they protect those that feel attacked, silenced, harmed?

It’s not possible to protect both factions. To demand silence of all sides doesn’t end the hurt caused and does not erase what happened. It may stop the discussion, but it protects no one.

For those that say what about censorship? Remember, free speech is only about not allowing government and similar entities to restrict you as a person and your ability to communicate freely. But it does not erase the consequences of those words. There is always consequences to everything we do. The depth and nature of those consequences may differ, but they do exist.

Thus, in these discussions, there is no such thing as a neutral stance. You either agree with the first approach or you agree with the second approach. You can’t agree with both as the first approach often fails to recognize the validity of a person’s humanity, or the validity that not all opinions are equal or healthy,  or the risks inherent, or the way words can kill as much as they heal.

These approaches as they currently stand in our society are not able to coexist peacefully. They just can’t. The second approach recognizes and respects the differences in stakes, the differences in risk, the humanity of those involved. And the first one? Doesn’t.

Because not all opinions are created equal. I think, by recognizing these approaches, maybe we can find a better way to communicate, to be more respectful, more empathetic, and better able to cause the least harm when sharing opinions. For a person’s humanity should be worth more than an opinion.

The start of a new year

Posted by Aibird on January 4, 2016
Posted in: Author, Philosophy, Writing. Tagged: , , , , . 1 Comment

Every year in January, people I know talk about their new years resolutions. Many of which we will forget by February or March. Why do we do this ritual every year? Where we dissect our lives, ponder all the things we failed to do or should have done better, and then seek out ways to be better? Do we ever think back on the accomplishments we did do? Sometimes but sometimes our failures stick out in our minds more.

Perhaps we do it to remind ourselves that we are not static, not frozen in time, that we really do improve and become better over time. That we can change for the better and that we don’t have to be set in stone. And yet, even as we remind ourselves of this, we fight back against the idea that people change, that change is somehow okay, that things aren’t set in stone. We can’t have both. What will it be?

I’ve been in flux for a long time, where I walked on the edges of society. Ever since I was a kid, I walked the cracks on the pavement, balanced precariously as if at any moment I could fall onto one side of the other and lose the essence of me. I know how the other children would hop over those cracks, laugh at how if you stepped on them you’d break your mother’s back, but to me the cracks were the in-between, the netherworld — this fragile reality that I could exist in in more than one place. Where I couldn’t be labeled as one or the other, but as something else entirely.

Labels never fit me well. I slid through them, into them, and out of them like the clothes I tried in stores — seeking just the right color or the right size, but never quite certain because I was always between sizes. I couldn’t just tell folks to get me a small or a medium or a size 4 or a size 6 or a size 30 waist, 30 length — because sometimes those sizes just never fit. I was a hodgepodge of existing in multiple sizes at once, never able to fit into one or the other. Just like I slipped on the labels of one idea, only to fall out of it as I came to better understand myself. Some have stuck to me like glue, and those I’ve used as a communication device, but others fade away in time. Labels are never set in stone as we’re not static beings. We flux and change, and move forward or backwards or sideways. But as much as folks might say they are concrete and are what they are forever, even they, the static ones, have fluctuated over time. It’s near impossible to breathe and be alive and not have change as an integral factor in one’s life. To say any differently is to live an illusion within this distorted lens of reality, never willing to acknowledge the giant stick in one’s own eye that prevents you from seeing the world in all its glorious beauty.

So for this new year, I spread my wings as wide as they can go. I am not the best at flying, nor am I the best at anything really. I just try and see where I end up. I’ve been this drifter, in and out of jobs, in and out of housing, and I struggled to stay safe, stay alive, and just move forward, but I’ve never given up. If that is one lesson I offer, you don’t have to be a fighter to make it in life. You just have to be willing to take  a risk, go out into the unknown, and be willing to be there for yourself and for those around you. Because by being present in life in this current moment, you are truly alive, and you have the chance to truly make a difference. Don’t let it pass you by. Reach for it and hope for the best.

Creativity

Posted by Aibird on September 22, 2015
Posted in: Author, Philosophy, Writing. 2 Comments

The world has settled around me, slowly but firmly, the glove finally fitting after weeks of adjusting and fine-tuning. Never one for sewing, the stitches were haphazard but determined, inching along the seams, until the glove grew to fit the hand, snug and warm in the growing darkness of the yesteryear. The onset of fall looms on the horizon and washes away the dredges of summer, and still bugs burrow and fly, swoop and buzz through the day, not yet willing to release their tyrannous hold on the world. A deep breath ensnares the nectar of life, its musky scent, wood flavored and grass dripping and fervent sour of the dead fermenting into the ground to enrich the world yet again in the spring, after the frozen months of winter. It’s a precarious time, one of lost hopes and misplaced dreams, the walks longer and longer as the sun sets earlier and earlier. The stars appear sooner, slurping up the sky and sweeping out the last vestiges of daytime. It’s the twilight of the year, and a passage from one moment to the next and the next, until time sweeps us out into the ocean, whipping us up into the hurricane of the years that pass by too swiftly.

We never know exactly where we will end up in the future, but fury of the universe has settled into a heartbeat, throbbing through our veins. Entangled as we are, we see and feel and thirst and soar up into the heavens, the clouds billowing out like a cape. It is the stars that guide us through the dark as the curtains drop and the stage empties. Even in darkness, we are not yet alone, for the soft bubbling of life simmers still, even under the layers of snow and frost.

It is a wonder that we walk through this life and fail to see this. We buzz from place to place, our feet scurrying and our hearts molten, and our brains locked on the prize we can never reach. It dangles above us, always zipping out of sight like the snitch that never was. We think we can soar like the birds if we but buy it, but no money in the world is enough to light the fires of our souls again. We don’t know where we are walking, and we cannot see the road, except for those yellow lines down the center, our guideposts unwavering in their solidity. We think it will take us there, to the realm for which we yearn, but the road just moves us further into darkness away from the light and the fires and the warmth of our dreams. The world is cold and our hearts empty, and our minds nothing but those yellow lines. We are the lines. Flat, unyielding, unwilling to deviate from the set reality we have constructed. Nothing will deviate us; nothing will stop us. We will be the lines and that is reality.

The earth heaves in a shuddered breath and the winds simper and whine. All around us, hidden in the particles themselves, is the whispers of millions, begging us to turn away. To cease our path, to let the lines go. To become malleable and open, to unleash the torrent of our hearts and minds, the flames of our souls that burn with a delirious hope that one day it will sweep us off our feet. We won’t see it coming. And yet, and yet, we might miss it. The moment passed and the lines once more unyielding, unwavering, set in its path. Breathe and open the eyes, smell the nectar of dreams, and touch the cool fabric of time as it curls around our wrists, tugging us to the left or the right, away from the lines. Away from what is familiar and comfortable. A challenge has issued from the stars above and the earth below.

Will we answer it?

Expressing oneself is a revolutionary act

Posted by Aibird on July 27, 2015
Posted in: Art, Author, Philosophy. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

My partner, who is an artist, discussed with me the other day the types of artists. There is the artist who is creating art with an agenda, who is often a political activist and their medium is art. But then there is the artist that simply creates art to express themselves. My partner discussed how modern art today is focused more on the statement said through art, where it becomes a metaphor for some type of political agenda. As much as this is celebrated, it also causes tension and frustration for those that seek to simply express themselves through art. Often times, those artists are criticized for not addressing the issues of today, and it seems that people often don’t appreciate the aesthetics of the piece and instead seek out hidden meanings. This was a valid point, but I added that expression and the aesthetics of a piece is in of itself the revolutionary act. Sometimes people forget that in their search for hidden meanings and metaphors.

One way to really see this is in the discussion on race and art that was hosted by the Art Center this past weekend. Dread Scott and John Sims were the two artists giving talks that day. As I listened to how they created their work and what influenced them, I noted a discernible and interesting difference. Dread Scott presented himself more as an activist artist, while John Sims presented himself more as an artist expressing himself through various art mediums.

Dread Scott discussed the political aspects that influenced his work and how he creates art in order to challenge the viewer into re-imagining the world in which we live into something radically different. He examined the past and reinterpreted it into the issues of today, for in regards to race, there is a lot of parallels with the past that are still sadly prevalent today. This examination of the past within the present was incorporated through a variety of mediums — painting, screenprinting, photography, installations, and performance. His hopes and dreams for a better future was realized in his activism in communities and in his art that deliberately challenges his viewers to interpret the world differently.  Much of his work held deeper meanings and metaphors concerning the history of race relations in America, but he also created works that could only be interpreted in one way such as the lynching flag of the early 20th century updated to reflect police brutality today. His activism and art were coupled together, a vehicle for his ideals.

John Sims, on the other hand, discussed how his art originated as an expression of his thoughts, interests, and emotions.  He began his discussion with how he was a math artist, and how he expressed his thoughts and contemplations about the nature of math and art into artistic forms that utilize mathematics. Much of his math-art explored aesthetically pleasing iterations of mathematical ideas. He organized conventions and classes to show others the relationship of math and art. This was part of an expression of himself but also a desire to help others find new ways of expressing themselves and the world around them. He spoke of how people, especially women and people of color, are often told they cannot do math, and so he sought to circumvent society’s programming — to re-ignite the enjoyment of math and art. It started from him expressing himself and evolved into the activist realm.

The latter half of his presentation swerved into him confronting the reality of the Confederate flag in the south, particularly Florida, and the intense emotions it caused. In order to process these emotions, John Sims took the confederate battle flag and began to transform it through the use of his math-art techniques. He found new ways to deconstruct the flag through color alterations and to display it so that it echoed the memory of the brutality in which the flag was birthed. This personal journey started with somewhat aesthetically pleasing color alterations and evolved into more abrupt (and for some jarring) expression of complex emotions. Through this expression of his emotions, he created a project that challenged Southern ideology regarding the flag and its relation to race. During this journey, John Sims interacted with the issues of race in society today, to really grapple with it on a personal level, and in turn to help others in their own journeys with these same issues. This act of expression was revolutionary — just as much as Dread Scott’s more activist art was revolutionary.

Both challenge society and the racist norms of our time, but they started at different places and took a different path to that similar end point. Often times, people will focus so much on the former — those who are activists that use art as a medium, that they often fail to see the power of the latter — those who use art as expression. In marginalized communities, the expression of oneself is the revolutionary act; it is a challenge to society. This is because society perceives their agency as a threat to order and often punishes those that try to freely express themselves. So, through the act of expression, the artist becomes a revolutionist. This is why expressing oneself can speak to the issues of our times just as powerfully as any activist act. It is this tension between expression and ideas that creates a visceral reaction in the viewer, one that births discussions such as this. Art is revolutionary no matter its birthplace, whether it be in political ideology or in the emotional realm.

Personal Narratives

Posted by Aibird on May 10, 2015
Posted in: Author, Philosophy, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

We all have our own personal story, which is how we explain to others our past and who we are. In the writings of Paul Ricoeur’s Time and narrative, volume 3 (University of Chicago Press, 1990), “narrative theory is a theory of personal identity rooted in the stories we tell about ourselves.” Think for a second about your own identity and how you make sense of it. Think about how the stories you tell yourself about your past; you may call them memories, but a memory is just an encoding of an event in your mind. You still need to make sense of that encoded event and place it within a time frame that you concocted or others coerced you into believing. This enduring identity that we hold about ourselves is tied into the narrative conviction that it is the same character — the same person — who continues through these diverse acts and words through life and death.

Yet, what if something challenges this narrative? What if we encounter a truth or an event that upturns a lot of what we believed to be true in our personal narratives?

A Look at Personal Narratives in Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica examines this very idea in the character arcs of the Sharons — model eight. In an essay by Daniel Milsky in the Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy Anthology, this idea of identity narratives is examined in detail.  Before I continue, be warned, readers, I may include a few spoilers within Boomer and Athena’s story lines. If you don’t wish to read further, that’s fine, you can skip the next two paragraphs, as these next two paragraphs are the only spots where I will have a few minor spoilers in Boomer and Athena’s story lines. I am using them as examples of personal narratives, how these narratives relate to how we perceive our identity, and how these narratives can change.

For Sharon “Boomer” Valerii, she believes she is human and has this thorough narrative of her life as a fighter pilot with the Galactica. She believes she is a member of the crew and a woman from Troy, as well as Chief Tyrol’s lover. This is all aspects of her identity that she holds dear. However, as the first season progresses, Sharon begins to experience disruptions to this narrative that calls into question something she held incredibly dear — that she is human. How does she respond to these disruptions? For example in the episode “Water,” Boomer wakes up soaking wet not long after the bombs used to destroy Galactica’s water tanks are planted. She can’t remember why she is wet. Part of this is due to her being a sleeper agent and her stubborn refusal to acknowledge this truth could exist. This culminates in the moment where she shoots Admiral Adama — she has no memory of it, but the evidence that it was her is plain as day. This narrative disruption to her internal story tears Boomer apart, and the response from the crew — especially after the shooting — who proceeds to vilify her and treat her as a less than, an ‘other’, an Cylon, further disrupts her cognitive view of herself. She struggles to rewrite her internal narrative to include the idea that her identity as a human was fabricated. This is a shocking truth.

In direct contrast to Boomer’s story line, Sharon “Athena” Valerii knows she is a Cylon. She is tasked by Model Six and Doral to seduce Helo, who believes she is “Boomer” returned to rescue him. However, Athena finds that she has come to return Helo’s love for her and starts to identify more with his goals. Model Six, watching this transpire, chooses to call Athena by her chosen name rather than her model number, and her reasoning for it is summed up in the narrative of identity: “I choose to to think of her as one of them,” she says to Doral. Doral asks if it’s because she dislikes her. Six’s response is very telling: “Because in the scheme of things, we are as we do. She acts like one of ’em, thinks like them. She is one of them.” Here Model six is defining Athena’s narrative of her identity, one that coincides with the actions Athena has taken and how she interacts with Helo and his group. So not only do we construct our own narratives, but others construct narratives about us based on our actions. For Athena, this narrative constructed by the Cylons eventually ends up casting her out as no longer “one of them.” Athena had started to redefine her own narrative based on Helo’s love for her, especially as she starts to love him in turn, so when the Cylon’s tell her to either convince him to stay with her or kill him, she chooses to escape with Helo away from the Cylons. She has chosen to redefine her previous identity narrative as a Cylon into one where she lives as a human in a human relationship. Note she hasn’t rejected her Cylon identity, but only added to its narrative, enriching it with her new experiences.

Narrative Disruptions and Fragmentation

In both of these examples, we see how narrative disruption can cause traumatic effects as well as profound transformative moments. Not only do we tell ourselves stories about our own narratives, but others often will develop narratives about who we are. As Milsky writes in his essay, “The Narrative Disruptions of Model Eight,” one of the ways we construct these narratives is “to engage in the process of ’employment,’ the way in which we arrange events and actions that give a sense of wholeness to the story with a beginning and an end. Emplotment is what makes the story intelligible. The beauty of emplotment is that we are able to take discordant events and heterogeneous episodes of our lives and tie them together into a coherent plot permitting readability to our lives.” This readability to our lives is how we understand our own identity and past, and also plays a role in how we react in the present and make our decisions about our future.

However, like I mentioned in the Boomer example, events may transpire that call into question some of the deepest held beliefs about our identity, and this disruption can cause tremendous pain and torment. How we resolve that torment depends on how we take these disparate events and fuse them into a coherent plot, tying our lives into a readable whole. Some may do this by disregarding the disruption and trying to edit it out of their life, as if it never happened. However, no matter the amount of avoidance, the event still influenced us, and it can never be completely erased.

You can see a bit of this in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series. At the end of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy end up in Narnia, very different from their lives on Earth. Eventually, over time, they integrate this disruption into their narratives and live out their lives as the Kings and Queens of Narnia. They have redefined their narratives to integrate this new reality into it, but once they are returned abruptly to Earth and their child bodies, this narrative is again disrupted. The magic may slowly cause them to forget parts of the Narnia narrative that had defined them for so many years, but it’s never fully forgotten. In Prince Caspian, it is revealed that the four had talked a lot about Narnia amongst themselves. They had tried to make sense of what happened, because not all of the memories were fully erased by the magic. Their abrupt return to Narnia in Prince Caspian further disrupts their personal narratives. Susan at one point in the group asks the others if they remember these ruins they are at, and she feels a great sadness at seeing them. Even though she cannot remember the exact details, her unconscious mind recognizes that seeing this should evoke sadness. This disruption to her personal narrative causes conflict and the longer they stay in Narnia, the more they remember the last time they were there. The books never dig too deeply into how these four characters integrate these disruptions into their narrative, but it is hinted that for Susan, after she and Peter are told they cannot return again, attempts to avoid the memories and move on as if it didn’t happen.

Avoidance of a narrative disruption often leads to further traumatizing moments, as no matter how hard we try, we cannot fully erase that dissonant event in our personal story line. Our mind may play tricks by inducing flashbacks triggered by what may seem random moments — something that we smelled, a sight we saw, a color, a person, or whatever the cause. This post-traumatic stress response is very common when a traumatic event happens in our lives. However, our running from these traumatic moments is often a type of self-defense mechanism. As Milsky writes about Starbuck’s running from her traumatic past, “coming to accept the factual disruption may be so traumatic that it could lead to an incoherent narrative and, thus, cause an identity fragmentation. In this case, we might imagine that the awareness of the factual disruption became so central to her story that she is unable to get a grip on her current narrative.” For Starbuck, integrating and accepting what happened to her risks fragmenting her identity as that avoidance had become part of how she defined her own identity. In her story line, she has to go through the fragmentation and put herself back together in order to find a coherent narrative to her personal story.

My Experience with Narrative Disruption

For trauma victims and those experiencing disruptions to our perceived beliefs and identity, this can be a common theme, as I know from my own experience. I spent nearly a decade and a half of my life trying to run from the idea of me not being a woman — I first encountered this thought in high school, but I had no words in which to describe it and had no way to process what this meant. This disrupted the narrative told to me by everyone in my family and amongst my friends — that my gender was female because that was how I was assigned at birth. I could be no other way. However, how I understood my own body served as a dissonance to that narrative. I spent numerous years hating how my body was because I understood cognitively that it was wrong somehow, but I didn’t want to face the idea of how it was wrong or what I could do about it. I didn’t want to disrupt the narrative people had thrust upon me for fear of losing them and everything I knew. My identity was tied up in a fabricated narrative, and when the sexual assaults happened, this further fragmented my identity. It left me doubting my memories and my knowledge about how my body should be. I struggled against accepting that the sexual assaults had happened, and tried to ignore them — tried to run from them. This sent me on a journey that spanned several states, but in the end, you cannot run from yourself forever.

Like Starbuck and the two Sharons, I had to finally confront my own self and my own truths. I had to make sense of the disruptions in my own personal narrative, and resolve the incoherent and fragmented parts of it. I had to redefine my narrative and start to heal from the trauma and the fabricated parts forced upon me by others. We are not static beings. The narratives we tell ourselves are forever changing as each day provides us with new experiences that we must now incorporate into our evolving narratives. Did these disruptions within my own narrative change my identity? No. I always knew that I wasn’t female, and this incoherence with the narrative given to me from birth doesn’t mean I changed my gender identity or that my identity was altered when I accepted that I was trans. Nor did sexual assaults alter my identity either — it disrupted it and forced me to either run from the truth of these horrid events or find ways of integrating it into my narrative. This integration does not condone what happened to me, but it does allow a way to heal and move past it so that it no longer haunts my footsteps.

Integration

This integration of a disruptive event is best shown in Battlestar Galactica when the Final Five discover they are Cylons. They decide to integrate it into their personal narratives by discussing this disruption right after the event happened. They stood together and declared who they are and what they stand for and how they will recommit to that. This integration allowed them to handle the disruption without fragmenting their identities, and it also minimized the traumatic post effects.

Post-traumatic stress often sets in because we do not stop to process the emotional impact of the traumatic event and integrate that event into our narrative. The longer we prolong that process the more intense and damaging the post-traumatic stress symptoms can become and is often why PTSD develops within people. In order to address PTSD, part of the healing process may require facing the traumatic moments and re-integrating it into our personal narrative in a way that invokes healing and coherence.

As a side note, integration of disruptive events may also explain how some people, when they encounter a person or event that challenges their religions beliefs or political beliefs, may choose to reiterate what they believe in order to attempt to deal with the disruption to their belief system. They are trying to integrate the experience into a box that makes sense to them, even if it means adding some fabrication to make that event fit. Accepting a truth that goes against your current belief system causes tremendous cognitive dissonance, and many may choose to run from it or alter the truth to  better integrate it. It is rare for a person to integrate the truth as it is into their belief structure as this often may require some rewriting of their personal narrative.

We are resilient and imaginative species, and we adapt and re-tell our narratives in order to integrate our new experiences the best we can. Narrative disruptions can happen and cause conflict with our identity, but we can adapt and rewrite our narratives as these are never set in stone. Although we may redefine our belief structures and how we view ourselves and our world, that doesn’t mean all of who we are is now changed or lost.  Some aspects of our core identity will often remain the same even during these transformative moments in our narratives.

Reference: The Narrative Disruptions of Model Eight. (2008). In J. Steiff & T. Tamplin (Eds.), Battlestar Galactica and philosophy mission accomplished or mission frakked up? (pp. 3-15). Chicago, IL: Open Court.