Reading the newspapers, watching the news, even listening to some heads of state, in addition to the normal sulphurous stench there is another miasma rising. A problem, a doubt that shrouds us like fog: those arguments, almost, go away.
For example
Too much CO2 is bad for you -> we do things to reduce it -> you don’t want to keep your car anymore?
Putin invaded Ukraine -> invading is bad -> let’s oppose Russia
Covid-19 can kill -> need a solution -> inject yourself with this drug, quick!
Shit. Shit. And what do you want to tell them? You can’t tell them anything, at least offhand.
Still, even if everything that comes out of the Kombinat’s mouth runs smoothly, sweet as the Pied Piper’s sound, there must be something wrong. After all, we wouldn’t buy from the Brussels/US/NATO Kombinat even a used match, because the results of their actions speak for them: away with private property, free will, freedom of thought, rationing of gas, electricity and drinking water…
Are they all sincere and are we wrong? Or is everything a lie?
Or is something else going on?
As in the illusionists’ tricks, we explain where the illusion lies. And to explain what is happening we start with an analogy. And if this seems bold, dear reader, know that Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem requires a much bolder leap of faith, yet it works. So don’t fuck with me and listen carefully:
Reality (as well as events and knowledge) forms an interwoven fabric that resembles a perfect weave: each element connects seamlessly to the surrounding ones, and each ‘piece’ is sewn seamlessly to the others, and on to the edges. There are no tears, no holes, the thread is always the same, there are no patches or reversals. This is a big problem for those who want to put their weft in, swap the inside with the outside, change the colour of the thread. You cannot do it cleanly, you cannot put external wefts into reality.
So how does the illusionist do it?
He corrupts the original weave, makes a cut here, a tear there, inserts a stitch more or less. There he can now connect, sew the plot of reality with whatever narrative muck he has in mind, voila, here is the new, revised and corrected version of reality to show the people.
Now, if the illusionist is foxy enough he will do a small and inconspicuous job, for once the original plot is blown, and with it the logical continuity, one can still get to say and think anything. And the smaller the correction, the larger the spaces of continuous canvas, large enough that when you linger on them alone, in the news, at work, at dinner with friends… you won’t see anything out of place: the crookedness started elsewhere, close to the edges, in a piece of canvas no one talks about, an imperfection minute enough to slip out of sight but substantial enough to change the plot.
Exactly what kind of patching does the illusionist do? Imagine you have a perfect blank canvas and you want to sabotage it to have inverted sides, holes, patches, different textures… you can do different things with it. Similarly, the work of patching can take different forms:
- modifying or omitting a piece of the story
- inserting a false premise or invented fact
- reversing cause and effect
- replacing the white fact with a coloured fact
- reversing reality
- cut out the existing story and sew the new story to it
- …
On a local level it may seem unexceptionable, but if you widen your gaze and follow all the threads in all directions, sooner or later you come to the bastard knot, the illogical premise thrown in there seemingly innocently, the logical reasoning that skips a piece, the absolute fact that is actually invented, the data that is true but interpreted ad hoc to support a thesis.
This is the power and at the same time the weakness of stortitelling.
Stortitelling is born and lives and reveals itself thanks to the catch in the plot.
No matter where you are in the web or what the topic is, follow the logical and historical thread, the real one remains consistent up to 1+1=2, up to Aristotle, up to Pasolini, up to the equations of Thermodynamics.
Everything else is stortitelling.