Editors love the persistent narrative. It makes their jobs easy. “MAGA people are white supremacists,” “Tea Party people are revolutionaries,” for example, or “more African-Americans than European-Americans are shot by police.” The many narratives of our times, both true and false, are easy to promulgate because most of the media’s minds are locked into them, like those who echo the climate change narrative, a story that ties almost anything—droughts, floods, fires, snowfall or lack thereof, hurricanes, migrations, wars, asteroids—to temperatures both warm and cold. There’s a danger in supporting any such narrative, and that lies in implanting false information that can, in some circumstances, result in unnecessary hardship for individuals and groups, real tragedies for real people, as in the bias against a particular race that makes the crazed injure or kill total strangers. No better example of the latter can be found than in Hitler’s blaming Jews for his country’s problems, a narrative supported by propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
A Famous Example from the Bard
Even Shakespeare addresses the impact of a narrative. In his eulogy for the slain Julius Caesar, his friend, Marc Antony keeps repeating the narrative spread by Brutus and his co-conspirators, those who assassinated Caesar. Caesar had to go because he was an ambitious man. You probably know its opening line “Friends, Romans, countrymen…”
The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
If you know the rest of the soliloquy, you know that Antony goes on to question the veracity of the claim of Caesar’s ambition by giving examples of his humility and compassion, but always ending each example with “Brutus is an honourable man.”
But I mention this not for anything profoundly political yet; l’ll do that in a bit. Rather I just want to note the apparent need for many to “support the narrative” of the day. “Urban legends,” unsupported beliefs, and practices are the products. Take the many YouTube videos on diet and dietary supplements as examples. “Take berberine.” “Take taurine.” Take this or that. All such videos give advice driven through anecdotes. If the storyteller is believable, is honorable, then the story must bear some truth. Besides, isn’t the narrative on just about everyone’s lips? Certainly, so many people can’t be wrong.
But you can fool most of the people most of the time: Hitler’s Germany is a prime example.
Blue moon and Laptop
On the silly side of narrative support are the false assumptions that influence beliefs. In articles on August, 2023’s second full moon, some online news reports show a “blue” moon—literally, a blue moon. The term blue moon, grew from the chance rising of two full moons in a month, not an impossible occurrence given the length of, say, August with its 31 days, but difficult for a short month like February, since a lunar synodic month is 29 d 12 h 44 min and 2.9 s and the sidereal month is 27 d 7 h 43 min 11.6 s.
There’s some speculation that after some spectacular volcanic eruptions, like Tambora’s in 1815 and Krakatoa’s in 1883, the volcanic dust might have tinged the color of the rising moon, making the “different” color associated with a “blue moon” a perpetual expectation. Anyway, the point is that the people who have posted a photo of a colorized or filtered picture of the moon showing it as “blue” is germane to the opening paragraph above. Someone heard that such a second rising was called a “blue moon” and decided the best way to spread the news of this celestial phenomenon was by posting a picture of a blue moon. And especially since the most recent rise occurred when the moon was at perigee, its closest point to Earth, the story had an added draw. This past full moon was not just a “blue moon,” it was also a Super Moon, one that appears to be larger than average.
Someone says “blue,” and the color becomes the reality in the mind even though blue color contradicts experience. A rising “blue moon” could look orange with enough scattering atmospheric dust. The brain becomes primed for blue and confused by the reality. The confusion generates a story to fit our observation: “Maybe I’m not in the right place to see the blueness.” “Maybe it appears blue through some illusion that I don’t see, much like those pictures that subtly hide a figure, those ‘magic eye’ pictures of the 1990s.” * And because we seem to be inherently lazy in an age when so much information hits us daily, we look up, see the orange moon, undergo a momentary confusion, and then go off to other matters as more information suffuses our brains.
In that laziness we discover how we can continue the narratives of the day. Tie our laziness to confirmation bias and it’s easy to “see” how members of one political party or another can promulgate “the narrative” regardless of a later discovery of its falsity, regardless of what our actual observation tells us. “I was told it was a ‘blue moon,’ so there must be something I’m just not seeing. The fault lies with me so I shouldn’t let anyone know I see orange instead of blue.” Brutus said Caesar was ambitious. Fifty intelligence officers said the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation.
Remember how Shakespeare continues Antony’s soliloquy? Two words become the narrative: “honourable” (British spelling) and “ambitious.”
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
Fifty intelligence officers. Fifty signed a letter stating that the laptop story was Russian disinformation. And “so are they all, all honorable men.” Why shouldn’t we believe their story, their claim. The President of the United States referred to them in answer to a debate question about Hunter’s laptop. Isn’t he “an honorable man”? Why shouldn’t we believe that a “blue moon” has to be blue?
The Other Narratives
Someone says climate change, and the phenomenon becomes reality when the weather turns hotter than average, an average kept for a sketchy 150 years, only 70 years at best, and without ubiquitous coverage by calibrated instruments placed in zones unaffected by urban heat islands, pavement, or direct sunlight. The narrative will continue because now most of Earth’s population carries that narrative in their heads. Someone says Russian collusion or Russian laptop disinformation, and that becomes reality for most people because the counter-narrative never receives the same coverage and because infused belief is difficult to displace without expending energy—energy that has to be spread out over a complex day with a constant inundation of information.
So, there will be people who will with the announcement that a blue moon will rise, go out to look for a moon that appears to be blue. And when they see a yellowish or orangish moon, they will quizzically shake their heads and move on to the next narrative, never questioning in depth the detail of the misinformation. And when the next election rolls round, there will be those who carry the belief that the laptop story was Russian disinformation.
That inherent laziness of the mind is the reason that false narratives persist. It's only "once in a blue moon" that we spend the mental energy necessary to see the moon as it is, that is, to see the stories for what they are.
* Illusions that take a bit of concentration: https://graphicdesignblog.org/optical-illusion-pictures-hidden-figure.html ; and “magic eye” pictures of the 1990s: https://www.magiceye.com/stwkdisp.htm
A Famous Example from the Bard
Even Shakespeare addresses the impact of a narrative. In his eulogy for the slain Julius Caesar, his friend, Marc Antony keeps repeating the narrative spread by Brutus and his co-conspirators, those who assassinated Caesar. Caesar had to go because he was an ambitious man. You probably know its opening line “Friends, Romans, countrymen…”
The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
If you know the rest of the soliloquy, you know that Antony goes on to question the veracity of the claim of Caesar’s ambition by giving examples of his humility and compassion, but always ending each example with “Brutus is an honourable man.”
But I mention this not for anything profoundly political yet; l’ll do that in a bit. Rather I just want to note the apparent need for many to “support the narrative” of the day. “Urban legends,” unsupported beliefs, and practices are the products. Take the many YouTube videos on diet and dietary supplements as examples. “Take berberine.” “Take taurine.” Take this or that. All such videos give advice driven through anecdotes. If the storyteller is believable, is honorable, then the story must bear some truth. Besides, isn’t the narrative on just about everyone’s lips? Certainly, so many people can’t be wrong.
But you can fool most of the people most of the time: Hitler’s Germany is a prime example.
Blue moon and Laptop
On the silly side of narrative support are the false assumptions that influence beliefs. In articles on August, 2023’s second full moon, some online news reports show a “blue” moon—literally, a blue moon. The term blue moon, grew from the chance rising of two full moons in a month, not an impossible occurrence given the length of, say, August with its 31 days, but difficult for a short month like February, since a lunar synodic month is 29 d 12 h 44 min and 2.9 s and the sidereal month is 27 d 7 h 43 min 11.6 s.
There’s some speculation that after some spectacular volcanic eruptions, like Tambora’s in 1815 and Krakatoa’s in 1883, the volcanic dust might have tinged the color of the rising moon, making the “different” color associated with a “blue moon” a perpetual expectation. Anyway, the point is that the people who have posted a photo of a colorized or filtered picture of the moon showing it as “blue” is germane to the opening paragraph above. Someone heard that such a second rising was called a “blue moon” and decided the best way to spread the news of this celestial phenomenon was by posting a picture of a blue moon. And especially since the most recent rise occurred when the moon was at perigee, its closest point to Earth, the story had an added draw. This past full moon was not just a “blue moon,” it was also a Super Moon, one that appears to be larger than average.
Someone says “blue,” and the color becomes the reality in the mind even though blue color contradicts experience. A rising “blue moon” could look orange with enough scattering atmospheric dust. The brain becomes primed for blue and confused by the reality. The confusion generates a story to fit our observation: “Maybe I’m not in the right place to see the blueness.” “Maybe it appears blue through some illusion that I don’t see, much like those pictures that subtly hide a figure, those ‘magic eye’ pictures of the 1990s.” * And because we seem to be inherently lazy in an age when so much information hits us daily, we look up, see the orange moon, undergo a momentary confusion, and then go off to other matters as more information suffuses our brains.
In that laziness we discover how we can continue the narratives of the day. Tie our laziness to confirmation bias and it’s easy to “see” how members of one political party or another can promulgate “the narrative” regardless of a later discovery of its falsity, regardless of what our actual observation tells us. “I was told it was a ‘blue moon,’ so there must be something I’m just not seeing. The fault lies with me so I shouldn’t let anyone know I see orange instead of blue.” Brutus said Caesar was ambitious. Fifty intelligence officers said the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation.
Remember how Shakespeare continues Antony’s soliloquy? Two words become the narrative: “honourable” (British spelling) and “ambitious.”
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
Fifty intelligence officers. Fifty signed a letter stating that the laptop story was Russian disinformation. And “so are they all, all honorable men.” Why shouldn’t we believe their story, their claim. The President of the United States referred to them in answer to a debate question about Hunter’s laptop. Isn’t he “an honorable man”? Why shouldn’t we believe that a “blue moon” has to be blue?
The Other Narratives
Someone says climate change, and the phenomenon becomes reality when the weather turns hotter than average, an average kept for a sketchy 150 years, only 70 years at best, and without ubiquitous coverage by calibrated instruments placed in zones unaffected by urban heat islands, pavement, or direct sunlight. The narrative will continue because now most of Earth’s population carries that narrative in their heads. Someone says Russian collusion or Russian laptop disinformation, and that becomes reality for most people because the counter-narrative never receives the same coverage and because infused belief is difficult to displace without expending energy—energy that has to be spread out over a complex day with a constant inundation of information.
So, there will be people who will with the announcement that a blue moon will rise, go out to look for a moon that appears to be blue. And when they see a yellowish or orangish moon, they will quizzically shake their heads and move on to the next narrative, never questioning in depth the detail of the misinformation. And when the next election rolls round, there will be those who carry the belief that the laptop story was Russian disinformation.
That inherent laziness of the mind is the reason that false narratives persist. It's only "once in a blue moon" that we spend the mental energy necessary to see the moon as it is, that is, to see the stories for what they are.
* Illusions that take a bit of concentration: https://graphicdesignblog.org/optical-illusion-pictures-hidden-figure.html ; and “magic eye” pictures of the 1990s: https://www.magiceye.com/stwkdisp.htm
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