mtl3p

i’m not even going to try and make this intelligible. i’m writing this for me and whoever wants to slog through it.

I’ve talked about imagined communities before. And I’ve talked about narrative therapy and our role of imagining our own lives
Spinning Stories
imagined communities (part2) - media and imagining nations
quick thoughts about imagined communities
narrative therapy 101 (my fav)

I’m reading an old harpers and there’s a great article by lewis lapham.

“Democracy proceeds from a more adventurous premise, it’s structure akin to a suspension bridge rather than to an Egyptian pyramid, it’s strength dependent on the complicity of it’s citizens in a shared work of the political imagination.”

(makes me think of another quote about bridges )

But really what this reminded me of was the imagination stuff from Bruce Chatwin’s book - The Songlines. He made a lot of his stuff up but it’s still great.

Australian aboriginals have a spritual/religious duty that they have to perform annually. They have to retrace ancient paths and “sing” the stories of creation appropriate to that path. The songs are naming/creating songs which gods used to bring different parts of the world into being. And if these songs are not re-sung on these paths, the things that were created will cease to exist.

It’s the most tangible way i’ve ever heard of a society acknowledging the fact that we recreate our selves, our communities, our institutions, etc every day through our actions. There is nothing permenant about anything we do. If we don’t re-invest ourselves -indivually and collectively- in whatever on a regular basis than it not only loses power, get’s tarnished, etc. Over time, it simply ceases to exist. We are creators, each of us, in our daily lives. That’s not to say we have free choice in what we create, but we create all the same. And imagination plays a big part of that. One, because we can’t create things that we can’t imagine. Two, because simply imagining is creation - especially when done collectively.

This is why i’m interested in narrative therapy. I’ve thought about it mostly at an individual level, but it probably bears a lot of thinking about in terms applications to larger communities as well.

I’m not trying to pretend that anything I’m saying is new. I’m sure that lots of people have written books about this - like lewis lapham - but it’s interesting to me to think through under my own steam.

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