Probably the biggest overall concept that I’ve been working on for many years it’s the story of stories how the entire universe is just the story we’re told and the story we create. I have written better in many blogs and talked about it in many conversations and recorded many videos about it all scattered randomly throughout my writings.
Every time I return to the story of stories it’s a little bit different and not always improved but it’s to a new audience so it’s kind of like Superman in the movies and that they all feel obligated to tell the origin story each time.
I’m not writing fiction though. I’m writing more philosophy and my ideas about the story are deep and can be life-changing if I tell it well enough that people understand and retell it to others. Some of the concepts are the kind that go without saying but if no one repeats things that go without saying then the next generation might need it to be said.
I have a quote that things that go without saying should be said more often and I’m seeing that more and more as I grow older. The next generation and the one after that aren’t being told a lot of things that I would have considered common sense. After three generations of not being told things that went without saying the next generation is lacking common sense in many ways sure they’re still not going to put their hands on the stove burner after a lot of things that people are not told and not learned.
As we evolve the amount of stories out there expands and now with social media it is very likely that people are not sharing a common story as often. That’s what church was all about in the early days. Everyone got together once a week and shared stories that they could use in their everyday life we don’t realize how much of our language is based on saying things are like other things. There are many concepts in our lives that we only describe by comparing them to similar things. The Bible was a set of stories that we all shared and we could use to describe situations and to learn from them.
For me Star Trek was like the Bible and that it was a set of 72 stories that most of my friends shared and we could discuss and learn from them. Everyone has their own set of stories that reflect their lives and teach them. For many the TV series Friends taught them how to react to certain things and how to tell your friends certain things and what to do with someone is using drugs or drinking too much fun Bobby examples. How to prepare for being a mother and a father. All things we learned from the stories on TV.
This generation isn’t watching TV and their media intake is catered to them not only by a demographic but by their own tastes so that even in the same household two children may never watch the same show. They don’t share the same stories. For many, they get their entertainment and education in 2 minutes videos from their peers rather than hour long stories or movies that suddenly try to sneak in life lessons we don’t realize until we’re older.
I’m sure there are many things that teenagers are sharing today. It’s where we get those terms that old people don’t understand and that’s a repeating tradition through generations but I also know they’re not watching TV and their parents aren’t teaching them some basics. It concerns me how much ignorance I am exposed to online watching YouTube and TikTok and I know that I have carry over wisdom from my youth but I’m not sure what today’s youth will be like when they are 50 and 60 years old. I won’t be around to see.
When I started this blog post I had a copy and paste of something I had just composed somewhere else and it was going to be the purpose of this post with a small introduction. That small introduction as is my way turns into a brand new ramble and we have this blog that hardly talked about stories at all but just rented a bit like an old man complaining about the kids in his Jello tree. A reference that will go over the head of almost anyone not my age
I guess I don’t really fear it. Because no matter what happens to the world while I’m alive and afterwards will make a good story. And when all else fails really it’s just the story that survives and there’s very little difference between good and bad when it comes to stories. Sometimes the bad makes the best stories and sometimes we don’t know what the story is until later but it’s all stories and it’s all interesting if you want it to be.
So I’m pretty content being a spectator to the world these days. Even the doll parts are interesting if the goal is the story.