The Macro-Narratives and the Micro-Narratives that Shape Us

The Principalities and Power that control our world and each person.

The Macro-Narrative is the Grand Story or stories of our culture. In the

West, much of our culture has come from Christianity. Without that influence what would our fine art, our art work, theater, movies (and on and on) all look like? It would be a very different society. The other primary macro-narratives that have greatly formed America and many other countries are democracy and capitalism. Most of our values and beliefs are derived from these macro-narratives, whether we are aware of them or not. Another way to see this is that we have all been conditioned to think, feel, see, and act in certain ways all of our lives. We are conditioned to see beauty as certain types of physical features. We are conditioned to buy certain things. Our identities are formed often by the things that we buy and our priorities are shaped by messages in the media telling us what we want and need and how to be cool or popular. These messages in religion and politics, fashion and shopping are spread in powerful, yet subtle ways through memes; viruses of the mind; cultural and social DNA. These little ideas, phrases, jingles, basic cultural building blocks, stick with us and can have the power of brainwashing if we are not careful, consciously and intentionally living our lives.

Invisibility and Familiarity

And just like viruses are invisible, so is the conditioning (memes) that has been happening all of our lives. Often people have no idea how they came to believe in certain things or why. Isn't it interesting how predictive our zip codes are in determining people's beliefs and values all around the world?


Why do we think the way we do? (good or bad)
Why do we treat people the way we do?
Why do we believe the way we do?
Where do our opinions come from?
Where do our assumptions come from?
Why do we buy what we buy?
Why do we think we need what we think we need?
Why do the things we buy become our identity?
What is our identity and purpose?
Why do we see ourselves as we do?
Why do we act, interact, and react in the ways that we do?
Why do we surprise ourselves by reacting or acting in ways we think are not characteristic of ourselves?
What lies under the surface?
What monsters are teaming within our subconscious?
What drives us and makes us who we are???

Probably the two most powerful ways of sustaining the things that drive our values and beliefs is invisibility and familiarity because these suppress and submerge those influences below the surface. Another form of conditioning, socialized behavior, domesticates those monsters that keep rearing their heads. 

If we are not conscious of it, then we allow those disruptive and destructive influences to run rampant. If they become too familiar, then they become invisible, like water to a fish. Do we know? Are we aware? Do we care?

Empire

Empire is another underlying influence that is pervasive in everything in our society, conditioning everything we do.

“The scope of empire continues to widen throughout history. Current structures of empire are more all-encompassing than anything that has gone before, not only in terms of their geographical reach and ability to enforce order but also in their ability to reach into cultural and even personal spheres and to redefine them. One of the things that distinguishes contemporary empire from past empires is that its  pressures appear to be more overpowering, even as the structures of empire are less visible than ever before. In the present situation, those two qualities seem to go hand in hand. Where the Roman Empire built streets and highways, for instance, a praxis that was still crucial to the expansion of European colonialism centuries later, empire now is less dependent on such visible structures and moves through the superhighways of technology, which reach farther than ever before (all the way into people’s minds) and which are mostly invisible at the same time…

“Moreover, the invisibility of the broadening influences of empire, aided by rapid technological developments in the realm of virtual reality, makes resistance much more difficult since most people never realize what it is that shapes them, that reaches all the way into and creates their deepest desires. In the final analysis, the forces of marketing and cultural persuasion through entertainment and education, also transmitted through technological superhighways, appear to be more powerful and irresistible than highly visible military displays of power that have the added disadvantage of revealing the real face of the empire.” (Christ & Empire by Joerg Rieger, pp. 4-5)

Empire is all inclusive of the

Military industrial complex

Food industrial complex

Fashion industrial complex

Health Care industrial complex

Education industrial complex

Retail industrial complex

Political industrial complex

Religious industrial complex

etc etc etc

Micro-Narratives

We each have an organizing drama that drives us, encompassing our childhood and nurturance, our successes and traumas, our loves and losses. But what is still lurking in the subconsciousness, those unexpected monsters that rear their heads affecting our reactions, interactions, and actions, causing us to wonder, what just happened? Was that me?

"I asked myself, 'What is the myth you are living?' and found that I did not know. So... I took it upon myself to get to know my myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks... I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me." (Carl Jung)

The macro-narrative of our lives interact constantly with the micro-narrative of our life, constantly impacting each other.

The Macro pulls us toward being acceptable people that fit in.

But then they send me away 
to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh responsible, practical
And they showed me a world 
where I could be so dependable
Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical...
Won't you sign up your name, 
we'd like to feel you're Acceptable
Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable! 
(lyrics from Supertramp, The Logical Song)

The Micro pulls us toward being unique, an individual that just will not fit in.

Do we just fit in and follow the herd, like the powers that be want us to do and be?
Or do we push the edges of society outward to the margins where true and unique identity, creativity, and innovation are nurtured. See also, Outliers and their Gifts.

Much of what I've been learning to see is the underlying influences that are shaping us. I plan to continue to write and work this stuff out for myself.

Here’s to the crazy ones

The misfits.

The rebels.

The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules.

And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine. They heal.

They explore. They create. They inspire.

They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.