The Narrative Fix
Another way to get your narrative fix: Riding in the back of a cab or a towncar on the way into Manhattan. You come over the Williamsburg or the Brooklyn Bridge and you see the whole island laid on your right. If you lay back in the seat just perfect and stare out the window, the city, it seems, awaits your arrival.
A few hours earlier you were somewhere else – in another state, on a plane, over the middle of the ocean – but now you’re here and the timing, well, it couldn’t have been any better. You could broke or paid on business and the feeling is the same. That the epicenter of the world is open to you, that you matter there.
What’s important to remember is this sensation is meaningless. Or rather, it projects no new meaning onto you as a person. You should enjoy it. It is, no doubt, a rare and special feeling. Yet it is one of these agnostic narrative events into which you personally figure at such a minuscule percentage that it is essentially exactly the same for everyone else.
So take it for what it is but don’t take it to heart.
Emotional sensation isn’t meaningless. There’s a problem with delusion, but there isn’t a problem with feeling renewed inspiration. If anything, that kind of awe usually invokes humbling and calming mindset that reminds me how small and unimportant my problems are in the grand scheme of things. Just don’t “run away” to it as a way of escapism.
The interpretation of sensations, moods, and emotions must be done by each individual. If I took a cab into New York City, and felt awe at the possibilities the city seemed to offer me, your “narrative fallacy” idea doesn’t not somehow invalidate my experience or my interpretation of my experience. My expectations of opportunity could quite possibly be justified.
I can already see the objection forming in your mind. “But I’m not talking about an anticipation of possibilities”. Oh, but you are:
“You could broke or paid on business and the feeling is the same. That the epicenter of the world is open to you, that you matter there.”
You are associating a feeling of expectation with an irrational basis – that the feeling would be felt regardless of one’s situation. But how do you know what I will feel? Or anyone else but yourself?
The real fallacy here is the “typical mind” fallacy:
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:bHrSvF50-zgJ:lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/+generalize+from+one+example&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Narrative fallacies do exist, but not as you have described them.
“Just don’t “run away” to it as a way of escapism. ”
So basically you’re sort rephrasing what he said and pretending like you’re disagreeing with him somehow? What’s wrong with you?
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“But how do you know what I will feel? Or anyone else but yourself”
If you aren’t personally feeling what he’s describing then this post wasn’t for you. And if not, why do you assume he’s referring to what you ARE thinking or feeling?
As he said it… “If you feel like the city awaits your arrival” to enjoy it but not to take it to heart, and not to let it affect you, but if that’s not what you feel, then it doesn’t apply to you. And if that is how you feel, guess what? The city isn’t actually waiting for your arrival.
You are actually guilty of the “typical mind fallacy” for believing that he was referring to your frame of thought instead of the one he described. And you’re also terrible at writing, so work on that.