Category: Podcast – The Back Channel

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Stories We Tell

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These stories can be a good thing or they could be lies but we’re not going to delve into the idea of the lies right now we’re going to stick to the stories. 

Stories are how we communicate and make experiences stick.  Stories are how we make ideas work, how we make them spreadable, and flesh out the idea, the story for the concept. This storytelling takes on different shapes and colors as it is wide and varied. But the bones however they are remarkably similar.

Some say there are only seven stories out there, that we only have seven stories to tell in our lives and our entertainment, they are:

The Seven Basic Stories

Overcoming the monster

Rags to riches

The quest

The voyage and return

Comedy

Tragedy

Rebirth

These are the bones of the seven stories.

Every CSI television show episode falls into one of those seven stories. Every Dragnet, every Hawaii 50. One show has a group of High-Tech specialists catching the bag guys. The other is a stiff, hardnosed, seen it all cop and the other is a set of ugly crimes set in a tropic island paradise.

We flesh out our stories to soothe ourselves to suit our needs and to service succor. As an example, with those seven storylines, they’re all there, and the Hollywood writers take that skeleton and change the trim.

The Story and it’s Flair

This means they change the settings and they changed the people, but it’s the same story. We do the same in our lives we add this color, that story, this flair, and your degree of difficulty, in the execution of certain things.

We believe we have a unique story and it’s nice, it adds flavor to life it adds color when we look at the structure.

When we look at the bones of the story not be fleshed out it would become more about the story. More about the adventure, the common experience wrapped in the dressings. The diversity of how we have shared similar bodies. Our stories, or how we’ve chosen to live out the sense of ourselves. How we choose to see the underlying commonality of us all.

Seven stories but the bones of our stories, of our journeys, falls into a simple understanding of a commonality of one another. The understanding that at our core, at our very inner self, were almost all identical in our stories and our structures.

Here is a deeply plunge into the Seven Basic Stories: Definition of Plot for Creative Writers

And here is a supplemental version of the stories we tell: Negative Self-Talk

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I’m Addicted

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Used to express an obsession with something, an object, to a product, is “I’m addicted.”

“I’m Addicted,” is used to share with someone the idea of a product, a movie series, again, about anything as being so good that it creates a mental and physical dependency.

Giving Away Free Will

The idea that it’s a good thing to cede one’s free will to a product or experience. Giving up one’s free will, that’s not a good thing, it should be avoided. I know it sounds as though this is splitting hairs. but it’s so prevalent in marketing and advertising that we sometimes overlook it. “I’m addicted to this new video game,” sounds different than, “I’m addicted to oxycodone.” Both of these statements are giving up one’s self to an external force. Listen to the word addict or addicted, they’re not positive.

Addiction, Not a Positive Choice

I don’t know that there’s any positive connotation to either of these words and in no way should they be desired. Yet they get used and as a point of pride. Being addicted to something is not a good thing. The next time you hear a commercial a promotion, a product is described as addictive then you should turn the other way.

Marketing

They’re asking you to give your free will over to them and their product. Oh feel free to see this as it is, the promoters, the marketer’s, they think you’re weak and that you have no will. That you will step forward and give up your free will and say, “Yes!, I’d like to be an addict or addicted to your product!” In casual conversation, we’ve begun to use it as a point of demonstrating our commitment to a product or an experience.

These folks, claiming addiction, are not demonstrating their commitment. They’re not sharing a commitment. They’re shooting of flare into the sky and telling everybody that we’re willing to give up our sovereignty. To give your sovereignty for a product, experience, or idea that somebody else has pushed across the table. Saying, “Here try this, give up your free will, it’s addicting and we would like you to be an addict.”

Although this is about marketing and product use, if you suspect you are addicted to something far more serious you can take a short Q&A here: How Do I Know if I’m an Addict?

Here is a previous blog on the negative stories we tell ourselves that maybe of aid: Stories We Tell

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Ladies and Gentlemen

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Ladies and Gentleman, those are earned titles. Recently you may have noticed that the world changed. Along with that change came stress, fear, terror, anxiety. The purveyors of this fear are relentless, it’s their job to spread terror and fear. They want to get clicks and eyeballs and create a sense of ambient anxiety.

Tell the Truth

It’s difficult to tell what’s even real anymore. The lies and the deceptions go deep. Some of the deceptions are deliberate others through omission and some of them are errors.

Regardless it’s hard to tell up from down, and left from right. In this sort of his situation, to keep your humanity, I suggest one simple act.  That is to adopt an extreme method of treating all well. Not because they deserve to be treated well, they may have acted like a jerk, but more often than not most people likely do deserve to be treated well.  

Courteousness, the Earmark of Ladies and Gentlemen

The reason you treat others well is not that they deserve it, or they likely deserve it. It’s because it is who you are.  When we go out of our way to use pleasantness and courteousness, we knock the hard edges off of the world and I can’t think of a time more than now, in our lifetimes right now that we need to do just that.

Engage in extreme courteousness, pleasantness, go out of our way to be that person and that’s what I am suggesting to you.

Your action item is to go out of your way to be the most pleasant person in the room and ultimately in doing so keep your humanity. 

Here is a fast read from wikiHow on: How to Become More Thoughtful

A previous post on how a person may choose to see the eternal world: Organized

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Uncertainty

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Uncertainty is what is happening now. The world is on fire according to the news of the day. If it’s not one thing that the world is doing to destroy your life, your world, your family, your fitness, your health, it’s another thing.

The phrase that is being used today or the versions of it are, “In these uncertain times.” or “These challenging times,” or, “These difficult times.” Well, it always is those things.

You see the world has always been difficult and uncertain. It’s likely not news to you. But, there is a suggestion in today’s thinking that fairness is a right. That freedom from disease, pestilence, or destruction is a birthright, well it’s not.

Uncertainty is Natural

In 2004 a 9.3 earthquake created a tsunami killing about 280,000 people.

In 1870 the Bhola cyclone in Bangladesh killed half a million people.

The central China flood of 1931 killed an estimated 2 million people.

12 million Ukrainians starved to death by Stalin’s oppressive starvation of their country and subsequently, there are an estimated 6.1 million birth defects because of malnutrition.

Beginning in 165 AD the Galen Plague in Rome killed 2000 people a day.

No, it’s not special it’s not rare it’s a blip on the radar of history and here we are in these present times.

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius the famous stoic said, “Reject your sense of injury and the injury disappears.” Now a broad statement and hard to deal with when you’re talking about some of the tragedies, I listed but many things can be dealt with in that fashion that Aurelius suggests.

Yes, terror, injury, pestilence, death, these things are brutal but if you deal with the idea of uncertainty, like Where am I going to get a haircut and what am I going to order out for dinner tonight or why can’t I go to the gym?

Now listen to the words of Marcus Aurelius, “Reject your sense of injury and the injury disappears.” History has a poker hand and it is ready for you and it is full of jokers. The only certainty you have is how you decide to hold the cards you’ve been dealt.

Here is another angle on the damage a negative view can create in your life: Fallen Stories

What would this be without a link to a TED talk?: Embracing Uncertainty | Joshua Bailey

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Cherokee Story

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Cherokee story is how it is attributed, who told it, but I suspect the story’s origin is lost to time. But the Cherokee story is about a grandson who was wrestling with a couple of ideas. The grandson went and talked with his grandfather to try to get the situation resolved and the grandfather said, “What you’ve got is a battle between two wolves and they’re trying to decide which one is going to win out.” The grandson asked well, “Which one will win?”

It’s the One You Feed

The grandfather replies with a simple phrase, “It’s the one you feed.” This is a great idea and it illustrates the concept that you get what you focus on. But there’s a sub-story to this, that lies underneath the main story.

The grandson skipped over a generation. The generation of his father who is involved in the day-to-day operations of making the world work and went to the oldest source he could find.

The Cherokee Grandfather

That is a nice little piece of wisdom and here’s another piece of wisdom that is well exchanged. The grandfather wasn’t specific, He wasn’t involved in the age of the wolves, the pack, or gender. He was about the imminent choice that his grandson was going to make. He was about the direction that things would take. It wasn’t specific. He said this is what’s going to happen.

The grandson went to the most experienced source of wisdom he could find. In turn, the grandfather offered advice but wasn’t specific. He didn’t say, you need to do this, or you need to do that.

Fate Follows Focus

The grandfather said whatever you choose to do is where your focus is going to go. And what is going to be the direction of your life. A little bit of wisdom from the grandson knowing to go to the oldest font of wisdom he could find. And a little bit of wisdom from the grandfather allowing the grandchild to shape his world the way he sees fit.

Here are a few other Native American stories if you want more: Native American Stories

Another post you might enjoy: Stories We Tell

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Fast Zombie

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Fast zombie. They are part of our world. It is no secret that mayhem and chaos sell, fear sells, it sells all the time. One of the classic methods of selling fear is the horror movie. It’s a genre all to itself with monsters that have changed over time. The monsters used to be the elite.


The mad doctor who creates his monster. The undead Egyptian Pharaoh that’s stalking his victims for being disrupted from his sleep. A Count who sucks your blood, an invisible man, made insane by his experiment as and an elite scientist.

Fast Zombies and Old Monsters

These old monsters came down from on high, from the elite of society. The creators often, through acts, of hubris flew too close to the Sun. Like Icarus from the myth. The results became these twisted and distorted monsters


Today the monsters are us. The Purge movies are about people running amok under the cover of law, or lawlessness actually. The walking dead are about, well zombies galore. We have stories and movies about mass murderers and psychopathic killers.


I’m not offering a solution here, just an observation that movies can lead or follow popular culture. But they do mimic and often reflect what is happening.

Where Did That Fast Zombie Come From?

As we look back over our shoulders and see the looming monster who is chasing us, what they look like? How fast they’re moving and can we get a good look at them? The question becomes, what’s their point of origin? Where did they come from? or they were they created from on high like the monsters of older. Were they created here with the rest of us? And as we look over our shoulder, as we are running away, the question remains, how did we come to this place?


Again, I make no conclusions here. This is simply an observation. It’s your responsibility to adjust the lights on the movie set for a different look.

Here is the origin of zombies from :The History Channel

Want Something a little more uplifting: Cultivating a Life

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