The Lie That Every Story Has In Common - Kurt Vonnegut On The Shapes of Stories
Вставка
- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- Thanks to The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring this video. Signup for your free trial with them today at: ow.ly/BVwH30pOPL1
In this video, we look at author Kurt Vonnegut's analysis of the shapes of stories, and what they suggest about our experience and consideration of life. Of course, not every story lies, but in a sense, most do.
If you are interested in supporting the channel, you can contribute to our Patreon here: / pursuitofwonder
Thank you very much to our Patreon supporters:
Julio Villafuerte
Follow Pursuit of Wonder on:
Instagram at: / pursuitofwonder
Facebook at: / pursuitofwonder
The Great Courses Plus is currently available to watch through a web browser to almost anyone in the world and optimized for the US, UK and Australian market. The Great Courses Plus is currently working to both optimize the product globally and accept credit card payments globally.
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." What an amazing quote that is.
It is ironic tho because if knowing the rules of the world we could perfectly predict the future though never reconstruct the past. Every moment could have happened infinitely many ways yet there's only one direction for it to develop.
Process And we can never go back as space time is only existent in one direction; forwards.
Yet, time can be warped and changed depending where we are in space which is pretty weird. Think about it, if we were the size of a Planck length time would move much slower. However, if you were on the opposite side of the universe time would be completely different on Earth. Everything is irrelevant and constantly changing. Hell, each year we travel around the sun and are constantly moving through space. Life is quite confusing but I suppose that’s the inherent beauty of it as meaning and sense of the universe is often abstract and hardly ever abundantly clear. Sometimes perspective is only achieved in our final moments but even then it can still be difficult to see, as mortality stares us in the face from the abyss clarity comes from the unknown... which is almost comforting in the fact that we may never understand life. Just to possibly live another day through mystery and discovery is the greatest gift of all.
Process Also, I guess in a sense we are the size of a Plank length because we are just one tiny dot in the universe as a whole. Think about how massively infinite our universe is. Now think about the theory of the multiverse and the equally infinite amount of universes that are also infinite. Perhaps time on the grand scale does move quite differently than we could possibly comprehend as we are just a granule of sand in all the world’s beaches and deserts. It’s actually mind boggling haha. We can’t even begin to understand how large that is, yet here we are; just one tiny and insignificant little being in a ripple of time and space for a very short amount of time.
Ahhh. I better stop now before I go too deep.
Dark Caesar Well I guess that would just depend on what your definition of authenticity is 😉
@@user-vr5zk9ox8dWhat if our perception about time is just a conjecture.The nature of time is ambiguous; that is, it can't be controlled or restrained.Also, how can someone say with certainty that time is moving in one direction.There might be a possibility that time is just an illusion, or maybe it is static and our point of view makes makes it look dynamic.
_"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."_
*~ Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five)*
one of my favourite books. ever.
I found a copy of that book as it was falling to pieces in an old work vehicle but it was good for one final read...
I liken it to finding a small treasure...
Destiny can funny that way sometimes.
Great book ;)
what about the slaughter?
@@michaelcraig9449 what about it?
@@michaelcraig9449 yeah, I also am intrigued... :3
The difference between *fiction* and *reality, is that fiction* has to make *sense* .
That's a really good summary
So true.
Please, it's the other way around, of course. Reality is only a mystery for those not interested enough in it.
Fiction have to start and end, reality carry on forever, this is why fiction has to "make sense" because its limited.
@@MNanme1z4xs also fiction has to have a logically consistent sequence of events while reality is full of weird illogical sequences.
i think that the word "lie" here is misleading, however unintentionally: while it's true that many plot structures in many stories are much clearer than reality, and less morally ambigous, that in itself is not a lie: that is a technical nessecity. literature still does explore our humanity and psyche. it's an exploration of values and inspirations. "a story about dragons is important not because dragons are real but because dragons can be beaten". chesterton,
...unless the dragon in your story is unbeatable
@@Nuclearburrit0 this is the realm of make believe, nothing is impossible.
@@nowhereman6019 ...including the existence of an unbeatable dragon
@@Nuclearburrit0 see the problem here?
@@nowhereman6019 nope. The existence of an unbeatable dragon is possible, thus you can have one exist in a story you wright if you want.
Real life has its ups and downs as well; only on a much shorter time scale. From far away the line will appear flat, but close in it's far more bumpy.
“I think, therefore your mom gay”
Damn. That quote will stick with me till my last breathe.
🤣 I came ill prepared. You gave me feels.
You brought me up, (🤔😏) then you brought me down (😮🥺...🤫)then you left me higher with laughter. (🥴🤣)
🏆best YT short story yet.
Cacatum non est pictum.
@@paulwalsh7134 in this case, maybe it was?
Your last breathe
I forgot where I heard it, but a good way of putting it is that stories aren’t meant to be true in the way of imitating reality but instead they reveal emotional truths. People don’t really ever fall down rabbit holes or get happily ever afters but sometimes things in our lives feel cataclysmic and consuming that we can only make sense of them through stories because stories are neater whereas real life is messy. We can’t always know what’s going to negativity or positivity affect us in real life but stories have a structure so we can get glimpses of having that knowledge. This is turning into an essay of second hand ideas that I’m poorly explaining so I’m gonna stop now haha
No I liked your thinking! Thx for taking the time to post it!
Rudolf Janse van Vuuren aw thank you for the nice reply!
I agree, thanks for sharing your viewpoint :)
Sounds like something Jordan Peterson would say.
@annemartina yeah, I agree
"Eventually a show will reach it's series end, when it stops working or runs its natural course." COUGH Walking Dead COUGH.
It's still airing.
@@legendaryzet8450 That's the problem.
Been shit for a few years now
@@amazingjay3957 did he though?
It's called walking dead for a reason.
No matter what your story is, sharing it with others, will more likely grant you a lot of new encounters.
The magical component of a story - it engages *EMOTIONS* and bring people together.
Are you subscribed to every self-improvement and philosophy-orientated channel on UA-cam bro?
A true MGTOW he is
Good I really like your comments keep it up.
Emotions what is that?
@@buk1733 Expression of a feeling
But we watch stories with endings, good or bad, for the emotional impact. In real life, usually much time elapses before we know the results. It feels good to watch a heroic story that ends one way or the other.
On and off topic, my husband never cared about the endings of stories or films. He used to aggravate me by turning off the TV before the end of a show if he could. He said the ending didn't matter. He was an extremely successful businessman who always dealt with reality. I am an artist who uses emotion to create. We actually had a good relationship and I can catch up with the endings of some old productions online.;-) (In an aside, both of us have/had direct connections to the film industry so we both knew how fake everything is on the screen.)
Fiction allows the writers to find closure in a world that often prevents that. It allows them to express their biases in a non-confrontational way. And often the journey is far more important than the conclusion. I would cite Grey’s Anatomy as an example of the journey. That journey is primarily about relationships that evolve over time. Just as our own lives move from one relationship to another.
Obviously very few people ever live happily ever after, old age sees to that. But stories also suggest what could be, and to quote another story line, “You’ve got to have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how’re you going to have a dream come true?” [Bloody Mary]
When i was studying creative writing our lecturer told us how every romance story is based on one single concept: 2 people falling in love and not being able to be together and/or facing problems in their relationship. I remember how upsetting it was to me that it was all so generic, that basically every romance ,I've ever read was simply the same plot, just twisted slightly to suit the story. Every time I read a romance now, I find myself disappointed each time to find this bland , same old plot over and over again.
@@taborlin8595 I love that!
Which is why I don’t like romantic movies/books. There are a few exceptions.
What about the before trilogy ?
I find this with a lot of things. Its all just the same things over and over again and most people never realise. I was invited to a stand up comedy show last week everybody was in hysterics and i was secretly bored as hell.
Well yeah... that's just like saying every story has a conflict. If the story centers on the relationship then the conflict is gonna be in the relationship. I don't see how that makes them all the same. Then again, I don't care much for romance stories so maybe they really do all play out the same, I wouldn't know.
Man this channel seems like puts out videos straight outta my conscience
Things i often think but don't think at the same time
After seeing so many comments saying that this channel just puts into words what they think, it's entirely possible that a whole lot of us have the same thoughts, the same feelings and yearn for the same things. It's dumb when I say it out like this, but it somehow makes me feel connected to all 697k of y'all
@@samarthsingh8735 yeah i feel the same bro
This is genuinely my favourite video on all of youtube, I can’t think of anything more important than the lessons it teaches.
How the hell is Hamlet a straight path? Everyone dies
I though the same thing! Oo
But they were always doomed to die
No one gets out alive! Reality, oh my!
Everyone dies. There is no straighter, surer path.
OP makes a good point, and y'all are missing it. Hamlet is classical tragedy, for crying out loud. It's a story about a character who brings about his own ruin/destruction due to an inherent fatal flaw. It _can't_ be a straight line on the "Fortune Axis" Vonnegut was talking about because that's not how tragedies work. They would, if anything, be a downward slope. The ending is not "ambiguous", it's _supposed_ to be sad and disastrous.
So, according to Vonnegut, the greatest stories are the daytime soaps that run for 30-40 years?!? 😲
😂🤣😁
You may mock the soaps but if they manage to attract enough dedicated audience for such periods of time, there is something about them.
Every show ends with 2 or 3 cliffhaners. People get addicted to them like a drug. It aint the quality of the stories. 😕
@@jeremiahsmith916 Their whole purpose is for people to watch it so the network could sell ad time so the show could make more money than it cost to produce.
the same could easily apply to superhero comics where its just the same stuff regurgitated again and again and again
This kind of reminds me of the anime Cowboy Bebop. That show really captures the part of reality where things aren’t good or bad, there aren’t always solutions and sometimes characters never find out things/some things are never resolved. Each episode is truly only an “episode” in the character’s lives rather than their whole story. Sure we see flashbacks etc and plot lines to drive the story forward but they mainly take the back seat. It also shows the characters going off by themselves or just laying around. Despite it being animated, something about that show always felt so real to me! This kind of helps explain that. It’s not a perfect show but is brilliant in my opinion and there’s nothing else like it that does it so well. Would highly recommend watching it and luckily for people who can’t get around eng subs over Japanese or aren’t used to anime, it apparently has a great dub!
It is a very unique show. Of the five main characters, they all have pretty dramatic and startling backgrounds, three of them being borderline superhuman. But in the show this is rarely relevant or mentioned. And the English dub is one of the best ever for a series.
"It’s not a perfect show," but it's pretty damn close.
See you... space cowboy
Love that show.
That quote about understanding life backwards is genius.
Kierkegaard's quote reminds me of another saying I've heard: hindsight is always 20/20. Which isn't quite true, but it's still a great saying.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if this trend is because a lot of the time, stories are played and presented as forward, but in reality, they are developed backward. Oftentimes you have to start with the conclusion of a story and then figure out where the story begins.
So the reason why stories seem to follow these arcs is because they actually are technically in hindsight. They may seem forward, but they're not.
Food for thought from someone who likes to write in their spare time. :)
Ohhhh these quotes from stories that are plateaued as a flat line are fun, let me try one too!
“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.” ...
~ Meursault
*The Stranger*
I didn't even read the title. I saw bojack, I clicked.
same.
What's a bojack, and where can i find one?
juan valdes Netflix
@@somethingcraft3148 I know I'm late, but what is it sbout, without spoilers. Who is the target audience.
@@tagaway6173 A former Hollywood star tries to enjoy/live his life after his glory days are over while facing many of his own personal demons. It's for older teens and adults. I'd definitely recommend it. It has a surprising amount of detail and touches upon a lot of things and issues that are typically avoided in entertainment.
This video made me realize what's the true problem with modern television. It is focused so much on hitting the viewer over the head with the moral good and ill, having the man behind the curtain get recognized for creating the message, rather than letting the characters and plot deliver it. Situations in modern TV shows will even break the laws of its own universe to broadcast the views of the writer/producer. Characters don't make choices. The plot just creates a situation that puts the character in the right. Or sometimes the plot is so pointless that they only tell you with language of cinema (camera shots and music).
Your life is your story and how you percieve your comming part of story is besed on the past incidents of the story you lived....wow..
*_I'm always BLOWN AWAY with your editing skills!
This assumes a show where each episode leads into the next. Many shows don't do that. Many shows reset everything before they end, and the next episode will be on a brand new story line or topic.
As with everything, people like to categorize and compartmentalize the world. This includes events. You don't just live life, you graduated, you traveled to another country, you broke your leg, you did something and it stood out. I think that's just what stories are, an event that stood out among everything else and was worth compartmentalizing and giving to others.
Ok that strangely made me happy
Liam O’Neil LMFAO
Same
Do heroin
Exurb1a and Pursuit of Wonder are the best channel ever. Existential crises yet motivation
‘we don’t know enough about life to know what the good news or bad news is”
that reminds me of that rumi quote about the field between them.
3:25 sounds like real life ngl
The gist: "Change in life can exist not for the sake of some conclusion or ultimate state of peace, but a continuation of itself for the sake of itself; a continual adaptation and movement in life, so to keep life interesting. And perhaps to be in this cycle of continued change for the sake of change is the actual GOOD FORTUNE."
is the man who speaks the one who writes these stories that give me great insight to everything I do and experience ?
truly amazing
Anime with 12 episodes: " Am I a jOkE tO YoU ?!!”
shows typically have a 3 season cycle before they jump the shark and add a baby, then it's ovah
Thunder Chile Burr?
@Thunder Chile
how bout shows which have a beginning and end thought up by the show inception ?
shows which can say that they only need 1 season to tell their stories
or need more then ten?
In a college composition class, we had to read more than a few Kurt Vonnegut books, not easy for an ME student. So happy I got through it, and the lessons learned are far reaching.
I think the problem with stories is that they rarely have lasting consequences, or consequences the last within our memory
This is what my existential life crisis is all about right here...
Cheer up u r a good person dont worry blessing🙏
His videos are honestly always so deep and beautiful
"we don't know enough about life to know what the good news is and what the bad news is"
I respect this statement so very much
This is probably why Shameless is so popular. You often don't know whether an occurrence will have drastic consequences, something good will happen as a result, or if nothing will happen at all.
There actually is an episode called the Story Train in Rick and Morty where Rick Sanchez explains how all stories go by and outside of the train is noncanon. Even on the show, Community, there is one character that is so obsessed that has anything to do with pop culture when it comes to movies and tv shows that it causes him to have parasocial relationships to these things as well as drag the rest of his friends in some of his antics that is based on (insert movie and tv show) on each episode of Community.
Nice of you to reference both Hamlet, which is located in Denmark and Søren Kirkegård who was a dane!
Adranium er det en dansk historie?
Nej, den foregår bare i Danmark
The problem is that a straight line story is far less rewarding.
Yes, yes. That is kind of an average life, no ups and downs, no thrill of a rollercoaster. Life is remembered by major milestones, not by day to day life, though a special and open mind can appreciate the everyday objects and make life a bliss.
Cinema Gaming Ah, but they are safe.
Great now I’m crying thanks
I was born in the sixties and I have not watched a single television series once. I used to watch weekly shows in the seventies but that was the last time. I love movies but have no desire for television shows that never end. I'm a reader. I love books more than mindless TV.
i could listen to you forever.
This channel is called 'Pursuit of Wonder'. That itself, in 3 words, suggests a journey. A journey can always be portrayed as a story. Therefore, the phrase 'pursuit of wonder' is itself a kind of lie as it implies that wonder is difficult to achieve, that wonder is something to be chased or experienced rather than to BE. To be wonderFUL rather than to merely wonder. Gossips and the bored wonder. It's like saying 'Pursuit of voyeuristic imagination without, necessarily, truth or fairness or the ability to greatly entertain, inspire, yourself or other people '.
Find someone who will change your life, not just your status.
BRIGHT MINDS ooo
When he said we don't know enough to know what's good or bad, that's some very real shit. Just in my life alone, I have had incidents that seemed wonderful on the surface that turned out to be bad and I've seen things happen that seem bad, but turned out to be some of the best things that ever happened to me. It's like the story of the Chinese farmer. You never really know how anything will affect you and since we do not have the foresight to truly know its hard to tell in a person's life. The fairy tales and stories have odd lines I'm assuming because the entire world of that character consists solely in any particular story so they base good and bad solely on the story's content. I've come to realize recently that some things that I used to think were bad that happened to me ended up being the greatest things that ever did happen to me and they changed my life forever in so, far a seemingly good way. I'll be honest, I LOVE the unknown. It's so exciting and full of any possibilities. That's what makes life exciting. If I knew everything already it would be an awful bore.
Stories can't lie because storytellers never claim to be telling the truth. It's just a story. It is the reader who divines the truth from a story. That's the job of a reader. It's what readers are suppose to do.
"Some people read "War and Peace" and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the back of a bubble gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe."
-- Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor
The goal is not the mission, the journey is the mission.
Way to bring literature and math and science and history all together in one video, at least it's more interesting than the classes.
Ami the only one that lost all their brain cells watching this
The truth of life has always been hidden in plain sight !
The lie is that the story has a relationship with reality. The truth is, we make it seem that way ourselves. All the story teller need do is keep talking.
This just made me realize that my favorite tv shows, movies and books have this straight line.
One of the best videos on UA-cam
Beautiful. Well done.
Ultimately life is a bunch of experiences, some good some bad some neutral. Looking backwards after you lived it forward is exactly what you would see, nothing more nothing less.
Your videos are pure art! Super amazing content.. I'm glad your channel exists
This was an excellent video. I never thought TV and existentialism can be tied so nicely with another.
This is cheaper version of psychoteraphy.
psychoterroratrophy
You got much more profound than expected, props for that!
A stories is not a lie when it is only a comment on a part of the larger narrative of life; romance with change, hiding continuity, is the deception.
In an up and down story, we want a continuation because the story is in a way, exciting
this was wonderful, thank you
"None of the episodes ever reach a conclusion." Seinfeld genius.
I just love this channel
That was beautiful. Thank you
This is great. Thank you!
Well, that was brilliant. I will need to watch this about 5 more times. The comment about life backwards was what I started saying about 40 years ago regarding why history class doesn't seem to register with most students. If taught from present back, I believe the relevancy of it all would probably make more sense. And the lack of resolution in story telling on TV, stringing the watcher along in a pointless struggle to engage their attention is EXACTLY why I stopped watching.
Thank you.
If you like this idea of a history of a linear story telling, without major changes, I recomend watching Cowboy Bebop. It's such a wonderful piece of art and as a lot in common with the quote "nothing in life is either good or bad".
Very good. When you started showing clips of Disney's version of Alice In Wonderland, it occurred to me that that is another pretty-much 'straight-line' story. It was the first book I read as a child, in a Blackie Classics edition with no pictures! in my first year of school. It had a massive impact on me. I was delighted, scared, paralysed-with-laughter, and astonished, by turns, and profoundly saddened (a bitter-sweet kind of sadness) by the poem at the end ("A Boat Beneath A Sunny Sky" -- the next time I got that was not until I was 20-odd years old when I first read Tolkien's book of poems: "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil"). My main decision in this life is too keep pushing for social change and hope that one day humanity can free itself from enslavement by a predatory minority of its own kind. In other words, I choose to believe in the Progress of Community, and believe that however small, my efforts can advance this cause at least a little.
bedankt
Thank you
i m here to thank the creator of this video who produce more valuable content
Watching this to be a better DM in D&D
I would say this great talk is very existential ... Soren Kierkegaard is a wonderful existential philosopher
And yet, the past is but a dream's memory and future an illusoric phantom. All we have is the eternal now.
Mr. Vonnegut suffered from depression. God bless him.
Great just absolutely great
Thanks man.
Charlotte Bronte in "Jane Eyre" and Charles Dickens in "Great Expectations" show what life can be like if you are poor and powerless. They describe the society of their times and we, reading today, appreciate the improvements we have made. We still don't provide the unemployed with adequate support but they are not quite as badly off as in the 19th century. Those great authors create sympathy for the unglamorous characters they create. Jane Eyre isn't beautiful or wealthy but we care about what happens to her. Hopefully that means that we also care about the non-glamorous people we meet and we want life to go well for them, too. Because both Bronte and Dickens experienced the stress of poverty, they can encourage us to see the lives of the poor with caring eyes.
A man once lost a horse. His neighbors felt sorry for him. But he just shrugged.
The next day the horse returned, leading many wild horses with it. The neighbors congratulated the man for his good fortune. But again he just shrugged.
Still the next day the man's son tried riding one of the wild horses, who got angry and threw him down so he became crippled. The neighbors came to console the man. But again he just shrugged.
Still the next day the king's men went around conscripting all able-bodied young men into his army as he wanted to fight a war. As the man's son was crippled, he could not be conscripted and was left alone. The neighbors congratulated the man for his good fortune again. But again he just shrugged. :D
Writing in headline the word "lie" suggests something of negative but, "the lie"; if it is not used for evil purposes, or if it not harms our life in real world, could be also a good thing, could be great pursuit a dream, as long as you believe strongly it is possible: this is called faith.
I don't know about you, but for me there is stories, songs, and artworks that never cease to move me, as much as replicate the same scheme endlessly.
We may not want crude reality in our novels.
I’d say that no, a individuals life has definite ups and downs, someone you love die, that’s not grey, that’s down, you get a roll in a show that you always wanted to be in, that’s definitely good, the truth is that somethings are grey, and ultimately, is a psychological fact that we’ll end up in the same emotional place in the end, it’s called homeostasis, so it’s less a straight line but more a squiggly line
Unless a film says “...and they lived happily ever after” at the end, I just assume one chapter in the hero’s journey has concluded. They will face new challenges in the future, that’s what sequels are for.
the amount of time and editing put in these videos is crazy...
Excellent stuff
this is the best video ive ever watched
in real life, one person's misfortune is often anothers good luck. you get fired from a job or dropped from a team, now there's an opening for someone else who desperately needed one. you wreck your car, now you have to buy a new one which gives someone who sells cars a commission. You get robbed, now somebody has a bunch of money.
Stories are flowers that already bloomed picked from a vast garden.
Life is more about survival than right and wrong.
I really enjoy your videos. Thank you for this beautiful art, you are a blessing in this world. ❤️
The lie stories tell that it's Going to be alright in the end
I believe No Country For Old Men and Fargo might be the most honest crime stories ever told, simply by not shying away from the brutality or banality that really lies behind most of these actions.
Ulysses by James Joyce is a great book about a straight line. The unique and experimental narrative style is where the curves come in, but ultimately, at its core, it is a relatively straight line plot. Not at all boring, however.
Kind of surprised Joyce's Ulysses wasn't mentioned, but it is a short video.
Was that the Unus Annus spiral at 3:44?