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Ian’s comment, “I am disinclined to argue that science should be held as the fundamental stance within a society and that other beliefs are merely the result of naïve intuition and therefore invaluable” as well as some of Heather’s comments during our meeting today made me think some more about emergence. In every emergent example I can come up with, variability is the cornerstone assumption. Along this track, diversity of thought is essential to a changing, growing society.
However, this line of thought has a lot of problems that can easily be accorded to it. When I think back on our conversations about story telling and story sharing, I think about how we’ve portrayed stories as a potential vehicle towards that idealistic society. From this, I've taken away the false notion that all stories are "good" and "useful" and "productive" I don’t think we’ve focused enough on the prevalence of deliberately harmful stories and how they can at times be just as persuasive as other stories… When I learned about social darwinism for the first time, I remember thinking how frighteningly logical their thought process seemed at first even though I recognized how many atrocities resulted from it. I don’t mean to make this process out to be a huge dichotomy (“good” stories vs. “bad stories” because I really don’t see it that way. I've made this point in other forums and I think it really continues to be a wrench in this whole thought process. Harmful stories are inherently "useful" in that they motivate change of thought and responses that may generate discussion, but that usefulness pales in comparison to the actions that may have forced those stories out in the open. It's one thing to think about the Virginia Tech tragedy, and it's another entirely to actually read about it and see footage etc...

This line of thinking has no clear solution, and I recognize that. I just propose that we pay a bit more attention to the darker side of story sharing and not see it as the alpha and omega of progression.