I have been thinking alot about this since last semester when I read Barbara Johnstone's Linguistic Individual. The idea that life is not a story, but that we make it one and how we make it a story reveals and constructs our identity. I think we are hard wired to do this, much like seeing an image of a rubber duckie in the clouds. Where there is chaos, we make order and think that we have made truth. I don't think we like anything that reminds us too strongly that order, certainty, and security are as nebulous as a rubber duckie made of clouds. I think the pragmatists saw that while these ideas of order and certainty are important, life happens anyway and we have to deal with it. Our stories are as Genevieve said of her story, "Fluid, always moving, always shifting, forever negotiating and re-imaging." Too much order and control traps us like Orwell in Shooting an Elephant. We end up shooting the elephant because our story won't let us risk chaos by choosing something outside the framework.
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