Story as Ontological Argument for Fulfillment

Contemporary storytellers ought not fear definitive stories but should aspire to participate in them instead

Yesterday I posted my 3 hour commentary video on @PageauJonathan conversation with Ben Hakte.

I didn't even cover the whole conversation, but, as usual, I mixed other stuff in. As @vervaeke_john often comments people don't appreciate just how ancient/radical Pageau is. He says shocking things in these conversations.

I make these videos because they set up a dialogue for me. I almost always learn a ton from my commenters. I get stuff wrong. I'm biased. All this stuff. Youtube can be an amazing tool for dialogical learning.

I almost always feel like I know more at the end of the video than I did at the beginning. Even though with thinking we have this interior (silent) dialogue somehow moving my lips and following the flow often provokes new and surprising thoughts.

One of the big realizations during this video was the contemporary fear that canonical/definitive stories (whether you regard Scripture as authoritative or not) limit the development of new stories. Hatke mentions this a few times.

The opposite is actually the case. The most real stories actually seed creativity and afford new registers of story telling to future story tellers.

Andy Crouch in his book Playing God talks about how some power limits the agency of others, as @vervaeke_john calls it "reciprocal narrowing" while other power, God's creative power, causes reciprocal broadening.

I think this is what the most real stories do. They are powerful because the cause reciprocal broadening for future story tellers. That's why "truth is stranger than fiction" but also more fruitful.

This for me is a story-verse ontological argument for the physicality of the resurrection. Events are MORE real the more layers of reality they participate in. The most-real stories seed and reciprocally broaden out into history.

The most-real stories/events are powerful because they reverberate through history in both the story-verse and the matter-verse reproducing themselves and variations of themselves. This is what we mean by "fulfilment".

The most real/powerful stories/events spawn creativity and instantiation filling up the world at both the story-verse level (upper register) and matter-verse level (lower register).

This is the answer to the student question to @jordanbpeterson why can't someone tell the definitive archetypal story and have it stand once and for all. Archetypes MUST become instantiated and the creatively reciprocally broaden out into existence.

.@andrewklavan made an interesting point in his review of Dune about why he often doesn't like SciFi. They try to share big ideas and too often the characters get flattened into ideal (texture impoverished) archetypes.

The fulfilment of archetypes are instantiations. The truer the archetype the more it must reverberate between heaven and earth until it is fulfilled/consummated, on earth (matter-verse, flesh) as in heaven (story-verse, spirit).

Look at how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus have reciprocally broadened through the story-verse. Nearly every movie (including Dune) has some dying and rising messiah. Our copying is derivative but it shows that most-real stories flourish.

They're not exhausted by derivation. So fear not story-tellers. The better your stories the more you seed the future, on earth as in heaven. Same goes for you spiritual/flesh agents out there in the stories you are writing with your lives. Fulfilment is real and born witness to the obviously fruitful reciprocal broadening of story.