Chapter 2
(Please read chapter 1 for context.)
reading time: 8 minutes
Last time I mentioned I had questions about our lives within the story we have been told.
What is the truth? Who are you? What do you believe?
From the little girl’s point of view in the last chapter, a strange woman was staring at her. From the woman’s point of view, she was staring at her once dead daughter.
Was one point of view more accurate?
If we are going to figure out the story we have been told, we need to talk about point of view (POV). In every novel or movie, the author/creator decides the main POV the reader/viewer will see in the unfolding story. Each creator’s POV choice influences what the reader will know and understand about the creator’s message.
If the main POV is not clear, or if the reader does not see the story through the author’s intended POV, the reader will miss the author’s message.
They won’t get it.
They will not see the story as intended by its creator.
The author’s choice for the main POV influences everything. That is what made the musical Wicked so unique, as it told the story of Oz from the perspective of the witches of Oz.
Today, the collective story we have been told is cracking. The foundation was never strong in the first place, and the structure we built upon it is falling. Old problems and current problems are now further exposed.
Anybody today talking about racism from our past?
How about racism still plaguing us today?
Anybody today talking about slavery from our past? How did we ever believe that ripping people out of their homes was ever okay to support greed?
And there is even more slavery in our days. We have a major human trafficking problem today, involving an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide. How can human beings believe that ripping people out of their homes is ever okay to support and satisfy base desires and to support greed?
And if that wasn’t enough, we have many additional forms of slavery. There is slavery to hatred. Racism. Drugs. Sex. Pornography. Work. Fear. Anxiety. Unforgiveness. Vengeance.
This is our story.
What is the primary foundational premise of the story we have been told? The collective story? The smaller story?
Here is the premise that affects the trajectory of your life if you believe it: There is no Creator God, and therefore we are not children of God. The POV of the story we have been told is any other POV and story other than God’s.
We are fed a narrative baked into much of our educational system, politics, Hollywood, all forms of media, our leaders, celebrities, and just about every other segment of communication and information. And even when a person of influence admits there is a God, it is usually a god made in the image of those in power and influence designed for power and profit.
Without an objective God, by default, we are trained to see life subjectively through any perspective that is convenient to the influencers or ourselves.
Play your role and do what you feel is right.
The main POV is in flux and fluid and can be through the eyes of self, a political party, a politician, a celebrity, a professor, a band, etc., depending on what is convenient at the time.
The documentary The Social Dilemma revealed evidence of social media companies using psychology, technology, and various algorithms to feed into human addictions. In essence, much of social media is structured to affirm and feed our base desires and ideology. That all sounds benign, but people are often shown only one side of issues conveniently supporting their worldview. The algorithms don’t emphasize challenging alternative viewpoints. The algorithms’ goal is to do anything to take your time and attention, and if it means only enticing you with information that reinforces your POV, then so be it in the name of profit.
Could this be one reason for the increased polarization of our society?
Over time, what does one person or group gaining unchecked power eventually look like?
Like someone breaking into an Apple store in the middle of a riot and leaving with a computer. Then someone beats him up and takes the computer. Then someone beats him up and takes the computer. Then a group of people beat him up and fight over the computer.
Might makes right.
With diminishing restraint, it gets even uglier. Just between Mao, Stalin, and Hitler, roughly 100 million people were killed under the eventual consequences of might makes right.
But might doesn’t make right.
This is our story to varying degrees. It seems like we are being programmed to live out the collective story incrementally downloaded into our brains. We are trained to decide who is god based on what benefits us, and eventually the strongest wins. Those who don’t fall in line will be bullied and shamed on social media or told they are members of an offensive group by association. Any past thing the offender said or did will surface to punish the wanderer.
Just a heads-up—I have mistakes in my past, just like you.
The story is set, and those above you in power and influence wait to care for you and determine what is best for you. Many of us grow to fight and protect the dependency model. We then teach it to our children.
In this parent-adult child dependency model, strategies to maintain the status quo are fluid and fluctuate. Sometimes we are told there is no sin. Do what feels good and feels right. Then we are shamed for our sins. Some of us are told repeatedly of the sins committed against us and how vengeance must occur and judgment must follow.
Sometimes your name is Victim.
Sometimes it is Oppressor.
Either way, we are then distracted and manipulated into fighting each other, as this further escalates our dependency on those who wield the dependency model.
And as with every powerful lie, there is some truth in the lie. We have the stains of our mistakes, and the mistakes of others, on our hands. The stains are there for everyone to see if we have the humility to look.
This is a good time to look in the mirror and ask ourselves questions.
But do we really want to look at the mistakes we have made? And if you go rogue against the story we have been told, do you want to lose your job, be publicly shamed, and have your mistakes unearthed? Or do you sit passively, intimidated from jumping into the discussion?
And yet we have to ask, what are we doing to each other? How can we still continue today to hurt and kill each other? It feels like we have been baited into a trap. With our story training, we hate a certain group or individual. When we act out our hatred toward that individual or group, and they respond accordingly, we then justify our hate with our self-fulfilling prophecy.
There has to be another way other than the one we are programmed to believe.
Maybe things are not as I am being told.
Am I more than Oppressor?
Am I more than Victim?
Is my name other than Republican? Or Democrat? Or Libertarian? Conservative? Progressive?
Perhaps I don’t have to be a conservative, libertarian, or a progressive. Maybe I don’t have to place the leader of a political party as a leader in my life.
Why do we yearn for a good story, a good hero, character arcs, an answer to our inciting incidents, a climactic climax and resolution, if they are never to be answered?
Though on the surface hope appears cut down and dead as a stump, something is moving underground.
And I then remember my family’s friend Raven (more on her later).
And then it hits me.
There is another story.
There is more.
What is the other story growing underground?
Let’s talk about that next time.
There is another story,
Charles Anthony Solorio
There is another story that is different than the story we have been told.
top photo credit Ave Calvar, Unsplash
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Thank you for joining me as I begin to document my journey as a writer within a story.
Whether you are a writer or not, if you have an interest in stories, then I believe we can share insights with each other. I enjoy writing fiction and nonfiction, and I have completed my first novella, New Seed and Hard Ground, that will kick off a new book series with elements of historical fiction and the supernatural.
You can get part of it for free at charlesanthonysolorio.com.
Tell others about this blog and raise up the other story.
