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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world

By David McElroy · October 4, 2019

If I could start my adult life over, I would do some things differently.

Knowing what I know now, I would avoid the newspaper business entirely. I also wouldn’t have spent two decades working in politics. What would I do instead?

I would become a filmmaker, an academic or a psychologist. Those three might sound rather different, but I’ve thought seriously about all three. The more I think consider it, the more sense it makes — because all three are different faces of something I do quite naturally.

You see, I’m a storyteller.

The sculptures you see above in the fountain at Five Points South in Birmingham are collectively called “The Storyteller.” The guy with the goat head is the storyteller himself. It was intended to convey the importance of storytelling in the South’s oral tradition.

Everything I’ve ever done was about storytelling in one way or another. In newspapers, I told stories and helped weave a coherent community narrative as I edited newspapers. In politics, I created narratives about clients which I sold to a gullible public.

If I could start life again, I would use storytelling in a different way. Filmmakers, academics and psychologists are at their best when they tell stories. They weave meaningful narratives to help confused people find their way in a world which is changing.

For a long time, I struggled to find my calling in the form of what I did. Early in life, I felt called to the ministry. Then for a long time, I saw newspapers as a form of calling. After that, I thought I could change the world in a positive way through politics.

I saw those specific roles as a calling. Even though I did the work of all three at one time or another, those forms didn’t seem right. And now I suspect it’s because my calling was never about the form.

It was about the meaning of the stories instead.

The longer I live, the more I have to say that I believe would be useful for individuals and for the decaying culture around us. In a way, I am the “anti-story” in the current culture. I am more like the Old Testament prophet who dramatically shows up — after God forces him to finally obey — and tells the people to repent.

My stories aren’t about sin. They’re not about obedience. They’re not about putting away idols. No, they’re about ideas instead. My stories are about how we — as individuals and as communities — can choose to turn away from the bright and shiny things which are slowly destroying us.

Ultimately, my story is about grounding ourselves in where we’ve come from — the best of the past — and about how we can shed the trappings of the “false self” that we grow up learning to be in order to be accepted.

I don’t glorify the past and I don’t hate change, but the more I understand about how we have gotten to the point where we are as a culture — and the more I see how we’re imploding — the more I realize how desperate many people are for an alternative. Millions and millions of people seem uneasy and unhappy with modern life, but without quite understanding why.

The stories I have to tell lay a narrative for understanding why we’ve felt this way. And they suggest some paths that we as individuals can take to get to somewhere more healthy, even if the rest of the culture continues over a cliff.

A filmmaker can certainly tell these stories. An academic can weave the same narratives to influence public thinking. And a psychologist uses the same sorts of stories to help his clients understand themselves and how they might be able to dig their way out of their problems.

I have a lot that I need to say. I have a powerful message. It feels like a calling. It’s a broad but integrated collection of narratives to help life make sense, for individuals and for the culture. It’s a call to sanity and personal peace.

It’s part psychology. It’s part serious academic thought. It’s part entertainment.

But it’s all storytelling.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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