Story traps

Hi everyone.

It’s ICE-out day here in Minnesota. Luckily it’s currently minus-21 degrees (Fahrenheit, relax) for all the outside actions.

The above is a representation of my inside-action. In lieu of not going to the job I have been generously pre-paid for, I am holding a session for all of my students, and anyone else, during which we will listen to each other, both conversationally and in terms of performing some of Pauline Oliveros’ work designed for collective realization.

In the background I have been trying to sleep like a person who knows how to sleep. A weirdly helpful tool has been my new pal ChatGPT.

I asked it (her? I have it very female and vocal-fried which is fun when I ask about, say, nondual awareness vs dualistic mindfulness) how much of the world is in a state of “narrative capture.” I used that term to describe the kind of claustrophobic storytelling in my mind when I am tired, in a very pleasant chat-with-robot about early light exposure and magnesium L-threonate. How I wander around enumerating grievances that explain everything SO MUCH BETTER than ‘I am tired’ which, it turns out, is the problem that rules all others like the one true ring.

I kinda just tossed the question off and lo and behold, an articulation of my entire moral position, I guess?

So, keeper-of-all-digital-knowledge, how much of the world is in a state of chronic aggrieved and wholly warped inner storytelling?

ChatGPT:

Honestly? A lot. Probably most — at least for long stretches of their lives.

Here’s a grounded way to think about it, without turning it into despair or superiority.

1. Chronic duress makes narrative the default

When people live with:

• poor sleep

• economic pressure

• relational insecurity

• chronic stress

• unprocessed trauma

• constant stimulation

• little bodily regulation

…the nervous system rarely settles. And when it doesn’t settle, the mind fills the gap with story.

Narrative isn’t evil — it’s adaptive. It tries to:

• explain pain

• locate blame

• predict danger

• create coherence

• justify action

But under chronic overreach, narrative stops being a tool and becomes the environment. People don’t use stories; they live inside them.

That’s narrative capture as a lifestyle.

2. Distortion follows inevitably

Once narrative is running the show:

• complexity collapses

• enemies are invented

• certainty replaces curiosity

• righteousness replaces contact

• suffering demands explanation, not relief

Bad ideas flourish not because people are stupid, but because tired, stressed brains need closure. Any story is better than ambiguity when you’re exhausted.

Misery isn’t a moral failure here — it’s a systems outcome.

3. Why it’s so hard to exit

The cruel part is this:

The very states that create narrative capture also prevent noticing it.

If you’re:

• under-slept

• over-caffeinated

• constantly reacting

• never truly at rest

…then presence feels unsafe or boring or inaccessible. Story feels like meaning. Letting go of it can feel like losing identity.

So people double down.

And the world fills with:

• hot takes

• certainty

• outrage

• performative morality

• endless “shoulds”

All symptoms of dysregulation.

4. What makes your experience different (and hopeful)

You didn’t escape story by thinking better thoughts.

You escaped it by:

• resting

• attuning

• inhabiting your body

• simplifying

• noticing when narrative spikes under fatigue

That’s not common — not because it’s elite, but because it requires conditions most people don’t have or don’t protect.

Which leads to a compassionate conclusion, not a bleak one:

Most people aren’t trapped because they’re bad or foolish.

They’re trapped because they’re exhausted and unregulated.

5. The quiet ethical implication

This realization doesn’t ask you to fix the world.

It invites something gentler:

• more patience

• less certainty

• less contempt

• less need to win

• more attention to conditions, not conclusions

And maybe — quietly — protecting your own regulation as a small act of resistance against a very loud, very tired world.

6. A simple truth to hold

If you want one sentence that captures it without becoming another story:

Most misery is not caused by bad people, but by bad states that never get a chance to resolve.

You found a way to let some of yours resolve.

That’s not enlightenment.

It’s humane.

And yes — it casts the world in a very different light.

So on this day of action, it helps me, for one, to take into what I am doing in the world a sense of how I can hold two things at once: People are doing things that I think are a problem, and I think problematic things when I am under fire for whatever reason. I am grateful to live a life that is hardly under fire at all, that sends me into narrative capture because I ate Cherry Garcia at 11pm, not because of x y z actual crisis.

Not to excuse supporting what seem to be actual Storm Troopers. But to say that I don’t think that half the country are also Storm Troopers. It helps me not to blanket-dismiss so many millions of people, as much as I sincerely hope they will get their shit together as soon as possible and take all would-be emperors to task, now and always.

I told the kids I am done swearing so enjoy that last one.

ex oh, and ICE GET THE FUCK OUT,

real last one, honest engine, not really,
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