Truth Versus the Comforting Fiction
Twitter is mostly terrible, but there are a few bright spots, and one of them is Nicole Cliffe. Moreso than anyone else I have found, she is able to tell consistently compelling stories in the weird and artificial format that Twitter provides. She also has this incredibly ability to build community around her writing on Twitter, which sounds strange when you say it but is 100% true.
Yesterday, Cliffe dropped a particularly amazing story, the beginning of which is:
But the counter-story is that we are basically behaving the same as we always have. All that has changed is that we are willing to talk about what we are doing and acknowledge it, whereas before it would be swept under the rug without discussion. Marriage was never really respected the way it should, families were not really valued, norms regarding sex were always discarded.
Cliffe's family story is strong evidence of the second theory. Her family story, while crazy, was not exactly unique. Old friend of the blog Frank Strong talks about coming from a family where both of his biological grandfathers walked out on his grandmothers. They walked away and basically disappeared on women and their children who were in a financial and social situation that was structurally far more precarious than today. Does that represent a respect for marriage, for families?
I come from a pretty long line of stayers. But, in the same generation where you had my grandparents, you had Frank's grandfathers and Cliffe's grandmother. Just as today, you had some people that are stayers and you had some people who are leavers. You had some people who had loving and affirming marriages, and some that were horror shows. You had some people who were basically good (if, always, imperfect) parents and some people who were terrible parents. If you look closely at the stories from the past, you see all of the same stuff you see now.
What is different is that we are willing to look at those stories square in the face. What is different about now is that now, both because of temperament and because of the nature of information distribution, we are far less interested in covering our stories in a thick layer of comforting fiction. We are no longer particularly invested in the rhetorical construct that everyone, including and especially ourselves, are perfect embodiments of some morally clean, universal story of propriety. The story that was once whispered in secret in protected circles is now far more likely to be discussed in the open.
In other words, it's not that we are so much worse, it is that we are more truthful. While there are those who overshare, to be sure, by and large I think this new truthfulness is substantially better than the comforting fictions of the past. For one thing, it's too easy to actually believe the comforting fictions. If you are a child who grows up surrounded by the comforting fiction that all families are great and stable while living in a family that is anything but, you will tend to believe that you are the only one who has to bear this burden, and that you must bear it in silence and shame. And for what? What purpose is served to make up for this silent pain? Because it's not true, as seen by the Cliffe and Strong stories, and countless others. Many, many people have lived through family brokenness and weirdness and pain. If you can talk about it, if you can acknowledge it, it makes people feel less alone, less marginalized, less freakish. And that's a good thing.
I had a similar thought watching the 60 Minutes interview last night with Stormy Daniels. While she said nothing that we didn't already know, she told her story forthrightly and unafraid. You may not like her or what she did (in terms of being adult film actress, or having a relationship with Trump, or both), but it's all out there, and she did not seem on any level to be hiding the ball or shying away from the truth. In a very real way, I felt like we saw on the screen this divide that we have all been wrestling with in its purist form--truth, even if it is unpleasant or unpalatable truth, in the form of Stormy Daniels versus what for some people is the comforting fiction packaged and sold by Donald Trump and his fellow travelers.
The stories that have dominated our common life in the last 15 months all seem to revolve around the clash between truth and the comforting fiction that presents as silence. Women speaking their truth about sexual harassment and assault, LGBT people speaking the truth of their existence, African-Americans speaking of the truth of their lives and fears, young people speaking the truth of their well-founded fears of being slaughtered in school, immigrants speaking the truth of their hopes and ambitions, those abused by churches, and many more. And, on the other side, we see various efforts to tell those people to shut up so as not to disturb a narrative of how great things are or a simplistic account of how things will be made great again in the near term. Truth versus comforting fiction seems to be the theme of our times.
For me, I would rather be on the side of truth. If people have stories to tell, let us hear them, no matter how much those stories shed light on things we would rather not see. Better to be real, than to take shelter in these fake comforting fictions.
Yesterday, Cliffe dropped a particularly amazing story, the beginning of which is:
Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Beyond being a cracker of a tale, her story got me thinking about a question that I think is at the heart of so much what is going on in America right now. Everyone, I think, recognizes that things have changed and are changing in our society, but the question is really about the nature of the change. If you listen to conservative voices, especially religiously-oriented conservative voices, you will hear an unending tidal wave of complaints about the state of society, especially in the sexual realm. Marriage is not respected, families are not valued, behavioral norms with regard to sex are not followed, etc. And all of this is presented as a new development, something that represents a degradation of moral values generally. Things are different, they would say, because we are behaving worse.OKAY: I am going to tell the story of my bigamous grandmother at the current time. Please mute me if you heard it two years ago. Please do not steal it for an Elite Daily story (happened last time.)— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) March 25, 2018
But the counter-story is that we are basically behaving the same as we always have. All that has changed is that we are willing to talk about what we are doing and acknowledge it, whereas before it would be swept under the rug without discussion. Marriage was never really respected the way it should, families were not really valued, norms regarding sex were always discarded.
Cliffe's family story is strong evidence of the second theory. Her family story, while crazy, was not exactly unique. Old friend of the blog Frank Strong talks about coming from a family where both of his biological grandfathers walked out on his grandmothers. They walked away and basically disappeared on women and their children who were in a financial and social situation that was structurally far more precarious than today. Does that represent a respect for marriage, for families?
I come from a pretty long line of stayers. But, in the same generation where you had my grandparents, you had Frank's grandfathers and Cliffe's grandmother. Just as today, you had some people that are stayers and you had some people who are leavers. You had some people who had loving and affirming marriages, and some that were horror shows. You had some people who were basically good (if, always, imperfect) parents and some people who were terrible parents. If you look closely at the stories from the past, you see all of the same stuff you see now.
What is different is that we are willing to look at those stories square in the face. What is different about now is that now, both because of temperament and because of the nature of information distribution, we are far less interested in covering our stories in a thick layer of comforting fiction. We are no longer particularly invested in the rhetorical construct that everyone, including and especially ourselves, are perfect embodiments of some morally clean, universal story of propriety. The story that was once whispered in secret in protected circles is now far more likely to be discussed in the open.
In other words, it's not that we are so much worse, it is that we are more truthful. While there are those who overshare, to be sure, by and large I think this new truthfulness is substantially better than the comforting fictions of the past. For one thing, it's too easy to actually believe the comforting fictions. If you are a child who grows up surrounded by the comforting fiction that all families are great and stable while living in a family that is anything but, you will tend to believe that you are the only one who has to bear this burden, and that you must bear it in silence and shame. And for what? What purpose is served to make up for this silent pain? Because it's not true, as seen by the Cliffe and Strong stories, and countless others. Many, many people have lived through family brokenness and weirdness and pain. If you can talk about it, if you can acknowledge it, it makes people feel less alone, less marginalized, less freakish. And that's a good thing.
I had a similar thought watching the 60 Minutes interview last night with Stormy Daniels. While she said nothing that we didn't already know, she told her story forthrightly and unafraid. You may not like her or what she did (in terms of being adult film actress, or having a relationship with Trump, or both), but it's all out there, and she did not seem on any level to be hiding the ball or shying away from the truth. In a very real way, I felt like we saw on the screen this divide that we have all been wrestling with in its purist form--truth, even if it is unpleasant or unpalatable truth, in the form of Stormy Daniels versus what for some people is the comforting fiction packaged and sold by Donald Trump and his fellow travelers.
The stories that have dominated our common life in the last 15 months all seem to revolve around the clash between truth and the comforting fiction that presents as silence. Women speaking their truth about sexual harassment and assault, LGBT people speaking the truth of their existence, African-Americans speaking of the truth of their lives and fears, young people speaking the truth of their well-founded fears of being slaughtered in school, immigrants speaking the truth of their hopes and ambitions, those abused by churches, and many more. And, on the other side, we see various efforts to tell those people to shut up so as not to disturb a narrative of how great things are or a simplistic account of how things will be made great again in the near term. Truth versus comforting fiction seems to be the theme of our times.
For me, I would rather be on the side of truth. If people have stories to tell, let us hear them, no matter how much those stories shed light on things we would rather not see. Better to be real, than to take shelter in these fake comforting fictions.
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