X is a story we tell ourselves.

March 7, 2008 7:16 PM

I'm trying to rember a quote from a science or public radio show (maybe even TED) and where it came from "X is a story we tell ourselves." Where X is what the story is about. I think X might have been memory, but I'm not sure.
posted by bigmusic to media & arts (15 comments total)

I'm not sure what specifically you're referring to, but I'd say X is "history."
posted by rhizome at 7:20 PM on March 7, 2008

It was a mental process of some sort.
posted by bigmusic at 7:21 PM on March 7, 2008

I'm almost certain I heard this on Radiolab very recently (although I listen to the podcast so it wasn't necessarily broadcast recently). I'm thinking it was either memory or our perception of our own bodies, possibly from this episode, Where Am I?
posted by doift at 7:28 PM on March 7, 2008

I think doift has it. The memory episode specifically addresses the evidently wrong idea of memory as a file cabinet or hard drive where we go to retrieve stored memories, countering that it is instead an act of re-creation of the event, and I think I have a faint memory of that phrase or one like it being used.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:31 PM on March 7, 2008

Incidentally, you can check out the mp3 here to verify if it's the memory episode. I'd do it for you, because I adore the show so much it hurts me a little, but I've got other things to take care of tonight.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:34 PM on March 7, 2008

Joan Didion said "We tell ourselves stories in order to live". Not sure if that's what you are talking about.
posted by sully75 at 7:35 PM on March 7, 2008

I'd put money on 'x' being consciousness.
posted by danhon at 7:55 PM on March 7, 2008

It's almost definitely the memory episode of Radiolab - I remember it, too. Great show.
posted by acridrabbit at 8:11 PM on March 7, 2008

If x = consciousness, you'll be wanting to look at the work of Daniel Dennett.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:14 PM on March 7, 2008

Consciousness?
posted by breath at 8:37 PM on March 7, 2008

No, it's memory. I remember hearing this phrase on NPR, while they were discussing an author who'd argued against the permanence of memory, I believe in the context of an obituary.
posted by klangklangston at 9:10 PM on March 7, 2008

It was radiolab, in the "Who am I" episode. About 26 minutes in "the extended self [the part of a person which is not the body], which is normally what we think of when we think about ourselves, is really a story. It's the story of what's happened to that body over time. " Paul Broks
posted by bigmusic at 9:59 PM on March 7, 2008

I thought Endel Tulving might have been the source, if we're talking memory, because he's talked for years about our need for language to create permanent episodic memories.

But I'd agree that consciousness is also a candidate. Antonio Damasio has written several books on cognition, emotion and consciousness, and also wrote this brief piece for Time last year called "A Story We Tell Ourselves". Here's the second paragraph:

All the natural history required to understand consciousness is now readily available in evolutionary biology and psychology. Gene networks organize themselves to produce complex organisms whose brains permit behavior; further evolution enriches the complexity of those brains so that they can create sensory and motor maps that represent the environments they interact with; additional evolutionary complexity allows parts of the brain to talk to each other (figuratively speaking) and generate maps of the organism interacting with its environment. Within the frame of those interactions, the conversation among the maps spontaneously and continuously tells the "story" of our organism responding to and being modified by the environment. (The story is first told without words and is later translated into language when language becomes available, both in biological evolution and in every one of us.)

There's an mp3 of one of his lectures here, along with a brief video excerpt.
posted by maudlin at 10:02 PM on March 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thanks for answering your question for us, bigmusic. :-) That looks like a damn interesting show.
posted by maudlin at 10:04 PM on March 7, 2008

Just for grins, I ran my little phrasal-template tool on the pattern "X is a story we tell ourselves". Here are the top few fillers, sorted by number of Google hits:

250     history247     time173     culture153     the future108     the self54      a spell44      a myth

posted by The Tensor at 1:54 AM on March 8, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]