I missed last week’s call (will listen to it later), but since no one has posted on the substitution exercise suggested by Jack (story for model) I just wanted to say that I found it useful. It helped me to see that our reliance on models feels like a specific instance of our more general reliance on stories. The latter feels much more generally present in human life and includes a lot more of our emotional need to find a place for ourselves, from infancy onwards. Yet the juxtaposition of those two words promotes a recognition of how desperately we humans seek a place for ourselves on which we feel we can rely. And the element of projection present in both our models and stories goes a long way towards explaining the mess we are in.–Michael
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I appreciate your thoughts, Michael. I did this exercise as well, by copying the text into Word and then replacing all references to “models” with “stories.” Like you, I found this exercise useful. In most cases, as Jack indicated, “story” worked just as well as “model.” But I also discovered an interesting tension between the words (at least for me). Models, while I tend to recognize them overtly as constructs, nevertheless seem to carry more objective weight for me than stories (on a conscious level). I see them as rooted in objectifying practices which “ground” them. I also recognize stories as constructs, but as stories (consciously recognized) I feel less compelled to take them seriously — they retain a stronger air of subjectivity. On the other hand, I find I also tend to recognize stories as stories less readily (unless engaged in a TSK practice), and then stories are often even more compelling than models, unreflectively representing “how things are” rather than standing as conscious attempts to “model” how things are.