Mental Relativity and Dramatica outside of writing

theory
#1

Has anyone explored either Mental Relativity or Dramatica outside of telling stories?
If you haven’t, do you have any interest in doing so?

For instance, one thing I am almost constantly doing these days is determining wether I feel like someone is approaching a problem linearly or holistically. I mentioned in another post that I felt like Simon Sinek tends to suggest very holistic views. Ine day I wondered if ants might be considered Linear problem solvers, and if so, what creature might be more holistic. If I watch anything political in nature, it’s become difficult to fight the urge to yell at my screen, “you guys aren’t even talking about the same thing! You’re looking at the structure of the issue while they are telling you about their relationship to it! This discussion will go nowhere because you’re both right about two different things!” It’s like the example I’ve seen on Dramaticapedia where two people are arguing whether the grape is round or purple (or something to that effect).

Or something else I wonder about is how Mental Relativity night view or explain certain mental problems. I don’t know enough about any mental illnesses or disorders to do anything but ponder, but considering that the mind is a machine made of processes, what would it look like if that machine stopped working properly? Say it got stuck on measuring the state of things. Might that look like some form of autism, or Aspergers, or OCD? Would that lead one to be more sociopathic in nature somehow? What if the mind got stuck on only measuring processes? What would we call that? Is there a way to fix it?

Anyway, I’m not necessarily looking for comments on those things (though feel free to do so), but just giving examples of what I mean by taking MR and Dram outside of writing. Does anyone do that? Has anyone done it? Ever found anything interesting or pondered something interesting or fun or silly in doing so? Or is this sort of thing not of particular interest to others?

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#2

So I’m going to use this as a general tread, I think, for sharing observations of Dramatica out in the world.

One day in conversation with my wife, I was told that I never do something (don’t remember what and wouldn’t share if I did), and I gave her several examples of when I had done exactly what she said. We discussed it for a bit before she said something like, ‘you’re stuck on that one example’ to which I started to reply that I had given several examples. But clearly that didn’t matter. So I stopped and tried to run it through Dramatica and Mental Relativity.

I decided that what was happening was I was approaching the issue linearly, giving specific examples, where she was approaching it holistically, looking for examples of that process being carried on between specific examples. I was approaching things linearly and treated the discussion as though my wife were also approaching things linearly, but she was approaching the issue holistically and basically pointing out that I was approaching it linearly.

So I took a few seconds to figure out how to express how my examples actually were a process that carried on even between the examples (not in that type of language at all, of course). When I did that, she stopped speaking for a moment and I could actually see her thinking about what I had said. A moment later we were both in agreement and moving on. Mental Relativity in action and at its finest. And this same type of thing has actually happened multiple times since then.

So here’s the interesting part. I’m now noticing more and more when someone approaching a problem holistically points out or gets frustrated by how others are doing things more linearly (it doesn’t happen ALL the time, but often enough) but people who approach things linearly tend to assume that others are also approaching things linearly. I don’t know if it’s just me finding a couple instances of this, or if this is generally how things go, but I thought it was really interesting because it seems to be predicted by Dramatica in the idea of audience reach-that holistic problems solvers can empathize with Linear, but Linear can’t do the same with Holistic.

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#3

Pretty sure Melanie and Chris have consulted with the government on…stuff.

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#4

Yep. But they are much harder to have an audience with. Particularly for extended discussion. It’s just that my main interest has drifted toward applying the theories in daily life more so than writing fiction with it. If anyone else here does that, I think it could be cool and lots of fun to discuss. If no one else here is interested in taking things those directions, I’ll try to stop with these Dramatica in the Real World posts and keep it strictly to crafting arguments for the purpose of story.

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#5

I love this inquiry and have been intrigued by Melanie’s suggestions that Dramatica can be used to essentially predict things or be used to help solve personal problems. I’m wondering what are the others useful applications. In my experience other applications have only been alluded to in a few articles/discussions of Melanie’s that I’d have to dig up. I think I had a similar inquiry post up here on this board a few years ago. Need to dig that up too. I don’t recall where that went. I do recall remarks that Melanie and Chris have used the theory in work with the government. Melanie has suggested the theory can be applied to games and writing self-directed narratives in them. All this is provocative. I just don’t know enough about it nor where to go with it… nor I have I dove in deep yet. But am up for the inquiry.

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#6

What you say here made think of this video I saw yesterday on Twitter of two guys having one of the most heated arguments I’v ever seen—all with only one singular hand gesture: https://twitter.com/apiecebyguy/status/1069947397982351360

Each gesture, although essentially the same as all the others, had their own unique nuance. Might this be a grand argument story? It’s definitely a relationship story, as you suggest above.

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#7

If you buy into Dramatica, and particularly Mental Relativity, then-to steal from Shakespeare-the world is a Dramatica Table of Story Elements. That is to say that literally everything you experience, if MR is accurate, has a description that can be found on the Dramatica table. Even processes that aren’t about conflict should still be able to find some explanation there.

I have no business even speculating about something like Mental Relativity and how it might be applied to something like OCD, for example, but I also can’t help but wonder how MR would look at it. I don’t expect to see much research in areas like that in my life time, but I don’t know that I can hurt anything by talking about it. And heck, what if this is the thread that causes some qualified individual to mix Mental Relativity with some other research and have a major breakthrough! So maybe I’ll keep posting some of my thoughts here.

But really, as far as applications outside of writing go, I am still mostly just using it, like you said, to solve personal problems, but also to sort of observe the problems of others.

Anyway, I’m kind of rambling here. Where would you be interested to look for applications that can be discussed? I know you’ve mentioned using it in the creation of art before, or in the subject of, say, a painting or a building.

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#8

I don’t know about that. But they were both definitely making very strong statements! That video was hilarious.

#9

I have been working with @jhull over the last few years to use Dramatica in a few interesting ways:

  1. Understanding ancient manuscripts: Narratives that are 1000 years old or more have usually gone through many iterations of translation and interpretation that have forced subjective bias into them. They are flattened into a pancake like the Hero’s Journey. Using Dramatica, the layers of plot, theme, and character can be pulled apart to approximate the original meaning and the author’s perspective.

  2. Navigating social discord: As an investigative journalist, I was repeatedly dropped into life-threatening situations. I found that, in general, the more divisive the situation, the more group think took over. When the survival instinct triggers everyone would grasp to a handful of narratives. There was not the typical noise of a thousand narratives going on around me. Dramatica has shown me the contradictions in people’s heads, what they want vs. do, how to circumvent problems, flip motivations that would otherwise be very dangerous. Internally, it showed me how I was contributing to my own problems and the relationship perspective sitting in my blind spot when I’m focused on my own story goal.

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#10

Those both sound pretty incredible, particularly number 2. I’d love to hear more details about your use of Dramatica there.

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#11

Yeah, I think before I had a predisposition to label everything risky as dangerous. Dramatica has been super useful in finding the narrative(s) at play. In fact, there are many different types of narratives that can escalate to danger and knowing things like the underlying problem vs. the symptom that everyone is chasing, the IC and OS solutions, the difference between the success and failure narratives, the critical flaws… These things allow me to play against that while participating in the documentary. It works very well especially when the societal group mind is very divisive and polarized. That said, applying Dramatica to organic experiences brings a bunch of extra challenges to solve, and both Chris and Melanie have told me on a few occasions that it is, so to speak, beyond of the scope of intended software support, ha!

Another way I’ve used Dramatica:
3) Onmimedia influencer campaigns: I have been able to tune the narrative to the audience, to action or decision, success or failure, which throughline my audience (OS in this case) will sit and target very specific underlying motivations. Then I have been able to step into the role of protagonist (promoter) and set the narrative frame that will draw an audience into participation with the story that will create the best outcomes.

I may be spilling too many of my trade secrets here.

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