We want to believe what Tyler Cowen says when he tells us stories are too simple. We can all think of such examples. I get very frustrated with people who always conclude that conflicts can be solved by compromise. I think their story is too simple. They think my story is too simple.
But isn't there a simple fact here that we need to remind ourselves of? Isn't the problem that we are often stupid? As I write this the huge and heartwarming story lots of us were telling ourselves about how we are helping in Haiti is already slipping into obscurity unfinished.
Haiti was a hellhole for decades before this earthquake struck and we did nothing about it. Does anyone doubt that we are all going to start forgetting Haiti pretty soon? That it will most likely slowly slip back into the hellhole it always was and will be obliterated by the next big story, probably the winter Olympics.
Is it these stories that fool us or are we just easy to fool? Are they the cause or the symptom? I'm stealing this critique from Joan Didion who uses it wonderfully in her essay on the women's movement in The White Album. Wittgenstein makes a similar point: there are certain kinds of stupid mistakes that very smart people make over and over again. This is a troubling fact about us but do we cure this problem by blaming stories?
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