Do you sometimes feel
like the real you
remains bottled up?
Do you ever sense you’re
vastly more significant
than you’ve ever realized?
Well, you’re not.
What you see is
all you are.
The Nibbling Society
for Beefy Nihilism
Hector Klumpp here. Here’s the story of how the NLA came about, something Rosetta has never understood…but, no matter! I’ve got Story and I’m sticking to it!
In 2008, on our 10th anniversary, Rosetta told me our marriage was over. You see, somewhere in the wee hours of a particularly blustery Minnesota winter, I bought back my Walker Percy collection, still on the shelf at Nibbling Used Book Rental Store from when Rosetta had sold it to Roger, the owner, as part of our nuptial understanding. Rosetta also gave Roger my copy of Infinite Jest, (which he rented out, never seeing it again after unwisely telling the renter to keep it until they finished it), or I would have bought that back too. I had taken to wandering often, in the brisk and in the swelter, to Echo Bluff to read and ponder about the meaning of life, or lack thereof. This unmuzzled the dragon, the very thing I had promised Rosetta I would not do.
The rub came when I began to understand that the deepest longing in me was for meaning. Even Robert McKee hints that his belief is that life is “intrinsically meaningless”…
How can one live life as if it matters when it doesn’t?
“This dragon is scorching your neck and ripping your back to shreds!” Rosetta roared.
“I’m as miserable as you, darling.” I whispered.
“If you can’t make him go, then it’s goodbye to you both.”
“I’ll do anything, dear,” I squeaked.
She tapped her toe, mouth pursed. This was a good sign. She’s considering…
Then, like a frog snatching up a fly, she grabbed my arm and marched me across the street to the place with no answers—the dark gym at Nibbling Fight Club, where I began my Beefy Nihilist journey. She persuades my old friend Diddly Squat and his buddies to set up a back storage room for me by pushing aside the cleaning supplies.
She found a paint blotched bent folding chair and tossed it in, along with my quote stuffed briefcase. Then she laid down the gauntlet, “You’re all about story, Hector. Use your beautiful mind to slay this dragon. You can come back to me when it’s gone.”
As she slipped away down the hall in her lean fashion, my buddies turned to me with wide eyes, handed me a lite beer, mumbled something about good luck, and closed the door.
There, on that crumpled folding chair, the dragon roaring, I reached up and yanked the chain, switching off the light hanging by a cord (that looked like an exact fit for the circumference of my neck), keenly aware that anything short of slaying this dragon could mean I’d lose everything.
This thought tumbled me to the floor, where, quite possibly, I fell asleep. Thus began my final round with this dragon of meaninglessness, my constant companion from high school.
Whether I slept or no, I came to, staring into the dark, with Rosetta’s words ringing in my head, “you’re all about story, Hector”. I sat up, as uninvited, yet welcome, fond memories came tumbling in of my first reading of McKee. My brain was so pliable then, swallowing whole everything McKee proffered. There on the cold concrete, I noticed the dragon’s claws slackened. This brought encouragement I was on the right track.
“I AM all about story,” I said, rolling to my feet and switching on the overhead light again. I opened my briefcase, found a single blank piece of tattered paper and scrawled in permanent marker one word—Story. Finding a pin, I jabbed the paper in the center of the wall, as if stabbing the dragon with a mini dagger. (Do you find it creepy that I keep scissors, yarn, and pins in my briefcase?)
Next, I eased myself into the crumpled chair, murmuring “story…story…story” as an attempt to gather my thoughts. Then, I remembered how paying attention to my desires had brought Rosetta and I together. “Story had lightened the weight of the dragon then,” I reflected, opening my beer with a spurt and feeling the dragon’s diggers relax a bit more.
Then, taking a swig, I spread out my quote snippets from the briefcase. Retrieving a quote that went right to the heart of the matter, I sprang to the wall, jostling the dragon. I chuckled, “you’re losing your grip, my scaly friend! Take this!”, I cried, pinning up this gem from Salman Rushdie:
We need all of us, whatever our background, to constantly examine the stories inside which and with which we live. We all live in stories, so called grand narratives. Nation is a story. Family is a story. Religion is a story. Community is a story. We all live within and with these narratives.
Salman Rushdie, Secular Values, Human Rights and Islamism, Point of Inquiry, October 27, 2006
“My life is a story,” I acquiesce with a nod, my neck feeling a cool draft. “So far, so good. Now, what kind of a story am I in?”
What McKee calls the Story Triangle popped into my head. I dug around and found an explanation by Ian Parker, who attended one of McKee’s story seminars. I stuck this beside the STORY paper that I had cut out of an article from the New Yorker years before:
…he drew a triangle on an overhead projector slide: at the top was “Classical Design” (stories with causality, closed endings, linear time, an external conflict, a single, active protagonist); in the other corners he wrote “Minimalism” (open endings, passive protagonists) and “Anti-Structure” (coincidence, nonlinear time).
The Real McKee, by Ian Parker, The New Yorker, October 20, 2003
Or here’s a video if you want to see a quick overview by McKee:
The McKee seminars I attended were all about the category at the top—archplot, stories of classical design. I’ve always believed the story triangle carried a weight of meaning.
Next, with a sigh, I picked up this quote from McKee, and as I pinned it up below the Story paper, I heard the dragon chuckle, spraying sparks down my back. McKee is talking about film here, but the dragon knows it’s my Achilles heel:
Above the line drawn between Miniplot and Antiplot (the bottom of the triangle) are stories in which life clearly changes.
Below this line stories remain in stasis and do not arc. The value-charged condition of the character’s life at the end of the film is virtually identical to that at the opening. Story dissolves into portraiture, either a portrait of verisimilitude or one of absurdity. I term these films Nonplot. Although they inform us, touch us, and have their own rhetorical or formal structures, they do not tell story. Therefore, they fall outside the story triangle and into a realm that would include everything that could be loosely called “narrative.”
Understanding my life as a story, though McKee never spelled this out explicitly in any teaching or interview I’ve seen, I believe he would put our Beefy Nihilist existence underneath the story triangle in no man’s land of non-plot. Intrinsically meaningless. It doesn’t even make the Story Triangle.
In other words…WE GOT NO STORY!
The dragon tightened his talons, while I brought out my permanent marker and drew a triangle around the Story paper, with three bold strokes that extended past the tattered paper and onto the dingy wall.
I slank to the floor, looking up at the triangle as a vision of sorts came upon me—I saw myself trapped with Bill Nye the Science Guy off the “Story grid”, living a narrative non-plot existence. The dragon, Rosetta, and Bill Nye can still smile under the weight of it, but I can’t!
I can hardly breathe, the dragon’s heavy body of non-plot meaninglessness pressing down, his claws tightening, his breath rekindled. If I stayed in this spot, the only reasonable option was the black pill ‘tap out’.
Once again, it’s Rosetta’s lean butterball face that saves me. I see her staring down the dragon in her forceful way and shouting through the static, “use your beautiful mind, Hector!”
If others make this work, why can’t I? Even McKee, who, as I understand it, shares my world view and has a far more brilliant mind than mine, finds life meaningful through story. And this reel started playing through my mind…
Weinstein: Why do you care so much about story?
McKee: It’s two things. One, if you accept the premise that life is intrinsically meaningless, how do we find meaning? There’s theology, philosophy, science and art. The four wisdoms. To read, to think about and to embroider into your life, to enrich it, to give your life meaning, the most powerful source of meaningful experience that you can inculcate into your life is storytelling.
This is why we’ve done it. We’ve done it for hundreds of thousands of years. We have told each other stories in order to make meaning out of meaningless.
The second thing is that not only is life meaningless intrinsically, but it’s full of suffering, so it’s painful. Anything that a human being can do to alleviate the pain in themselves and the pain in others is a meaningful positive action.
Story, because it makes sense out of senselessness and enriches us in those ways, reduces the suffering.
“Story and the mind,” I whisper to myself, as I crawl back into the tattered chair. “I’m no Russel Crow, but I do have a beautiful mind for story.” I sip my beer before grabbing another pin. Here’s the quote I jab into the wall as if I’m stabbing it into the dragon’s heavy body:
Story mirrors life. Story, in fact, mirrors the mind. There’s been a great enterprise, certainly by science of all kinds. Social sciences, but also neurology and others, trying to understand how the human mind works.
And the one grand idea that they’ve, understanding that they have achieved in the last decades, is that first and foremost, the mind organizes life as a story. This is how we put things together and understand things. When we think back, when we remember our life and try to make sense out of our life, how do we remember it, as a series of facts, as a deductive, inductive argument? Of course not. We take it and we create a little story for ourselves, a little inciting incident, in which things went out of balance for ourselves, the struggle we went through to restore the balance, how and why eventually the balance was restored or not. But we put the past together into a little story in order to understand ourselves and our own existence.
Story is a model of expectation, of anticipation, of planning for the future. When you think toward the future toward what you hope will happen or you dread might happen, how do you try and prepare yourself for life? You imagined a little story for yourself, a coherent story with a beginning, a middle, and end. A hypothetical story that somehow then prepares you for life.
That is just what we do each and every day in order to organize our own lives.
The dragon seemed oddly breathless after this last prick. Have I punctured his lung? I smile, taking another sip of beer and a puff of air. I say to my slouching dragon, “You may be heavy on my back, but you can’t touch my mind.”
With new energy, I scrambled through my briefcase snippets with the thought–My mind may not be on McKee’s level, but it’s alive and functioning, its inner workings embracing story, like every other human being on the planet.
I found the quote I was looking for and pricked the dragon’s other lung, pinning this up, and reading it aloud to us both:
Stories have been implanted in you thousands of times since your mother took you on her knee. You’ve read good books, seen movies, attended plays. What’s more, human beings naturally want to work through stories. Cognitive psychologists describe how the human mind, in its attempt to understand and remember, assembles the bits and pieces of experience into a story, beginning with a personal desire, a life objective, and then portraying the struggle against the forces that block that desire. Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.
I feel the air rasping out of the dragon, his claws still clinging, but his body deflated. I fill my lungs with stuffy closet air, concurring with the idea– my mind rebels against the reality of an antistructured world, and it embraces the perception of causal patterns of Classical design.
The sagging dragon gasps, and I find my beer half full. Then, like a heartless matador, I punctured him with my next snippet:
Classical design is a model of memory and anticipation. When we think back to the past, do we piece events together antistructured?
Minimalistically? No. We collect and shape memories around an Archplot to bring the past back vividly. When we daydream about the future, what we dread or pray will happen, is our vision minimalistic?
Antistructured? No, we mold our fantasies and hopes into an Archplot. Classical design displays the temporal, spatial, and causal patterns of human perception, outside which the mind rebels.
Classical design is not a Western view of life. For thousands of years, from the Levant to Java to Japan, the storytellers of Asia have framed their works within the Archplot, spinning yarns of high adventure and great passion. …. The Archplot is neither ancient nor modern, Western nor Eastern; it is human.
Robert McKee, Story
Arch-plot is human life Story, the one we all use to evaluate and direct our own lives. This is why Arch-plot has the greatest potential for the largest possible audience. Every person on the planet is a potential reader/viewer.
Shawn Coyne, The Story Grid
….
We love Arch-plots because they mirror the way we choose to privately examine ourselves. There is nothing more powerful in a Story than having a lead character desperately pursuing something. The reader or viewer cannot help but attach himself to that character because he has objects of desire too. If the lead character in a Story gets what he wants, our brains are wired to believe that we can too. Stories fuel our courage and offer the cautions that we believe will help guide our own paths.
I joyfully reread the McKee quotes, allowing them to sink into my mind:
–Despite our non-plot reality, Human beings are wired for story.
–McKee says we all order the random events of our lives into a story line of sorts.
–Each and every time, these tales we tell ourselves are right at the top of the story triangle.
–We all desire to live archplot lives.
–We see ourselves as heroes in our own stories.
I step back, exhaling. The dragon, once a roaring inferno of nihilistic despair, is now barely more than a whisper, an ember flickering, his breath a mere gust of warm air rather than a scorching blaze.
I announced to myself, “It’s time, Hector.” And armed with Story embedded in my DNA, I pictured my hero self, emerging from dusty, non-plot chaos under the story triangle. I feel the dragon, hanging by a shred on by back, scramble up to my shoulder, rasping, “This is MY spot, coward!”
Ignoring him, as I bravely claw my way up the steep incline of the Story Triangle, the dragon tottering on my shoulder, trying in vain to steady himself by flapping his wings. I ascend to the “Classical Design” top of McKee’s Story Triangle.
Once there, I triumphantly tap the dormant light; the dragon topples like a bowling pin and takes wobbly flight, casting ghost like shadows on my beautiful wall. I watch the poor creature slam into the story triangle and crumple to the floor, limping back to the chaotic meaningless rubble underneath, where we used to live together.
His eyes belie betrayal, beckoning me back. I stretch my shoulders back and forth, scrunching my neck.
“I am free from you, you existential monster, never to return to your rubble heap,” I declare, laughing.
The dragon snorts and closes his eyes, then lies his chin on the floor like a tired dog.
I victoriously swig the rest of the beer, my eye catching the word “Lite” on the can. I lifted it triumphantly, as if it is my conquering “archplot sword”.
💡From the Archplot precipice, is it possible to take the reality of Nihilism lightly? Could Nihilism Lite be my hero story line? Can I find meaning through living an Archplot Story even though life is intrinsically meaningless?
“Yes!, Yes!, and Yes!!” I triumphantly shout, in answer to all three questions.
I crushed the can and threw it at the defeated dragon, joyfully shouting this statement to nothing, “I am a Nihilist Lite!”
My buddies, hovering outside, opened the door to my dark closet, and with the Lite light pouring in, the dragon disappeared. I cried for joy!
Eyeing the wild freedom in my lite enlightened eyes, they asked, “What’s a Nihilist Lite?”
Stepping up to the plate, and taking my first swing, I excitedly began to explain to them my discovery. Strike one. Diddly and his buddies didn’t understand.
And I whiffed it again (strike two) when I went home that night (without the dragon as instructed). My wife listened patiently, and she could see the dragon was gone. So, she agreed to remain my wife. But even after countless tries to show her the lite light, she wasn’t persuaded by my epiphany and still isn’t.
But that’s okay. I love her Beefy Nihilist soul, and she’s as intellectually curious and whole-heartedly enjoying our meaningless existence as ever.
Even after these two strikes I swung for the fences and persuaded my best friend, Clifford Bean, as well as his wife Michelle that I was onto something.
Thanks to Michelle Bean being who she is and believing wholeheartedly in the cause (at the time), she began publishing the writing that poured out of me over the next six months. It was out of this that the Nihilist Lites of America (NLA) was born, going viral, and giving hope to thousands of hopeless Nihilist souls.
So now, thanks to Story, I can turn a deaf ear to non-plot meaninglessness and enjoy the archplot precipice of my meaningless existence.
Because I’ve got story, and I’m sticking to it!
Welcome to Nibbling 