Frameworks II: The Use of Story
The Three Little Pigs – Building the Philosophical House of Frameworks
Note: This article is part of a series that will explore the useful concept of frameworks and their applications. Throughout the series, we'll examine how these frameworks influence our understanding of the world, our roles within it, and how they guide our actions and decisions.
If you made it through the introduction to this series, thanks. I know it was a little chewy. But it set in place a series of assumptions that allow us to explore further the notion of frameworks and their utility. But in this case let’s explore the use of story, which actually amplifies our receptiveness to the utility of frameworks in terms of capacity. There are many simple frameworks that inform a particular function, but even then, story as a framework is often the most “sticky” in terms of retention and integration.
Even the shortest of stories, such as “the rabbit runs around the tree and into the hole” or “lefty lucy, righty tighty” in remembering the bowline knot or the orientation of a nut to a bolt, respectively, serves as an invaluable heuristic. Story is of particular utility in building frameworks for answering “how to be?”, a topic that modern science has all but abdicated in lieu of the exclusive question, “what is this?”. Though, if we’re being honest, the development of administrations acting as tumors on our institutions have mired that search in favor of “how to maintain our rigid orthodoxy from the threat of a Socrates, Galileo, or Luther”, or something like that. For, this is a role, the role of arbiter of truth, previously inhabited by cardinals and bishops. This is a universally human problem, as church was corrupted before university, as the former birthed the latter through the monastery. Neither is worse than the other, or more at fault as every human institution is eventually corrupted, as anything of value draws the attention of psychopaths and tyrants. The moment it stands tall enough to be seen on the horizon, imagine a giant herd of sprinting zombies or marauding orcs moving in to take it over. And they will. They always do. So we must keep moving, regenerating new institutions in pursuit of the objective truth, even the spirit of Truth, as the apex of our values structure, perhaps even retaking lost institutions when we are at our best.
Story as a framework is superior in its capability of conveying lasting and deep meaning through oral and written traditions through thousands of years of our development. They also provide sophisticated prompts for what is right in various contexts. In order to equal this type of functionality of the biblical corpus in such a regard, one would have to develop a nearly infinite flow chart or decision tree that humans neither intuitively understand nor retain.
Stories can also have many layers of truth baked into varying levels of analysis, particularly in highly concentrated stories, like the story of Cain and Abel. This archetypal tale is only 15 verses but the lesson is profound in multiple layers. In one layer, one can explore the notion of tension and rivalry between farming and herding societies of ancient humanity, as my friend Wilfred Reilly has in our conversations about the story. But beneath this is the notion that Jordan Peterson has explored in which sacrifice isn’t rewarded, largely because you’re not all in, which would look more like Abel’s blood sacrifice. The lesson that giving in to bitterness and killing the one whose sacrifice has been rewarded because you suspect reality itself is skewed against you is the timeless and tragic example of the destructive power of resentment and envy. And this is as pertinent a concept today in the world of leftist upheaval in America as it has ever been. For, Karl Marx didn’t create anything new, he merely channeled the metaphoric spirit of Cain and took on the wrath of covetousness that has tempted man through his entire existence.
Among the most important stories for childhood development are moral stories. If you’re in your 30s or older, you’ve probably heard these tales from, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, to The Little Engine That Could, to The Little Red Hen, in which the titular character asks for volunteers to help her bake bread. For a reader to state emphatically that they don’t literally believe a chicken baked a loaf of bread is to miss the point of the exercise entirely. More on that when exploring the biblical corpus.
I will be exploring many stories in this series as frameworks for “how to be.” Today’s story is my own exploration, though based on the type of explorations by Jordan B. Peterson of other fables and fairy tales that provide deeper meaning of reality, humanity and its many facets, and “how to be” in light of these considerations. I will ultimately be taking us through some cavernous depths of the biblical corpus, which I regard as the ideal of story as framework in a very real and deep sense. But first, let’s start simple.
The Three Little Pigs
Among the more timeless fables is The Three Little Pigs. If you haven’t heard this one, which the younger reader may not have, given that these stories have begun to fade from the landscape, you can get a quick rundown here. As someone who was born and raised, at least for a time, in rural America and having grown up around pigs, they are as reasonable an analog for humans as any other animal. This story is iterative, it builds on itself through multiple attempts as each pig fails until the last pig succeeds. Three is a very important number in story, particularly three iterations for the same reason that “the third time is a charm.” It often requires a single point to be referenced with another point before the relationship between those two points can inform proper navigation of whatever world those two points inhabit.
It goes like this: I want to sight in my rifle. So I aim for the bullseye and squeeze the trigger. Bang. The first round has hit the paper. I know my shot was true and that my trigger pull was clean. But the round was down and to the left of my point of aim. Now, in my first adjustment there is a high likelihood that I will either overcorrect or undercorrect. Say in this scenario I aim for the bullseye again. Bang. Clean shot again. Only my second shot is halfway between the first shot and the bullseye, forming a straight line between the first shot and the bullseye. I now know I need to adjust one more time, and… Bang. Third time’s a charm. This is the same reason Goldilocks encountered three bears and not two or four. Too hot, too cold, and just right informs the reader of the notion of guardrails. Meaning, to go too far in one direction is pathological. But to run away from that point of pathology in the opposite direction leads to an opposing point of pathology. The sweet spot is somewhere in between.
The pigs are pursued by the wolf, who is among the most common symbol for predation in our mythos along with the snake. And for good reason. It represents the horrors lurking outside in the dark that everyone knows is there and rightly fears. It is danger. It is death, and by definition the unknown of unknowable things, for none of us truly knows what’s on the other side of that chasm, if anything. And that fear of the predator runs deep in our biology. The pigs need to build a house to fortify themselves against the dangers of reality beset against them.
In my life, I have developed the concept of my philosophical house. This is what I describe as a framework made of many frameworks in which I reside to navigate reality and contend with its many dangers. I didn’t originate it, as the biblical corpus offers the concept of “oikodomeo” (οἰκοδομέω), which means “to build the house,” as metaphoric utility. The parable of the man who built his house on the rock incorporates this, but also the notion that agape (ἀγάπη) “edifies” or “builds up” in which the same word is used (Whatever agape means… more in future content).
So I had this concept in my mind in my early adult years. But when I look back on my own life, my first house was blown over by my parents’ divorce in my pre-teen/teenage years. This was a storm that not only made the future and the present uncertain, but it made the past equally uncertain. What I thought family and stability was in the home context was incorrect and had to be reexamined for the vulnerabilities I didn’t know were there. It scattered my family to the four winds as my parents sold our home, and my grandparents, their adjacent property soon after. We all moved to different places, never to be in the same room together again while living.
You likely remember the first time your model of reality was blown over by the first storm strong enough to do so. And you likely remember how long it took you to recover and build the next version which would hopefully withstand what reality will undoubtedly serve you.
In my case, it took many years of stupid, inept attempts as a rebellious adolescent with no man in the home. For a decade or more, I worked to piece together my new philosophical house. This took humbling myself to find men capable of instructing me along many facets of understanding – to say “I don’t know” and bow to superior understanding in the face of my own ineptitude. It also required facing my fears head on, incrementally and in a voluntary manner.
The latter led me down a path that resulted in military service after 9/11 in which I was fortunate enough to work with some of the best men I have ever known or will ever know as an intelligence professional for the SEAL teams. This life was of the most meaningful existence I have known, though my work in helping others attend to their potential is to aim at similar significance. During my time in service I held a most important role. We lost many friends in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And every loss was in some part due to an intelligence failure. My job. If I made a large enough error in judgement, not only might my friends be killed, but I along with them, in a very public fashion. They would likely write a book about the ordeal which would then become a movie. Jupiter-level gravity. Time moved quickly, and suddenly, my friends were dead and I, as a college student, was relatively purposeless. Nothing I did mattered whatsoever, after having borne the weight of the world on my shoulders.
This transition demolished my philosophic house in catastrophic fashion. By then it seemed clear that the deaths of my friends were in vain as the Taliban was obviously going to be replaced by the Taliban and our efforts in Iraq had just strengthened an Iran with nuclear aspirations. I became bitter and nihilistic, an atheist, then an agnostic, which I still am in the sense of no ‘gnosis’ (knowledge in the sense of certainty) to apply toward the unanswerable. I was the ultimate cynic in the shambles of a demolished home shaking my fist at the almighty I doubted was even there.
But cynicism is only the halfway point in the journey many if not most will never complete, for that leg of the journey is the narrow way. At this point, you have to voluntarily take on all the suffering incumbent in humanity and walk up out of the ditch in spite of it all. So, I bent down again and started really inspecting every piece of the house I was going to build yet again. Curating with discernment every single one and then putting each to the test. My story is likely as universal a story, though the details are unique, as any regarding man’s search for meaning.
Certainly we build a house in our minds, a model of reality. And what do we build our first house with? With what is around us, in the field grabbing straw and making the first attempt. Because what do we know? We happened to be in the field, not well-travelled, inexperienced, and naïve. We build a flimsy first attempt and the predatory nature of reality knocks it down. And we are no longer naïve.
Now we have to put up a more resilient façade, we must do some walking and some work to find the sticks to cobble together something more resilient and more aligned with the nature of reality than the last. But the wolf comes again, and we are still inadequate. Sooner or later that iteration fails under enough wind and predation, and we must make the third divine attempt.
Whether the first two pigs die in the story or not, this series of iterations is in essence a series of deaths. The part of us that was inadequate in the previous iterations has to die to make room for the ideal within us to grow further, to properly attend to our potential and face the storms. This is mirrored in the biblical context of the inner man and the outer man, and the death of the carnal outer man daily, facilitating the resurrection of Christ (the ideal) within us.
The last house in the story is the divine house, impervious to the predation of reality. It could just as easily have been made of stone in terms of durability, but it wasn’t. The pig could have just collected the stones as he did the straw and the sticks, but he didn’t. The fact it is made of brick is of supreme importance to the deep meaning of the story. Brick must be synthesized. We make brick by curating multiple elements, often dirt, water, and straw, that serve varying purposes and then we treat it with fire. Fire in story is commonly the picture of refinement or atonement. It burns away the inferior elements and leaves the refined gold. It purifies, eliminating the impurities, another source of great danger which claimed many of our ancestors. It is both the sense that, "The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the LORD tries the heart" from Proverbs and, “the fiery trial which is to try you” from the first book of Peter. The bricks of which we make the divine philosophical house must be tried in the fire of scrutiny, humility in the face of objective truth, and open discourse through good faith exploration.
If story is a framework of frameworks, then consider the house in your mind the framework of stories, built to stand the test of time, though ever-refining and ever adapting to reality as it presents itself, for better or worse. It often takes multiple catastrophes in life to force the structure to come forth properly if you are honest with yourself and others. The pigs act this out through their poor-though-incrementally-improving structures, building a map for “how to be” in the face of the dangers of reality. And that is as true a story as I can imagine, along with all the other deeply true stories in our mythos.
Brooks Crenshaw is a writer, columnist, and speaker who focuses primarily on philosophy, economics, and policy while serving as a manufacturing and technology consultant. With a background as a Naval Special Warfare intelligence professional and an economic advisor and Director of Research for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, he holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University.