“The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who has written powerfully about the loss of virtue in postmodernity, put starkly the necessity of narrative in building character: "I can only answer the question, 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question, 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'"
There is a very deep rooted story about myself that I was taught by my mother. It is not a pretty one and I come out of it very badly. It makes me very angry at myself and I have to punish myself for who I am in it. One, but only one, way I have done that is by quite violently physically injuring myself and I have been doing that since I was 13 or 14 years old. Beating myself up is what I have to do as part of that story.
Of course telling you that is telling you how weird I am and inviting you to despise me; it is part of my acting out. That tells me I am feeling low and in a dangerous place.
But the story most people know about me and one that I hear about or read about at least a couple of times a day is that of the sex offender monster in our midst. What am I supposed to do as part of that story? What is my role and how should I behave?
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