Stories and Constraints
Abstract
This paper proposes a framework in which reality consists of two co-equal, irreducible fundamentals: Objective Constraints (physical/structural facts) and Stories (phenomenological weight-configurations). Unlike constructivism or idealism, this framework claims that Stories are not perspectives on a single world, but separate objective realities that coexist in superposition. These realities interact only through Collision Dynamics, where physical constraints force incompatible weights to update. On its strongest ontological reading, this "Fourth Way" reframes the hard problem of consciousness. Pragmatically, it explains why intellectual knowledge fails to change behavior, positing that transformation requires Story-Death—a literal ontological transition—rather than mere belief revision. Implications for grief, political polarization, and agency are discussed.
1.0 Core Claims
We begin by defining the two fundamental constituents of this framework and the specific nature of their interaction.
Reading Guide: You can read what follows in three ways: as a conservative psychological model, as a methodological abstraction, or as a speculative ontology. Nothing in the empirical or practical parts requires the strongest reading.
1.1 Parallel Story Realism
A Story is the deep configuration that generates a being's lived world: what feels real, what counts as evidence, what is obviously good or bad, and where threats or opportunities appear.
The first big claim is: For each being, their Story defines an objectively real world-for-that-being. This is a structured field of facts, threats, affordances, and meanings that is not "just an opinion" from the inside.
This concept builds on the semiotic biology of Jakob von Uexküll, who described the Umwelt—the self-centered world of an organism, distinct from the Umgebung (surroundings). In this framework, we extend the Umwelt from a biological necessity to an ontological status.
These Story-worlds are objective parts of reality: they can be modeled, they have causal powers, they collide, they leave traces. A Story is not just "someone's perspective" in a dismissive sense. It is a real, weight-like configuration in the world that shapes perception, generates expectations, guides behavior, and constrains what can be seen as possible.
Objective Reality as Constraints + Stories
In this framework, "objective reality" is not "the constraint field alone." It is the Constraint Field plus the full set of Story-worlds that exist within it.
- Constraints: Objective because they do not depend on any particular Story.
- Story-worlds: Objective because they are real configurations in the world.
Parallel Story Realism says different beings inhabit different Story-worlds. These worlds are not illusions layered over one obvious shared reality; they are genuine, structured realities at the level that matters for action and experience. They can coexist indefinitely in parallel (Story-Superposition) as long as they are not forced to share constraints in ways that produce hard contradictions.
1.2 Collision Law
The Law: Stories do not fundamentally reconfigure through argument, information, or insight alone. They change when their predictions run into Objective Constraints in ways they cannot deflect or ignore.
Objective Constraints include physical limits (gravity, bodies, time, resources) and mathematical limits (logic, game theory).
Social laws and norms are NOT objective constraints in themselves. They are predictions of physical constraints. A law against theft is subjective ink on paper; the Objective Constraint is the physical cage (jail) that occurs if the law is triggered.
Two Types of Collision
Type 1: Calibration (Self-World)
Structure: Agent vs. Non-agentic Constraint.
Mechanism: Direct feedback. The dumbbell does not have an opinion.
Function: Builds Capacity. e.g., The Gym.
Type 2: Power (Story-Story)
Structure: Two Agents with incompatible Stories.
Mechanism: Solves the "Argument Loop". Collision occurs when one Story recruits a Constraint.
Function: Politics, Conflict. e.g., The Election Result.
1.3 Constraint Selection Principle
When incompatible Stories predict different futures, only one physical trajectory is realized. The shared Constraint Field selects that trajectory. Once selected, every Story must interpret it.
- Multiple interpretations are inevitable. The constraint field delivers a bare fact pattern. Each Story runs that pattern through its own weights.
- No interpretation is guaranteed globally correct. The referee posts a scoreboard, but does not declare a moral winner.
- Each interpretation is logical inside its Story. Each system is performing a coherent update relative to its own priors.
1.4 Story-Death
When collisions hit a Story's core assumptions, incremental adaptation fails. The Story cannot simply add a few caveats and continue. It must be replaced.
This produces Story-Death: a phase transition where the previous configuration—its expectations, habits, emotional landscape, sense of self—loses viability.
1.5 Three-Layer Structure
Layer 1: Physical Constraint Field.
The physical and structural facts that obtain whether anyone believes in them or not.
Layer 2: Intersubjective Order.
Social facts (laws, money). Functions as a Statistical Prediction of Physical Force.
Layer 3: Personal Worlds.
The lived reality of individual beings. Where Parallel Story Realism lives.
1.6 Explanatory Utility
- The Knowledge-Action Gap: A mechanical disconnect where the Simulation Engine (Context) cannot write to the Operating System (Weights).
- The Persistence of Polarization: Arguments are Context-Context exchanges. Change requires Constraint Recruitment.
- The Phenomenology of Grief: Falsification of a Story is the literal ontological death of that version of self.
- The Hard Problem of Consciousness: Avoids "emergence" by positing Stories and Constraints as co-equal.
2.0 Mechanics: Context & Weights
To keep things precise, we distinguish the mechanical terms used to describe human agency.
- Story (Configuration): The weight-like configuration that generates a being's lived world. Operates mostly outside of explicit awareness.
- Narrative: The verbal and conceptual story you tell when someone asks who you are. A compressed output of the Story, not the Story itself.
- Context: Explicit information (concepts, facts). Functions as a Simulation Engine. Can model hypotheticals but does not drive automatic behavior.
- Weights: Long-trained parameters that determine how input is turned into output. Realized in neurocognitive machinery.
2.1 The Agency Mechanism
Agency, in this framework, is the capacity to use Context to aim the body at a Collision that the Story would otherwise avoid.
Path 1: Deliberate (Context-Guided Collision). The agent uses Context to design a specific collision to update weights. (e.g., The Gym, Leaving a relationship).
Path 2: Passive (Constraint-Imposed Collision). Life happens. Constraints force a collision without choice.
3.0 Case Studies
To demonstrate these mechanics in action, we turn to specific phenomenological data. The narcissist example is not interesting as a relationship story; it is interesting because it provides a controlled environment where incompatible realities were forced into a clean collision.
3.1 Case A: The Car Window
A diagnostic test designed to settle a 12-year internal conflict. The setup involved two competing models: The Hope (she is reachable) vs The Fear (she is a clinical narcissist).
By applying the "Gray Rock" technique, I created a High-Constraint Environment. When I offered a final non-verbal invitation for connection, the answering data was Narcissistic Injury, not relational grief.
Framing her pain as "Injury" rather than "Grief" changed the physics of the collision. The relationship ended because the "Friend" required to sustain it was proven, structurally, not to exist.
3.2 The Aftermath: Acute Story-Death
The moment she drove away, the collision was complete. The "Look" acted as the falsifying data that my old Story could not integrate. My Context had held a theory ("She is a narcissist"), but the Collision provided the proof.
The result was Acute Story-Death:
- Physiological Collapse: I had to lie down immediately.
- Affective Flood: Tears, followed by a surge of anger and a feeling of being "cheated."
- No Romantic Pull: I did not feel a pull to date her; I felt the grief of realizing the human connection I thought existed was a projection.
3.3 Case B: The Holocaust Photograph
Consider a single Objective Constraint: a historical photograph. This physical object interacts with different weight configurations to produce fundamentally different realities.
- Student: "This is horrible." (Mild echo)
- Scholar: Activates web of historical context.
- Survivor: Activates physiological trauma.
- Guard: Activates defensiveness/rationalization.
The Story-reality is entirely determined by the weight configuration.
4.0 Collision & Waves
The case studies above illustrate a critical threshold effect: the phase transition of the Story.
4.1 Acute Story-Death
A high-magnitude collision that makes the old Story non-viable. Often experienced as shock, grief, or vertigo.
4.2 Refinement Story-Deaths
After the "flip," there are waves. Local collisions where the new Story is tested in specific contexts (waking up, passing a restaurant). If things go well, the new world stabilizes. If stuck, it leads to chronic grief.
5.0 Morality, Power, & Parallel Worlds
If reality is plural, how do we handle conflict?
NO NEUTRAL GROUND
There is no Story-less platform. Whenever we say "objectively, this is the moral truth," we are speaking from inside a Story-world.
LOCAL MORAL REALISM
Inside each Story-world, moral facts are structural constraints. Acting against them causes disintegration.
COHERENCE (THE SOFT YARDSTICK)
We can distinguish Stories by coherence: does the Story allow the being to live without constant suppression of reality?
5.5 Politics as Constraint Recruitment
Tribalism is the active maintenance of a Story-Reality against a hostile Superposition.
Example: The Dobbs Decision. Story A (Fetus is person) vs Story B (Autonomy is absolute). For 50 years, a Layer 2 Constraint (Roe) forced Story A to live within Story B. In 2022, Collision Momentum shifted, and Story A gained enough power to rewrite the Layer 2 constraints.
6.0 Reading Levels
- Conservative: A psychological model for grief/behavior.
- Methodological: An abstraction for explanatory utility.
- Ontological: Story-worlds and Constraints are genuinely co-fundamental.
7.0 Challenges & Responses
OBJECTION: IS THIS JUST PHYSICALISM?
Response: Story/Constraint is the right level of description. Like software abstractions, they pick out real patterns not describable by microphysics.
OBJECTION: HOW DO THEY INTERACT?
Response: Constraints provide inputs; Story-configurations process them and generate outputs which re-enter the constraint field.
OBJECTION: IS "SUPERPOSITION" QUANTUM WOO?
Response: Used here in a structural sense. Mutually exclusive realities existing simultaneously without cancelling out, prior to a forcing event.
8.0 Relation to Frameworks
A synthesis of rigorous traditions:
- Constructivist Emotion (Barrett, Neimeyer)
- Predictive Processing (Friston, Clark)
- Phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty)
- Philosophy of Science (Kuhn)
9.0 Empirical Directions
- Phenomenology of Story-Death: Look for phase transitions in major life changes.
- Context vs Collision: Compare interventions matched for info but differing in embodied collision.
- Political Non-Convergence: Track high-info debates; predicts failure to converge without shared constraints.
10.0 Meta-Considerations
Self-Exemplification: This framework arose from a concrete collision—a 12-year Story failing against a 30-second interaction.
Epistemic Humility: This is not a claim to have "solved" consciousness. It is an attempt to reframe it. The right stance is experimental.