Disenthraling Ourselves
The late, Daniel Kahneman wrote “Thinking Fast and Slow” in 2011. In it, he talked about the “narrative fallacy.” What he meant was that sometimes the story we are telling ourselves is so good, so compelling, so right, that it enthralls us and captures others. We are mesmerized. No matter what evidence to the contrary, or evidence that only consists of more narratives about this narrative, we are totally hooked on the story. His example was testing candidates for officer training in the military and using obstacle courses to show who had the right stuff. Even when extensive data proved it did not work, the army still paid him to do it. They were stuck on a story.
When I think of Lincoln’s 1862 civil war message about how to save the nation, by “disenthralling” ourselves, Kahneman comes to mind because he was talking about these kinds of stories. For Lincoln, part of the nation believed that slavery was the indispensable institution, bibilically validated and economically essential to a plantation economy that relied on intense labor at minimum cost. He knew emancipation depended on breaking the spell of that narrative fallacy that was slavery. The nation built on liberty thought the story would suffice.
Today, we don’t have to think too hard to find other examples- like trickle down economics and lowering the taxes on the wealthy. Doesn’t work and has never worked, except for the rich, but the story still grips certain political parties. Or take the neocons who told us after 9-11 that the USA has the military force to make the world safe for democracy- all we have to do is use our power and not waste it. We can create freedom by force. The sorry saga of our foreign policy since 2003 proves otherwise. How can we be still mesmerized by a story that patently does not work? Easily, it seems. It is the trap of the narrative fallacy, stuck on a story.
Take a story that has been part of my work in the Middle East these last 15 years- “the Two State Solution.” It is still fiercely defended, even if one of the States gobbles up the land of the potential other state. Reality be damned, it is the only solution that our imagination can manage. Take that story away and what are we supposed to to? We’d rather keep our fantasy than face our failure.
There is another story underneath all of this, one that might be even more dangerous because it is closer to home. It is the story I have been telling until a few years ago, when I was disenthralled. It it the story we tell about story.
I used to call myself a narrative evangelist. I boldly asserted that ‘if you wanted to change the world, you had to change the story.’ I founded narrative peace programs for the hot spots of the world to stress test the theory. For Ireland/Northern Ireland at least, we got some proof of concept. Stories are indeed powerful. But sometimes they turn on you. You think you are changing them, but they are changing you so that you become part of the problem. Someone needs you to keep on believing that stories can magically save the world so they use your faith as their cover. “See, “ they plead, “someone still believes in us no matter what war crimes we commit.“ What the world rightly condemns, you are still defending, peddling a nonsense piety about dialog and people to people. You refuse to see when your stories have become lies, and you have become complicit. For all your narrative courage, stories are damning the world, because someone far more powerful has stolen your fire.
Stories about stories are still stories. They are all constructed, all made up. They reflect the power of who is telling as much as anything that gets told. Yet, we assert that they are “true” stories, but true to what? True to our faith, our convicton, our career path, our bottom line. What if reality doesn’t agree? What if for all the stories of peace in the Middle East and all the programs including my own that peddled that idea, the Middle East has degenerated into the site of the worst terror in generations?
Our stories, once told as a new vision of tomorrow now leak with irony and add to the cynicism. Peace initiatives are now the preferred cover for more war. Ceasefires only mean less intense killing. Negotiations no longer have to even include the main parties to the negotiation. Stories are now the cover for more war crimes and more terror. The narrative space is so polluted with propoganda that “Truth” has taken a holiday.
What story are we trapped in? The telltale signs are that our narratives have less and less to do with reality and are well on their way to becoming its mirror opposite. As Orwell said, “Peace is the new name for War.” Stories that have to work more by assertion that confirmation is another sign. Believe me because I told you. We solicit proof by telling more success stories, to prove that stories work, but this is our self enclosed loop, the successsion of stories of success that tell the success of stories. As they say, the plural of anecdote is not evidence
The claims that we story practitioners habitually make, be it for international affairs, or to businesses and organizations, about securing peace, or improving bottom line, or turbo charging marketing or team building all come with the fervor of faith healers, spreading the story of the power of our work. The stories work as stories. We demonstrate that we do indeed know the art of telling them, and even the art of selling them. Scepticism doesn’t close the deal. But if we are stuck on stories that don’t work anymore, and we peddle a story about story that is more magic than real, then it might be time for us to take Lincoln’s advice, and disenthrall ourselves.
What narrative fallacy are we still caught in that is making us blind? The story we are telling about story will become just another story, if reality has other plans. At least it felt real when we told it.