How the Conflictariat Works: Narratives

"‘Narrative’ is a marketing buzzword, and it still has some leverage because it has only been doing the rounds for a few years. ... It is a response to people’s growing resistance to marketing of all kinds. They are exposed to subtle and clever messages almost all the time they breathe: they don’t trust slogans, they ignore advertisements – but they do listen to stories."
- David Boyle, UK Political Blogger

In communications terms, a narrative is a set of linked ideas that lies behind what a group does, says and believes. It provides an explanation that doesn't need to be repeated to those who already understand it. In other words, a narrative provides an easy subconscious shorthand to govern thought and action. Narratives make us safe.

The visual metaphor that comes to mind is one of a tree or shrub, where each branch is a rule or statement of belief or fact, and each branch ties in to other branches that support or relate to them. Those who understand a narrative can usually follow the branches forward and backward quite intuitively. Most narratives come back to a big root or trunk idea from which the rest naturally emerge. And these root ideas, at their essence, are stories.

In business, marketing and communications has long focused on crafting narratives around companies or products. The pursuit of slogans, unique selling propositions, branding, mission and value statements, image advertising - all are ways of helping refine a narrative. Our institutions need narratives for their employees, for their customers and clients, and for the world at large to understand them in that easy subconscious way we all find so appealing. Institutions with clear narratives attract emotional loyalty from their constituents; institutions without them become defined by the narratives of others.

A narrative always has certain attributes:

• It implies a story. Narratives have an implied beginning, middle and end. They explain where they came from and where they're going.
• It explains other narratives. If a narrative is a story about the world, then it's natural that it include stories about what it sees around it.
• It implies a big idea. Or a series of big ideas which it connects in a coherent way. A narrative without a big idea is just like a story for toddlers.
• It explains the big ideas. If you have a narrative that explains the problem, a back story that articulates the basic situation, then big ideas can slip into the debate and start uniting a constituency of interest round them.
• It works better when vague. We trust narratives in which we fill in the blanks with our own experiences. At the end of the day, we trust our memories and our own experiences more than those of others. In fact, articulating a narrative in definable terms is one of the easiest ways to alienate people.
• It's personal. To be effective, narratives have to be adopted emotionally by their supporters, and to do that, people must find it appealing in some primal way. A cardinal rule of storytelling is to make the audience 'relate' to the characters and events in the story. This is why social media and blogging have become so effective – because there is something real and authentic at the heart of it, a person, a place, a tale to tell.

Here's a summary of what Mother Jones magazine recently published about the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections in America.

"What does the American economy need, according to conservatives? That's easy. Lower taxes. Smaller deficits. Reduced spending. Less uncertainty. It may be nonsense, but it's not an act. They are 100% convinced that this is bedrock truth, and they tell their story with absolute conviction.

And what's the liberal story about what the economy needs? Don't all raise your hands at once. More stimulus? ... A payroll tax holiday? ... Policies to weaken the dollar? ... A direct government jobs program? Work subsidies? Maybe, kind of, and we're not sure.

In other words, liberals don't have a story at all. In the halls of power and the corridors of the media, liberals have nothing but a collective clamor of pet ideas and peevish finger pointing. So even if the economy does improve, there won't be any way for them to persuade the public that their policies were responsible. For starters, they themselves probably won't really believe it."
- Kevin Drum, Mother Jones

The point here is that the conservatives have done an excellent job of conveying the essence of their narrative, so much so that even Mother Jones magazine finds it clear, even if they don't agree with it. Conservatives didn't accomplish this by laying out a distilled platform of bullet points for public consumption (they did, but behind the scenes). They did it by telling stories over and over again that had as those bullet points as their morals.

It's important to note that narratives need not be comprehensive or all-explaining. Some can be very small in scope and ambition. And they need not conflict or complement to enjoy our adherence - we simultaneously hold thousands of narratives in our heads at any moment, flipping from one context to another. Human beings are adept at holding conflicting beliefs simultaneously - our intellect only bothers to integrate them when challenged.

All this in some ways is simply to state the obvious: we form our beliefs, values and actions based on an accumulation of stories to which we personally, emotionally relate. Humans have always employed narratives in the service of making other people change their behavior, and it is natural for us to become so immersed in our own narratives that we react in contradiction to our own stated values - sometimes violently - to those that threaten or conflict with them. People kill and die for their narratives all the time.

Here's what's new: technology and advanced techniques have made it unprecedentedly easier for groups to use our own narratives against us. The goal of those who do this are often banal - often simply the perpetuation of their institution or the pursuit of a mundane outcome - but more and more involves the accumulation of money and power for aims different from those stated. The individuals who do it are often professionals who have adopted the narrative of their institution quite personally - and believe they are acting in good faith. But in stoking the natural conflicts between narratives in pursuit of their narrow goals - without regard for the broader consequences - they are doing harm.