Dominant narratives

There is a flow and pattern to narrative that can entrance and entrap at the same time. You know the way it works a story is told and it stimulates interest. As a result more stories are told, a theme emerges and strengthens, characters become stereotypes and thereafter the die is cast. Only a catastrophic change of context can break the inter weaving patterns of the story which has now become a script. Scripts are a perverse form of myth, then set a template within to which facts are set in whole or in part. We pay attention to facts, or aspects of facts that support the script dismissing (probably subconsciously) anything which contradicts the current into which reality has been swept.

I was reminded of this when Brian Sherwood Jones sent me this press clipping whose title Brown Doomed tells it all. I will let the article speak for itself as it makes the point better than I can. Now whether the current British Prime Minister will survive or not, wether he deserves to is a different matter. My point in quoting it is to illustrate the wider point in which a connected world can make this tendency for a simple story to become a weak myth and then morph into a script from which there can be no escape.

Its worth remembering that narrative and connectivity can create many wonderful things, but are still tools or capabilities and can be used for good or ill.