Patterns of narrative

In my first post in this series, I talked about social and semiotic patterns, introducing culture as an assemblage, or more properly, an agencement, a more dynamic word.  I went on to talk about the role of curiosity and the need for diversity of background in any situational assessment. Then, in a third and somewhat emotional post, I argued the importance of actants (not all things that act are human) in cultural identity.  I then paused posts in the series;  it was building to the launch of a new low-cost way to understand patterns, but getting that right took a few weeks longer than expected.  Also,  in anticipation of a long travel period (I am writing this from South Africa and will go to Singapore after two days at home in a week’s time), I grabbed the chance to hike in the Lake District for a few days.  Either way, things are back on track, and I can conclude this series before writing about the new products early next week. 

I could argue that narrative is one of the most fundamental sense-making capabilities. Our landscapes, relationships, interactions, and actions define us; narrative is critical to all of those.   I have several concerns about its use.  One is that you can/should create a narrative; another focuses on one-way communication through ‘storytelling’.   Narrative is far more than that, and a shared body of narrative forms a substrate for identity, ethics, and, yes, communication, but far more than story-telling, as with common stories, you can tap into a substrate of meaning that goes beyond the words you utter.

My mother, who fought her way out of submission to society’s expectations, was pretty unforgiving in this respect.   Although she was an agnostic, she read us the Bible designed to be read as literature when we were young, and indicated that I needed to read the King James version in my first year at secondary school.  Homer was added to that requirement for the very simple reason that understanding European literature without understanding those foundation stories is very difficult.   She added in Celtic Myths and Legends and the Norse Sagas for good measure.  I recently talked about the wine-dark sea, and someone complimented me on the phrase, not realising its origin or the complex.  I threw in rosy-fingered dawn for good measure and got a blank stare in return (it’s Homer if you didn’t realise).  A recent and important book chapter, I titled “Through a glass darkly” which has both literal significance to my writing on foresight but also carries complex levels of meaning arising from the use of the phrase in Corinthians.  If I say that I was like Daniel in the Lion’s Den, there are multiple levels of meaning, and it is a richer phrase than just saying someone was brave.   At one time, everyone knew their Bible stories in Europe (and their equivalent elsewhere).  Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Marvel Universe films provide some of the same function in a new generation.  These stories are being told and retold, their complex meaning discussed and disputed.  Stories gain meaning not as abstract text but by being told with tone, influence and emotion and listening in the same way.  Meaning is an emergent property of many such interactions over time, and it isn’t one-way ‘communication’ a reverse semi-intelligent camera, which we too often assume.

So when I tell a story, I am in a complex and entangled dance with many other similar story threads; it is not a stand-alone process, and it is, to use some technical language, enacted rather than deliberated.  Other than when you use stock phrases, you do not know how a sentence will finish until you complete it.  Your audience’s response will determine what you communicate daily if you understand rhetoric.  Death by PowerPoint is very real, and it’s not just sending the audience into the wrong sort of stupor; it damages the evolution and structure of the broader narrative substrate of which that presentation is a contributing and influenced part.    Physical objects also form a part of this, and it’s the reason the opening picture shows a bunch of yarrow sticks used in the I Ching.  I could have also used tarot cards; they form a part of the scaffolding around which we can stimulate and evolve narratives.   The same applies (to an earlier theme) to encounters with nature.  Narrative work is far more than words alone and far more than the probabilistic techniques of algorithms.

This brings me to a topic that I both love and hate, partly because the perpetrators are, in the main, well-intentioned.   It’s the notion that we can create a new narrative.  Often, a group with a shared cultural background come together and agrees that things should be different.  This process can be rewarding and gain traction from like-minded individuals, but it’s not straightforward.  A ‘narrative’ is not just a pattern but an agencement, a constantly evolving ‘entity’ that may stabilise for periods but destabilise in abrupt phrase shifts with little or no warning. It’s not a static or engineered thing.  It’s influenced as much, if not more, by your actions than your words and the enactment of any meaning by those around you.  This concept of deliberation versus enactment is dynamic, intriguing, and important to ethics, a subject to which I will return later in the week.

The net result of all of this is that you need to understand the current narrative patterns in which you live, the degree to which they have territorialised the domain, the lines of flight which would allow for the possibility of change and, ideally, a mechanism to deterritorialise the domain so that new patterns can emerge.  This applies as much to an organisation and society as a whole, and it will be the subject of my next post.  

The banner picture is cropped from an original by Kier in Sight Archives on Unsplash.  The bunch of 50 yarrow stalks, used for I Ching divination is by Charlie Huang via Wikimedia Commons and used under a   CC BY-SA 4.0