The Dangers of a Single Story — Part II
Beware the meta-narrative running the show
It is easy to forget how mysterious and mighty stories are. They do their work in silence, invisibly. They work with all the internal materials of the mind and self. They become part of you while changing you. Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world. — BEN OKRI
Narratives are our compasses giving us a sense of coherence and direction as we navigate our lives. Most often they remain unseen and unexamined. We often overlook the fact that underlying our beliefs, values, thoughts, and actions are threads of narratives and stories that have been passed down in various forms — through parenting, schooling, higher ed, organizations, advertisements, political propaganda, social norms (spoken and unspoken) and religious practices.
These narratives build for us a lucid web of understanding which then act as our guide in decoding the world and its messages. They literally codify the world for us. They control our choices, define our sense of justice, and help us to distinguish right from wrong. They shape us and form us right from our infancy beginning with the seemingly innocuous bedtime stories. The stories we tell ourselves have immense power but this is often forgotten because they are invisible, pervasive, and appear in myriad forms — often in an outwardly harmless manner. Unquestioning and uncritical acceptance gradually propel us towards creating a world far-removed from our vision of a “world that works for all.”
Remember women who revered and communed with nature were burnt at the stake in Europe because the dominant narrative needed to establish nature as something out there to be exploited. Women were burnt at their husband’s pyres in India to keep them from inheriting what would otherwise have been rightfully theirs. The Atlantic slave trade flourished for centuries because the colour of the skin was deemed to be a suitable marker of one’s humanity or lack thereof. Global South countries like India — rich in natural resources with a civilization going back to thousands of years — have been invaded apparently to bring progress and development to the unenlightened. However, my point is not only about India. It is to highlight how the underlying narrative often deludes us into saying, doing, and creating a world that we didn’t really sign up for.
By de-legitimizing, marginalizing, and suppressing those stories that contradict the dominant narrative — frequently meting out punitive punishment to the bearers of the alternate narratives — the powers-that-be learn to control society, shape politics, and form an economic order that continue to serve the dominant narrative. Think tanks and academic research grants are cases in point. Thus, a network of insidious nexus is formed that uphold the status quo under the guise of growth, development, and good governance.
Those that hold the threads of power are supremely aware of this. No wonder then that billionaires rush to buy up media platforms. Twitter is just a recent case in point. Media barons are in cahoots with the ruling powers to maintain the dominant narrative through dissembling, disinformation, and misinformation. Technology has vested us with tremendous capacity to create, disseminate, and regulate information. In the hands of those who seek to maintain and sway the status quo, media becomes a potent and dangerous tool. Not only does media control the narratives, they control the minds of people. Genuine capacities of sensemaking are distorted and actively discouraged through a deluge of disinformation and misinformation. This is further intensified by the use of exponential technology. Algorithms suppress opposing and contradictory narratives and voices of reason while repetitively promoting toxicity to further aid and abet polarization.
It seems sensible to ask, “Why would anyone want to polarize and fragment society when it is evident that we are indelibly interconnected with each other and all of Life?” The underlying narrative holds the key. Today, we have a meta-narrative in the form of a monomyth which is a hegemonic one of European origin, imposed on the rest of the planet as an imperial and colonial project. This monomyth is an essentially economic one — disregarding all else that makes life worth living. The mantra is “profit, power, privilege”.
Nesting within and under this meta-narrative are the entire political-industrial-social complex with decrees like “winner takes all,” “competitive strategy,” “culture wars,” “austerity,” “deregulation,” “free trade,” and such. The entire narrative supports the accumulation of capital, destruction of real wealth to create phantom wealth, and manufacturing of enormous inequality. This extractive, exploitative, and exclusive economy has been running unhindered for centuries because the narrative has been insidiously inserted into every facet of life.
This narrative — to remain in power — must have a segment of society to brutalize and exploit. It needs the vulnerable to feed its extractive policies in the form of cheap labour. It is constantly scouring the planet for ever-decreasing resources seeking to feed the machines of capitalism. Its exponential technology are all put in the service of profit for a few at the cost of Life. Getting out of the clutches of this narrative require us to hone our peripheral vision, see through the illusions being created, and sharpen our sensemaking capabilities.
Today’s world of exponential technology and an interconnected, global civilization make the scale of this impact terrifying. Creating misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and online trolling have become a business model shaping a chillingly polarized, fragmented, and splintered world. An atomized and individualized model of humanity upheld by the current narrative further intensify the effect of this fractured world. Deliberately severed from each other, adrift in a hostile society, lacking community support and a sense of connection, constantly provoked to hate and anger, it is easy to fall prey to the dominant narrative where “the enemy is someone/anyone different from us,” “profit trumps everything,” and “winner takes it all.”
Paul Joseph Goebbel, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, then Reich Minister of Propaganda and one of Adolf Hitler’s closest and most devoted acolytes, memorably said:
“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be moulded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”
Hence, beware of narratives. Look for the meta-narrative to which the daily narratives are hitched.
Maintaining the narrative is a multi-pronged approach invading all aspects of society. We are unknowingly becoming prey to the manipulations of a few exacerbated by technology. An overarching reductionist approach prevents us from sensing the underlying deeper connections in the seemingly disparate symptoms. How are toxic masculinity connected to rampant felling of rainforests and othering of refugees? How are austerity connected to the growing number of billionaires? How are gig economy, worker insecurity, and rising depression connected? Why did technology — meant to increase leisure and efficiency — become tools for surveillance? What fundamental meta-narrative is driving this show?
It is almost impossible to escape this toxic web without falling off the radar of society, economy, and all else that make daily life possible. Schools are created to churn out future workers. Ivy league institutes reify and reiterate the founding principles producing future leaders — powerful, privileged, entitled. Corporations — supported by free trade regulations — scour the globe for the most vulnerable to exploit.
For example, toxic masculinity — another aspect of this “might is right” and “game of power” narrative has taken the form of vicious misogyny ably supported by algorithms and AI. Technology that could have and should have enhanced global collective intelligence about our indelible interconnectedness and inter-relatedness, have been used spuriously, remorselessly, and cavalierly to further intensify the brokenness.
The underlying narrative has taken on frightening powers ramifying into and infiltrating every aspect of life because of the uber tech supporting it. This narrative monster has been infused with a Frankenstein-like life of its own succeeding beyond the dreams of the original perpetrators. Trying to dismantle the varied signs and symptoms that arise from this narrative is a bit like chopping off the heads of a hydra. It will simply spring a few more in different places. It is time to collectively reimagine and co-create narrative(s) that render the current one obsolete.
“A compelling narrative fosters an illusion of inevitability.” ― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow
Exponential technology is catalysing the world towards catastrophe in a manner previously never experienced. The only way to counter this rampaging monster is to re-imagine and co-create counter narratives. Reimagining very different narratives require us to look to the edges. The stories, epistemologies and ontologies rejected by the dominant narrative are to be found in the margins. They have always existed and continue to exist. The movements dotting the globe for the past few years are also the imaginal cells of the new narratives.
Fortunately for the planet and all sentient life, growing pockets of resistance spanning the globe in the form of myriad movements are thwarting the plans of the powerful. These movements are emanating from all corners of the globe from Iran to India, from Myanmar to the USA. They may differ in their explicit causes but the underlying, implicit narratives echo the foundational values of humanity, equality, and respect and dignity for all of life. They are serving as puncture points in the façade of the current narrative — revealing the underlying brokenness and deceits for all to see. The homogeneous narrative is being replaced by myriad, pluriversal stories arising from the unheard, unacknowledged, delegitimized corners of the planet to reclaim and reimagine the civilizational narrative.
The future of our present global civilization lies in the hands of sense-makers and storytellers. Our capacities for collective intelligence and sensemaking need to be honed and finely tuned to enable us to sift the truth. That will be the biggest challenge and hope for the future of our planet. The narratives arising from the collective consciousness of a global civilization will better encapsulate the potential and possibilities of a new civilizational order — a world that works for all.
One of the pitfalls to avoid is to imagine a planetary-level order from the perspective of only humans. It is essential to understand that humans are merely another form of life — yes, evolved with a larger prefrontal cortex and great capacities for abstraction and conceptualization; however, that do not in any way make us sole arbiters of our planetary future. We have tried that path and have seen the disasters that have been wrought. It is time to listen to the birds and the bees, the bears and the whales, the trees and the ferns.
Enough about Human Rights! What about Whale Rights?
What about Snail Rights? What about Seal Rights?
What about Eel Rights? What about Coon Rights?
What about Loon Rights? What about Wolf Rights?
What about, what about, What about, what about Bug Rights?
What about Slug Rights? What about Bass Rights?
What about Ass Rights? What about Worm Rights?
What about Germ Rights? What about Plant Rights?
‘Enough about Human Rights’, from the album H’art Songs by Moondog, 1978
In the next part, I explore the capabilities required for us to reimagine our collective civilizational narrative through the lenses of pluriversality and global south epistemologies.
*I have used ‘narratives’ and ‘stories’ interchangeably here though there are distinctions in their dictionary meanings. One of the meanings of narrative is a particular way of explaining or understanding events as stated in the Cambridge Dictionary. I have used the word in this context here.
