Beware of the Stealthy Story-Tellers
(They'll bypass your brain and hijack your heart)
As any student of psychology could tell you, we humans develop our sense of identity through a combination of our lived experience, our predispositions (genetics, temperament), and through our relationships with other people (family, social groups, culture, and so on). But the means through which our identities are shaped, individually and culturally, is primarily through story-telling: both the stories we take in and the stories we tell. In a way, that’s what psychotherapy is—a reframing and reimagining of a personal story.
Stories influence our sense of identity, success and belonging
Whether we’re aware of it or not, there is an ecosystem of stories surrounding us at all times. They are so ubiquitous we often don’t realize they are stories rather than facts, and we tend to believe in them automatically. These commonplace stories are called “master narratives” and have been defined by McLean and Syed as “culturally shared stories that guide thoughts, beliefs, values, and behaviors.” Our sense of identity, success and belonging, as well as our ideas about what it means to live a good life are deeply influenced by these narratives.
An example of a master narrative is the belief we have about the correct progression of life stages: you grow up, go to school, find a rewarding career, marry, buy a house, and pop out two children. The master narrative affects our motivations and expectations. If we fail at following the script, or choose not to, we can expect to be challenged about our choices even when it is clear that the script doesn’t match up with our individual wants and needs. Furthermore, master narratives in a society tend to privilege the experiences and ideas of those who hold the most power. A well-educated, white, well-off person inhabits a different story-world than a person who is poor, working class and belongs to a minority group.
When you try to pin down the source of a master narrative, it’s tricky. Most of us will default to phrases like “that’s the way it is” or “that’s what the experts say,” or “that’s tradition.” The philosopher Michael Foucault believed that master narratives arise from “discourse,” which is to say from all the forms of social conversation, entertainment and history we consume and participate in. Discourse includes TV, movies, media (traditional and social), sports, institutions (schools, hospitals, churches) and advertising. All of these types of discourse are affected by political and financial interests.
Stories often have moral, ethical or political purposes
Master narratives are not neutral. The ideologies and ethics they promote have implications for social order and the ways we structure our societies. At the same time they influence the way we feel about ourselves, individually and collectively. Another commonplace master narrative, for example, would be “charity begins at home.” There is no way to prove or disprove that, it’s a value judgment, but it does affect whether people choose to interact with or ignore the suffering of others outside of their social group.
Master narratives are living, changing things, and every good marketer knows that the direct way to target hearts (and bypass brains) is through story-telling. Better still if the stories tap into existing “favourites.” Advertisers always aim for pain points and identity issues. The current campaign from the Pathways Alliance (Big Oil) is a case in point. They would have you believe that they are champions of the environment and that to reduce oil production is to take food out of the mouths of your friends (and babysitter) and a recipe for economic collapse. They argue that to be against fossil fuels is to be un-Canadian. By tapping into our shared belief that we are a caring society where we look out for one another, they distract us from the harm that they plan to continue doing to the environment and our children’s futures. They have a tremendous amount of money and power at their disposal, so the only hope is that people will see these narratives for what they are: stealthy manipulation aimed at preventing progress on climate change.
“A skilled deceiver is an illusionist”
The French philosopher, Amélie Rorty writes:
Clever deceivers rarely tell outright falsehoods. It’s too risky. The art of deception is closely related to the magician’s craft: it involves knowing how to draw attention to a harmless place, to deflect it away from the action. Deeply entrenched patterns of perceptual, emotional and cognitive dispositions serve as instruments of deception. A skilled deceiver is an illusionist who knows how to manipulate the normal patterns of what is salient to their audience. He places salient markers — something red, something anomalous, something desirable — in the visual field, to draw attention just where he wants it.
That is why developing protected Greenbelt land is being framed as a solution to a housing crisis. The privatization of public health care is framed as “fixing” healthcare, and a refusal to address environmental issues is being framed as necessary for economic prosperity. It’s an age-old misdirection that is easy to pull off on a stressed-out, inattentive, individually-focused populace. We ignore it at our peril.
Master narratives, like social media, are not innately good or bad. They can be a source of social cohesion or social disruption. They can change. The best way to manage a master narrative is to see it for what it is: a coercive force that aims to shape or reshape our identities at both personal and collective levels. Whether the force is pro-planet or pro-profit or both, or neither, is something we need to pay attention to.
Identity is one of our deepest attachments and we, consciously or unconsciously, give it great weight in our decisions. That is why seeing through attempts to manipulate us is so important.
We can shape the master narratives of our social groups and institutions for the better. We can tell better and more evidence-based stories based on science, data and collective wisdom. Or we can stay unconscious and allow those vested in profit-before-planet to fast track us into extinction. We are creative, imaginative creatures capable of space travel, medical miracles and technological wonders, but until we have better awareness of our emotional and psychological vulnerability to story-telling we will be at the mercy of stealthy spin-doctors.
References
Hammack, Phillip L., and Erin E. Toolis. “Putting the Social into Personal Identity: The Master Narrative as Root Metaphor for Psychological and Developmental Science: Commentary on McLean and Syed.” Human Development 58, no. 6 (2015): 350–64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26765124.
Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg. “User-Friendly Self-Deception.” Philosophy 69, no. 268 (1994): 211–28. doi:10.1017/S0031819100046854.
McLean, Kate, Pasupathi, Monisha, and Syed, Moin. “Master Narratives, Ethics, and Morality.” doi:10.31234/osf.io/urja3
News Digest
One Resilient Earth has received a grant from the Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights to provide training and stipends for hosting climate circles. Climate circles are brave spaces of collective care where participants can openly express the emotions they feel in relation to climate activism or sustainability professions among a supportive group of fellow climate workers. Many circle participants have described the experience as 'immensely needed' and 'heart-opening'.
Prior expertise in psychology or mental health is not required to become a climate circle host. It is essentially about presence, empathy, trust, and humility, as well as your own experience with climate change and emotions. The training sessions are open to all and you are welcome to join one or the other.
Training sessions are scheduled on:
Thursday 30 March from 8-10 pm CET/ 2-4pm EST
Tuesday 4 April from 3-5 pm CET/ 9-11 am EST
https://airtable.com/shr9SFeKbyLkDFI1n
Greenpeace takes aim at the Pathways Alliance ad campaign:
The most recent IPCC update:
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Love this Elaine. The content is so reflective of what I’ve been thinking about lately too - the stories we tell, we share, we reject. Challenge everything ;)