Narrative Instinct
The Narrative Instinct, part of Mental Models, is our human instinct to construct narratives to explain our behaviour, society, organisations, companies, brands, etc… The author Yuval Noah Harari, has an excellent, and lengthy, explanation about the Narrative Instinct in his book Sapiens. Gods, nations, money, human rights, laws and justice exist only in our narratives because we all believe they exist. Imagine if no one believed the pound had any value, it would render the currency worthless. It may seem more straightforward to see the narratives of OTHER people, THEIR narratives. Everyone knows their institutions and leaders are based on lies and are not real, but what about our narratives? Our narratives are harder to identify and accept as what they are, entirely of our own making.
Just because they are not “real” doesn’t mean narratives are not powerful, they have allowed humankind to achieve incredible feats together. Narratives fought wars, took us to the moon, will take us to Mars, keep social cohesion and brought us human rights, to name a few. Narratives, as they are lies, are easy to make, but it’s not easy to convince others to believe your narrative. That is the problematic part, create a narrative that will be believed by millions and have a massive impact.
However, narratives are not only for the masses, think of your narratives. Those stories you tell yourself to justify your actions, many times after you have already decided or acted. To avoid, or reduce, Cognitive Dissonance, we create narratives that smooth out the differences between our actions and our beliefs, or the belief of the societies.
Narratives can be used for good and evil, understanding the power of the Narrative Instinct can help you in your personal life, your job, and to achieve things in your community. Identifying your narratives can get you out of bad decisions if you can identify that you are creating a narrative to justify an action you should not be taking. Mindfulness can help in the process of identification of narratives being created.
As an example that links to another of the Mental Models, The Narrative Instinct can be used to lower the Activation Energy of an action.
Obsidian Links
[[mental-models]]
[[activation-energy]]
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