narrative collapse

Layers of organization in our communities include those that look: (a) outward from the boundary of individual families including matters of social hierarchy i.e. politics, (b) inward from the boundary of culture including sports and religion, and (c) outward from the boundary of culture including the guidelines for many professions. In this context two effects on narrative, that reduce its effectiveness, may be expected to occur especially when resources are scare.

One of these effects is that narrative on levels (b) and (c) may be trivialized to level (a) thinking, i.e. politicized. This for example happens with different groups when the topics of inequality and climate-change come up, with the result that the structural problem and consequences underlying these things end up being ignored.

The second effect, that works hand in glove with the first, is our tendency to think of causes as organismic, i.e. to explain problems in terms of bad guys and good guys, rather than in terms of natural processes in a world which will always be sending us new challenges. As a result, we have a tendency to react to real effects in the world around by focusing on a personality soap opera that has little to do with the problem itself.

How can we fix that?