Арсен Аветисов – The Power of Narrative Intelligence. Enhancing your mind’s potential. The art of understanding, influencing and acting (страница 4)

The vast majority of stories are told to us by amateurs. But professionals have a greater and more targeted influence on us.

For centuries, directly or indirectly, governments have created and disseminated narratives facilitating continuous monitoring of citizens’ behaviour. The system of narratives is a powerful tool through which institutions are able to predict and guide people’s thinking, decisions, and actions. The process maintains consistency and continuity by featuring different groups of narratives for each age. Step by step, starting with the family, parents, kindergarten, with the established order at school and the curriculum at college or university. Then everything is much easier.

People are taught behavioural patterns that carry various meanings and concepts within themselves: about guilt, about punishment for the slightest deviation from the existing system, about rewards, and even about social behaviour scoring systems.

If following the parents’ narrative gives the child an appropriate reward, then he or she will readily accept it. The adult world has its own universal system for controlling and regulating behaviour – money. Its essence lies in the initially created shortage and limited purchasing power. This imbalance becomes the primary mechanism for the functioning of any survival model that a person chooses.

The system should have a tool to measure a person’s position in relation to the imbalance between their needs and capabilities. This form of measurement, which we can call a social convention, is money.

Money allows you to exchange your work, time, and even life for the satisfaction of your most diverse fantasies. To consolidate this dependence, hundreds of different instruments have been invented – loans, obligations, mortgages. Therefore, people cling to work and endure humiliation and pressure. Money is a universal and unique narrative. It is not a natural resource essential for life, like air, sun, flora and fauna. However, it is considered by people as an indispensable means of survival, for which they can sacrifice air, flora, fauna, and the planet itself.

The narratives that dominate a society do not come from the society, although they may convincingly appear to do so. They always, to one extent or another, represent the views of those in power, whether political parties, banks, corporations, the ruling elite or the armed forces. One can observe any combination of the above-mentioned organisations that, by creating temporary alliances, control the public narratives and shape the societal agenda.

Content meanings in narratives regularly create illusory social beliefs. For example, 'War stimulates scientific and creative potential.' There is no real reason for this, other than the fact that increased funding for the defence industry leads to more inventions and technical breakthroughs. Invest in another industry to that extent, and you will see what you get. What you water and care for grows.

Most people tend to exaggerate the fact that free enterprise and competition create motivation. This is only partially true. If the world is based on competition, then what is the competition based on? Is it really based on the desire to become better? After all, it is obvious that at the same time such a system generates what is characteristic of competition – corruption, crime, conflicts. The price of this motivation is so high that it casts doubt on the very meaning of human existence, especially when this meaning is replaced by corporate and national narratives.

And at the everyday level, several governing narratives may exist in parallel, sometimes directly opposite. We strongly believe that money is such a healthy motivation that we rarely trust people whose only goal is financial gain. Moreover, mistrust of these individuals is not the only negative emotion we experience towards them.

People tend to bring narratives of the past into the present and project them into the future. But what kind of past are we referring to when even today the use of computers and the internet challenges the very nature of employment, and when the internet provides the basis for the development of unprecedented social changes in our interaction with the world? The internet accumulates vast amounts of information, shapes public opinion, and as it happens, narratives no longer have customs barriers, borders, or international agreements.

Some countries are trying, and not without success, to introduce restrictions, but they also understand that a person who is forced to perform monotonous repetitive and meaningless actions degrades. The narratives of the countries that the world focuses on will become unsuitable for the majority in the future due to the technical capabilities they create for the accelerated intervention of alternative narratives.

Narratives are part of our physiology, nature, and culture. Even those who think they make their own decisions if they turn off the TV and shield themselves from cultural indoctrination are still influenced by the narratives of people who watch TV and read blogs.

Maybe tomorrow supercomputers will not start a war, as in The Terminator, but will simply create and spread narratives that will help humanity itself bring civilisation to ruin. Can you imagine what people who are convinced of something are ready to do? It is about them that it is said: 'One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.' And if there are millions of them? Humanity was safer when people sat around a campfire and looked at the stars, telling each other legends and making up myths.

We do not know much about ourselves. People know less about their own behaviour than they do about what is sold in the nearby supermarket. But those who form the system of narratives know us better. Big data technologies make this knowledge incredibly effective. It is clear that a system can be discreetly changed by adjusting the culture and education. People should learn more about themselves and the world, understand how their system of narratives makes the world the way it is, and how it can be changed.

What exactly forces us to make certain 'conscious’ decisions or guides us? Only narratives: what we believe, what we are made up of, and what we choose from. Our behaviour is a choice of the possibilities presented to our brain, what is already recorded in it. It cannot be chosen if something does not already exist. But it can be created.

And even if the state has a monopoly on narratives, and if it shapes the agenda, we still are engaged in an odd relationship with our narratives. We own a small monopoly on narratives.

A Parable Is a Form of Narrative

Special learning space.

Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they

are ideally set up to understand stories. ― Roger Shank

A person always needs a specific space where they can reflect, learn, understand and accept their place in this world and the place that they have yet to find. This is not a home, work, or social media, which has become a part of today’s world. This is where it all started, intelligence and its narratives.

One of the forms of narratives that help us understand the world and our place in it is a parable. A parable is a brief, didactic story presented in an allegorical form. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines a parable as an 'example… that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle.' Parables allow us to give knowledge a live and dynamic image, to imprint it deeply in memory and present it as a complete idea that has meaning. Any parable captivates the listener not only with its plot. The parables are imaginative and concise, they are full of metaphors, they are emotional.

In real life, we often encounter parables that relate to our daily problems. Such parables are widely known and often quoted, for instance, King Solomon’s proverbs. And even today, thousands of years later, they are able to make a strong impression on listeners. The works of art based on them are among those known to many. Other well-known parables are no less meaningful.

For example, the Parable of the Sower:

'Behold, a sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up. Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them. But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold'.

What is this parable about? It is about many things, including the process of becoming a person and the role of conditions and environment in this process. Much of our life really depends on how deep the seeds of knowledge fall into us. And how much we are affected by external factors – birds pecking at grain, weeds that grow near us. If we do not focus, if the knowledge and experience we gain are not taken into account in such a way that they are transformed into competencies, if they are not connected with our values and life principles, they will eventually wither and become worthless. The eighty-nine words of the Parable of the Sower provide a clear and concise SWOT analysis of the possible forms of this process.