The Power of Narrative Intelligence. Enhancing your mind’s potential. The art of understanding, influencing and acting
a choice. Even when there is no choice, there really is one: just NOT to choose. But we choose all the time. Fortunately, our choice is not determined solely by our instincts. It is defined by our narratives. The choice of narrative is the choice of behaviour, and therefore the choice of one’s present and future.
Graduates of an American university, who were on average no more than 25 years old, were asked the question: ‘How do you imagine yourself at 40?’ The vast majority told what they wanted to have when they were 40. A few told who they wanted to be at this age. Which of them do you think will do better?
Intelligence is a rational assessment of the world, a judgement, a concept. Emotional intelligence (EI) is an irrational and subjective assessment of the world. Separately, they are the cause and formal grounds for a person’s actions. Narrative intelligence is the place where rational intelligence and irrational emotional intelligence combine to form a dualistic matter, i.e. human behaviour. It, like many compilations, fits into scenarios that are understandable for the person involved, but sometimes inexplicable in general.
Overall, our effectiveness does not lie in taking tests, doing mental calculations, and staying cool. It is about what we do and how we do it – our behaviour. This is the end product of our brain activity.
Narrative intelligence is a set of such abilities to determine behaviour, create new narratives and use them to solve problems and exercise influence. Narrative intelligence is the ‘assemblage point’ of our behaviour. By and large, a person is a moving collection of all their narratives in space and time. Although this movement itself is also a narrative.
Monopoly on Narratives
How societies create a monopoly on meanings and narratives and how people voluntarily choose them.
People believe what they believe and see what they believe.
In the last century, when films featuring cowboys and Indians were shown in cinemas, there was an increase in injuries caused by arrows shot from DIY bows. A well-made film is an example of a spectacular passive narrative.
A narrative can serve two purposes. Passive – when narratives act as role models to follow. And active – when they influence behaviour through their semantic realisation.
A correctly structured conversation with a parent or spiritual shepherd, after which a person changes his or her life, is an example of an active narrative. We accept any stories in which we find something useful for ourselves, something that we can gain from or avoid. We learn from those who tell us such stories and, in fact, shape our behaviour. But the lesson that can be learned from human history in a broad sense is that humanity does not learn from history. Every hundred years or less it repeats some dramatic episodes of its history. Maybe these are not the right stories… Or maybe not the right lessons…
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