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Human beings need stories. We need stories for entertainment. We need stories to make sense of the world. We need stories to understand who we are. In other words, we need stories to be human.
Everybody tells stories. The professional writer. The dude on the bus telling tall tales of past fame and glory to random commuters. The mother informing her Facebook friends that her toddler did toddler things. The guy who knows he would have gotten the job were it not for affirmative action. And, of course, the politician telling people what issues they must care about and why only he can fix them. The stories we tell give order to an otherwise random succession of events.
The stories we tell are informed by the narratives populating our universe. They are inspired by what we read (provided we do read), by what we see on the big or small screen, and by what we are being told. What samples from this vast narrative bazaar we consume varies with the things that occupy us. Naturally, these things change over time. The stories we choose tend to become more complex, subtler, and more ambiguous as we mature. They reflect our desire to make sense of a world that is no longer as simple as it used to be.
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The Smurfs lived happy lives in a tightknit, harmonious community. They had simple invariable identities. Even the source of all evil was readily identifiable. Gargamel, an evil human wizard, was completely consumed by one goal: to capture the Smurfs. His exact motives, eating the Smurfs or using them as an ingredient for a potion that can produce gold, remained ambiguous, and didn’t really matter. What mattered was the obvious fact that everything wrong in the Smurf world could eventually be attributed to Gargamel.
The straightforwardness of children’s narratives, such as the Smurfs, reflected and informed the worldview of my young self. People had few characteristics and clear motives. I, myself, was good and always right—the unquestionable hero of my mental story world. People who agreed with me were nice. People who posed obstacles were mean. The attributes of others were classified with similar ease. Boys liked cars and toy guns. Girls liked dolls and pink stuff. Weak kids liked crying, strong kids liked fighting, strange kids were stupid, and fat kids liked to eat. The world was simple and easy explanations were always available.
As I became older my story taste evolved. Nuances and ambiguities became more important. Full-fledged characters became more interesting than types. Simple solutions appeared incredible, and good didn’t always triumph. And even the stories explaining my own life became more complex. For starters, I became much less of a shining hero. Insecurities, doubts, and fears replaced the prior clarity, and my very identity was frequently called into question. And I developed a taste for narratives that reflected these issues.
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The importance of stories, long known to artists, has only recently been recognized by scientists. Narrative psychology examines how the stories we tell ourselves affect human perception, action, and identity. The basic underlying assumption of the field is that people derive meaning from the more or less coherent tales they consume and reproduce. The stories we tell constitute our worldview and shape our personalities. We don’t experience our lives as disjointed sequences of events, but as a meaningful succession of plot segments. When we tell others or ourselves about us we do it mostly in narrative form. And when we experience new events, we fit them neatly into the established pattern of narratives that constitute our worldview.
Acknowledging the importance of narratives sheds light on the worldwide rise of right-wing populism. There is an astonishing degree of similarity in the stories of anti-immigrant groups of Western Europe, the new authoritarians in Eastern Europe, and the white supremacist movement, euphemistically dubbed “alt-right,” in the United States.
Their basic plot goes like this: Once upon a time, there was a simpler, a better life. Everybody looked and thought the same way, and people were happy with the world and their place in it. But then rose the age of insecurity, hardship and wicked things. What brought about such evil were barbarous hordes of immigrants flooding the land, fierce minorities rejecting their designated place in the natural order, and viscous morals and lifestyles destroying the very fabric of society. And so decent folk are, quite understandably, angry and eager to regain their lost paradise, and perhaps punish some of the evildoers along the way.
Local variations of these narratives are not only remarkable similar to each other, they also bear surprising resemblance to children’s narratives such as the Smurfs (minus the innocence and the charm, of course). They praise a harmonious and homogeneous natural state of simplicity and social coherence. They denounce the pluralistic, complex, and critical forces threatening it. Simple, and outright evil motives, are ascribed to everything that is inconsistent with the assumed natural order, and so it must be outright rejected.
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One cannot help but wonder how adults, sometimes with high levels of formal education, can embrace a worldview that—in its simple structure, its one-dimensional characters, and its predictable plot—is so similar to narratives for 5-year-olds. And how can they insist so stubbornly on the truth of explanations that are repeatedly contradicted by empirical facts? Once again, the field of narrative psychology grants interesting hints to answering these questions, especially through its clinical practice.
Therapists seek to improve mental well-being by co-authoring alternatives narratives that improve patient’s outlook on themselves and their past experience. For example, the self-perceived loser may become the resilient fighter against hardship, and the eternal victim becomes a heroic survivor. Stories of hopelessness become stories redemption, and passive observers become active protagonists.
Such clinical interventions demonstrate a rationale behind story selection that most people employ without the assistance of a therapist. Stories are chosen not only to explain experience and to make sense of an indefinitely complicated world, but also to meet our emotional needs and to secure our mental well-being. While most people require that the narratives they employ are, at least to some extent, based on empirical facts, others have less strict requirements.
The racist mass murderer Dylann Roof, for example, expressed a world view that had no foundation in reality, but allowed him to redefine himself—from an inconsequential young man to a race warrior, a heroic avenger against an imaginary black menace. Even white supremacists that have not committed murder frequently make wild statements about the ravaging crime epidemic with mostly white victims, regardless that no such evidence exists. And privileged white citizens experiencing or fearing economic hardship blame their grievances, conveniently and falsely, on reduced opportunities due to immigration.
Such narratives, although not supported by facts, are beneficial for their proponents. They grant superiority without merit, victory without struggle, and authority without competence. But do those white angry Smurfs really believe in their ill-founded worldview?
It is not likely and the visceral anger with which they seek to silence any contradiction clearly hints their awareness of falsehood. It is likely that many, but the most deluded ones, cannot completely ignore the faint voice that calls them out. The discomfort of cognitive dissonance between what feels good and what is true cannot be completely denied.
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That worldviews are constituted by narratives doesn’t mean that just any tale enjoys equal plausibility. Facts matter, and the childish stories of right-wing populists are poorly supported by facts. They can be challenged by better stories: Stories compatible with the truth. Stories for intelligent adults.
Such alternative narratives have the power to discredit limited worldviews, to question oversimplified solutions to real and imaginary problems, to terminate the vilification of innocent victims, and to expose the selfishness and incompetence of leaders. Of course, there will always be a remainder of angry white Smurfs that will, with visceral determination, cling to their “alternative facts.” But constant insistence on narratives that incorporate actual facts will make their self-deception more challenging and nourish the little voice in their minds that states the obvious: They are full of shit!
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Photo credit: Getty Images
