Digging out from Narrative Collapse

“The collapse of narrative is as much about a crisis of connection as anything else – we don’t know who or what to believe because we don’t know where we belong.”

In a widely viewed TedX talk back in 2009, Tyler Cowen urged his audience to be suspicious of stories.

Cowen’s advice came in the context of increasing use of storytelling in journalism and reportage in all sorts of fields (not to mention a proliferation of books about how to use storytelling to persuade and convince, in business and politics). Storytelling that Cowen felt could be worryingly manipulative because it moved people by presenting a particular version of reality, while hiding its creators’ biases, perspectives, and assumptions within a particular narrative form.

Image credits: adapted (remixed) from collapse by naql and Zanzibar Doors 3 by Sam Hawley. Under CC BY 2.0 DEED license.

Apparently we have all wised up since 2009. In an article in The Atlantic in 2023, James Parker observed that we now distrust narrative: “So when plot enters…when story starts to happen, we think, Yeah, right.” Parker was referencing an earlier Atlantic article by Megan Garber, who blamed this distrust of narrative on reality TV, which she says erased the distinction between fiction and fact. As viewers, Garber says, reality TV taught us that what seemed to be organic stories playing out naturally between real people were actually carefully orchestrated and edited narratives with the hidden hand of the producer controlling it all behind the scenes.

I work in the field of narrative change and impactful storytelling, and I regularly urge activists and funders to develop narrative strategies and tell better stories. But I think Parker and Garber are onto something important. I do think there is an increasingly widespread suspicion of narrative. I do not think it’s just the fault of reality TV. It’s also the ever-increasing blurring of news and entertainment, say nothing of the proliferation of hype and PR in every aspect of our lives and of our culture. And thanks to social media, we all produce and edit and filter and share photos and videos; we all present a glossy, fictionalized version of ourselves. We all know how the sausage is made. So increasingly, with every story, every narrative we encounter, we expect we are being manipulated in some way or another. And honestly, we’re probably right.

This has left us in a crisis of narrative. Not (just) a contestation between different stories but a contestation and crisis over narrative itself. In his 2013 book Present Shock, Douglas Rushkoff described this as narrative collapse: the loss of linear stories that explain our reality—the disappearance of goals that justify journeys. In their place: a continuous present of fleeting, unconnected incidents. According to Rushkoff this is playing out in fiction and non-fiction alike—he cites The Simpsons as a great example—where the characters never grow, change or develop—things just keep happening to them while they stay the same. In this TikTok video, Brendon Lemon gives a great summary of the idea of narrative collapse and its implications for us right now. And you can hear Rushkoff and Lemon discuss the idea in more depth in this podcast.

Bringing us from 2013, when Rushkoff proposed this idea, into the present, Lemon sees narrative collapse playing out today in all sorts of profoundly destabilizing ways. His prime example is the competing accounts of what happened in the US on January 6, where people have widely varying versions of events, that they unabashedly assert as the truth, even though the actual events are extremely well documented. We also see it right now in the political conspiracy theories surrounding Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce (seemingly ridiculous but since it’s on record that at least Kelce’s celebrity status is the result of a years-long marketing and PR master-plan, it’s only a small step further to believe in the existence of all sorts of other master-plans behind the scenes). Why is this narrative collapse? Because any and every attempt to make sense of a series of events (whether January 6th or a celebrity romance) is seen as suspect. There is no longer a narrative truth, a making-sense-of-things, that we all accept, and see as reasonable and common sense. Common sense—common sense-making—no longer exists.

So what does all of this mean for those of us who work in the world of story and narrative? In the wake of Trump and others of his ilk, we talked of the post-truth era, where facts and information don’t count. We turned to storytelling, to narrative, as an essential way of making things make sense and of moving people. If narrative now no longer counts either, as storytelling expert and author Annette Simmonds posted on LinkedIn when the Parker article came out, “now what?”

Firstly, whether we’re suspicious of narrative or not, stories and storytelling are still a fundamental way we make sense of the world as humans. Like it or not, narrative is still the water we live in and breathe (which is of course why “narrative collapse” is so disorienting and distressing). We can’t not tell stories about the world. Facts still need stories to help them make sense. That we all have a better understanding of how stories and narratives work and how they are constructed—and so can see better into how others are constructing these narratives for us, and thus may be manipulating us—is not altogether a bad thing.

Maybe the problem is that the dominant narrative model in popular culture—linear stories with heroes who go on journeys—is no longer fit for purpose. Maybe the problem is that dominant meta-narratives, which we usually hold in common as cultures or as nations, and which we usually use as an (unconscious) measure against which to judge more fleeting narratives and stories, have come unmoored. Our dominant economic and political models are in crisis, because their internal contradictions can no longer be contained—so it should not be surprising that the narratives that served to justify these models are in crisis too. For too long we have worked to stuff reality into familiar narrative packages, but now reality is bursting out at the seams.

There are no easy solutions to this crisis, but there are two approaches that may help us find our way. Firstly, Megan Garber, while highlighting our contemporary distrust of narrative, recommends we turn to fiction (though presumably not the sort of commoditized fiction that The Simpsons represents and which Rushkoff talks about as exemplifying the problem). She argues that while we may be at the whim of the creators of every kind of story, at least “the terms of fiction, which have been negotiated over centuries, are widely established and commonly understood.” I would go further and recommend we take the advice of my colleague Dr. Mehret Mandefro, who reminds us that we need to turn to the artists to lead the way. The idea of artists as leaders is indeed an idea IRIS is founded on. Now, perhaps more than ever, we need the power of fiction, of imagination. We need the visionaries and the dreamers to excite us, to inspire us, to show us even deeper truths than those we have held onto until now.

Secondly, we need to focus a lot more on human connection. Those of us in the field of narrative change and impactful storytelling have put far too much attention on stories in and of themselves as persuasive tools. As critical as it is to tell stories, stories are not enough. As Jung Hee Choi and Joseph Phelan and Mandy van Deven and Jody Myrum all point out, we need to invest much more in organizing, in building authentic relationships, in fostering community and connection.

There’s more than enough research showing how important human connection is. We believe things and do things, not just because somebody told us the right story. Much more, we believe and do things because the right somebody told us a story.

“The crisis or collapse of narrative is as much about a crisis of connection as anything else – we don’t know who or what to believe, because we don’t know where we belong.”

The thing is, genuine connection cannot be about manipulation or one-directional persuasion. Building connection means that we enter into relationship, where influence potentially flows two or more ways. Building genuine connection means we have responsibility to one another. There has to be an ethic of respect and care. It has to be just as much about listening as about telling. That’s much harder to do, and it’s going to take ALL of us – in every sense of that word.