Summary
Substrate, as complexity thinker Dave Snowden uses the word, is the stock of stories a culture holds in common, which lets people mean more than they say. In ‘Patterns of narrative’ (2024) he writes that “a shared body of narrative forms a substrate for identity, ethics, and, yes, communication”. His example: say someone was like Daniel in the lions’ den, and listeners who know the Bible story hear far more than ‘brave’.
For Snowden this substrate can’t be written to order. It forms as stories are told, retold and argued over. Harry Potter and Marvel, he suggests, now do some of the work the Bible once did.
Rationale
Snowden’s substrate is one account of the ground in Part 1’s “Stories don’t arrive on neutral ground”. His is made of stories, though, and ours is “more like an orientation than a story”.