Patterns of Narrative

Summary

Complexity thinker Dave Snowden on narrative as something enacted, not engineered: “When I tell a story, I am in a complex and entangled dance with many other similar story threads; it is not a stand-alone process, and it is, to use some technical language, enacted rather than deliberated… A ‘narrative’ is not just a pattern but an agencement, a constantly evolving ‘entity’ that may stabilise for periods but destabilise in abrupt phrase shifts with little or no warning. It’s not a static or engineered thing. It’s influenced as much, if not more, by your actions than your words and the enactment of any meaning by those around you… You need to understand the current narrative patterns in which you live, the degree to which they have territorialised the domain, the lines of flight which would allow for the possibility of change and, ideally, a mechanism to deterritorialise the domain so that new patterns can emerge.”

Rationale

His case that narrative is shaped as much by what people do as by what they say fed our conclusion that communications alone don’t tend to change a deep disposition.