Narrative Rules Everything Around Me

Historian Niall Ferguson often says that that the key to understanding history is to have a sense of what didn’t happen. The idea has a name: Counterfactual History. What if Robert E. Lee had won the battle of Gettysburg? What if the allies had failed to secure a beachhead on D-Day? What if the assassination of JFK had failed? By working through the “counterfactual” scenario, it helps historians gain a better understanding of what did happen.

The practice of Counterfactual History challenges the very human tendency to participate in the mortal sin of Predeterminism — It’s the assumption that the outcomes throughout history were inevitable. As humans, we do this a lot. We can’t help it.

On several occasions, the American colonies came unnervingly close to losing the Revolutionary War. There are dozens of stories throughout the Cold War that detail close calls with nuclear annihilation as a result of malfunctioning early-warning systems. Fidel Castro survived 634 assassination attempts during his time as Cuba’s dictator.

It’s a grave mistake to assume that the outcome of any major moment from the past was inevitable. But, the greater sin is the attempt to forecast the future through that same lens of “Predeterminism”.

Future Outcomes Seem Predetermined

Today, the unrelenting pace of progress can make certain outcomes seem inevitable. If you spend more than five minutes on Facebook or Twitter, you’ll find yourself subjected to an onslaught of posts, articles, and “thought pieces” about the monumental technological shifts coming in the near future: AI, AGI, crypto, geopolitical instability, climate change, population collapse, the seed oil armageddon...

And what do all of these things have in common?

1. Each of them makes the future they describe appear inevitable

2. They’re all narratives

A “narrative” goes by many names: Advertising, propaganda, publicity, spin, dis/mis/mal-information. At its core, a narrative is nothing more than a compelling story. Narratives help us understand the world around us, often by sacrificing many of the truth-obfuscating details in favor of a simple argument that points to a particular outcome.

Why Narratives Are Important

What makes these stories so important? Narratives influence outcomes, not the other way around. Each one of us has a perception of the world that influences how we act within it. That perception is impacted by stories:

• Your neighbor’s story of a nearby break-in might prompt you to install a new home security system and grow distrustful of vehicles you don’t recognize.

• The Bloomberg headline about continued inflation may prompt you to cut back on your “discretionary” spending.

• The viral video of a climate protest may lead you to believe that the world is in a perpetual state of chaos and division.

• The memes about AI may lead you to reconsider asking for that raise in hopes of insulating yourself from any future layoffs.

Narrative Rules Everything Around Me

Each of us lives in a persistent state of narrative. The only common thread is the fact that these narratives compete with each other for your attention.

The stories we tell about ourselves.

The stories we tell about the world around us.

The stories we hear about the world around us.

Political campaign slogans, corporate jingles, Tide commercials, IG story ads, memes… each of these is its own narrative.

The Theory of Narrative

So why does any of this matter?

Our monkey-brained relationship with stories and our resulting perception of reality is not going to change. But the world around us is in a perpetual state of evolution. And, there’s a single unifying theme that will define our perception of reality in the coming decades:

The Fight Against Predeterminism

Just as the events of history were never predetermined, the future has yet to be written. The job of a well-crafted narrative is to convince you that its version of the future is inevitable.

• For years, Russia’s Ministry of Defense has been manufacturing propaganda in an attempt to convince the world that their victory over Ukraine is inevitable.

• Memes from FinTwit accounts of questionable authority perpetuate a narrative that the global financial markets remain one negative headline away from total collapse.

• This newsletter is, itself, a piece of propaganda created for the purpose of promoting its author’s half-baked ideas to an audience of dozens of indifferent readers.

Those narratives (including my own) are, at best, incomplete and mired in self-interest.

Why This Matters

The only way to maintain a sense of agency is to learn to identify narratives and recognize their impact on our own lives. The better our understanding of how narratives influence our behavior, the better our ability to navigate this brave new world.

That’s the purpose of this newsletter.

My goal is to share many of the countless examples of how the abstract notion of “narrative” has shaped our past and how it continues to influence the present.

Where Does This Leave Us?

This leaves us with the opportunity—the responsibility—to make a decision. As the world becomes more complex, these narratives—these stories—become more impactful.

So, if stories run the world, we must each decide to become storytellers, ourselves.

I’m here to show you how.

— Nick