The Siren Call of False Narratives

Sorry for the temporary suspension of duty- this entry marks my return from finals and an end to holiday lethargy. It's good to be back.

I'd like to start off the new year by taking a moment to pause and reflect on one of the most powerful weapons in the media arsenal (and a prime obsession of mine): the notion of narrative. This entry is a bit longer than most, but I hope you'll indulge me because it's a rather important topic- and I hope you'll find it interesting. Please note: this treatment is FAR from exhaustive. Those interested in further reading should consult the work of Berkeley Professor George Lakoff particularly Metaphors We Live By and The Political Mind.

If media perform any principal task, it is the construction of narratives- or basic storytelling. The diversity of facts and details the world has to offer is boundless, but the amount of meaningful narratives is relatively finite. (Think why so many Hollywood films seem to utilize the same plotlines.) Without the framework of some type of narrative, the human mind sputters to extract any meaning from media messages. Without a perceived narrative context, information floats like an indiscernible morass of minutiae. This is so much the case that if message producers do not provide a credible narrative to frame the facts, our brains will instinctively scour our memory for the most salient, ready-made narratives to fill this critical void.

The point is that narratives are what provide meaning in our lives- they organize the chaos of sensory data into convenient frames of time and space so that we may better understand how to orient our lives in an incredibly complex world. In fact, we are conditioned to recognize the traditional catalogue of narratives from a very early age (Walt Disney created an empire on this fact). We learn the hero is inherently good and the villain is evil incarnate; we know the grammar of the hero's quest instinctually and we know how we will feel at any given point in the story whether it's a "rags-to-riches" or "boy meets girl" tale. These emotions are not arbitrary, but are organized to promote specific moral principles passed down from one generation to the next. From Homer's Odyssey to Lucas' Star Wars, we repeatedly encounter these "deep narratives" via media representation. As a result of this diligent indoctrination, most of us come to interpret our own lives through these essential epics- after all, what is our own life if not a story with us as the protagonist.

From a psychological perspective, narratives constitute a valuable cognitive expedient. There is no physical way our brains can digest and compute every single fluttering detail the lived world has to offer- we have to sacrifice a great deal of earthly complexity in order to make informed generalizations based on our "best" judgment. Therefore, we are often less attentive to isolated features than we are to patterns of features. This is to say that our brains think metaphorically because it provides the best economy in cognition. It's the patterns that provide us with the most meaning not the details. Details are important, but only in so far as they help us recognize a pattern. Similarly, facts are important, but only in so far as they help us construct a credible narrative.

The problem is that once we recognize and apply a given pattern/narrative in our thinking, we are more likely to try to apply this same pattern in other circumstances where there may only be a vague resemblance. It's been scientifically proven that narratives are self-reinforcing (in the cognitive sense)- our brains become biased towards seeing these old patterns versus seeing something new or "out of the ordinary". In our cognitive scramble for meaning, we tend to eschew or ignore the critical details that may render our favorite narratives obsolete or erroneous. (This phenomenon is the same for cultural stereotypes.) To put it another way, we tend to see what we are inclined to see. (Was Saddam Hussein really part of the "War on Terror" narrative?) Our deep narratives form the primary lens through which we try to see the world- we compartmentalize the facts into the finite set of frameworks that we can understand. Unfortunately, reality should not be treated as a pliable substance.

As far as media manipulation goes, the problem is threefold. The first is referenced above: our brains have evolved to over-rely on pattern recognition- we instinctually seek to apply a certain narrative whether the actual facts warrant this or not. In other words, narratives enable and encourage a certain degree of cognitive laziness. We love our narratives, and we want to employ them all the time. Rather than parse through the tedious facts and arrive at a truly enlightened picture, we want the "executive summary" so we can understand the gist of an event and quickly move on. Media producers (especially the unscrupulous vendors of partisan media) are highly aware of this and exploit it by framing the facts to fit a narrative that promotes their objectives. They don't so much provide the breadth of clinical facts as much as they sell a prepackaged narrative with a selection of facts couched to fit the framework. (Watch John Stewart nail this.)

This leads into the second vulnerability: narratives are never neutral, especially when it comes to news. Narratives are heavily-laden with rigid value judgments. The hero is always good; the villain is always despised. If you can believably frame the narrative in your favor, the desired effects are almost guaranteed. And finally, the third (and most important) vulnerability we have as media consumers is the instinctive and often unconscious nature of this cognitive process. We do not consciously decide to feel this way or that way about a certain narrative or representation of facts, it happens automatically. We may consciously feel the emotions attached to the narrative, but we have little control over whether they are elicited or not. Therefore, we may think we are making a "rational" political decision based on a certain objective set of facts, but in reality we are being manipulated at the subconcious level.

In sum: news media use narrative device to provide an essential degree of context in the presentation of world events. However, narrative is often used by less scrupulous actors as a mechanism to prey on the psychological vulnerabilities inherent in the cognitive process. We must be vigilant of this practice. Our narratives should only serve as rough guides to aid our understanding- especially when it comes to our domestic and foreign policy choices. They should be held loosely and abandoned readily. Whether you subscribe to the so-called "War on Terror" narrative or not, we should all be wary of those who seek to apply such frames dogmatically to every international event. Clearly, this is evidence of an agenda. The world is much too complex for such facile frameworks however tempting they are. We must resist the siren call of false narratives and strive for a genuine, impartial pursuit of truth.