narrative change

I’m reminded of the words of sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” Of course, it was also noted by philosophers Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Such a statement displays the narrative wei

when you aren’t just dismantling the narrative but providing another one, you are creating a new reality for your audience.

Many of us have clear visions of what kind of world we don’t want to live in, but are struggling to imagine the kind of world we would live in - let alone how to build that world. We need new narratives to illuminate what’s broken in our society and hands-on solutions for a more sustainable, equal and resilient world.

owing to the fact that behind the many interconnected problems of the metacrisis there is a deep ideological problem (i.e., a lack of unified narrative), metamodernism can be defined as a new collective value system1 that incorporates, contextualizes and transcends all previous value systems while resolving the conflict between them in an integrate

A value system is fostered through storytelling and negotiation in forums of public discourse.

Throughout the last few decades, our economic system has transformed society into a market, citizens into consumers, and communities into individuals

Stories are thought experiments that cut through contemporary interests and structures to imagine an alternative world. Stories help us understand the current system but also provide the tools to investigate how that world is changing and reveal solutions to work to a different futures.

Humans get vastly more efficient at absorbing narrative inputs, even as they get better at producing it. And as narrative environments increase in sophistication, you do not need to actually be paying direct attention to be influenced by them