Narratives

In the last post I used the example of fracking in the Bakken shale oil field in support of my view of how optimism can misread cues from reality.  Critics who were informed about the return on investment of oil projects were skeptical of the Bakken's viability and are being proven correct as things stand now.  This may just represent a failed project, companies may just pack up and go back to Texas or where ever, and that will be that.  But I think the eventual and pretty quick failure of the Bakken, and fracking in general, represents a national mood swing in waiting as well, with optimism downshifting to pessimism.

A powerful narrative has been fed to the populous about this fracking project and it, too, will run dry.  This narrative has been pumping credulity from investor's, along with their money, for about a decade now.  It has been telling a story of energy independence, a prosperous economy, and the triumph of technological innovation.  It is a very alluring narrative because it seems to solve so many problems we have, like high gasoline prices and dependence on foreign oil.  In effect, it promised a kind of status quo ante, resetting us to an earlier time when the U.S. had everything it needed within it's own borders and without giving up the lifestyle we're used to.

Everybody has a narrative.  Narratives don't have to be all that cogently spelled out to be effective because they work largely at a subconscious level.  They come from the culmination at any given point of individual or cultural beliefs and knowledge to form an encompassing structure for how the world works.  I don't think I'd be going too far by saying that without them we'd all be insane.  Narratives come and go.  Some are durable and some are not.  Their staying power depends on the quality of the narrative to explain events in the world.  Since it is impossible to know everything, narratives will always be present.  However, when large narratives fail people can be left without a functioning narrative, and that can make them insane. 

Americans aren't there yet.  We have evolved and grown up around very powerful narratives and it's only gradually dawning on people that some of these might need to be changed.  There are countless competing narratives, the politics around the country is a good place to start looking for them, and one or several of these is fixing to become the dominant narrative.  Here, if you replace "narrative" with "version of reality", a whole lot of insight can blossom.  Political fights are often expressions of whose version of reality is right or wrong, or better or worse, and ideology, the philosophical basis of political action, is a means to present a version of reality at it's starting point.

You don't have to look far to see how the national mood has darkened.  There are countless polls pointing to a collapse of trust in our institutions.  Political rhetoric offers plenty of evidence, as well.  Our entertainment has turned more apocalyptic, what with zombie takeovers and sudden, usually unexplained or indeterminate, collapses of civilization where the survival of the characters in the face of incredible odds makes for gripping drama.  This is one expression of the collapse narrative in it's beginning stages.  As a culture perceives it's fortune is at risk, it allows the imagination to express it.  On the flip side of this, other expressions can be found with a different, decidedly positive outcome:  The superhero dispatching the supervillian.  Ironman is probably most representative of the techno-optimistic superhero.  His supergenius concocts superweaponry to augment his super badass physical (though still human) prowess to crush The Threat.  None of this is real, of course, but it still serves to buttress the narrative of technological innovation to solve real world problems.

In the end, Ironman is nothing new.  Just the form and the means are new, reflecting the times we live in.  Throughout the twentieth century Americans have fed their imaginations with these stories, through sci-fi novels, comic books, films, and Halloween costumes.  As a side note, it would make more sense to call "sci-fi" "tech-fi", because technology is really the driver of most of these stories.  They aren't typically about science as such.  This tech-fi has given us the vision of inter-planetary or inter-galactic travel, of colonizing other planets, of incredible devices that seem, and work, like magic.  In general, we went along for the ride because it was fun, and gave us a sense of direction.  Who doesn't think that, when we imagine the future, that we'll have at our disposal all sorts of high tech devices that we only imagine now?  Maybe we'll have toasters that talk, or cars with cloaking devices.  The possibilities are limitless.  Only imaginations are limited if you let them be.  We've been telling ourselves that for a long time.

The quality of a narrative is determined by how well it describes the world people see.  The techno-narrative worked because it effectively described what people saw.  New devices, new capabilities, and new imaginative possibilities popped up all the time.  Now we're realizing that not all that glisters is gold.  Why that is the case is a subject for a later date, but for now, it is enough that the mood is changing.  Building a narrative around this will happen, is happening, but it needs to be built around a solid version of reality.  In the present and near future, this new narrative will be (should be) formed around the reality of physical limits.

Physical limits, for which you can substitute natural limits, serve as the brakes on the techno-imaginative life of the future.  Forming a narrative takes time and good information, but for all that, it also needs a beginning.  Take a simple sentence like "things are not going to work out the way we thought they would" and think about it for a while.  With a slight alteration, "things didn't work out the way we thought they would" could be the first sentence of a novel.  Maybe it is the first sentence of a novel I haven't read.  Make up a scenario that would prove this sentence true.  Apply that to where we are today in the real world as you understand it.  Use your current narratives, which may take time to formulate.  Narratives are ultimately the result of the human imagination drawing all your sense perceptions of reality together to make sense as a whole.  Exercising the imagination is useful for making connections.  At this point in time people need to make connections.

Now, a link below by Ugo Bardi that will augment what I've been talking about.  It describes risks that the nation is taking by challenging Russia over Ukraine based on the false narrative of Bakken oil.

Ugo Bardi