There are nods.
“So before your date, is it safe to say you already have a narrative to ‘go by’ to guide your actions and help you accomplish the date?” More nods. I pick someone. “So what did you do on your first date?”
“Dinner and a movie,” he said.
“The always reliable dinner and a movie. So that was a plan, right? And one you didn’t think up on your own?”
They nod.
“You heard that narrative somewhere, right, your friends had done it? We might say that when we ‘go by’ a narrative, we are ‘enacting’ it into being, such that the narrative in our heads, our cognitive framework, comes to fruition and becomes reality as we act it out.”
There are nods.
“By enacting the narrative, it becomes true, right? You actually perform the narrative into existence. It is an accomplishment. Like implementing a plan, we go by the narrative we have in our minds, and in doing so, it becomes reality and we end up going to dinner and a movie on a date.”
More nods. I have them part way to understanding narrative theory.
“So narratives are handy, right? They allow us to navigate social situations such as first dates by enacting some narrative we hold. But what else do narratives do beside help us accomplish interactions like dates, or even job interviews?”
Silence.
“Do you see how the narratives we go by might also control us?”
They know that’s a rhetorical question.
“What I mean is, narratives guide our behaviors, but they also control us, confining us to do things we think are appropriate in a particular situation. We follow social norms about dating. So what happens? Narratives guide us and allow us to accomplish a date, but…?” I raise my eyebrows.
“We never do anything but go to dinner and a movie?” someone ventures.
“Exactly!” I say. “If our narrative defines a date as dinner and a movie, that is what we always do, over and over. Narratives can confine us, even imprison us!” I shout, “to a narrow set of behaviors. And if we keep enacting the same old narratives, we end up trapped in a cycle where we keep doing things the same old way. In fact, the narratives we go by can become so powerful that we can’t imagine doing things any other way. Some narratives are so culturally ingrained and taken for granted that it never even occurs to us that we can do something other than go to dinner and a movie. We are on autopilot.”
I try to walk and move my arms like a vacant-eyed robot. Everyone in the classroom is staring at me. That’s good.
“It gets juicier,” I say. “So narratives guide us, but also control us. Now, on top of that, we may never even realize this predicament because we are often not conscious of the narratives we are going by. You are always, whatever you’re doing, going by something. And that something is guiding you, but it is also controlling you. And most of the time, we are not conscious we are being controlled. When we are mindlessly enacting our narrative of a date, we are not thinking about how it is just a cultural convention, learned through stories, that we are going by. We are thinking—that’s just the way we do things. We don’t critically question the origin or legitimacy of the narrative because we can’t—because we don’t even realize we’re going by it.”
I can see from my students’ faces that wheels are starting to turn in their heads.
“So we can’t question the narratives if we aren’t conscious we are going by them. And we’re being controlled via our own enactment of the narratives that society has indoctrinated us with. We strictly follow the narrative and the social norms they entail, without question, doing and thinking whatever they tell us to do. You are all basically programmed robots.” I pause. “The bottom line is this: you’re all doomed. Now have a good night. Go do whatever society or your TV tells you to do.”
“So that’s it?” someone frets. “We’re leaving it right there? At we’re doomed?”
“We only have two more minutes left,” I say. “We have to leave it at doomed. It’s a cliffhanger.”
There are disapproving looks.
“Okay then, one last question!” I say. “But you all have to start thinking. Where do all these narratives come from? How do we get them?”
Puzzled looks.
“Well, they weren’t always there, right? We had to learn them from somewhere.”
“They come from us?” someone awakens.
“Yes, yes!” I say, “Us! Collectively. Society. We create them! We build them out of past experience and as we make sense of events, or come up with explanations of why things happen, or what should happen, by…?”
“Creating narratives,” someone finishes.
“Yes! Narratives are socially constructed, meaning that we, society, create them. Some narratives become so deeply ingrained and widely shared in our culture that they seem to be permanent and objective fixtures, like immutable laws of the universe about how things work instead of something we made up. But, if we are the ones who created the narratives, that means…?”
“We can change them?”
“Bravo!” I put both arms up. “We can be free!”
There are smiles.
“Plus,” I add, “narratives are changing all the time anyway, even if it is slow. Our social norms about dating are not the same as they were fifty years ago. Yes, there are still a lot of dinners and movies, but some tiny things have changed, like who pays, and who can ask whom out on a date. The good news is, if we created the narratives we go by, that means you can create a new narrative to go by, and attempt to enact it. You don’t have to walk around like a robot doing whatever society has programmed you to do. Just remember, everyone else will be enacting various narratives as well, and you will be pressured to stick to the script. It can be a lot of pressure, and not always for good reasons.”
“Just because that’s the way it’s always been done,” says a student.
“Yes,” I say, “norms. The social pressure to keep reenacting them seems insurmountable. So it won’t be easy to enact a new narrative, but it is a possibility.” I raise a finger for a final instruction. “You don’t have to be controlled. You can be conscious and reflexive instead.”
■ ■ ■
Michael, Walter, and I are the last three customers in the coffee shop. What I underlined for them was the idea that, if we go by narratives all the time, we should create the very narratives that we use to guide our behaviors and actions. We can take processes that we do naturally and unconsciously in everyday life and engage in them very deliberately and consciously on an organizational scale. Why shouldn’t the team create and agree to go by our own narrative in deciding “how things are done” on death penalty cases?
“We’ll play by our rules, not theirs,” I said.
“There won’t be any hugs or trust falls, will there?” Walter asked.
“Not unless you need a hug,” I said. “I know it sounds weird, but if you think about it, enacting a narrative is not so different from pursuing a strategy. However, I believe thinking in narrative terms has a bunch of advantages over traditional vision statements or strategies. The very process of constructing the new narrative will give everyone on the team a shared understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish, along with more details about how to go about it. Plus, they will have a better understanding of their role in enacting the narrative.”
“So it will just be like a goal?” Michael asked.
“Much more powerful,” I said. “Narratives entail goals as well as how to go about achieving them. I think