Why Story

1.1 The Narrative Animal

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.

— Zora Neale Hurston

Story has been central to the human experience for as long as we have been human. Evolutionary biologists increasingly believe that our capacity for narrative is what helped to make us human. As Lisa Cron writes in Wired for Story, "Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to." There is growing consensus in the scientific community that the neurological roots of both storytelling and our enjoyment of stories is tied to our social cognition and the way individuals connect to form groups. It is this expanded capacity for narrative that makes humans truly unique in the animal kingdom.

Humans are hardwired for narrative. Brain researchers have discovered that hearing a powerful story about an experience will stimulate the same neurological region as having the actual experience. A 2006 study found that when participants read words with strong smell associations like "coffee" and "perfume" their olfactory cortexes light up as if they were experiencing the real scents. When a story carries us into another world (what narrative theorists call "transportation") that experience is literally real at the level of our brain chemistry.

Narrative is so deeply embedded that often we see it even when it's not actually there. In one foundational 1944 experiment, psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel showed subjects an animation of a pair of triangles and a circle moving around a square, and asked what was happening. Overwhelmingly, the subjects did not describe the literal events of shapes moving around on the screen, but instead their responses revealed how they mapped a narrative onto the shapes in order to tell a story about what they observed. People would describe the film as the social interactions of three human-like characters who possess personalities, emotions, and intentions. The big circle was a "bully" who was "chasing" the triangles, the square was a "house," the events were a "fight." Numerous subsequent studies have reiterated how humans, as social creatures, project stories and narrative qualities onto almost everything we perceive.

We remember our lived experiences by converting them to stories and integrating them into our personal and collective web of narrative.

Humans are the narrative animal constructing our social reality through our ability to create, interpret, and contest the stories around us. We remember our lived experiences by converting them to stories and integrating them into our personal and collective web of narrative. We think, dream, imagine, and believe through the filter of narrative.

This is what led narrative theorist Walter Fischer to suggest that rather than scientifically classify ourselves as Homo sapiens, which roughly means "knowing person," we should consider our species Homo narrans, "storytelling person." In fact, these two concepts — knowing and storytelling — have always been deeply linked in the human experience. The word narrative itself derives from the Proto-Indo-European root gno-meaning "to know" because to know something is to know the story about it.

1.2 Hacking at the Roots

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.

— folk poem, 17th-century England, author unknown

In July 1846 the philosopher and author Henry David Thoreau was confronted with a choice: either pay his taxes to support America's expansionist war against Mexico or go to jail. He took a stand of conscience — against imperialism abroad and slavery at home — and chose imprisonment. His single night in jail inspired his essay "Resistance to Civil Government" advocating for civil disobedience in the face of unjust government. His writing would inform Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and generations of people of conscience.

Thoreau famously lamented that most activists spend their efforts fighting the symptoms of contemporary problems rather than confronting the roots. Concerned that his abolitionist and antiwar values weren't reflected in the political discourse of his time, he wrote: "There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

Thoreau's metaphor of branches versus roots continues to frame a common question: Why isn't there more outrage about the causes of injustice? Why isn't more energy going into confronting the roots of our problems rather than just the symptoms?

One answer is that the types of injustice Thoreau decried are often invisible, even as they are hidden in plain sight. These are structural evils that have been consciously made invisible within the day-to-day workings of institutions, concealed by oppressive cultural norms, or the intentionally limited terms of political debate. Taken in total as a "system" the institutional relationships of power that constitute modern society are often opaque. They become hidden by the dominant stories of the culture that justify the status quo of power relations and define "normal." These stories become so routine that most people in positions of privilege (for whom the system is working) don't think to question them. In this way unquestioned mythologies (as we'll discuss in Chapter II, mythologies are the most powerful form of narrative) emerge to bolster historic power structures while concealing the roots of systemic problems.

For social change practitioners to hack at the root, we must build the capacity to identify, analyze, and intervene not only in the institutional power structures, but also in the stories that are preventing the changes we know are needed. Through agitation, successful social movements change more than policy — we reimagine the story of what is possible in our society. Particularly now, for those of us who feel both the urgency and the opportunity of this unique historic moment, this book argues that our movements must prioritize narrative as a lens to shape our strategies. This is the arena of story-based strategy.

1.3 The Era of Outdated Stories

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

— William Faulkner

Five centuries of European colonial expansion and organized white supremacy have wiped out countless cultures, devastated ecosystems, and left us with a legacy of racism, economic disparity, militarism, and global inequity. Over 200 years of resource extraction, industrialization, and fossil fuel–driven economic growth have pushed our planet's life-support systems to their breaking point.

Over time, the greed, racism, and violence of this history has become hardwired into many of the institutions and operating assumptions that define the global system: from government policies, to the influence of multinational corporations, to international financial and trade regimes, to the collective sense of what is politically possible. Underlying these overlapping systems is the logic of the past: rationalizing, justifying, normalizing. The mythologies of the conquistador, the slave master, and the Indian-killing "pioneer" live on in the economist who sees looted ecosystems merely as entries on a corporate balance sheet; the politician who exploits fear and racism to build their own power; or the corporate CEO who maximizes profits by paying his workers poverty wages.

When we look at our current world of intersecting social and ecological crisis through this lens, we can see we are living in an era of outdated stories. This is a time when many of our dominant political and economic institutions are shaped by destructive stories rooted in the violence and exploitation that has accumulated over hundreds of years. These stories were never true but through concentrated power they were normalized and many people were forced to accept them, but now their grip on common sense is loosening.

Giant oil, coal, and gas corporations (and their allies in governments) are still telling us we need every last bit of fossil fuel, even if it means blowing up mountaintops, poisoning our kids, and destabilizing our climate. That's an outdated story.

Giant corporations like McDonald's and Walmart claim, despite profits that dwarf the GDP of many nations, they can't afford to pay their workers a living wage. That's an outdated story.

Politicians repeat old racist lies: that people murdered by the police deserved it and that Black people leading the fight for freedom, dignity, and racial justice are thugs. That's an outdated story.

And, of course, the onslaught of pervasive and ever more personalized advertising tells us that happiness and progress means consume more, more, more, regardless of the price tag to people and planet. That's an outdated story.

Powerful, ruthless interests push these outdated stories, but that doesn't mean that they are unchangeable. In fact, with their obvious hypocrisy and contradictions they often can't withstand the power of public scrutiny. The story-based strategy approach helps us see them as critical vulnerabilities (what we will later call points of intervention) in our current unjust system.

As the grip of outdated stories on mass consciousness weakens, space for new stories opens. The historic narratives are being challenged every day by the transformative organizing that is happening in communities around the world. These outdated stories are challenged by an inspiring new generation of civil rights leaders emerging from the Movement for Black Lives. They are challenged by workers organizing for a living wage, the right to form a union, and countless other efforts to make workplaces safe, dignified, and just. They are challenged by actions around the world to keep fossil fuels in the ground and redirect investments toward clean, renewable, decentralized energy solutions.

More and more people are helping our global society outgrow these stories that have been used to limit human freedom and justify the destruction of the planet. Resistance to these toxic stories of the past is sparking new alliances, and new movements are charting paths toward alternative possibilities and better futures. By drawing attention to how power operates through narrative and offering some basic approaches to contest for power in the narrative realm, this book aspires to support momentum toward a brighter future.

1.4 Movement as Narrative

A social movement tells a new "story."

— Marshall Ganz

It is easy to see the results of social change once organized constituencies have forced changes to the existing power structures: striking workers win a pay increase, a corrupt politician gets voted out of office, a community mobilization shifts police department policy. The process of winning those victories is, however, often less visible.

Social change efforts happen in many different arenas, but regardless of the type of initiative, there is a shared arena of struggle that unites them all: the fight for public understanding. This often invisible arena of struggle encompasses the intangible realm of stories, ideas, and assumptions that frame and define the situations, relationships, or institutions we are working to change.

There are lots of tools for measuring public opinion that can be important resources for any campaign. But story-based strategists don't just respond to public opinion, they shape it. To succeed, we must develop strategies to reframe the debate and then commit to the time and resources needed to change the story and win public support for social change efforts.

For instance, look at the shift in U.S. public opinion on LGBTQ rights, and particularly on the issue of marriage equality. Decades of organizing, pushing back against violent homophobia, and campaigning across political, economic, and cultural arenas eventually led to ongoing changes in attitudes. Along the way reactionary forces responded by amending state constitutions in 30 U.S states to explicitly deny the rights of same-sex couples. This realm of the courts, and particularly constitutional law, backed by the full authority of the state, is an entrenched, seemingly immutable form of power.

While the movement continued various legal strategies, the larger fight was already far progressed in many different arenas as a broader, multi-faceted force. High-profile campaigns challenged the U.S. military's homophobic "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and turned hate crimes and bullying into national issues. Continuing a decades-long trend of growing visibility, more and more people came out publically as LGBTQ, including celebrities, professional athletes, and prominent business people. Meanwhile LGBTQ characters, rights, and the issue of marriage equality itself became more visible themes in popular songs, movies, and television.

This 1958 comic book produced by the Fellowship of Reconciliation told the story of the Montgomery bus boycott in an accessible format and encouraged its readers to join the movement for racial equality. It continues to be reprinted (most recently by WagingNonviolence.org) and has been translated into multiple languages.

Finally, in June 2015 the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have a right to marry, thereby overruling all the various state and federal laws that legalized discrimination. Although this aspect of the victory was achieved in the judicial arena, it would be a serious mistake to believe that it was only smart lawyers that won these changes. As Evan Wolfson, longtime leader in the fight for marriage equality and founder of Freedom to Marry, put it: "We persuaded the country and the courts followed."

Movements have won public support with powerful stories like Rosa Parks' refusal to change seats, the AIDS quilt carpeting the National Mall in Washington, or courageous undocumented youth dressed in college caps and gowns marching to demand immigration reform.

The LGBTQ movement and the marriage equality fight showed what countless social movements have demonstrated: making progress in shifting the narrative drives structural change in other arenas as well. When culture moves, power moves. When the story changes, new possibilities emerge.

Historically, the power of stories and storytelling has always been at the center of social change efforts. Movements have won public support with powerful stories like Rosa Parks' refusal to change seats, the AIDS quilt carpeting the National Mall in Washington, or courageous undocumented youth dressed in college caps and gowns marching to demand immigration reform. A single widely viewed image can carry a new story and shift the emotional landscape of an issue, leading to dramatic changes in public opinion and policy: an image of a Syrian refugee child traumatized by war; a polar bear stranded in a sea of melting ice; people from all walks of life holding up their hands to draw attention to police shootings of unarmed Black people.

But alongside these large, public narratives that inspire mass support, story also is at the heart of the day-to-day, person-to-person work of making social change. Organizers and movement builders rely on storytelling to build relationships, unite constituencies, and mobilize people. As people come together and share their stories, they identify common problems and create a narrative of how things could be better. These stories motivate actions, and the stories of those actions are retold to inspire, hone strategy, and recruit people to take even more actions. Eventually, as the story spreads and more people see their own experiences and aspirations reflected within it, the movement grows.

Shared narrative is a defining feature of a social movement — connecting people across space and time in a shared sense of identity and purpose. This common understanding helps participants feel the power of a whole that is greater than the sum of all its diverse, individual parts.

But building the collective power to make changes in society takes more than just telling good stories. The other side of the equation is that movements have to change the existing stories that are limiting the popular imagination of what's possible (what we will discuss in Section 2.7 as the idea of "hegemony"). The story-based strategy approach is an invitation to view social change work through the lens of storytelling and understand how power is tied up in narrative.