[Reading Log -80] The World is Made of Narrative
Logical thinking alone is not enough to navigate the world
In the modern business scene, logical thinking is an essential skill. However, in today's world, where data is overflowing and unpredictable events occur one after another, it is not uncommon to hit a wall with logic alone.
Angus Fletcher's "The World is Made of Narrative" fuses literary studies and neuroscience, presenting a method to break through those limits by utilizing narrative as the "brain's OS".
Narrative means "story," "telling," or "art of storytelling."
However, it is characterized not just by "stories (events)," but by focusing on the "speaker's perspective," "speaker's emotions," and "interpretation of the story."
The author of this book, Angus Fletcher, is a professor at Ohio State University's Project Narrative and holds a PhD in literature. In addition to teaching Shakespeare at Stanford University, he has published two books on the scientific mechanisms of novels, poetry, film, and theater, as well as numerous peer-reviewed academic papers.
Why is "narrative thinking" a weapon?
We humans have spent a long time developing the ability to organize creative actions into new plans (new plots) in order to respond to crises and opportunities.
That is "Narrative Cognition = Story Thinking".
The "statistics" and "logic" that traditional business education has valued are effective for deriving "what is correct" based on past data, but they lack the power to create "what should be done" in an unprecedented future. This is especially true for answers output by AI.
On the other hand, the human brain is designed to process causal relationships as stories. The simulation ability that stories possess—the "if this, then that"—is a powerful weapon for carving out an uncertain future. The author devotes plenty of pages in this book to examples of this.
The narrative utilization techniques as a business weapon proposed in this book are summarized in the following three pillars.
1. Maximizing Creativity: Hybridizing Processes
What is important in creativity is not the result, but the "process" that leads to it. However, it is essential not only to use narratives that go from cause to effect, but also to employ "reverse-calculation narratives" that work backward from result to cause, and hybridize (combine) them. To do this, you must not only store successful cases but also store failed cases in your brain as a "comprehensive library" so that they can be retrieved at any time.
2. Sharpening Choices: The Courage to Abandon Optimization
To improve the accuracy of decision-making, you are required to remove "variables" as much as possible and keep your thinking simple. Do not aim for perfect optimization. Especially in business, you should make quick decisions with "Good enough (about 70% completion)" and have a long-term narrative that prioritizes the success of the next generation and the generation after that over immediate profits. That is what ultimately produces the strongest choices.
3. Separation of Creation and Selection: Guarding the Threshold
Do not let "selection (criticism)" intervene in the creative process. When you come up with new tools, rules, or roles, do not remake or discard them based on your past experience. You should set a "threshold" between creation and selection to separate them and think in an orderly fashion. After ensuring pure creation, perform selection calmly. By thoroughly following this order, you can create innovation.
The author writes the following at the end of this book.
If you can find a purpose in nurturing the narratives of others, you can turn your egoism in the opposite direction and discover your own immortality in the prosperity of all the contemporaries we meet.
Many parents, teachers, mentors, and friends find daily joy in this. Here is how to activate ethics, which we have excavated from natural history in the previous chapters of this book.
1. Our brains evolved as story thinkers.
2. Story thinking can be further evolved through individual strategies (e.g., changing perspectives) and social narratives (e.g., democracy).
3. Such evolution creates the freedom and pleasure of physical, emotional, and intellectual growth.
4. Our physical, emotional, and intellectual growth can be accelerated by strengthening the story thinking of those around us.
Reference Links
Amazon 'The World is Made of Narratives'Book Introduction Page