Finding it and Feeling it

Flirting with modernity will have to wait. It’s time to share something less conceptual about this whole ‘we need a new story’ malarkey.

Last Friday afternoon, I spent three hours at the event below at Kairos counter-club in central London.1

It was good to be out of the house, but I wasn’t entirely sure why I was there, and initially felt a bit bored by what felt like generic advice on familiar subjects that I had heard many times before. I showed up partly as a refugee claiming asylum from the enslavement of school pick-ups, and partly because I believe Woody Allen might be close to correct when he says that 80% of success in life can be attributed to “showing up”. Above all, though, I sensed there was something here I needed to learn or experience. While I am sceptical of the “we need a new story” outlook, I figured I should take the chance to hear from a legendary movement builder about narrative.

After all, Marshall Ganz has the shirt.

I found the question of the event: “What narratives are needed?” a bit misplaced, because I think it misrepresents our relationship to narrative. We cannot ask for a new narrative as if it is a request for an exogenous tool that we call for from outside of our context; as if they are hanging up on a rack in a work station, so that when we get lost under the bonnet, trying to fix the engine of modernity we say: The brakes don’t work, can you pass me some narratives about slowing down please?

I develop this point in a prior post called: We don’t need a new story: Why I am weary of calls for narrative change, where the signature line is probably this one:

By all means squeeze another story into the back of the car before you set off on your social change adventure, but you’ll find there’s a narrative traffic jam on the road to anywhere you want to go.

The issue is not just that stories are ubiquitous and entangled with each