Storytelling

          My partner has drawn me into a televised drama, streaming now on a screen near you (no subscription required): the hatching of three osprey eggs in a nest somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. At first, I was merely curious, then I became fascinated, caught by the obvious difference between ospreys – who have but one purpose in life, procreation – and people, who strive not just for existence, but for dominance over everything and everybody. Despite our bigger brains, we have taken a path that has led us, via war, cruelty, subjugation and greed, into an environmental disaster that threatens our future existence. How did we get here?

          Plato contended that storytellers rule the world, by which it is inferred that if you can persuade people to accept your story, they will allow you to take control. Simple stories are easier to follow, so charlatans soon learned to reduce theirs to mere slogans, obscuring nuance, so as to convince those who are either unable or disinclined to see through their sophistry. In our times, President Bush’s story was “war on terror”, whereby vengeance took precedence over reconciliation; Trump’s was “let’s make America great again”, in which the US, the generous leader of the free world, gets wise to being leeched and fleeced by all other nations; and Johnson, with his “get Brexit done” campaign, enabled an opportunistic narcissist to pass himself off as the decisive leader who will save Britain, the exceptional mother of parliaments and champion of free enterprise, from being hamstrung and side-lined by unelected European bureaucrats. I recently came across the word ‘ambivert’ – a person who is neither an extrovert nor an introvert – and found myself thinking about why it is so little used. Now I see that it is because it is too confusing to introduce nuance to a world where dichotomy is the best way to get results. Freedom fighter (good)/ terrorist (bad); capitalism (good)/ communism (bad); nationalism (good)/ federalism (bad).

          For now, populist demagogues appear to have gained the upper hand by using such stories to their advantage. The voices of reason and nuance – and they are many – are drowned out by the clamour of greedy, elitist, self-aggrandising rhetoric. But reason and nuance may yet prevail, given that the extremes of suffering, privilege, poverty and wealth are widening and increasingly visible to all. Never-ending wars – usually fought over natural resources – and the inequalities of wealth wrought by the excesses of neo-liberal capitalism have resulted in the destruction of the ecosystem, the latest and most universal manifestation of which, covid-19, has emerged from the animal biosphere because of human interference. A reassessment of capitalism has been under way, even since before its self-destructive crash in 2008, by economists and socio-political analysts alike – Chris Hedges, Mariana Mazzucato, Rebecca Henderson, John Elkington, Raghuram Rajan and Rutger Bregman, to name a few. In their publications they take a cool look at facts and statistics that demonstrate the ways in which we have been and are being hoodwinked by the stories fed to us about, for example, how private initiative is good and government interference bad. This is a false dichotomy and a false story. All the facts indicate that a mix of the two would be the best way to achieve economic growth that is green, sustainable, inclusive and affordable. They present no simple dichotomy, which is perhaps why their stories have less traction than they deserve.

          It is frustrating and infuriating to see greed prevail over generosity so, to soothe my passion, I watch the ospreys. Or the nasturtiums sprouting from seeds that I sowed in a pot on the windowsill. These are lives with predictable plots. They are born, they are nurtured, they replicate their genes and then, they die. Meanwhile, we humans listen to stories in preference to facing reality.