Narratives…Can’t Live with Them; Can’t Live without Them

History, ring your bell, 
Fare thee well, McConnell 
Pluck is the lady that he loves the best. 
Phoenix to Maricopa 
Votin' with snark and Nope-Ahh 
Maverick is a legend of the west. 
Black Jack Claymore : May I have a word? Cleaver Greene : What word? Narrative? Or some un-translatable French word?
The little bit of dialogue above is from the deliciously sharp Australian series Rake (not ever to be confused with the lame, short-lived US version). Actor Richard Roxburgh who plays lawyer Cleaver Greene absolutely excels at hitting single, solitary words like “narrative” square enough to deliver all the humor, nuance and meaning any writer could ever intend. The line is directed at his rival, Black Jack, whose his ex-wife’s lesbian lover and a political consultant prone to throw narrative around like a mantra designed to fix any and all problems. Cleaver, who’s what Bart Simpson would be if he were to grow up and take a profession (and Bart as a barrister makes perfect sense), has no use for narrative…neither the word, nor the concept. Rake the show, in fact, much like The Simpsons, plays out in a fairly anarchic environment where the subtext is always the chaos and randomness of human existence. In an episode from Season 17, Sideshow Bob asks Homer if he can tell him the story of how he came to be mayor of a small Italian village. Homer replies with: “Yes, if it has a beginning, middle, and end and I end up rooting for the protagonist.” Homer delivers the line with the same level of finely marinated sarcasm that Cleaver Greene employs in the narrative line above. Both shows insist on always going their own way and constantly push against the tropes and expectations of traditional narrative.  
I like narrative. I’ve pretty much both made a living off and lived by narrative all my life. But my recent immersion in the works of Daniel Kahneman—first, in his book Thinking Fast and Slow and now in The Undoing Project about the impact he and his partner Amos Tversky have had on our understanding of the thinking process--have shown me that my affection for and insistence on narratives only makes me one more human being hopelessly trying to impose linear storylines on arbitrary happenstance. 
Kahneman and Tversky spent most of their distinguished careers debunking the idea of narratives built on patterns that imply meaning. Their work has undermined much conventional wisdom that creates the illusion of predictability and purpose. For instance, they prove through carefully researched data that here is no such thing as a “hot hand” in basketball, the stock market, corporate leadership, Vegas, or anywhere else. If you flip a coin 100 times, there is a likelihood that at some point in your flipping you’ll come upon a pattern of, say, 2 heads and a tail three or four times in a row. That is no guarantee the pattern will continue and that you should feel confident in betting that it will. The same goes for the shooter off the bench, the stock picker, the CEO, etc. Kahneman and Tversky felt so confident in their findings that they dared to tilt at one of the prime shibboleths in Western intellectual thought, Santayana’s declaration that those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. On the contrary, found the great Un-Doers, our real problem is too much reliance on the repeatability of history…on employing the same strategies and solutions to solve problems that come at us under constantly evolving circumstances and changes in chance.
In the great counter-narrative that Kahneman and Tversky’s work provides, we are forever plugging events and incidents into our favorite narratives. This goes on every day in every walk of life, from matters both banal and serious. Here’s an example of the banal--Boston Red Sox beat reporter who has held to the not unique narrative this season that the Sox need help at third base—reported on a recent loss this way: “"Angels 3, Red Sox 2: A team that craves for more offense, particularly at third base, lost on a home run by the opposing third baseman. How's that for a cruel twist?” First off, as cruel twists go, that’s pretty small potatoes. But more importantly, it is nothing more than a damn coincidence, and a meaningless one at that, that the Sox were beaten on a homer by a rival third baseman. Only the human impulse and ingenuity for creating narrative makes it anything more.
As for a more serious example--there was John McCain’s dramatic midnight vote to kill Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare. For days leading up to the vote, which few saw coming, you could find countless and fairly consistent narratives everywhere of McCain’s career as a faux maverick who always failed to back his noble rhetoric up with action. His epitaph as a man who was less than he appeared seemed pretty firmly written in stone. Then came the vote and a major rewrite was underway throughout the Internet: The Maverick lives! He rode into town at the last minute and saved the day. Literally there were contemplations about a future McCain movie…a patriotic, Capraesque tearjerker where the wounded warrior ambles to the well of the Senate and Cato-like turns a thumb down on an odious bill designed to bring death and hardship to millions. A modestly talented screenwriter could crank that baby out in a week…all the dots are there.
But like all narratives, it is manufactured…true insofar as any narrative is true to the interconnections of the dots…the plot points. A less charitable creative force behind the film (here’s looking at you, Oliver Stone) could just as easily produce a darker narrative, one driven by resentment, vengeance, and dime-store Machiavellianism.
So it is with narrative. But as illusory and malleable as it is, it is still necessary and essential to our lives, which is why The Nob has been so partial to myth, the ancient narratives of our forebears. Narrative has always been especially important to those of the political consultant class, like Rake's Black Jack Claymore, because they shape the stories that politicians bring before the public to stir emotions and votes. It has become abundantly and regrettably clear that one of our major political parties has excelled with a steady, compelling narrative about masses of moochers living off the work of others, of immigrants and terrorists coming for our property and lives, and of a safe and stable world being knocked off its axis by rampant godlessness. It is up to that other party to come up with a more compelling counter narrative, but I’m afraid The Democrats’ newly unveiled  “A Better Deal” ain’t it. That’s a slogan and a handful of policies, but it’s still not a story. It lacks narrative pull…and as made-up fictional as narrative may be, you can’t hope to run the non-fiction world without it.