Discovering the Narratives that Matter to Us
Scientific discoveries have provided new windows into our deep past and revealed a more fundamental reality of who we are. While most historical accounts of the past might cover decades or hundreds of years, and with exceptions more than that, recent scientific discoveries shed light on the past in thousands, millions and billions of years.
Recent archaeological discoveries not only take us through the human journey during the Holocene (the last 10,000 years — an interglacial period), but in fact over hundreds of thousands of years through the emergence of our species, and the 3+ million years of the possible species we may have come from. Evolutionary biology, on the other hand, often deals with millions and even hundreds of millions of years, documenting the emergence, change and extinction of species over the several billion years of life on Earth. And discoveries in physics informed through astronomy and chemistry reveal that the very atoms that we are made of were created in distant suns through a process of nuclear fusion and supernova dispersion over perhaps the estimated 13+ billion years of the cosmos.
By Pablo Carlos Budassi — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99555425
It’s not an exaggeration to say that science has transformed our understanding of time. But as well in conjunction with this it has transformed the concept of who we are. From biology we have learned that there is no such thing as race, we are all fundamentally one species (with contributions from a few other sister species, Denisovans and Neanderthals). And from physics we can say that we are literally the space dust of the cosmos experiencing itself in human form.
Unpacking time within the self
I like to consider how who and what I am goes far beyond the physical and indeed experiential boundaries of my body, because it reminds me that the self that I see in the mirror is only the most immediate and perhaps surface level of who I am. It connects me with the idea that I am a cosmic being, that I am fundamentally human (not necessarily of just a nation or ethnicity) and that of course I am part of the tree of life on planet Earth. That idea of connection breathes into me a feeling of kindred ness, relatedness, and mystery with life.
But as well we have idiosyncrasies of self and culture where we can unpack layers of temporal experience that are woven through us. As a Mexican I am the product of the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica, and the biological and cultural hybridity which emerged. As a US English-speaking citizen I speak a German derived (Anglo Saxon) language rich with influences from the Norman conquest of England, Scandinavia influences from the Viking colonization, Latin & Greek and many other influences which created the pastish which is modern English, born of British imperial conquest and a stubborn resistance to excluding loanwords.
We all have elements within us which, when unpacked, lead us down the rabbit hole of historical and cultural experience.
Temporality as a resource
This idea of time being woven through us and in us is not just an emerging scientific reality, but temporality is a critical resource in empowering us to create the changes in the world that we want to and need to create.
Today much cynicism, pessimism and nihilism abound which assumes an inability to create change, or a fated-ness toward the way the world is and can be. Much of the cynicism, pessimism or nihilism can be attributed to an a-temporal (lacking a time dimension) and a-contextual (lacking contextual awareness) view of the world. In its extreme some have referred to this collapsing of our temporal consciousness as “hypernormalization” — the making normal of a state of affairs which is dysfunctional or absurd. The Russian anthropologist Alexi Yurchak, who coined this term, described this in late Soviet Russia, where mounting systemic dysfunction came to be treated as just a normal state of affairs. Hypernormalization can only be maintained through a-historical and a-contextual perspectives — comparisons with other times and places are not possible, thus nothing challenges our social constructions, no matter how absurd or disfunctional they are.
But nothing can be further from the truth. We’ve heard the expression that the past is a foreign land. Human beings have been creating and re-creating our societies for many millennia. But as cultural beings humans create social constructions and then most often forget that these social constructions are not immutable. We mistake the socially constructed for the fundamentally real. Elise Boulding, one of the founders of peace studies and futures studies, created a simple conceptual tool to help us go beyond the hypernormalized present, which he called the 200 year present:
“The 200-year present began 100 years ago with the year of birth of the people who have reach their hundredth birthday today. The other boundary of the 200-year present, 100 years from now, is the hundredth birthday of the babies born today. If you take that span, you and I will have had contact with a lot of people from different parts of that span”
– Elise Boulding Interviewed by Julian Portilla — 2003
In sharp contrast to hypernormalization, where the absurdity or dysfunction of the present is ignored, obscured or suppressed, we can consider that we actually live in “Epic Times”. The times we’re living in are in fact remarkable, and we can play a meaningful and positive role in this drama. These Epic Times are calling forth new ways of being and new ways of doing from us as individuals and communities.
Decolonizing temporality
Futures studies, in particular critical future studies, has been a critical domain that has developed approaches towards the emancipatory goal of decolonizing temporality. There are several dimensions to this.
In his work on critical futures studies, Richard Slaughter came up with a conceptual model called the transformation cycle, in which one can map the breakdown and reconstruction of social meaning. The transformation cycle shows how the social constructions that come to be seen as real eventually lose their viability over time, with new social constructions and meaning frameworks emerging. His framework helps to show the malleability of social constructions, and opens towards the possibility of transformation. He describes the basic process as:
- Analysis of the breakdown of inherited meanings.
- Reconceptualisation via new myths, paradigms, images etc.
- Negotiation and selective legitimation of new meanings, images, behaviours etc.
In his original breakthrough article on Causal Layered Analysis in 1998, Sohail Inayatullah offered up the post-structural toolbox to help people do this type of decolonization. In particular he asked the question, what histories and depictions of the past maintain the present (normalize the present) versus what depictions of the past challenge the present (make the present look remarkable)? He also asked, what histories or depictions of the past potentiate alternative futures or legitimize hegemonic futures? These are powerful questions, as they point to the role of temporalization (the construction of time) as critical dimensions in our ability to imagine and create alternative futures.
At a basic level decolonization begins by making time an object of analysis. Paolo Freire in his book Critical Consciousness linked emancipatory struggles for a better society with what might be understood as “temporal conscientization” (becoming conscious of historical change, our past, present and futures). He made the point that for people to intervene in the movement of history, people need to understand how they got to where they are now, the era that they are coming from, but as well to understand the movements and potentialities of change that are leading to different futures.
Re-narrating temporality
I did a type of ethnographic futures research as part of my PhD work, exploring different visions of the future within the global justice movement. I learned that different communities hold within them different narratives of time, each with distinct depictions of the past, present and the preferred future. There is a cohesiveness to narrative in the communities that hold them. For example, for communities wanting to reform global governance institutions like the IMF, World Bank and United Nations, the narrative starts with the Bretton Woods agreements and carries on through US hegemony, but may see a future where these institutions are governed more equitably and openly. But for a different community, for example the Dalit (untouchables) of India, their struggle reaches back thousands of years and the social construction of the caste system. Their present reveals the inequitable impacts of neoliberal globalization on different strata of society and on them. Their future vision is an India free of caste discrimination.
Narratives will be different depending on the community and the issues they face, and these will express different pasts and futures. Many of these narratives can give people a sense of purpose and direction, but they can also lock down and obscure better possibilities. There are a vast number of narratives that permeate our societies and communities. But many of these may not be very helpful to navigate through the present times. The ethnonationalism used by Trump and other leaders around the world, for example, stokes division and fear. The hypercapitalist narrative, what Margaret Thatcher famously referred to as “TINA” (There Is No Alternative), is another one of these narratives no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was.
Joseph Campbell, the great explorer of mythology, believed that the old myths that we’ve inherited are no longer sufficient to give us meaning in our new changing world, and that we need to create and invent new myths and new stories for the era. His insight tells us that we need to create new narratives of change for the new era, for these Epic Times, that inspire us, to be both better people and better societies.
The Mutant Futures approach
Creating empowering narratives of change is not a new approach. The practice of narrative foresight has been well developed over the years. And we can see through many types of literature, including science fiction, new stories of humanity flourishing in the long term.
In the Mutant Futures course that I run, I draw from many eclectic influences, for example futures studies, critical futures and narrative foresight. But I also draw on the work of Joanna Macy and her eco-psychology, and many others.
The work or using deep time as a resource and re-narrating for Epic Times consists of these elements:
- Practically, the foundation is to discover what issues and themes are important and meaningful to us.
- We then need to explore the issue or theme through a deep time perspective. This means we really delve into as much of the past as possible, but as well imagine as much of the future as possible. Framework and methods can help us to this.
- Ultimately we want to come to a story of change that is inspiring, dramatic and compelling, for us and for other people. This is a story that helps us to make sense of where we’ve come from and where we want to go.
- We also need to become storytellers. We want to practice telling these stories to others and figuring out what works in the storytelling process. Partially, storytelling is about embodiment, where we play the role of containers or mediums for the social potentials that bring us hope, enthusiasm and a reverence for life.
- Having established our storytelling, we can ask what kinds of roles we want to play in this story of change. Dramas and stories have many characters. We are not stuck in one role. We can choose the role we want to play. We can also ask what parts of ourselves are being called forth by this story of change? It might be that we don’t feel ready to play this role, it might feel daunting, and therefore we need to develop aspects of ourselves that remain undeveloped. In short, our narrative and the future(s) it contains might be calling forth new selves from us.
- We can also ask what new methods or techniques or even technologies are being called forth from these narratives of change. This follows the truism (often attributed to Albert Einstein) that we can’t solve the problems of tomorrow with the approaches or methods of yesterday. Humans are at one level methodological beings, we are co-constituted through a complex of techniques, practices and technologies. So we also need to hack this level of the social constructedness of our worlds. This requires the skill of experimentation, trying things that may or may not work, and learning through experience and iterations.
- Finally, community is really fundamental to bringing these new dimensions into being. We’ve all had the experience that we can behave in one particular way with one group of friends, but sometimes it is a new friend or colleague that provides the space to be a little different. We do need to find the communities that will help us to play the roles we want to play in the world, bring forth the selves that we want to bring forth, use the methods that make sense for the times, and tell the stories that inspire us and matter to us.
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You can find out more about Mutant Futures and Deep Time through the course website at Futures Lab Academy
References
Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity. Penguin UK.
Inayatullah, S. (1998). Causal layered analysis: Poststructuralism as method. Futures, 30(8), 815–829.
Milojević, I., & Inayatullah, S. (2015). Narrative foresight. Futures, 73, 151–162.
Ramos, J. M. (2020). Messy grace: The mutant futures program. In, Bussey, M., & Mozzini-Alister, C. (Eds.). Phenomenologies of Grace: The Body, Embodiment, and Transformative Futures. Springer Nature. 41–63.
Ramos, J. (2017): Futures Lab: Anticipatory Experimentation, Social Emergence and Evolutionary Change. Journal of Futures Studies 22.2 107–118.
Ramos, J. (2005). Futures Education as Temporal Conscientisation, Social Alternatives, University of Queensland, Vol. 24 №4, Fourth Quarter
Slaughter, R. A. (2004). The transformative cycle: A tool for illuminating change. Foresight International. https://foresightinternational.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Slaughter_T_Cycle_2006.pdf
