Power to Control the Narrative

If this sounds appealing, think again.

Narratives compete, and the carefully curated story will at some point collide with someone else’s acount. Those who hold power would like to believe their own voices and are convinced that others should, too. However, there will always be another powerbroker who’s telling a different story.

Powerless people are participants in those narratives, but they are also observers. In their experience, the story will eventually become unsatisfying and even obnoxious. They want to escape the story they’re being told because it’s not credible, nor is it dignifying. Instead of being merely resentful, many notice how universally destructive the story of the powerful becomes, even to the one who’s controlling the narrative but can’t see it. It’s a reality the controllers reject because they are both confident they will prevail and afraid that they won’t.

When governments and commercial interests control curriculums and news media, they tell stories that enrich themselves. As observers, the powerless hold, not the power to control, but the power to imagine.

To have no imagination is poverty indeed even if you’re controlling the narrative. Imagination is love and the opposite of tyranny and to have no love is the most abject poverty.