Putin’s “Master Narrative”

The importance of stories and narratives in our sense-making and deliberative process cannot be over-estimated.

Stories are “the primary form by which human experience is made meaningful…Narrative meaning is a cognitive process that organises human experiences into temporally meaningful episodes.” (Polkinghorne, 1988)

“ You start to answer the age-old question ’ What am I to do?’ if you can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’ “ (Macintyre, 1981)

We live by master narratives which include The Western Tradition, Neo-liberal Capitalism, Environmentalism, Rewilidng. We check all our stories for fidelity and probability against our master narratives (Fisher 1985)

In the domain of complexity, narratives are arguably more powerful than ‘facts’. We are Homo narrans (Fisher 1985) more than we are Homo sapiens.

Heres a very powerful master narrative in evidence right now… 

‘Putin’s Spiritual Destiny’ by Giles Fraser (Unherd)