Throughout history and across all cultures, humans grew up with a classic story structure where the good battle the evil, and, after some struggles and challenges, it wins.
Part of that classic format, which embeds powerful programming in everyone's mind from very early on in childhood, there are a few additional variations where good becomes evil and evil becomes good. However it goes, more often than not, good prevails.
Stories where good goes against good are rare and generally they take a competitive form rather than combative, i.e. “sports or art stories”.
Finally evil against evil stories are rare and usually end in mutual destruction, often with human life as collateral.
Two common elements play a tremendous part involving the process of storytelling:
One, the audience does not like confusion; it must quickly identify the good versus the evil. Second, the audience will always pick a side.
As a good story unfolds, audiences eventually begin identifying with one side or another, and at the very least something in the story resonates deeply with something in their personality and their lives.
Even in evil versus evil scenarios, we eventually find ourselves somehow rooting for one side or another - or both, when the mutual destruction in the story brings us a sense of thrilling satisfaction and power.
Why this happens is incredibly complex and beautifully simple. Human minds are easily influenced, heavily conditioned since birth, and incredibly flawed in processing through the filter of critical thinking.
Movies, for example, work perfectly because of a fundamental process humans are capable of - suspension of disbelief.
However, there is one scenario that gives us trouble. When the battle between the good and the evil is uncertain and when both evil sides pretend and claim to be good and the narrative is stretched over such a long story that we no longer can make sense of it, so we simply default to believing one side or another.
Our narratively-conditioned minds cannot bring themselves to assume that both sides are good or that both sides are evil. More so, once we pick a side, we rarely admit choosing wrong, so we almost never switch. If and when we switch, we are usually frustrated and emotionally charged against our first choice, thus becoming incredibly vulnerable to manipulation from the second choice.
This scenario is the narrative of betrayal and when human nature is weaponized against itself for the benefit of those who wield the power of the story medium. This is usually a case where a new evil challenges the old. In part, one emerges from the other, and in part none can maintain a stronghold of power without the other. They move toward reciprocal destruction in a collaborative way, making this narrative immensely confusing for the audiences.
Normally, this would be a bad thing for the process of storytelling, but confusion is the realm where manipulation thrives.
In a classic story, we want the audiences to eventually achieve clarity and ultimately feel mentally or emotionally fulfilled, but in the case when both evil sides fight each other while mutually maintaining the illusion of righteousness, the confusion itself is the intended result of the narrative.
More so, just like in a classic format, both sides have their own helpers, except that in this case the helpers are just mere sidekicks or supportive characters; instead, they are narrative mercenaries, continuously shaping and shifting the storylines and blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and lies.
Such is the story of Politics and the ruthless apparatus behind its scenes.
What narrative are you trapped in, because most certainly you are, just like almost everyone else? Are you a truth seeker or a loyal consumer of the abundantly flashy taglines and appealing narratives continuously broadcasted to sow discord and division among people who share more in common than they do not?
The only way to resist social engineering gone bad is to dream alternatively and act accordingly. This requires a courageous act of moral resistance in respecting all human rights, without reservation and prejudice.
Join me, dream forward:
https://www.project-forward.org/
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