Enabling stories: only stories make sense ?

From Changing the Strategic Game to Changing the Strategic Frame (Part #6)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Last | All | PDF] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

---

Esteva himself makes the case for stories enabling individuals and local groups to engage with their challenges in new ways. This follows a long and respected tradition of the role of stories and aphorisms in reframing circumstances. Arguably many of the better known sets of stories are effectively a set of strategic remedies to particular circumstances, and have been used or cited as such:

• Aesop's fables
• Anansi tales
• Nasreddin tales (600)
• Jataka tales (547)
• Panchatantra
• Br'er Rabbit stories

This mode has been used from a management perspective by Russell L. Ackoff (The Art of Problem Solving: accompanied by Ackoff's Fables, 1978) as with the 150 "aphorisms" of W. Ross Ashby from a systemic perspective and those of Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Bed of Procrustes: philosophical and practical aphorisms, 2010). Many sets of tales have long been considered a valuable guide to personal and spiritual development. Such stories are designed to serve simultaneously as children's stories and as carriers of deeper systemic insights for those who can distinguish them.

The question is then what sets of tales would be relevant to an "augmented" variant of the alternative Cancún Declaration -- Let's change the system of thinking, not the planet?

What tales would offer a form of "cognitive toolkit" to enable people to engage otherwise with their immediate reality -- and to reframe it fruitfully and sustainably? Of relevance is how such tales might be expected to function where injunctions, moralistic discourse and conventional forms of advice have proven to be inadequate. To what extent does any such "cognitive toolkit" necessarily call on other "brains", as suggested by the work on biocultures of Antonio de Nicolas (The Biocultural Paradigm: the neural connection between science and mysticism, Experimental Gerontology, 1997).

Tales offer a form of "cognitive catalyst" through metaphor -- suggesting that many current metaphors may effectively be "impoverished" (In Quest of Uncommon Ground: beyond impoverished metaphor and the impotence of words of power, 1997). In this sense the issue for individuals is a form of metaphoric revolution (Metaphoric Revolution: in quest of a manifesto for governance through metaphor, 1988).

A classic tale regarding development

A development assistance officer encounters a man lying by the river in a developing country. He suggests the man might get some agricultural training. The many asks why. The response: "Well then you could grow your crops more efficiently". To which the man again asks: "Why?". The response: "Well then you could use the surplus to buy more land from your neighbours and increase your production". Again the question: "Why?". The response: "Well then you could hire people to manage your enterprise... and you could sit and watch the river go by". To which the man sitting by the river responds: "But that is what I am doing now".

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Last | All | PDF] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]