Part One: A Case for Narrative Intelligence

A narrative intelligence paraphrase of complexity and storytelling researcher, Ken Baskin’s quote, would suggest that we experience life and we experience the stories we tell ourselves to explain it – and they are not the same.

Psychologist Russell Hurlburt describes a very private, unique world we all inhabit.

As each of us hurtles through space and time in the ever-unfolding present, we wonder things like: what is happening, why is it happening, how might we alter what is happening to enjoy more of it or endure less of it, how does what is happening connect with what just happened and what might happen next? Historian of meta-trends in human development, Yuval Noah Harari, says “Each of us has within ourselves a brilliant ray of light that gives value and meaning to our lives” (2014, p. 113). Illuminating meaning in our lives from that ‘brilliant ray of light’ is generated by the flow of stories we constantly create to make as much sense of what we can, of what is happening. And as we do this, each of us casts ourselves as the lead character (sometimes as hero, other times as victim, survivor, villain, or champion) in a series of interweaving narratives involving other people and events that feature in our lives.