We need a good story don’t we?

After 6 years of daily news on declining economic performance and even gloomier forecasts of the future do we wonder why people are fed up and disillusioned, demonstrating in the streets of European capitals?

Without hope of keeping falling material standards in check, life becomes unbearable and social conflict might return. Shopping is not affordable anymore and society has to resort to sustainable solutions to give direction to people.

I was ruminating on these ideas when I end up watching Django Unchained, the last film of Tarantino. I bought a ticket for Les Miserables but entered another room.

Django is a black slave who becomes a cowboy hero slaughtering whites in southern American. Lincoln or Amazing Grace are feel-good films for white progressive folk, but Django is what a Black crowd needs to feel good and proud. It is just fiction but it’s a good story to energise people who have been portrayed as losers for the last 3 centuries.

It’s not a coincidence that this week I organised a seminar on narratives for scientists, with Lucas, the European Commission and an international group of researchers working on Global Systems Science. We explored how stories are the key to getting people engaged in science and changing behaviour. Data in itself has never excited anybody other than experts.

Since the dawn of humanity we humans have told stories of heroes to keep together and energise the community. The paint in Lascaux cave must be the first one in history – although Darren is wigging about African and aboriginal stories that I’m glossing over.

As the Greeks were exploring nature they also theorised about poetics – this is what they called the theory on good stories. This is actually what I specialised in when I studied philosophy at University.

Leaders have always generously paid artists, poets and writers to tell good stories. Stories helped them to keep their subjects together, obedient and focused. Fortunately power needs good stories otherwise Italian cultural heritage such Uffizi collection and Sistina Chapel would not exist.

However, policymakers must have forgotten the lesson in the recent years. After the Third Way died in the War of Iraq the only concern of governments has become the economy. The focus is on the income of citizens, forgetting people need more than material nurturing.

People need to believe in a better future – and perhaps a bit of blood to get excited. The jubilee around the election of the new Pope proves the first part of the sentence, Django the second one.

Unfortunately Brussels, as most of Western political elite, is not able to excite people anymore, nor deliver material wealth. Economic data don’t make any difference for the general mood. This is the sense of pervasive malaise that you find in Brussels. I found comfort only at the cinema.