"Know, Believe, Act" Stories

Since “myth” has negative connotations for most of us (“stupid, false things other people believe”), I’ve started talking about socially significant stories instead – that is, stories that everyone in a group knows; that many believe; and that some act upon.

The “Know, Believe, Act” Test

I came to the “know, believe, act” rubric via Egregores: The Occult Entities That Watch Over Human Destiny by Mark Stavish. [1] He writes,

“The entire action of an egregore, be it a political philosophy, family history, cultural mythos, or initiatic organization, can be summed up in the commonly heard phrase controlling the narrative. Controlling the narrative means to be in control of the story, of the story you want people to hear, believe, and act upon—all three parts must be present. It is not sufficient that they hear it; they must also believe it, and from that position of belief act in the manner that the narrative is directing them to.”

Know/believe/act neatly encapsulates what I think sets myths apart from run-of-the-mill stories. 

First, everyone in a culture knows their myths, more or less. They don’t have to know them well; many may only know the shape of the story, so that it’s more of a trope than a detailed narration. [2]

Second, while it’s unlikely that everybody in a group believes that the story is true, it’s important that many do. The reason why the classic Greek myths no longer function mythologically is that they meet the “know” test among today’s educated people, but not the “believe” test: everybody knows that Zeus went around raping young women, but nobody believes that this happened, literally or figuratively. 

The third criterion is that some people will act on the story. Even if only a subset of believers act on their faith, it will make the story socially effective. Action can take many forms, from consciously changing one’s beliefs, to speaking in specific ways (which could range from just liking something on social media to talking to friends or fellow citizens), to physically acting in the world.

Note that I'm trying not to take a position on the truth, validity, plausibility etc. of any of these stories, let alone whether the beliefs or real-world consequences are "good" or "bad." If someone believes a story its true, it's true for them, and thus true for the purposes of this exercise. (Of course, I can't avoid my personal biases, especially the implicit, unconscious ones.)

Some examples:

• In classical Greece, all citizens knew the stories about the Olympians. Many believed they were true, but some – such as the philosophers – emphatically did not. Quite a few acted on these beliefs, for example by making offerings at cult sites, and participating in rituals. 

• In contemporary America, everyone knows of the story of Jesus, at least in outline. A significant number of people believe the gospels to be true, and quite a few act on their belief by going to church regularly.

• Almost everyone in America knows the story that Donald Trump was deprived of the presidency through fraud in the 2020 election. Many people believe this; according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released on Dec 24, 2020, 78% of Republicans believe that Joe Biden was illegitimately elected. Thousands acted on this by traveling to Washington DC to rally in support of the president, and subsequently hundreds of them broke into the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021.

Socially significant stories

If a myth is a socially significant story, it’s worth parsing the three parts of that definition. [3]

There are innumerable definitions of “story.” For me, a story is an account of a sequence of events that happened in the past involving specific actors. [4]

In the narrow sense, a story refers to a specific series of events. However, a story can also be part of a larger collection of similar anecdotes that form a narrative in aggregate. To use an example provided by Amie Stepanovich: there is a narrative that “foreign governments try to break into US systems, and so we must do more to protect against foreign state attacks.” This is based on facts (reports of exploits by North Korea, China, and Russia, for example) but the person rehearsing the narrative may not recall the details of any specific incidents, or even be aware of all of them.

The “events that happened in the past” criterion is a little squishy since many powerful myths are built around eschatologies, e.g. Christian apocalyptic. Contemporary technology-related versions include belief in the Singularity, and techno-utopianism generally; and some climate change thinking. I would argue, though, that even these examples are built on a series of past events that are projected into the future. [5]

A significant story is one that is felt to be meaningful – it points to something important beyond itself. Not all stories are significant in this way; many are “just” entertaining, or scary, or instructive. The significance is largely (perhaps entirely) in what the hearer makes of it, not in the story itself. Even a story that most people consider to be insignificant can have an important moral to a specific individual; a personal experience or a family anecdote, for example.

Socially significant stories are ones where the same meaning is felt by a group of people. The group can be big or small; the story may just be a small part of the group’s identity, or it can define that identify, as it does in some religious traditions.

Contemporary examples

Here’s a short list of contemporary myths, in the sense of socially significant stories, that is, stories that everyone in some group knows; that many of them believe; and that some act upon:

• The 5G vision

• The 5G-coronavirus conspiracy

• Climate change, both acceptance and denial

• Robert Shiller’s economic narratives (cf. my Oct 2019 post, Narrative in economics: Shiller’s stories)

• Spectrum auctions as a way to improve efficiency 

• Unlicensed spectrum as a way to create abundance out of “junk bands” 

• The “romantic anti-hero” model of tech innovation

• UFO theories (cf. American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology by Diana Walsh Pasulka), including the Breakaway Civilization idea

• The scientific method generally, and the notion that government funding of basic research would deliver innovation and economic growth (cf. the 1945 Vannevar Bush report, Science: The Endless Frontier)

Each of these needs to be justified and unpacked; future work…

Notes

[1] Egregores are distinct non-physical entities that arise from collections of people; my lay understanding is that it’s what happens whenever something takes on a life of its own – literally. Wikipedia says that “the concept [historically] referred to angelic beings, or watchers, and the specific rituals and practices associated with them, namely within Enochian traditions.” Stavish adds that “it is also the home or conduit for a specific psychic intelligence of a nonhuman nature connecting the invisible dimensions with the material world in which we live.”

[2] I mean trope here in the broad sense described by tvtropes.com: “a storytelling shorthand for a concept that the audience will recognize and understand instantly.”

[3] One of the things that turns a story into a myth is that the story is felt by a group of people to be meaningful and important, and that it shapes their behavior. Cf. my definition of myth in "Myth" in tech journalism: 

• A widely held
• belief
• in significant or far-reaching truth claims
• presented in narrative form
• that influences thought or behavior

[4] Mieke Bal defines narratives as an “ensemble of texts, images, spectacles, events and cultural artefacts that ‘tell a story’” in Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narratice (2009). She explains that a story is “a series of logically and chronologically related events that are caused or experienced by actors [that don’t have to be human].” Norris et al. list eight narrative elements in “A Theoretical Framework for Narrative Explanation in Science” (2003); the ones “of primary importance” are the existence of event-tokens, past time, and agency.

[5] Some tropes are predictive, but much narrower in scope, such as “better living through chemistry” used in corporate positioning. The associated Wikipedia entry argues that “DuPont used the ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’ slogan not to promote particular products, but to change viewers' opinions about the role of business in society.”