Homo narrare. Narrative Intelligence 3.0: Managing Reality and Influencing People. Arsen Avetisov

the language in which they are written in the first place? We should create a higher-quality game code so we do not have to search for errors and rewrite entire blocks of our lives later.

      «Effective» experience is the repeated practice of illusions. The experience of quick results from actions, from pressing buttons and clicking a mouse, lacks meaningful content, leading to the reinforcement of superficial attitudes toward reality. As a result, people today readily accept both scientific and conspiratorial theories of events, backing them up with randomly created but conveniently fitting facts. This is done as quickly as the subsequent disappointment in such constructs sets in. The nature of the processes that create and destroy these assumptions and narratives remains unexamined. The world lives in a constant state of impatience and expectation.

      Understanding the driving narratives provides an advantage in controlling and directing events. The paradox is that even when studying their narratives, people rarely attempt to build a system. It all boils down to telling themselves yet another story about the system. Facts mean little to people unless they are arranged into a story. It is not facts but stories that help us plan, predict changes, and survive.

      Everything in the world evolves according to its own scale of unpredictability and levels of expectation. It is easy to believe that our expectations are also secretly controlled and, depending on the political situation, steered in a particular direction. The key is that there is some truth to this.

      Whoever Controls Attention Controls the World

      If the eyes are the organ of vision, then the brain, particularly its cortex, is the organ of insight.

      Just as the mode of the rational mind is words, the mode of the emotions is nonverbal.

      Daniel Goleman

      It has been wittily noted that emotional intelligence comes into play when, unable to sell something, there is at least the possibility of enticing. More seriously, the essence and understanding of emotional intelligence lie within the very definition of emotion. Emotion is a psychological process that reflects our subjective evaluative attitude toward a current or potential situation. The key word in this definition is «subjective.»

      The concepts of «feelings» and «emotions» are often conflated. Feeling is the fusion of thought and emotion and even something more profound than their wordless reunion. Emotions, on the other hand, are simpler and quite manageable.

      By nature, the use of emotions in active interaction with the environment constitutes an irrational form of influence. However, it is effective and easily understood, as it does not require deep analysis, calculations, or planning. Often, a single glance conveys more information than hundreds of words or thousands of figures.

      The work with rationality – reasoning, ideas, and assumptions, accompanied by clarity and logic – has its downsides. These processes, due to their linearity and sequential nature, proceed slowly and are extremely energy-intensive. The quality of results and the level of intelligence depend on many factors, not only innate but also acquired, such as vocabulary, education, and upbringing. Therefore, mental processes and the constructs they create can be compared to the strategy of a general staff, whereas the work of emotional intelligence resembles tactical operations directly on the front line.

      There is a belief that to manage something, one must control it. Control implies understanding what is happening and what needs to be done to bring about something different. Humans strive to control everything they can imagine and measure. However, this rational approach to controlling the irrational – in this case, emotions – has its peculiarities.

      Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross observed that people can usually distance themselves from others’ stories. Nevertheless, they struggle to maintain such detachment when dealing with emotionally significant problems in their own lives. Researchers call this the Solomon Paradox.

      The task of emotional intelligence is not to engage in control in the conventional sense of the word but to focus on understanding experiences. To comprehend emotions, they must be felt, experienced, and identified – given a name. However, this does not mean blindly following them. One should follow goals and what is necessary, which often diverges from the direction emotions indicate. Either you manage your emotions, or they manage you.

      Using emotional intelligence allows for deliberate influence and drawing attention to what is essential. The volume of information entering the brain through all channels in one second amounts to approximately 400 billion bits. Consciousness processes only about 2,000 bits. Given the overwhelming influx of information, people focus on what they perceive as the most important. Simultaneously, many reactions or decisions shift into the brain’s background mode. To create a mental image, the brain filters out most incoming data and uses pre-existing information stored in memory. In this competition of priorities, emotions uniquely highlight what truly deserves attention, aiding in consolidating this «important» information in memory.

      Despite this process, honed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, challenges persist today. Recent studies have shown that the average attention span of people using multiple electronic devices has dropped from twelve seconds to eight seconds – one second less than that of a goldfish.

      We are accustomed to thinking that emotions focus attention on events or phenomena prioritized by the individual. Yet, with equal likelihood, emotions can focus attention on priorities presented by the surrounding environment. Through emotions, bypassing the rational filter of consciousness, the environment gains access to older brain structures than the cortex. This enables the management of attention and the emergence of desires. Whoever controls attention controls the world. Emotional influence in economics and business aligns with the well-known mantra: «If you take enough of nothing, you will get something.» Emotions are that intangible «nothing» that can be transformed into tangible «something.»

      Why has cinema captivated the world? Spending two hours escaping into a world of «once upon a time» offers a much-needed distraction from a life filled with tiresome, mundane, and endless responsibilities. For most people, daily routines are relatively predictable and banal. But spending two hours in a world of «sometime, somewhere,» where anything is possible, feels magical. Once a story turns on this internal «television,» it becomes impossible to look away. Capturing attention comes at a price, and what is demanded in return is substantial.

      Unlike the stream of weekdays filled with trivial details, a story told in a film can become a form of vivid and extraordinary life experience. Cinema compresses time, eliminates daily clutter, and polishes the rough edges of reality. Stories have the power to romanticize existence, elevate the significance of events, and emphasize the good and bad qualities of people. On one hand, stories resemble our world; on the other, they possess a supernatural quality. The diverse sensual pleasures of stories not only nourish us physically, emotionally, and spiritually but have become as vital as real food. Such feasts often lead to a lasting craving.

      Gregory Berns, using fMRI to study the left temporal cortex, sought to clarify whether neural connectivity related to a text would persist while reading a novel in the evening, the following morning, or even for several days. The temporal part of the brain is linked to linguistic perception. Anyone who has ever picked up a book and could not put it down or binge-watched seven seasons of a favorite series knows what it means for a story’s mood to color everything they do. It is as if one starts living in Middle-earth or thinking in the terms of the Seven Kingdoms.

      It turns out this is indeed the case – heightened neural activity persists. Berns called this «shadow activity,» comparing it to muscle memory developed through physical tasks, such as a tennis serve or a golf swing. This heightened activity also appeared in the brain’s sensorimotor region, whose neurons are tied to creating sensory representations for the body. This phenomenon, known as «grounded cognition,» occurs, for example, when the thought of running activates neurons associated with the physical act of running.

      Reading about