Introduction

We open by exploring the metacrisis and its cultural roots. You will delve into the transformative power of narratives and their role in shaping systems and actions in the world. We share the Culture Hack Labs approach to Narrative-Led Systems Change: Justice plus Onto-Shift, which emphasizes that demands for justice must be paired with a deeper shift in ontologies—the fundamental ways we perceive, relate to, and engage with the world.

Step 3: Understand

First you will analyse the Attention, Network and Power, as well as the Language of your Narrative Communities. You will then Map the Communities using Justice-Ontology axes to reveal key patterns and positions - building on the “Justice plus onto-shift” approach introduced in the Introduction. Finally, you will identify where the Window of Discourse sits and where we want to shift it. This is the foundation for your narrative intervention strategy.

Deep Dive: Example

Let’s use “Nature as Resource” as a cultural example

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We can understand the deep structure of a culture (the relationship between self and other) by making observations in its context.

For Example, humans make up 0.01% of the biomass on Earth. Through the advent of the Industrial Revolution and Globalisation, humans have managed to wipe out 83% of all wild mammals and cut the plant biomass in half.

This devastation has been driven by extractivism, which prioritizes resource extraction over ecological balance; industrial agriculture, which replaces biodiverse ecosystems with monocultures; deforestation for urban expansion, and fossil fuel consumption, accelerating climate change.

We can infer that the dominant Western culture frames non-humans (including nature, animals, ecosystems, etc.) as “other.”.

The cultural construct that mediates this relationship between self (humans) and other (nature) is “nature is a resource”. This separation between humans and nature justifies extraction and destruction.

These cultural constructs are carried through narratives. There are many dominant narratives that frame nature as resource, reinforcing extractivist and exploitative practices, for example:

“Natural resources are the backbone of our economy, and we must continue expanding our industries to secure a prosperous future.”
Even “Humans must save nature” positions humans as separate saviors rather than part of the ecosystem.

Read more about the philosophical foundations of the separation between self and other.

Footnotes

Franklin-Wallis, O. (2018). Human race just 0.01% of all life but has destroyed 83% of wild mammals – study. The Guardian.

The Culture Hack Method