Who's afraid of Grand Narrative?

Subscriber exclusive: The introduction to my new book

A rather delightful birthday present! The first draft of my new book “Grand Narrative” has now been completed and below is the first draft of my introduction. As I complete the referencing and my self-editing, I will release the second draft of the book section by section here on Substack for paid subscribers. Hopefully you will be able to help me identify mistakes and make suggestions so that together we can improve the work towards a final publishable conclusion. Many thanks and enjoy.

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Introduction: Who's afraid of Grand Narrative?

[Image: The arrow of history. https://www.emau.org/history.html]

Who’s afraid of grand narrative? Well I am. You are too. We all are. And for a very good reason. It was grand narrative that led the Bolsheviks to forcibly bring about a Marxist utopia…with catastrophic results. It was grand narrative that led the Catholic Church to burn innocents at the stake in the name of love. And it is grand narrative that leads modern theocrats-cum-messianics to cause evil in the “best interests” of their peoples. Grand narrative has led the otherwise rational to madness and the reasonable to insanity.

Faced with the historical record, one may be inclined to lock grand narrative in the attic out of sight and out of mind. But tempting as it might be, that would be an error. Because, for all its trail of destruction, grand narrative speaks to something deep within the human soul: The need for meaning. The need to be part of something greater than oneself. To have a collective purpose, both with those around you and those across the generations. It is as essential as the air we breathe. Should we deny this, we condemn ourselves to a future of nihilism. Look deep within your own being. Note the division throughout the heart of your own self when in the grip of atomisation and languishing in the desert of crowd-surrounded loneliness. Denuded of purpose beyond that of self-preservation, we sink into a despair from which no material well-being can rescue us.

Grand narrative has the power to reinvigorate our citizenship and renew our sense of nationhood, guiding us in the path of meaningful action. It can reacquaint us once more with the idea of nations being in time as well as in space. Great Britain is not merely an island with borders, a resident population and a space within which to live. British citizenship isn’t merely a badge of bureaucratic rights; a token of universal values. It is the gift of owning a writer’s pen; of being an author in the ancient national story and having the duty to write the next chapter. The honour of leaving a better country to your children is within your hands and none other may take that responsibility away from you. This story began centuries before. It will continue, God willing, long into the future. You should consider that you alone have the power to shape the world to come and it is this potentiality that gives you immense purpose but also responsibility. You are free to act to fulfil your part and you are morally required to do so. Freedom, obligation and meaning marry together majestically in a symphony of purpose.

The dangers of grand narrative are two fold. Most obviously, the narrative may be flawed, harmful, even immoral. Nations founded on aggressive narratives that seek to harm the other are reflected in the nature of those nations. Narratives that are merely oppositional to an enemy nation are bound to lead their people to eternal war. As the receiver of a narrative identity, it is your responsibility to set it on firm moral foundations through your choices. Finding a charismatic leader so that you may cling onto his every word provides meaning without freedom. You sell yourself into slavery with the aim of harming others. Narrative duty is about taking on responsibility, thinking for yourself and acting freely within the bounds of the freedom of others. Your free action must be no imposition on the freedom of your fellow. Rather it must empower them.

The second danger, evident in both Marxist revolution and religious radicalism, is the need for an end goal and the Olympic race to reach that goal in the minimum of time. To be sure, there is a good and proper end for humanity and it is best expressed by the Hebrew prophets. We are to create a world where each may live under his own fig tree with none to make him afraid; which is to say in individual freedom that doesn’t encroach on that of one’s co-citizens. In such a world, there would be a “pure language”; each would understand what the other would say in plain terms. There would be no linguistic confusion whether through conceptual misunderstanding or the intentional manipulation of terms. To paraphrase Vaclav Havel¹ we would all live within the truth; not acting falsely and automatically in order to be left alone, but acting in that way which we know we must. But though the end is clear, and it guides us slowly but surely on the road towards Jerusalem, we must speak plainly: that perfect world will never come. A world of pure language will never come. All that we can hope for is to reach for it in the manner of an exponential curve. All that we can strive for is the renewal of nations with moral narrative.

Far from a council of despair, this is a gospel of blessed relief. For even in the theoretical reality that this Eden-esque utopia came to pass, it wouldn’t see out a single day. Freedom implies that someone will inevitably bite from the apple. If prevented from doing so, whither freedom? For doesn’t freedom entail the right to choose wrong? The opportunity to deviate from the true path if for no other reason than boredom? And so we are better off reaching rather than arriving. Striving rather than attaining. Evolving rather than revolting. By relieving us of the need to reach some end-of-days paradise, we expel the tyranny of the gulag and the horrors of the morality police. We take the responsibility for improving our lives from the autocrat, he that seeks to take us to heaven on the sword blade of violence, and place it where it must be, in the hands of the individual aiming to bequeath a better world for their children. We stop dreaming of a world to come and start focusing on life here on Earth. We stop and think of our children; their future and that of our grandchildren.

The danger of grand narrative comes through haste and the imperative of now. It comes from appointing slave masters to achieve now at all costs. It comes from the individual divesting themselves of personal responsibility. The promise of liberal democracy is that it places sovereignty in the hands of the individual person so that we may create better nations together. The failure of (consumerist) liberal democracy is that it falls into the trap of asking our elected masters to create a better world for us instead of asking ourselves to create that world. We passively wish to receive where we ought truly have the responsibility to give.

This book is a thorough exploration of the roots of human agency and sovereignty. It speaks of the power of narrative to give meaning and the responsibility of the individual to write the next chapter of the national story. It considers how we might create nations of narrative through education and speaks of renewed conceptions of citizenship. It explores the basis of freedom and the fundamental foundation of veritas. But ultimately it is calling out to you the reader and I the author, as vessels made in the image of God with the power of human agency and the awesome strength to create new worlds. It is calling us to live within the truth. For by placing truth as our highest ideal, we can hope for peace.

This work should be seen as a grand narrative about grand narrative. It starts with truth and it ends with peace. It is written step by step with intended logic and precision. After a survey of our current hellscape of lies, it shows how correct language leads to truth, how truth leads to human agency, how human agency leads to sovereignty, how sovereignty leads to citizen-centered nationhood, how nationhood leads to narrative, how narrative leads to meaning, how meaning leads to individual responsibility, how responsibility leads to freedom, how freedom leads to leadership and leadership leads to peace. On the way it passes by matters as vitally important as the existence of God, the problem of evil, the philosophy of language, science, education, immigration, diversity, abortion, prophecy, the international order, the philosopher teacher and peace in the Middle East.

The work is divided into “books” in the manner of the Bible and other magna opera throughout history. It does so less as a nod to personal pretentiousness, but more as a realisation that some readers may wish to read only parts of the whole. Atheist liberal democrats may feel allergic to theological discussions and others still may be dissuaded but references to philosophy. For the author, all the parts are logical necessities of whole, but the reader may feel otherwise, wishing to cherry pick those sections that provide them with personal inspiration. This being so, each book is a self-contained, accessible mini-work that can be understood on its own terms albeit without the theoretical foundations laid down in the previous books. The reader is kindly asked not to reject the whole on the basis of disagreement on some of the parts for the work is above all a book of ideas. To channel Ed Koch², It is unlikely that anyone will agree with me about every tiny detail and that’s just fine. The basis of liberal democracy is open debate and respectful disagreement; we must escape from our echo chambers and embrace this strength of our free societies.

Importantly, this work is unfinished. Further books may be added to the magnus in future and additional chapters to those already published. These words are not a revelation set in stone from above, but a living, breathing document susceptible to amendment and reconsideration. I refuse to go to the grave needing to defend every last clause and I refuse to allow the malicious critic to diminish the entire work for one phrase poorly expressed or one issue disagreed with.

The work is directed assuredly to the general reader, but it makes many and constant references to two nations above all: The British and Jewish nations. This should be of no surprise. I am British. I am Jewish. It would be foolhardy to speak in detail of nations I don’t understand and of mentalities about which I am unfamiliar. This is not to diminish or show disrespect to the other great nations of the world. Indeed, I hope that my words are inspirational to other peoples and that they can be applied in their own context, even spawning additional books written from the perspective of foreign peoples in their own language but in the same spirit as this magnus now written. Yet, in line with the idea of the national narrative concept that forms the heart of this work, it is by speaking of my own peoples that I find meaning. It is by writing of my own stories, and taking my responsibility to write the next chapter of each, that I engage my personal responsibility both to history and the future.

The British and Jewish nations are interesting in many respects, but most remarkably in that many deny that either are nations at all. Of the former it is said that it is a cultureless, nationless, international political vessel and of the latter it is said that it is a religion. I profoundly disagree with both sentiments. For whilst it is true that neither nation has a fixed, specific culture, both have a deep sense of moral, historical narrative and of values-based moral progress. They are inclusive identities, whereby attachment to values and national story trump offensive labels such as race and limiting principles such as culture. One can be British and Jewish at the same time, easily and openly, and indeed it is my deep entrenchment within both national stories that has birthed this book. At a time where antisemitism is rife and anti-British history is ubiquitous, I may have done better for my sales to have cleansed this work of all references to either people. But that would have been to live outside of the truth and deny my life of meaning. In short it would have been to contradict the very purpose of the book. If publishers are to boycott me for being the British-Jewish double Satan, then it merely shows the necessity of publishing this work right now. For that which the British and the Jews have given to the world may no longer be denied.

This work is long. So if you require a pithy slogan it is this: If today we decide to speak of truth, tomorrow we can achieve peace. It is in all our hands. Or rather, it is in your hands.

1. "The Power of the Powerless" - Vaclav Havel (https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23)

2. “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.”