Perspective: Threat-driven narratives are scaring people away from classical liberalism/libertarianism

On 5.17 at American Institute for Economic Research's (AIER) SJ Mont Hamilton/Bastiat Society, notable futurist author–speaker and longtime Silicon Valley Libertarian John Hagel discussed a major flaw in local libertarianism's narrative: It's fear based—and should instead spotlight opportunities to improve one's community, in exciting and tangible ways. Hagel's comments excerpted below.

...I've studied movements for social change throughout history and in different parts of the world, and tried to find out: What are the common elements? Despite all the diversity of the regions and periods of history, what are the common elements that seem to be shared by all these very successful movements for social change? I've ended up identifying three elements that I believe are absolutely critical to the success of those movements.

(3:37–4:08)

The first element is what I would call opportunity-based narratives. And here, I need to be very clear and make a distinction because in my experience, most people, when I talk about narratives, say, “Oh, you're talking about stories....” So for me, a story is self contained. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end to it. The end, the story's over. And the story is about me the storyteller, or it's about some other people, real or imagined. It's not about you.... And for me, a narrative, in contrast, is open ended. There's some major threat or opportunity out in the future, not clear whether it's going to be achieved or not, and the resolution of the narrative hinges on you. It's a call to action to say, “Your choices, your actions are going to determine how this narrative plays out.”

And, again, when I look at successful social movements throughout history, they have all been driven by opportunity-based narratives. Their focus is on some really inspiring and exciting opportunity out in the future, not yet achieved, and, “You need to act. If you just sit there, it's not going to happen. There are barriers, there are obstacles, there are things we can overcome, but we need to come together and act.” But it's about the opportunity.

And I believe one of the big issues today and around the world, actually, is we're becoming increasingly driven by threat-based narratives. And I'll just talk about the U.S. in this context. In the U.S., I believe both sides of the political spectrum are equally guilty in that they have adopted threat-based narratives: “The enemy is coming to get us. We're all going to die. We need to mobilize now and resist or we're going to die.” “Oh. We're going to die?” It feeds fear. And I think that's one of the big obstacles we have in the world today is that fear is increasingly overwhelming us and leaving us passive because it's too scary. There's too much going on.

(4:19–7:13)

Watch the whole thing here.

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