Of Comfort and Disquiet

My parents’ generation lived their formative years during the Second World War. Their war service, experiences and exposure to propaganda were still raw in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

As a result, when I was growing up, Hitler and the Nazi party were a constant background presence. It is hard to avoid the things that our parents and teachers experienced so viscerally. Inevitably, I picked up the prevailing view of Hitler as an unhinged monster supported by a mindlessly evil political apparatus.

It may, ironically, have been comforting to focus on all that monstrosity.

The picture of Hitler and the Nazis is so awful that it creates a gulf between us and them. The abnormality of the monster serves to reinforce our normality. This allows us to write the story of the war as a black and white narrative about the battle of good and evil. And, predictably, the good guys won. It reinforces that all is right with our world. It is a comfort narrative.

This allows us to write the story of the war as a black and white narrative about the battle of good and evil.

I define a comfort narrative as a story we tell ourselves because the alternatives are simply too frightening, unpalatable or complex to consider. It helps us feel safe or justified.

Comfort narratives may be the small stories we tell about ourselves to maintain self-esteem, or the large stories that help groups of people feel safe. If articles of faith assert what we collectively accept to be true, comfort narratives bolster what we wish were true.

Unlike myths, which are invented narratives, comfort narratives are plausible stories, and we cling to them because they seem the best alternative.

Many of our collective beliefs can be read as comfort narratives – at least for some people. Religion is often framed thus, but strict adherence to the scientific method functions similarly. Both provide an anchor to stave off the disquiet of existential meaninglessness.

I also interpret progress as a comfort narrative. The idea that things are inevitably getting better allows us to see each new crisis as a bump in the road rather than a sign of a system in decline (which would be how you might interpret it if you accepted a cyclical version of history).

Adam Smith’s ‘hidden hand’ works like this too: the economy may look like a smoking pile of manure, but the market’s hidden hand will somehow, miraculously, turn up trumps.

It is similarly comforting to believe that people who voted for your political rivals must be corrupt, stupid, or blind. Or that they are some sort of cartoon character. That is what labelling your opponents ‘hicks’ or ‘social justice warriors’ serves to do.

It is similarly comforting to believe that people who voted for your political rivals must be corrupt, stupid, or blind.

All these narratives keep us psychologically safe by stopping us from having to deal with the complex dynamics of politics and people, and the possibility that our opponents may be more like us than we care to acknowledge.

The most basic of all comfort narratives is the one that says “I am right.” It lies at the heart of many other versions of the narrative. And, along with safety, it fuels people’s outrage at having their comfort narratives questioned.

None of us likes being mistaken – of there being another better explanation that means having to rethink the whole issue. Alternative narratives are disquieting.

Studying history forced me to take a deep breath and start looking for those alternative, disquieting narratives. In the case of the Nazis, it was the question of how a not particularly hot-headed nation was able to democratically elect and then support a clearly damaged and volatile leader.

Since it is not viable to suggest that over 50% of the German people were evil, instead we are obliged to face the spectre of ordinary, generally well-intentioned people contributing to one of the world’s greatest atrocities.

...we are obliged to face the spectre of ordinary, generally well-intentioned people contributing to one of the world’s greatest atrocities.

All of a sudden, it is much harder to distance ourselves from those people. And, by being forced to confront the way evil can creep in with the help of solid, ordinary folks, the scary possibility of it happening again becomes much more real.

It is not comforting to think of Hitler as just another deeply flawed individual. Or his followers as ordinarily decent people whose circumstances caused them to buy into a particularly insidious comfort narrative – one that scapegoated a single group as the root of all their problems.

But if we want to understand our contemporary circumstances then, perhaps, we need to examine our own comfort narratives (like those that demonise specific people) and start thinking instead about some of the disquieting alternatives that we are resolutely avoiding.  Otherwise, our society’s warring narratives will end up making us all very uncomfortable indeed.