narrare necesse est

Walter Fisher, in his 1984, Narration as Human Communication Paradigm, writes in my paraphrase: People are essentially storytelling animals, and all communication is a form of storytelling. We make decisions on the basis of good reasons, and history, biography, culture, and character determine what we consider good reasons. Narrative rationality is determined by the coherence and fidelity of our stories, and the world is a set of stories from which we choose, and thus constantly re-create, our lives.

This is of course nothing new. Roland Barthes and others have expressed the same earlier, and later, Anthony Giddens, in his Modernity and Self-Identity, writes extensively on the narratives of self-identity and the necessity to keep a particular narrative going as a biographical protection, affirmation and continuity. In other words: narrare necesse est.