The Rule of Stories

“Those who tell the stories rule society.”— Plato

We are not so much governed by the rule of law as the rule of stories.

Our stories define who belongs, who threatens, and whose suffering matters. Control the stories and you control how the laws are executed. If you want to change society, you have to change the stories.

Plato understood this reality of the political order. Stories shape the moral imagination of people, which determines what they will demand and what they will accept. “Those who tell the stories rule society,” Plato said.

For people to consent to be governed they have to accept the stories that define the character of society and their place in it. In a warning to American democracy, recent surveys show media organizations are ranked among the least trusted institutions in the United States, above only Congress.

Alienation and resentment grow when citizens feel their government doesn't recognize their stories. Healing begins when marginalized stories are allowed to enter public life, and their truths expand our collective governance.

Artist Faith Ringgold created pioneering "story quilts" that capture the experiences of Black Americans. Her quilts compel honesty. They reclaim narrative authority from institutions that have excluded certain lives from official history. By stitching personal memories into public art, as in "The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles" above, her work asserts that those stories are not marginal; they are artistically and politically constructive. Ringgold's quilts are acts of democratic renewal, inviting a plurality of voices into our civic conversation.

A democracy that cannot accommodate multiple stories will eventually enforce a single one. And that story will serve power, not people.

1. Plato, "Republic," Book III.
2. Faith Ringgold, "The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles" (1991).