The Rashomon Effect: Shifting Narratives
of Consensus & Doubt
from Book to Game
RASHOMON: LOSS OF�NARRATIVE CONSENSUS
Rupture in National Narrative
The most grievous cultural wound has been the loss of a shared moral order. We told multiple generations to come up with their own individual values…
Without shared standards of right and wrong, it’s impossible to settle disputes; it’s impossible to maintain social cohesion and trust.
David Brooks� New York Times
Loss of Narrative Moral Consensus
Institution, the Nation-State
- Japan
- The Panopticon
- Hive Mind
- Conspiracy Theories
- Linearity vs Cycle
- Abraham vs Ulysses
/� ///�
From National to Civilizational Narratives:
Exodus, the Flight from Egypt
1776 DESIGN OF US SEAL:�FRANKLIN, ADAMS, JEFFERSON
Iranian State TV
Exodus story, the crossing of the Red Sea
(Feb 28, 2026)
Japanese anime and manga have played a prominent role in protest movements across the world. They are particularly effective forms of protest due to unique story tropes, close connection to online discourse and cross-cultural, decentralized fandoms. Tim Brinkhof
New Narrative for Political Activism-
Japanese Anime (‘One Piece’)
Paris
New York
Indonesia
Let no man think that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God's words, or in the book of God's works.
Francis Bacon (17thc)
REALITY AS A BOOK
CONTENT OF THE FORM:�NARRATIVE DELIVERY SYSTEMS
I. Heretofore Narrative: Age of BOOK
God’s Story, God as Protagonist
Man’s Story, Man as Protagonist
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II. Present ‘Narrative’: Age of GAME Artificial Intelligence as Story
Creating a Social Imaginary:
Panopticon & National Book Narratives
The Panopticon
INNER PANOPTICON:�CONTROLLED BY FREEDOM
The Panopticon’s Big Brother was invisible, but he was everywhere in prisoners’ minds. The inhabitants of today’s digital panopticon feel free.
The digital panopticon thrives on voluntary self-exposure. Now, everyone is his or her own panopticon.
Byung-Chul Han
Phono
‘Phono Sapiens’ & The Digital Panopticon
UNITY THROUGH DOUBT:�SOCIAL MEDIA & CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Scoring points, hunting for clues, building plotlines, revealing the Grand Narrative… Why are people acting like the national fracture is fun?
ARG (Alternate Reality Game) game masters have described one of the pathologies of players as seeing connections that aren’t “really there” — that the designers didn’t intend.�� Jon Askonas
QAnon is popular partly because the act of “researching” it through obscure forums and blog posts is actually more enjoyable...
Fictional worlds populated by a kaleidoscope of characters. And they required communities to piece them together to reconstruct meaning.
Adrian Hon
Tribal Storytelling—Online Community
This has always been part of the appeal of conspiracies and the occult, but QAnon is one of the first to have done this deliberately in a very online, responsive, real-time manner.
Adrian Hon, 2020
Alternate Reality Game?
Pizzagate, 2016
Role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons pioneered using gameplay mechanics not to fight tabletop wars but to tell stories, centered not on armies but on individual characters of a player’s own creation. The point of playing was not to beat your opponent but to share in the thrill of making up worlds.
Jon Askonas� The New Atlantis
FROM THE CENTRALIZED CELLS OF�THE PANOPTICON…
]\\
…TO THE ALGORITHMIC TUNNELS OF
THE HIVE MIND
Mind Flayer
It’s an alien life form [internet]
—David Bowie
AI Hive Mind: ‘The Joining’
BOOK AS THROWBACK:�TALES OF RESISTANCE…
CAROL
MIKE
THE NON-BOOK FORM OF NARRATIVE
With digital platforms, we approach the degree zero of narration. They are media of information, not narration.
Reality disintegrated into ‘stories’ on digital platforms such as Instagram or Facebook are not genuine stories. They have no narrative duration.
�A NEW CONSENSUS (CONFORMITY):�ALGORITHMIC NARRATIVES�
Exhibit A:
The ‘People’s Choice’ Landscape Project: 1990s
Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid
Sample Questions:
‘People’s Choice’ Landscape
‘Wind Tunnel’ Effect Design
From film to fashion and architecture to advertising, creative fields have become defined by convention and cliché. In every field we look at, we find that everything looks the same. --Murrell
Blanding of Auto Branding
‘Generic Metropolis’
“Is the contemporary city like the contemporary airport— ‘all the same’? What if this homogenization was a conscious movement away from difference toward similarity?” -- Rem Koolhaus
‘Non-Native Species’ Architecture
We’ve copied and pasted our society from the most anodyne, boring. Covered with fiber cement, stucco, and bricks. They’ve shown up all over the country, spreading like a non-native species. --Coby Lefkowitz
‘International AirBnB’ Style
White walls. Raw wood. Nespresso machines. Eames chairs. Bare brick. Open shelving. Edison bulbs. The style combines the rough-hewn rawness of industrialism with the elegant minimalism of mid-century design. –Aaron Harvey
‘Air-Space’
Easily recognizable symbols that’s meant to provide familiar surroundings for a wealthy, mobile elite, who want to feel like they’re visiting somewhere “authentic” while they travel, but who actually just crave more of the same: rustic interiors and sans-serif logos and splashes of cliche accent colors on rugs and walls.” Kyle Chayka
‘Instagram Face’
Social media influencers look like beauty clones: a full pout, perfectly arched eyebrows, expertly applied eyeliner, topped off with highlighter and cheek contouring. With a few makeup brushes, you can be well on your way to looking like everyone else. --Julia Brucculieri
UGC (User Generated Content)
The Instagram pictures we post, the tweets we read, the TV we watch, the app icons we click, the skylines we see, the websites we visit all look the same.
It’s time we reintroduced some originality. When the world zigs.
Zag.
COMPARATIVE NARRATIVES:�CYCLICAL VS LINEAR,�WESTERN EPIC VS BIBLICAL
Abraham
Ulysses
CYCLICAL JOURNEY:�ULYSSES & ‘THE RETURN’
To the myth of Ulysses returning to Ithaca, we wish to oppose the story of Abraham who leaves his fatherland forever for a yet unknown land, and forbids his servant to even bring back his son to the point of departure.
The itinerary of philosophy remains that of Ulysses… Emmanuel Levinas
Abraham
Ulysses
ABRAHAM’S JOURNEY
HOME AS LINEAR
By faith Abraham went to live in the land of promise.. For he was looking forward to the city..whose designer and builder is God…
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised..and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth…seeking a homeland.
Hebrews 11
Homesick for a Place
You’ve Never Known
�BIBLICAL LINEAR NARRATIVE�(CREATION 🡪 FALL 🡪 REDEMPTION) �
Viewed as a whole, the Christian account of history is eschatological not only in the sense that it comes to a definitive and everlasting end, but in the sense that the end is a glorified beginning, not merely a return to origins.
The Christian Bible moves not from garden lost to garden restored, but from garden to garden-city.
Peter Leithart
Redemptive History Leans Forward
They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven…But in fact the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises. Hebrews 8
�TOWARDS A BIBLICAL RESPONSE�
--- linear, not ‘lived happily ever after’ novel
--- not nostalgic return
--- not blood/ethnos
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?
Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. and the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham. saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham., the man of faith.
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings”, referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring”, who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterwards, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 20 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.
Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
Father Abraham: Equality & Hierarchy
(Galatians 3)
Slaves in biblical Israel were physically identical to masters. Even those slaves who were not born Israelites were to be “Hebraized,” made into Israelites through circumcision and then fully invited into the social and religious life of the community. The blessings of God’s promises to Abraham were applied to those so ingrafted into his family.
Timothy Padgett� (“American Slavery and the Image of God”)
Expanding the Ethnos:
Circumcision & Multiethnic Israel