---
type: claim
domain: cultural-dynamics
description: "Master narratives are born in crisis, gain dominance through institutional embedding, accumulate contradictions through success, and collapse when contradictions exceed institutional capacity to suppress them"
confidence: likely
source: "Kuhn 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions' (1962), Berger and Luckmann (1966), m3taversal (Architectural Investing manuscript)"
created: 2026-04-21
secondary_domains: [grand-strategy]
related_claims:
  - "the-current-narrative-breakdown-is-unprecedented-in-speed-because-the-internet-makes-contradictions-visible-to-billions-instantly"
  - "effective-world-narratives-must-provide-both-meaning-and-coordination-mechanisms-simultaneously"
  - "berger-and-luckmanns-plausibility-structures-reveal-that-master-narrative-maintenance-requires-institutional-power-not-just-cultural-appeal"
  - "punctuated-equilibrium-emerges-from-darwinian-microevolution-without-additional-principles-because-extremal-dynamics-on-coupled-fitness-landscapes-self-organize-to-criticality"
---

# World narratives follow a lifecycle of formation dominance contradiction accumulation crisis and transformation

Every dominant world narrative -- religious, political, economic -- follows the same lifecycle. The pattern is structural, not accidental.

**Formation:** A new narrative emerges during a crisis in the previous one. Christianity formed during the crisis of Roman civic religion. Liberalism formed during the crisis of divine-right monarchy. Neoliberalism formed during the crisis of Keynesian stagflation. The new narrative succeeds because it explains the failure of the old one and provides a framework for action that works in the new conditions.

**Dominance:** The narrative becomes institutionally embedded. Schools teach it. Laws encode it. Professional norms enforce it. Economic structures reward behavior consistent with it and punish deviation. Berger and Luckmann's "plausibility structures" describe this phase: the narrative appears self-evident because the entire institutional environment is designed to confirm it.

**Contradiction accumulation:** Every narrative simplifies reality. The simplifications that enabled coordination during formation become distortions during dominance. The narrative says markets are efficient, but crashes keep happening. The narrative says meritocracy rewards talent, but inherited advantage keeps compounding. The narrative says democratic institutions represent the public, but policy keeps serving elites. These contradictions accumulate as anomalies -- Kuhn's term for observations that the paradigm cannot explain but has not yet abandoned.

**Crisis:** Accumulated contradictions exceed the institutional capacity to suppress or explain them. The crisis is typically triggered not by a new contradiction but by a focusing event -- a crash, a war, a pandemic -- that makes existing contradictions undeniable to a critical mass of people simultaneously.

**Transformation:** The old narrative doesn't simply die -- it is replaced by a narrative that incorporates the contradictions as features. Science incorporated the contradiction between Ptolemaic astronomy and observation. Liberalism incorporated the contradiction between divine authority and human agency. Each transformation preserves some elements of the old narrative while reframing others.

## Evidence
- Kuhn (1962) -- paradigm to normal science to anomaly accumulation to crisis to revolution to new paradigm
- Reformation -- Catholic narrative accumulated contradictions (corruption, indulgences, illiteracy-dependent authority); Luther's 95 Theses as focusing event; Protestant narrative incorporating literacy and individual conscience
- Keynesianism to Neoliberalism (1970s) -- stagflation contradicted Keynesian prediction that unemployment and inflation trade off; Friedman/Hayek narrative incorporating price signals and market efficiency
- Neoliberalism to unknown (2008-present) -- financial crisis, inequality, climate change contradicting market-efficiency narrative; replacement narrative not yet dominant

## Challenges
- The lifecycle model may impose false pattern on diverse historical events -- not all narrative changes follow this sequence
- "Contradiction accumulation" is only visible in retrospect; prospectively, it's hard to distinguish genuine contradictions from temporary anomalies
