The very essence of a competitive advantage, whether it be in chess or economics, is the discovery and execution of stage-setting moves. Narrative is one of the ways in which we speak, one of the large categories in which we think. Plot is its thread of design and its active shaping force, the product of our refusal to allow temporality to be meaningless, our stubborn insistence on making meaning in the world and in our lives. The Chess Mentality S ome animals have gotten to be so fancy that they simulate a course of action before taking even a tentative first step. These are only extreme examples of how to make and compare alternative plans, but they illustrate the same sort of process that we all go through, when simply contemplating the leftovers in the refrigerator, trying to figure out a combination that will avoid another trip to the grocery store.
Many animals look ahead in a limited way, predicting when winter is coming.
It's a novel course of action, one that neither you nor any of your ancestors have done before, that is the difficult problem. And not even that is hard, if you have the time to grope around. A goal, and some feedback about progress, suffices for many novel situations. Humans can simulate future courses of action and weed out the nonsense off-line. By borrowing the mental structures for syntax to judge other combinations of possible actions, we can extend our plan-ahead abilities and our intelligence.