On Lore

A series on lore

This is a series of essays on lore as a basis for a new approach to organizations, management, and leadership.

1. Lands of Lorecraft: In which I introduce lorecraft, via glimpses of ideas from emerging thinkers, as an emerging Millennial school of management with a primary focus on internal psyche management. I pose the question of whether it is a generational cope, or a genuine new capability that is a response to contemporary techno-social conditions.

2. Lore as Imaginative Irony: In which I argue that lore emerges as a response to traditional cringe management culture, and attempts to transcend cynicism by operating in a mode of imaginative irony, similar to kayfabe.

3. Raw Lore: In which I use recycling behaviors as a reference example to develop a model of lorecraft as an approach to managing a complex epistemic commons. I propose the notion of a “lore molecule,” comprising a posture, a narrative fragment, and a behavior, as a building block

4. Epics vs. Lore: In which I draw on the Star Wars universe and Ursula Le Guin’s carrier-bag theory of fiction to argue that lore is a natural foil to epic narrative as a psyche management mechanism. I argue that lore is rooted in deontological ethics where epic is rooted in consequentialist ethics, and propose a set of 7 dimensions of lore.

5. Dark, Gray and Light Lore: In which I consider the question of whether lore can be crafted at all at a macro level, and argue that it can, and that three broad strategies can be identified that differ in their levels of intellectual rigor, and ethical soundness.

6. Mopium, Copium, Hopium: In which I consider the micro-level question of lorecrafting by way of a nootropic stack metaphor that functions to elevate organizational life at a dreary minute-to-minute level, and propose oracles and encyclopedias as two basic ways to operationalize lorecrafting work.

7. Towards Management Metamodernism: In which I wrap up the series by taking a cue from David Foster Wallace’s writings to pose what I consider to be the fundamental question driving this young field of Lorecraft: Is it possible to create a metamodern management science?