Dr. AnaLouise Keating’s Status-Quo Stories

1. Dr. AnaLouise Keating’sStatus-Quo Stories Status-quo stories describe worldviews, belief systems, and actions (ontologies, epistemologies, and ethics) that normalize and naturalize the existing social system, values, and standards so entirely that they stunt our imaginations and shape our lives.

2. Status-quo stories contain core beliefs that can define our reality and thus greatly influence our lives, although we rarely (if ever) acknowledge their power—or even their existence. Because status-quo stories function as factual truths (or, for many people, as The Truth) about reality, they inhibit our ability to envision the possibility of change—on individual, collective, and social levels.

3. “It’s always been this way!” “That’s just the way things are!” “People are just like that. Stop worrying. Stop trying to change them!” “Don’t rock the boat!” “It’s God’s will. Just pray for strength to endure.” “It’s life. Get used to it!” “You don’t like it here? Then leave! Go back to your own country/your own place.” “It is what it is.” Things that we say/hear that protect and preserve status-quo stories:

4. Generally spoken with great certainty, these and similar comments (commands, really) reflect unthinking affirmation of the existing reality and a stubborn, equally unthinking resistance to change. Because we believe that our status-quo stories represent accurate factual statements about ourselves, other people, and the world, we view them as permanent, unchanging facts.

5. Status-quo stories have a numbing effect. When we organize our lives around such stories or in other ways use them as ethical roadmaps or guides, they prevent us from extending our imaginations and exploring additional possibilities. Status-quo stories block us from changing; they actively encourage us to remain the same.

6. This belief in the status-quo’s permanence becomes self-fulfilling: We do not try to make change because change is impossible to make. “It’s always been that way,” we tell ourselves, “so why waste our energy trying to change things?” “People are just like that—there’s no point in trying to change human nature!” Status-quo stories trap us in our current circumstances and conditions; they limit our imaginations because they prevent us from envisioning alternate possibilities.

7. So what can we do expose status-quo stories? How can we free and transform our thinking in order to make positive personal and social changes? We are all born curious. Status-quo stories stifle and even shut down this curiosity. In college now, we can resurrect that curiosity through strengthening our powers of critical thinking. Critical thinking does not mean being critical, or negatively picking things apart in order to find something wrong. Critical thought can be defined as thinking about what we are thinking—as thought about thought. What do we think and believe? Why do we think and believe these things? How do these thoughts and beliefs influence—even control—our actions and our behaviors, the big and small choices that we make every day?

8. Critical thinking can help us understand ourselves and the world of which we are a part. Critical thinking is not easy. It’s sometimes not fun. It can often be uncomfortable. But beyond the difficulty, the nonfun, and the discomfort, critical thinking makes us smarter, stronger, kinder, more empathetic, more compassionate, and more confident in our ideologies and ourselves.

9. Critical Thinking: Just Say WHY? In academia as in life, it cannot be enough to never question the status-quo stories which influence and impact our lives. Through our powers of critical thinking, we can challenge these status-quo stories, we can challenge ourselves, and we can come to understand that each of us has the power to change and to create change in the world. BE change. CREATE change. Do it! TODAY!