A shock alone rarely ends a community's story; it ends when the shock arrives together with a coherent rival story whose bearers are visibly spared, because then material reality itself argues for the rival. Ansary's ch. 17: in the Black Death "there was not another coherent narrative pressing in on Europeans," so they rebuilt amid the rubble, and "There was no rival narrative competing with the one they were constructing. Native Americans, however, had no such luxury." For them "material reality told them they were wrong and the strangers were right, for they were dying like ants and the newcomers were walking through horror untouched"; "the world stopped making sense," and the pandemic "destroyed a universe of intertwined narratives." Clay's step: the variable that decides whether a story survives a shock is whether it must be rebuilt in the presence of a rival that is winning. In the AI transition, people whose work is displaced while visible adopters are untouched are in the second situation, not the first.

Evidence 5 passages

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In Europe, when the Black Death was rampaging across the land, there was not another coherent narrative pressing in on Europeans, asserting itself as an alternative to their own crumbling belief system.
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There was no rival narrative competing with the one they were constructing. Native Americans, however, had no such luxury.
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Every day, in every way, material reality told them they were wrong and the strangers were right, for they were dying like ants and the newcomers were walking through horror untouched.
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Surely, for the natives of America, the world stopped making sense.
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It didn't just clip short a history, it destroyed a universe of intertwined narratives

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