the problem is the dominant narrative gets internalized, and we react from that. it's powerful and pervasive. 
i listened to rutger bregman the writer of humankind:a hopeful history. he writes about how the dominant narrative is propaganda, and he says we can make a different reality, a self-fulfilling prophecy. r. has said that to me repeatedly and i got defensive, sticking to my internalized narrative, one which can always find corroboration externally, because humans do do some vile things. but the book is about the truth that humans cooperate and even put the other first. 
two things he remarks on. the stanford experiments were rigged and the "guard" subjects were told to torture the "prisoner" subjects to fit the desired results. the other was the book lord of the flies which illustrated the thin veneer theory that civilization is a mask covering brutal instinct, when in fact the book twisted utterly the real life scenario in which boys stranded on an island for a year made a peaceful cooperative society.
it's the dominant narrative that makes us competitors and killers and perpetuates war for profit and destroys the earth. 
we have to resist, to expunge and defund the dominant narrative.