Old stories must die

Powerful words - those that affect physical reality beyond the capacity of one set of hands - are those that create a story that enrolls other people.

By a story, I mean a system of meaning that focuses human intention and assigns roles to those involved in that story.

Here are some examples of stories: America, France, money, the government, property, marriage, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, Citibank.

That these things are stories becomes clear when people stop believing them.

When people lose confidence in a government, it is no longer a government but just a bunch of men and women in suits.

When people lose confidence in a currency, it becomes mere slips of paper.

When people stop agreeing that your possessions are "yours," they become just things.

Stories have their own life cycle.

Stories that were once true and potent grow old and infirm, and eventually they die.

Today this is happening to some of our deepest stories, the great myths of our civilization.

In particular, two related stories have created the world we know today, and both of them are nearing their end.

Ultimately, it is because they have entered their terminal phase that we have the ubiquitous matrix of lies

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Lies have a way of growing until they consume all life, that we have nearly forgotten what the truth feels like.

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The first of these world-creating stories is the Story of Ascent.

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It is our story of the people.

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It says the humanity has risen from a state of nature, a state of scientific ignorance and technological impotence, to becoming nature's lords and masters.

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We have harnessed natural forces, penetrated the mysteries of the universe, overcome natural limitations with technology.

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Someday, says the story, our understanding and control will be complete, thanks to nanotechnology, space travel, infinite energy, social and genetic engineering, etc.

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Humanity: conquerors of nature, onward and upward forever!
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The second defining story of our civilization is our Story of Self: that we are discrete and separate beings living in an objective universe.

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You and I are separate - mutually dependent, perhaps, in a practical way, but independent of each other or anyone else for our basic being-ness.

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From the selfish gene of biology to the rational actor of economics to the flesh-encapsulated soul of religion, all of our ideologies are aligned with our story of self.

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And, from the medical system to the criminal justice system to the money system, all of our social institutions enact it.
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Both of these defining stories are crumbling around us.

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Neither is true any more.

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Few people today greet the Story of Ascent with the same near-universal fervor of, say, the 1950s, as all the promises of technotopia (the end of disease, unlimited energy, a leisure society, space colonies) fade into legend.

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Collapse, not ascent, is the new meme, and this collapse ushers in new realization of connectedness, of interdependency, and along with it the end of the story of the discrete and separate self.

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The independent, unencumbered man of reason no longer beckons as an ideal: we crave now community, intimacy and connection.
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It is time now to tell a new Story of the People and a new Story of Self.

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The first might be something like, "A peaceful humanity living in co-creative partnership with a wild garden earth."

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It is a humanity that no longer takes unthinkingly from Mother Earth, but a humanity that co-creates and coevolves together with Lover Earth, starting, I think, with an initial centuries-long phase of healing the wounds to nature and the indigenous spirit that civilization has inflicted.

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The second new story is the connected self: a nexus of relationships, a node in the cosmic cycle of gifts, an individual dependent not only for survival, but for her very being, on her relationship to all that was Other

And then................

C.Eisenstein