Second, don’t you think the “We need a new story” crowd are gesturing (however vaguely) at the same conclusion you point to? To me, your conclusion sounds like a new story.
“The joyous struggle we are caught up in is to forge a new relationship to reality, champion a new societal purpose and build a new political economy. We need to do all those things and it won’t be easy.”
I imagine you are joking about Tina, but I just noticed the lyrics in that song are quite metacrisis-relevant and worth revisiting.
Obviously I'm joking to some extent about not needing a new story. There's a little bit of 'The King is dead, long live the King' to any discussion of narrative change. I suppose I'm just resisting the idea of story as panacea, and some of the psuedo-profundity and the illusions of control that surround talk of new narratives.
No way! I would never joke about Tina, or Beyond Thunderdome.
I agree, "We need a new story" is not super helpful, and the devil is in the political/economic details, as you note. Power, Praxis, and Learning from the Mafia.....
"So, in some way, I believe that many of the stories that we need right now in our culture arrived perfectly on time about five thousand years ago." Martin Shaw
"Martin Shaw: There’s no way we can’t create stories, which are the things that really feed our bones; that’s what we’re hunkering down for. Stories bring in what is at the edge of our vision and not right at the center. So in other words, in an old myth, if there’s a crisis in the story, the remedy for the crisis always comes from the edge not the center. So when I think about the times we’re in, and I think about what is actually happening to our gaze—what we are fundamentally staring at all the time—I think, that’s not a mythological move. A mythological move is to be aware of all the hundred trembling secrets at the edge of your vision. Because they are the things that want to secrete their intelligence into you about the problem that’s right in front of you.
But if you think about great myth—if you keep staring at Medusa, you get turned to ashes. And when I meet a lot of activists at the moment, I meet a lot of people utterly consumed with the seemingly horrible narrative of our times. I see a lot of burn out, because they have no shield to reflect, they have no art to reflect, the immensity of what’s right in front of them. If all you do is stare into hell, you will become ashes.
Stories are a way, an artful way, of negotiating very difficult things in such a fashion that, in the very demonstration and articulation of those stories, more beauty works itself out into the world."
On reflection, I think the idea that “we” don’t need another story is more a continuation of your ruminations on the problems with “we”, than it is a condemnation of “story”. For sure, there are issues when it comes to making up bespoke stories (as Martin indicates) — but as Ric is pointing out, the cthonic stories that we need probably already exist we need to re-excavate, reinterpret and reintegrate them
Yeah, good point Ric. In some sense - and, while swept-away by the spirit of the Enlightenment, which no-doubt enabled many good things - I think we have nevertheless moved away from things that we then perceived to be not 'progressive', 'scientific', and that might even have been judged as 'primitive', such as stories and myths; which we are now (re)discovering as actual perennial vehicles of wisdom. In a sense, we are re-learning our true heritage, I think. While many claim that we may not be able to re-enact the dynamics of the Axial Age, it would seem that the key humanistic insights from some of these perennial stories and myths do need to be revived - or if 'need' is too strong, than at least, that we can greatly benefit from them; if we are to construct a new thriving age in the post-Anthropocene.
I sense your urgency in this piece, Jonathan, and I resonate with it. The challenge with stories, as I see it, lies in their tendency to focus primarily on the 'what' and 'why.' A truly impactful story incorporates a poetic 'how' that can only be understood with an open heart. Unfortunately, many of us remain trapped in dualistic thinking, which limits our ability to recognize this crucial and transformative aspect. While I don't align myself with any specific narrative 'tribe,' I continue to long for a new overarching story that is expansive enough to include all of existence and profound enough to motivate us to protect it from what threatens it. Until then, I remain focused on the little I do have control over, that is, my daily tasks of life, attempting to remain grounded in my actions. And am grateful, ever so grateful, that there are people, like many of us here, who are attempting to do the same.
Yes, that's an important set of distinctions and it helps to explain what I am reacting against - the absence of the how, which is always specific. And also, yes, how a story unfolds is often heart related - in the sense of how you are moved by it and what you feel through it. While 'we need a new story' tends to come from the head...
Huh. That struck me as the most reified relationship to story(ing) I think I’ve heard in a very long time. If that’s all the author imagines that “story” can and does meaningfully placehold, the worlding it enacts is indeed an impoverishment to be rightly rejected. If, on the other hand, “story” is allowed the space to evoke, say, a more Baradian, Deleuzian, or even Piercean sensibility (which I can confidently say that it does, for many), this piece begins to feel more like a case of uncharitable ax-grinding and failure of imagination and less like a sophisticated philosophical defense or ethical advocacy. Yes, of course, “story” can be legitimately understood in the reductively pathologizing way the author seems to hold it (and I can support and celebrate all the concerns that arise from such an act), but why reify this word from the beginning only to de-mean those for whom the idea is deeply meaningful and foreclose the question into which it might otherwise invite us?
Thank you BrandyinStarland. With such a wonderful name I can see why you'd be inclined to defend stories. I can't comment on the alternative sensibilities you allude to without knowing how you are using them, but I agree 'story' can evoke all sorts of things, and from a variety of perspectives of greater or lesser depth. I hope I made that pretty clear though, and even shared my love of stories in passing, which makes your reference to reification a curious one.
For perspective, there is some ax grinding in the piece, and that vibe is probably the strongest that comes through. I am not sure how you spend your days, but for the last decade or so I have been attending events, reading books or listening to podcasts where some version of the 'we need a new story' is a recurring suggestion. When that suggestion is made, those making it rarely say, for instance, "and I mean that in the Deleuzian sense..." or, "And here we have to start distinguishing between story, narrative, myth and metanarrative...." Instead, the suggestion typically does reify stories and even deify stories - it makes them real (and singular) and turns them into Gods - without really doing the work of explaining how that it supposed to happen today, and whether it would be a good thing if it did. If anything, I think I was reacting *against* the tendency to reify stories. I accept however that without sufficient academic grounding presented here to substantiate the case, it might have come out as an undiscerning rant to those more familiar with the scholarly terrain.
Yes that’s one way to keep people happy and I am being provocative, but the question is whether it’s too simple, (pace the Einstein quote “as simple as possible but not simpler”) and I’m inclined to think it is. The main reason it’s too simple is actually more about ‘we’ than ‘story’. The new metaphysics, meta ethics and metapolitics calls the we into question and transfigures it, in a way I don’t think the desire for story (as panacea) does.
Agree. I’ve been thinking about this for years. Some complementary questions:
1. What even is a “story,” which can literally mean “lie”? (Leaving aside myth, where important truths rest upon falsifiable facts. And are journalism “stories” inverted myth, where false narratives rest upon provable facts?)
2. Why new stories if the old ones made no difference? (1984 for example. Did that massively popular story do anything to stop our march towards a technocrat surveillance dystopia?)
3. What if the stories we need are displeasing or unpalatable, or incompatible with capitalism and the attention economy?
4. Is our need for a new story unevenly distributed? Is a story that pierces the heart of the president of Standard Oil more valuable than one that makes eight billion powerless hearts beat happily?
5. What if the idea that words are primary (in The Beginning) is a persistent error? What if the snake wrote that part, inserting a poisonous, self-referential worm into the human buffet of wisdom and mythology? What is the Tree of Knowledge after all, but a tree both made of words and whose fruit are more words?
Is the notion of “story” as slippery as that of “we?”
I neglected number one here, because I wanted the rant to flow and not get too stuck in distinctions, but clearly story means many things and there are many kinds of stories. But it's always helpful for any given 'we need a' or 'let's do..' to ask whether and how others can use any such device for their own ends, rather than for the greater good.
Number two is a powerful example.
I think most people want a version of number three, but they may not be aware of what they have to give up in the process, or really willing to countenance that.
A big yes to number four. This relates to Claudia's point above about simplistic demands for a new story neglecting the centrality of 'the how'. There is usually something about stories that stays with us personally.
Number five is dark! I should say I don't think 'Logos' means words as such, and the translation 'The Word' is a questionable one. It's more like 'in the beginning was the narrative ordering principle' but this is widely discussed terrain and there are other ways to look at it.
Yes, 'story' and 'we' share similar issues today, and with hindsight I should have remarked that a huge part of the 'We need a new story' is that it diverts attention from the We problem, or rather it thinks it has a panacea to solve it, but it doesn't. Actually, that's a good point, thank you for getting me there...
Touching back on #5, I’ll clarify briefly as I find this subject fascinating.
#1 Understood that Divinity students will have more subtle interpretations. I’d argue “Word” is the common sense. The idea is elsewhere too. For example: “Let there be [a thing]”, and then there was [thing]. In fact, the whole idea of the Bible is it’s The Word of God. (My point is simply to acknowledge the powerful role of words in this creation story.)
2. Also discussed widely are the wrods Thou shalt have Dominion… That’s the really dark part, even if it was meant more like Stewardship. I think the darkness could lift if the Abrahamic faiths did a little collective “Oopsie, we got that part wrong.” But we can’t, because institutions lack humility. Along with ‘We need a new story,’ we also hear we need to embrace indigenous ways of knowing and being. I think there is discomfort in that to truly embrace the latter it is necessary to challenge the former, for any interpretation. (Here, I’ll go first: Oopsie.)
3. I’d cut out a reflection on The Bicameral Mind. Where did Jaynes go wrong? In knowing the ‘Superior Hemisphere’ was the important one, and then having to shoehorn his theory to fit that pre-existing cultural and scientific assumption. In this I don’t mean anything dark. The universal phenomenon of finding what one is preconditioned to find is the same as early scientists looking at amoebas and seeing tiny, mechanized factories.
One could substitute “Left Hemisphere” for “snake” and my meaning wouldn’t change. I’m not sure if that dispels the darkness or takes us to new depths.
I enjoyed the playfulness of this, Jonathan. Thank you.
Back in Apr 2019 myself and 67 others followed my friend Daisy Campbell (who has been instrumental in the creation of CoB). We travelled in a big bus from The Cerne Abbas Giant, Dorset to CERNE in Geneva (or Hardon2Hadron as we preferred to say) with the express magical purpose of bringing about the end of story (as we know it). The (as we know it) was tagged on 'cos we were a little worried about the original idea of ending story completely. We also 'reset time'. I've yet to see conclusive evidence that we were unsuccessful.
Of course, me being all about money... (which Joe Brewer referred to in that vague way as 'economic systems' which I don't think helps us)... I would like to offer this wisdom from my buddy Noam Yuran. "Money is the mute object of discourse". Money is written into story by default. So new discourse about 'economic systems' is always on dodgy ground imo. If we want redemption (get it?) then it will come through action. We must act ourselves into a new way of thinking - as you put it a few weeks back - and once that's done we can sit around the fire and make up those new stories.
Ha! It's an anti-story itself. At least in practice.
Talking/writing about it a big hurdle is understanding that ritual sacrifice is not an exchange. I think that's obvious in praxis. But many folks observing can't get their heads around it.
Quick and dirty summary of ideas on the About page. I've written tons about the ideas... but of course its all useless. The transgression or renunciation or active negation (or however you want to put it) is the key. If I can put on another event I'm gonna beg you to come be a Bishop in our Synod.
I agree with the criticisms of the 'story' - however, there is also more. At the root of the issue, I think, is that we indeed "need a new metaphysics, a new metaethics and a new metapolitics" - and, the 'new story' is a shorthand for that, in many peoples' minds. What is the story of any given epoch? It's hard to pin down and might seem ephemeral, yet is nevertheless embedded in the various socio-cultural artifacts in formative ways - which then informs our subjective and 'objective' experiences, and creates conditions for the emergence of social institutions, policies, and de-facto 'solid' experiential realities, that effectively become embodied. This 'embeddedness' is pervasive, systemic, and therefore difficult to perceive - and so we translate it as 'stories', because we cognitively attempt to create wrappers around things, so that we can cognicize them. As an illustration - and if Weber was right - then the stories of the early Protestants had a very formative effect. There is also arguably something 'underneath' stories. We might not yet know what that is - since we are in the midst of emerging a new set of 'sciences' that, as McGilchrist might suggest, are going to be based on a better balance between the various modes of perceiving the world. So stories in that sense are far from 'innocent' - they are formative and present conditions for emergence, since they effectively collapse some interpretative possibilities offered by the 'consensus reality', while allowing others. If we believe in the stories of exclusive competition, externalities and 'winner takes all' scenarios, why would we then listen to Joe Brewer, and attempt to create a regenerative world? And if we subscribe to the indigenous stories, we are getting more than a story - it's an entire worldview, that comes with responsibility for the stewardship, deep respect of, and love for the mother Earth. So, while finding the 'new story' might not be an end in itself - in as much the Enlightenment was not purely based on stories - the emergence of a new age, I think, aught to consider the generative power of stories as a minimal 'nugget', a sort of a Planck scale, of wisdom (see Boje and Jørgensen, 2008); and create ones that we find most promising towards enabling the 'creation of conditions that fulfill their own possibility'. Let us become the Protestants of our own age. What stories would we need to move beyond the instrumental - and what emergent structures might they imply?
Hmm yes, that might very well be the case, I suppose. In the era of 'liquid modernity', perhaps the case can be made that the ground is shifting too rapidly to accommodate stable stories. In such an environment, attention might indeed be best shifted to active and multimodal forms of enactment - such as the Antidebate. Perhaps such formats might be considered as representative of what Chomsky termed as 'generative grammars' - those domains of engagement within which continuously adjusting and dynamically reinterpreted 'stories' emerge; that have both personal and collective relevance not as 'stable snapshots' of timeless relevance, but as a processual experiences rooted in embodied insights.
Thanks John. Doesn’t it feel good to disagree? I’m not sure I recognize my argument in your representation of it though, and I certainly didn’t mean to belittle the importance of stories of all kinds. See some of my other replies here for a fuller sense of what I am getting at.
This piece really didn't do it for me, Jonathan. But maybe it's because I've been pondering all of this stuff very deeply for ... decades, and have been sinking ever deeper into the layers of grief which await anyone who perceives what's happening in our world -- to us, to nature, to culture, to everything.
No, of course we don't need another story. What we need is another direction to walk in. One which makes sense now, which didn't seem to make sense to many twenty and thirty years ago. That is, it's not so much about story as about living the implications of what is real now. Living it. Its essential feature (this time in our lives and in history) is moving in the world, which is why I said walking and evoked direction. I will offer no story about any of that. I'll point to the heart of us all and ask us to then move.
Thanks James. I am as heartened by a candid negative response as a reflex positive one.
It might be a mood thing. I barely slept last night and feel a bit unhinged today. If you want more about 'new direction', the posts I link to near the end on 'Perspectiva in ten premises' and 'the flip, the formation and the fun' might be more to your taste.
You've won me over on the inadequacy of the word 'story', but I think the sentiment many people are trying to get at with 'we need a new story' is a good one, that's more precisely expressed as 'we need a new plan, that's both visionary and practical'. To my mind, and to use the 'time between worlds' framing, it's saying that we (people who want a better future) need to design and build the new world, not just wait until it happens, and to do so we need a 'story' to guide us.
IMO, the idea that we need to design and build the new world is an important one, because if we do just let the future happen, it's going to be awful. I really like the way you (personally and through Perspectiva) have developed the related 'time between worlds' idea. My impression (but please excuse and correct me if I am wrong) is that it's a kind of preparation for envisioning and building the new world, because it gets minds & hearts out of the old one and ready for the new one.
There are of course many people trying to envision what the new world should look like and how we can build it... I am one of them! The quick description of what I'm envisioning is 'a planetary pluriverse with a systemic basis of bioregional cosmolocalism'. I would be delighted (and maybe you would too...) if you were to read my recent essay developing my thinking on this: https://paddyleflufy.substack.com/p/the-meta-solution-is-a-new-civilisation
Hi paddy, The issue for me is that “visionary and practical” is not what “new story” typically conveys because once it gets “practical” it also gets political and then new stories emerge. Good to see bioregional cosmolocalism being fleshed out though. That whole post is too long for me to read in the near future but I’m glad to know it’s there.
I'm not sure if you mean you have an issue with the words 'new story' or with the idea that we need a practical guiding vision. I agree story isn't a very apposite word but I do think we need a practical guiding vision.
I agree politics is an issue for such a vision. IMO, they (people, like politicians, at the top of the current system) won't do enough to avoid catastrophe, let alone build a better world. We (people who want a better world) need to build it without, or even despite, them. This being possible is a strong design constraint and one of the characteristics of cosmolocalism.
"It's always been the same old story"~Cat Stevens. The human mind creates stories ad infinitum. The glibness of "we need a new story" is what urks. It seems like a wistful hope or hopium designed to placate or manipulate.
The fact that we evolve is relevant here. It's what you advocate in this essay. Personally & Socially we evolve. We wake up over & over to new stories. Until we don't. Sometimes we regress. Sometimes societies regress into fearful reaction instead of moving forward in the direction of positive change for all of us. For some, change happens too fast & they react. Thats what we see in the authoritarian shift happening around the world.
Time will tell which part of our psyche's will prevail. The lizard brain or the evolving soul. There is a story that says that evolution will always win, its just a matter of time. There is also a story that says civilizations die. It's happened to homo sapiens more than 80 times in our long history.
We must all do the work to transcend our lizard brains & to help others.
The war is between squares and triangles, why is it we use squares on a round ball, and maps instead of ‘smells, cold air, common sense, direction, memory and place, trees, land marks and understanding, freedom of expression?
I stopped reading when I learned patriarchy is a bogeyman and not something impacting American women (and our bodies) right now. but perhaps that qualifier exists so as not to scare the bros.
First, I’m here for Tina.
Second, don’t you think the “We need a new story” crowd are gesturing (however vaguely) at the same conclusion you point to? To me, your conclusion sounds like a new story.
“The joyous struggle we are caught up in is to forge a new relationship to reality, champion a new societal purpose and build a new political economy. We need to do all those things and it won’t be easy.”
I imagine you are joking about Tina, but I just noticed the lyrics in that song are quite metacrisis-relevant and worth revisiting.
Obviously I'm joking to some extent about not needing a new story. There's a little bit of 'The King is dead, long live the King' to any discussion of narrative change. I suppose I'm just resisting the idea of story as panacea, and some of the psuedo-profundity and the illusions of control that surround talk of new narratives.
No way! I would never joke about Tina, or Beyond Thunderdome.
I agree, "We need a new story" is not super helpful, and the devil is in the political/economic details, as you note. Power, Praxis, and Learning from the Mafia.....
"So, in some way, I believe that many of the stories that we need right now in our culture arrived perfectly on time about five thousand years ago." Martin Shaw
https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/mud-and-antler-bone/
From link:
"Martin Shaw: There’s no way we can’t create stories, which are the things that really feed our bones; that’s what we’re hunkering down for. Stories bring in what is at the edge of our vision and not right at the center. So in other words, in an old myth, if there’s a crisis in the story, the remedy for the crisis always comes from the edge not the center. So when I think about the times we’re in, and I think about what is actually happening to our gaze—what we are fundamentally staring at all the time—I think, that’s not a mythological move. A mythological move is to be aware of all the hundred trembling secrets at the edge of your vision. Because they are the things that want to secrete their intelligence into you about the problem that’s right in front of you.
But if you think about great myth—if you keep staring at Medusa, you get turned to ashes. And when I meet a lot of activists at the moment, I meet a lot of people utterly consumed with the seemingly horrible narrative of our times. I see a lot of burn out, because they have no shield to reflect, they have no art to reflect, the immensity of what’s right in front of them. If all you do is stare into hell, you will become ashes.
Stories are a way, an artful way, of negotiating very difficult things in such a fashion that, in the very demonstration and articulation of those stories, more beauty works itself out into the world."
Beautiful. I am actually a paid subscriber to Martin’s Substack but had not read that.
All credit to Martin of course.
On reflection, I think the idea that “we” don’t need another story is more a continuation of your ruminations on the problems with “we”, than it is a condemnation of “story”. For sure, there are issues when it comes to making up bespoke stories (as Martin indicates) — but as Ric is pointing out, the cthonic stories that we need probably already exist we need to re-excavate, reinterpret and reintegrate them
Yeah, good point Ric. In some sense - and, while swept-away by the spirit of the Enlightenment, which no-doubt enabled many good things - I think we have nevertheless moved away from things that we then perceived to be not 'progressive', 'scientific', and that might even have been judged as 'primitive', such as stories and myths; which we are now (re)discovering as actual perennial vehicles of wisdom. In a sense, we are re-learning our true heritage, I think. While many claim that we may not be able to re-enact the dynamics of the Axial Age, it would seem that the key humanistic insights from some of these perennial stories and myths do need to be revived - or if 'need' is too strong, than at least, that we can greatly benefit from them; if we are to construct a new thriving age in the post-Anthropocene.
I sense your urgency in this piece, Jonathan, and I resonate with it. The challenge with stories, as I see it, lies in their tendency to focus primarily on the 'what' and 'why.' A truly impactful story incorporates a poetic 'how' that can only be understood with an open heart. Unfortunately, many of us remain trapped in dualistic thinking, which limits our ability to recognize this crucial and transformative aspect. While I don't align myself with any specific narrative 'tribe,' I continue to long for a new overarching story that is expansive enough to include all of existence and profound enough to motivate us to protect it from what threatens it. Until then, I remain focused on the little I do have control over, that is, my daily tasks of life, attempting to remain grounded in my actions. And am grateful, ever so grateful, that there are people, like many of us here, who are attempting to do the same.
Yes, that's an important set of distinctions and it helps to explain what I am reacting against - the absence of the how, which is always specific. And also, yes, how a story unfolds is often heart related - in the sense of how you are moved by it and what you feel through it. While 'we need a new story' tends to come from the head...
Huh. That struck me as the most reified relationship to story(ing) I think I’ve heard in a very long time. If that’s all the author imagines that “story” can and does meaningfully placehold, the worlding it enacts is indeed an impoverishment to be rightly rejected. If, on the other hand, “story” is allowed the space to evoke, say, a more Baradian, Deleuzian, or even Piercean sensibility (which I can confidently say that it does, for many), this piece begins to feel more like a case of uncharitable ax-grinding and failure of imagination and less like a sophisticated philosophical defense or ethical advocacy. Yes, of course, “story” can be legitimately understood in the reductively pathologizing way the author seems to hold it (and I can support and celebrate all the concerns that arise from such an act), but why reify this word from the beginning only to de-mean those for whom the idea is deeply meaningful and foreclose the question into which it might otherwise invite us?
Thank you BrandyinStarland. With such a wonderful name I can see why you'd be inclined to defend stories. I can't comment on the alternative sensibilities you allude to without knowing how you are using them, but I agree 'story' can evoke all sorts of things, and from a variety of perspectives of greater or lesser depth. I hope I made that pretty clear though, and even shared my love of stories in passing, which makes your reference to reification a curious one.
For perspective, there is some ax grinding in the piece, and that vibe is probably the strongest that comes through. I am not sure how you spend your days, but for the last decade or so I have been attending events, reading books or listening to podcasts where some version of the 'we need a new story' is a recurring suggestion. When that suggestion is made, those making it rarely say, for instance, "and I mean that in the Deleuzian sense..." or, "And here we have to start distinguishing between story, narrative, myth and metanarrative...." Instead, the suggestion typically does reify stories and even deify stories - it makes them real (and singular) and turns them into Gods - without really doing the work of explaining how that it supposed to happen today, and whether it would be a good thing if it did. If anything, I think I was reacting *against* the tendency to reify stories. I accept however that without sufficient academic grounding presented here to substantiate the case, it might have come out as an undiscerning rant to those more familiar with the scholarly terrain.
What if "we need a new story" is a simpler way of saying "we need a new metaphysics, a new metaethics and a new metapolitics"?
Yes that’s one way to keep people happy and I am being provocative, but the question is whether it’s too simple, (pace the Einstein quote “as simple as possible but not simpler”) and I’m inclined to think it is. The main reason it’s too simple is actually more about ‘we’ than ‘story’. The new metaphysics, meta ethics and metapolitics calls the we into question and transfigures it, in a way I don’t think the desire for story (as panacea) does.
Agree. I’ve been thinking about this for years. Some complementary questions:
1. What even is a “story,” which can literally mean “lie”? (Leaving aside myth, where important truths rest upon falsifiable facts. And are journalism “stories” inverted myth, where false narratives rest upon provable facts?)
2. Why new stories if the old ones made no difference? (1984 for example. Did that massively popular story do anything to stop our march towards a technocrat surveillance dystopia?)
3. What if the stories we need are displeasing or unpalatable, or incompatible with capitalism and the attention economy?
4. Is our need for a new story unevenly distributed? Is a story that pierces the heart of the president of Standard Oil more valuable than one that makes eight billion powerless hearts beat happily?
5. What if the idea that words are primary (in The Beginning) is a persistent error? What if the snake wrote that part, inserting a poisonous, self-referential worm into the human buffet of wisdom and mythology? What is the Tree of Knowledge after all, but a tree both made of words and whose fruit are more words?
Is the notion of “story” as slippery as that of “we?”
Excellent questions.
I neglected number one here, because I wanted the rant to flow and not get too stuck in distinctions, but clearly story means many things and there are many kinds of stories. But it's always helpful for any given 'we need a' or 'let's do..' to ask whether and how others can use any such device for their own ends, rather than for the greater good.
Number two is a powerful example.
I think most people want a version of number three, but they may not be aware of what they have to give up in the process, or really willing to countenance that.
A big yes to number four. This relates to Claudia's point above about simplistic demands for a new story neglecting the centrality of 'the how'. There is usually something about stories that stays with us personally.
Number five is dark! I should say I don't think 'Logos' means words as such, and the translation 'The Word' is a questionable one. It's more like 'in the beginning was the narrative ordering principle' but this is widely discussed terrain and there are other ways to look at it.
Yes, 'story' and 'we' share similar issues today, and with hindsight I should have remarked that a huge part of the 'We need a new story' is that it diverts attention from the We problem, or rather it thinks it has a panacea to solve it, but it doesn't. Actually, that's a good point, thank you for getting me there...
Touching back on #5, I’ll clarify briefly as I find this subject fascinating.
#1 Understood that Divinity students will have more subtle interpretations. I’d argue “Word” is the common sense. The idea is elsewhere too. For example: “Let there be [a thing]”, and then there was [thing]. In fact, the whole idea of the Bible is it’s The Word of God. (My point is simply to acknowledge the powerful role of words in this creation story.)
2. Also discussed widely are the wrods Thou shalt have Dominion… That’s the really dark part, even if it was meant more like Stewardship. I think the darkness could lift if the Abrahamic faiths did a little collective “Oopsie, we got that part wrong.” But we can’t, because institutions lack humility. Along with ‘We need a new story,’ we also hear we need to embrace indigenous ways of knowing and being. I think there is discomfort in that to truly embrace the latter it is necessary to challenge the former, for any interpretation. (Here, I’ll go first: Oopsie.)
3. I’d cut out a reflection on The Bicameral Mind. Where did Jaynes go wrong? In knowing the ‘Superior Hemisphere’ was the important one, and then having to shoehorn his theory to fit that pre-existing cultural and scientific assumption. In this I don’t mean anything dark. The universal phenomenon of finding what one is preconditioned to find is the same as early scientists looking at amoebas and seeing tiny, mechanized factories.
One could substitute “Left Hemisphere” for “snake” and my meaning wouldn’t change. I’m not sure if that dispels the darkness or takes us to new depths.
I enjoyed the playfulness of this, Jonathan. Thank you.
Back in Apr 2019 myself and 67 others followed my friend Daisy Campbell (who has been instrumental in the creation of CoB). We travelled in a big bus from The Cerne Abbas Giant, Dorset to CERNE in Geneva (or Hardon2Hadron as we preferred to say) with the express magical purpose of bringing about the end of story (as we know it). The (as we know it) was tagged on 'cos we were a little worried about the original idea of ending story completely. We also 'reset time'. I've yet to see conclusive evidence that we were unsuccessful.
Of course, me being all about money... (which Joe Brewer referred to in that vague way as 'economic systems' which I don't think helps us)... I would like to offer this wisdom from my buddy Noam Yuran. "Money is the mute object of discourse". Money is written into story by default. So new discourse about 'economic systems' is always on dodgy ground imo. If we want redemption (get it?) then it will come through action. We must act ourselves into a new way of thinking - as you put it a few weeks back - and once that's done we can sit around the fire and make up those new stories.
So you burn money as a ritual practice, is that right?
What's the story there then?
Ha! It's an anti-story itself. At least in practice.
Talking/writing about it a big hurdle is understanding that ritual sacrifice is not an exchange. I think that's obvious in praxis. But many folks observing can't get their heads around it.
Quick and dirty summary of ideas on the About page. I've written tons about the ideas... but of course its all useless. The transgression or renunciation or active negation (or however you want to put it) is the key. If I can put on another event I'm gonna beg you to come be a Bishop in our Synod.
I agree with the criticisms of the 'story' - however, there is also more. At the root of the issue, I think, is that we indeed "need a new metaphysics, a new metaethics and a new metapolitics" - and, the 'new story' is a shorthand for that, in many peoples' minds. What is the story of any given epoch? It's hard to pin down and might seem ephemeral, yet is nevertheless embedded in the various socio-cultural artifacts in formative ways - which then informs our subjective and 'objective' experiences, and creates conditions for the emergence of social institutions, policies, and de-facto 'solid' experiential realities, that effectively become embodied. This 'embeddedness' is pervasive, systemic, and therefore difficult to perceive - and so we translate it as 'stories', because we cognitively attempt to create wrappers around things, so that we can cognicize them. As an illustration - and if Weber was right - then the stories of the early Protestants had a very formative effect. There is also arguably something 'underneath' stories. We might not yet know what that is - since we are in the midst of emerging a new set of 'sciences' that, as McGilchrist might suggest, are going to be based on a better balance between the various modes of perceiving the world. So stories in that sense are far from 'innocent' - they are formative and present conditions for emergence, since they effectively collapse some interpretative possibilities offered by the 'consensus reality', while allowing others. If we believe in the stories of exclusive competition, externalities and 'winner takes all' scenarios, why would we then listen to Joe Brewer, and attempt to create a regenerative world? And if we subscribe to the indigenous stories, we are getting more than a story - it's an entire worldview, that comes with responsibility for the stewardship, deep respect of, and love for the mother Earth. So, while finding the 'new story' might not be an end in itself - in as much the Enlightenment was not purely based on stories - the emergence of a new age, I think, aught to consider the generative power of stories as a minimal 'nugget', a sort of a Planck scale, of wisdom (see Boje and Jørgensen, 2008); and create ones that we find most promising towards enabling the 'creation of conditions that fulfill their own possibility'. Let us become the Protestants of our own age. What stories would we need to move beyond the instrumental - and what emergent structures might they imply?
I don't think I disagree with any of that, but there is a challenge in keeping the idea of 'story' bounded enough for it to remain meaningful.
Hmm yes, that might very well be the case, I suppose. In the era of 'liquid modernity', perhaps the case can be made that the ground is shifting too rapidly to accommodate stable stories. In such an environment, attention might indeed be best shifted to active and multimodal forms of enactment - such as the Antidebate. Perhaps such formats might be considered as representative of what Chomsky termed as 'generative grammars' - those domains of engagement within which continuously adjusting and dynamically reinterpreted 'stories' emerge; that have both personal and collective relevance not as 'stable snapshots' of timeless relevance, but as a processual experiences rooted in embodied insights.
Well put.
Thanks for the video with Joe Brewer. Wonderful !
Yes it's a great one. Short, but the heart of the matter.
long live stories, myths and grand narratives
https://johnstokdijk538.substack.com/p/we-dont-need-a-new-story
Thanks John. Doesn’t it feel good to disagree? I’m not sure I recognize my argument in your representation of it though, and I certainly didn’t mean to belittle the importance of stories of all kinds. See some of my other replies here for a fuller sense of what I am getting at.
We are more in agreement than disagreement. I accept your argument. It was the vibe I was reacting to.
TLDR - I’ll read it later. But yes, the story is eternal and that’s what needs to be revived. God bless you.
This piece really didn't do it for me, Jonathan. But maybe it's because I've been pondering all of this stuff very deeply for ... decades, and have been sinking ever deeper into the layers of grief which await anyone who perceives what's happening in our world -- to us, to nature, to culture, to everything.
No, of course we don't need another story. What we need is another direction to walk in. One which makes sense now, which didn't seem to make sense to many twenty and thirty years ago. That is, it's not so much about story as about living the implications of what is real now. Living it. Its essential feature (this time in our lives and in history) is moving in the world, which is why I said walking and evoked direction. I will offer no story about any of that. I'll point to the heart of us all and ask us to then move.
Thanks James. I am as heartened by a candid negative response as a reflex positive one.
It might be a mood thing. I barely slept last night and feel a bit unhinged today. If you want more about 'new direction', the posts I link to near the end on 'Perspectiva in ten premises' and 'the flip, the formation and the fun' might be more to your taste.
You've won me over on the inadequacy of the word 'story', but I think the sentiment many people are trying to get at with 'we need a new story' is a good one, that's more precisely expressed as 'we need a new plan, that's both visionary and practical'. To my mind, and to use the 'time between worlds' framing, it's saying that we (people who want a better future) need to design and build the new world, not just wait until it happens, and to do so we need a 'story' to guide us.
IMO, the idea that we need to design and build the new world is an important one, because if we do just let the future happen, it's going to be awful. I really like the way you (personally and through Perspectiva) have developed the related 'time between worlds' idea. My impression (but please excuse and correct me if I am wrong) is that it's a kind of preparation for envisioning and building the new world, because it gets minds & hearts out of the old one and ready for the new one.
There are of course many people trying to envision what the new world should look like and how we can build it... I am one of them! The quick description of what I'm envisioning is 'a planetary pluriverse with a systemic basis of bioregional cosmolocalism'. I would be delighted (and maybe you would too...) if you were to read my recent essay developing my thinking on this: https://paddyleflufy.substack.com/p/the-meta-solution-is-a-new-civilisation
Hi paddy, The issue for me is that “visionary and practical” is not what “new story” typically conveys because once it gets “practical” it also gets political and then new stories emerge. Good to see bioregional cosmolocalism being fleshed out though. That whole post is too long for me to read in the near future but I’m glad to know it’s there.
I'm not sure if you mean you have an issue with the words 'new story' or with the idea that we need a practical guiding vision. I agree story isn't a very apposite word but I do think we need a practical guiding vision.
I agree politics is an issue for such a vision. IMO, they (people, like politicians, at the top of the current system) won't do enough to avoid catastrophe, let alone build a better world. We (people who want a better world) need to build it without, or even despite, them. This being possible is a strong design constraint and one of the characteristics of cosmolocalism.
Very understandable that you don't have time to read that essay at the moment. In case you are interested, I have another that goes into cosmolocalism in detail and is much shorter (about 4,000 words): https://paddyleflufy.substack.com/p/cosmolocalism-the-key-to-our-economic
"It's always been the same old story"~Cat Stevens. The human mind creates stories ad infinitum. The glibness of "we need a new story" is what urks. It seems like a wistful hope or hopium designed to placate or manipulate.
The fact that we evolve is relevant here. It's what you advocate in this essay. Personally & Socially we evolve. We wake up over & over to new stories. Until we don't. Sometimes we regress. Sometimes societies regress into fearful reaction instead of moving forward in the direction of positive change for all of us. For some, change happens too fast & they react. Thats what we see in the authoritarian shift happening around the world.
Time will tell which part of our psyche's will prevail. The lizard brain or the evolving soul. There is a story that says that evolution will always win, its just a matter of time. There is also a story that says civilizations die. It's happened to homo sapiens more than 80 times in our long history.
We must all do the work to transcend our lizard brains & to help others.
The war is between squares and triangles, why is it we use squares on a round ball, and maps instead of ‘smells, cold air, common sense, direction, memory and place, trees, land marks and understanding, freedom of expression?
I stopped reading when I learned patriarchy is a bogeyman and not something impacting American women (and our bodies) right now. but perhaps that qualifier exists so as not to scare the bros.