The 4th Act — A New Narrative.
I have been writing a thought piece since the beginning of the pandemic. I was pulled home from a movie I was set to direct and my hyper-active brain keen to contemplate sci-fi apocalyptic futures went on a tear. What I have been writing is vast and unwieldy, unfolding as I type, with branches and tangents, like a vine that has found a new fence to latch on to and explore. But that is not this post. At least not in its leafy abundant form. (I know you have Zooms to get to).
This is the pruned version that will hopefully grow into something fruitful. With your help.
But first, a little backstory. Upon my arrival home, I flipped through some notes from the beginning of the year. I found my initial writings on a short story idea — it was about the entire world being shut down. (I kid you not.) The story I had imagined was called Stop Gap, where — because of a massive climate change event — the world’s governments had, in tandem, stopped life as we knew it. No one was allowed to go to work, school or travel. There was no aircon, limited power usage, all people forced to stay home. It was a full reset, I wrote. This quiet, lulling image of people stationary permeated my skull. How would this story unfold? I started making notes, but then was pulled in another direction by work. The date I first came up with this was January 13th.
“The future arrives first as a feeling” — Otto Scharmer
From the same week, I also found notes for a blog post that catapulted from a phrase stuck in my head: ‘Where do we go from here?’. Thinking I must have ‘Evita’ on my mind — but probably the Australian wildfires — I googled it (I have a thing for poking the Google AI with my random thoughts). I ended up landing on Martin Luther King Jr.’s revolutionary speech of the same name given the year before his death.
His thesis was ‘community or chaos’.
It struck many chords — his cries against social and economic inequality, lamenting broken communities, his call for love over violence, of the need for a structural rebirth of America, all rang crystalline in their present urgency (I had no idea just how poignant his words would be, come June*). As I started to explore MLK’s bleak picture of the establishment, revealing its rotten foundation, I wrote down “do we need a doomsday story to unite us all?”
My words keep coming back to haunt me.
I’ve been thinking A LOT about story over the past few years, not just as a sci-fi writer, or a creative who works in the story-making capital of the world, but as a person who wonders how, as a species, we will survive the future (I don’t have kids so I have more time to ruminate existentially). I look to the past and see stories, myths and ideologies that helped cultures and civilizations navigate difficult times and unite them but I couldn’t point to one ‘big story’ that helps us collectively approach the impending job disruption of A.I. or empowers us to tackle climate change, systematic racism, inequities or embrace the changing dynamics of gender, sexuality and family in a globalizing world.
I certainly don’t see a story to guide us through a Pandemic and its uncertain aftermath. Or a revolution.
I first started exploring this concern for the future in the piece which would be the catalyst for Scirens (the STEM advocacy group that I co-founded). I suggested that to help encourage scientific literacy and critical thinking in the general public we need to infuse the wonders of science into entertainment again (‘edutainment’, if you will). I shared a bit of my thoughts about AI job disruption and our live-streamed future in my short film LIVE.
And then I discovered the work of Yuval Noah Harari. Historian, sociologist and bestselling author (Sapiens, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons) Harari argues that we have succeeded as the dominant species on the planet because of shared stories. Why? Because these shared stories allow for large scale, flexible cooperation. Other species can cooperate on a large scale, like ants and bees, but are rigid in their hierarchy and activities. Other groups, like dolphins are flexible cooperators, adjusting and adapting but only on a small scale. But we as humans cooperate across networks, across borders and governments, with strangers, as well as with neighbors. And what allows us to cooperate in these large scale ways? Harari’s answer: Stories. Large, pervasive stories that make up social constructs. And a through line in his work? We don’t have the big ones connecting us anymore, and it’s a problem.
“Now, there is a vacuum. There is no credible story that explains the world and predicts the future or explains what is to be done in the future. This vacuum is being filled not with sensible visions for the future. It is being filled with nostalgic fantasies about the past”. — Yuval Harari
And this is where we begin.
*To note: Just as I was set to publish this piece, George Floyd was murdered and the protests erupted. My eyes have been opened to the harsh reality of police brutality, to the need to reallocate funds away from corruption and into the community, and to my personal responsibility to examine my privilege and be antiracist. These events have had me reexamine my post through a new lens and look to voices I had not considered.
ACT 1: Once Upon a Time (Not in Hollywood)
“There have been great many societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin.
Stories. Extensive research asserts that stories are key to humanity’s ascension to apex species. This argument has been approached from historical, psychological and neurological positions. Storytelling was perhaps our best adaptive tool for survival; for when put in the shape of a story, the brain remembers better as it activates more regions of the brain because a story effects you emotionally, imaginatively and intellectually. There is a reason single stories were told over long cold winters in the tribal long house. I could argue that shaping experiences and information into a story evolved our brain’s mind’s eye which then developed our ability to extrapolate and imagine the future. Which then spurred innovation. But also, it gave us identity.
“…epic literature served as common reference points for entire cultures, telling their audiences where they came from and who they were.”
Stories have shaped the world: The Iliad influenced Alexander the Great, The Book of Songs was seminal for the development of the Chinese empire. Writing Dante’s Inferno in a local Tuscan language instead of Latin paved the way for the Italian language. In the 19th Century, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped lay the ground work for the Civil War. And more recently: the original Star Trek inspired a generation of scientists and the nuclear war drama The Day After impacted President Reagan’s deescalation of nuclear armament and the signing of the INF treaty with the Soviet Union.
“(Story)… the ultimate act of power, influence, and culture creation.” — Michael Margolis, Story 10X
Shared stores are demonstrated to be the bedrock of community. But that’s not where their importance stops. Multiple stories build and connect to form a larger narrative. That narrative can be a road map for a society, a nation. And unlike a story which is about someone else and has an ending, a narrative is opened ended and impacted by your actions. A narrative gives a call to action and a roadmap to the future. For many it creates their entire operating system (see religion). Stories then reaffirm and create credibility for the narrative. Think of the individual stories of bravery and in WWII or Black activists in the civil rights movement — those stories crafted larger narratives embraced by much of the world of anti-fascism, tolerance and equality. People are inspired by stories, but are mobilized by — and even give their lives — for narratives.
The ‘American Dream’ was one such narrative; it brought forth a call to action of ‘come to America, work hard, and you can have a better life’. For many Europeans in the 19th and 20th century, their stories of emigrating and making a better life for themselves on American soil reaffirmed this narrative (which is now defunct, but more on that in a sec).
Story and narrative are often interchanged in the work that I cite, but I will try my best to delineate. Because I believe that progressive forward looking stories will help build the missing narrative that can help reconnect and rebuild our society. Why?
Stories are powerful systematic agents of change. Ella Saltmarshe’s excellent piece in the Stanford Social Innovation Review “Using Story to Change Systems” explores this in detail (I highly recommend it). The piece articulates story as ‘light’, as ‘glue’ and as ‘web’ in its relationship to systems change. Saltmarshe reiterates story as a “direct route to our emotions” and that it creates cohesion within communities.
“When it comes to changing the values, mindsets, rules, and goals of a system, story is foundational.” — Ella Saltmarshe
But also important to consider is, as Harari reminds us, the stories which lay the foundation for society are works of fiction. And he doesn’t just mean the stories on the page or the screen, but the laws we live by, the borders we live within. There is the objective reality of the physical world — the river — but the international border that river runs through, the tax charged to cross it, and the money you pay for that tax, are just invented stories … but ones that we all believe in. Especially money. Money is the most pervasive story in the world.
“Any large-scale human cooperation — whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe — is rooted in common myths that only exist in people’s collective imagination.” — Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens
In looking at the coming environment and technological disruption, Harari points to the failure of the liberal story. In his latest book 21 Questions for the 21st Century he argues that for almost a century, governments and society moved towards the ‘liberal story’ — where the more liberties you gave to people, ideas and markets, the better. But post 2008, many countries have been turning against the move to ‘liberalize and globalize’ (think immigration restrictions, trade tariffs, nationalist agendas). He argues that liberalism as an ideology was sufficient in dealing with industrialization but not with blockchain or biotech (which know no borders). And even if the liberal story has a rebirth, the economic system it supports, capitalism (ie. capital growth), clearly conflicts with this planet’s well being; the more goods and services we produce and ship around the world, the sicker the planet becomes.
”It is not only easier for these over-promoted imbeciles to imagine the end of the world than a single restriction on capitalism — they would actively prefer it.” Laurie Penny, WIRED
And indeed the ‘American Dream’ is now a defunct narrative (and is still a lie for many people of color). Technology, globalism and the way for profit companies have pivoted in response have eroded the worker’s well being. Wages — adjusted for inflation- have barely increased in decades yet the cost of living has outpaced inflation. And in many industries wages have dropped. As Academy Award winning documentary The American Factory examines, the union factory job that once paid the worker $30 an hour with a health plan and end of career entitlements now pays $13 an hour at will because the plant was bought by a Chinese company — which places workers along side under paid foreign workers and autonomous machines that could very well usurp their job. The farmer, the coal miner, the steel worker — jobs from the industries that built this country — are consolidated, shipped offshore and automated. The polluting ones are vilified. No wonder the 2016 election played out as it did, with promises of reopening coal mines and auto plants… all empty promises peddling in toxic nostalgia. And the most dangerous thing? No alternate future was offered.
“Without shared myths to bind societies together, the risks of fragmentation, polarization, culture wars and actual violence increase dramatically — exactly as we see all around us today.” — Alex Evans “The Myth Gap”
ACT 2. The Age of Anxiety (A feedback loop)
I believe the effects of this lack of unifying narrative have already manifested in our ‘Age of Anxiety’. Even before COVID19 struck, the word on everyone’s lips was stress.
We were overloaded, under paid, over tired, in the grips of toxic partisanship, FOMO and Cancel Culture. We were already struggling to save for an uncertain future (with no guarantee of social security), the cost of living skyrocketing, the dizzying heights of the stock market only seeming to increase the bank accounts of the entrenched wealthy class. And everywhere we turned were new warnings of our impending climate doom, which you could either stomach or disregard (and yet sustainable tech wasn’t booming, just a billion dollar wellness industry full of crystals and crack theories.)
And though technology was connecting the world, we were less in harmony with each other than ever before.
Feeding our fractured, siloed world is our recent addiction to screens, which we check at least 150 times a day. Digital content has fragmented our focus, reducing our attention to 8 seconds because of the engineering behind our most utilized social media. Our brains have become hooked on the constant need for dopamine delivered by expectations of pleasure and novelty through new ‘things and dings’, whether physical (a new product) or digital (breaking news, a ‘like’). This addiction to the ‘new’ feeds GDP, thus fueling economic growth. But we now know that our demand for ‘things’ is at violent odds with our need to reduce carbon emissions. (I could write a short book on this topic but I want to keep things moving!)
Our problematic addiction to digital content is only exacerbated by an untenable amount of offerings. Yes, Hollywood, I’m finally turning my lens on you. We live in the Golden Age of TV. The average home receives 189 TV channels, plus a bevy of streamers (Amazon, Netflix, Disney +, Peacock, CBS ALL Access, Hulu), new mobile platform Quibi dropping 30 new episodes a day, and YouTube, Snapchat and Tik Tok. Navigating just one of these streamers can make your head spin. But do you know what happens when you have this never ending pipeline of new content (your choices often guided by algorithms)? The Paradox of Choice. We are so overwhelmed with choice, as well as fear that we will choose the wrong thing to optimize ones pleasure in the finite time that we have, that we often succumb to the ‘Status Quo Bias’ where ‘the known’ is chosen. Reboots and sequels are so popular (both to the consumer and to the producer), I believe, because there is limited uncertainty surrounding choosing them.
“Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.”— Sydney J. Harris
But the problem with these status quo stories? Beyond playing to an unrealistic nostalgia… is that they no longer serve our changing world (and rarely served communities outside the white establishment in the first place).
Stories from the 20th century are entrenched in classical binary storytelling, (good vs evil, us vs them, Democrats vs Republicans). Michael Margoli’s Story 10X goes into this idea in detail. He asserts that binary stories were created for the age of certainty where there is a definitive hero and villain and clear vision of the future. Indeed, our entertainment, especially from Hollywood, is saturated with the individualistic ‘Quest Myth’ three act structure grounded by Joseph Campbell’s ‘Heroes Journey’ where the lone hero embarks on a journey, learns about himself, vanquishes the enemy and then returns home laden with gifts and knowledge. It is no secret that George Lucas was heavily influenced by Campbell’s work in Star Wars. This structure became THE blueprint for Hollywood movies by the late 70s. It may be heresy to even suggest that Campbell’s hero is past its prime. But these limiting stories with neatly tied up conclusions and singular heroic figures don’t reflect our new world, our interconnected, interdependent, diverse global culture full of differences, some nuanced, some stark.
AND YET… there are stories out there, countless stories, which supersede these forms. As Afrofuturism artist and attorney Rasheedah Phillips states “modern Afrofuturism has less to do with the existence of ‘futuristic technologies’ in a disasporic African context, and much more to do with dissembling presuppositions of Western inventions of time and space”. There are stories out there, no doubt, that challenge the status quo, and could assist humanity in navigating our changing and challenging world — but they often come from the outliers, the outsiders.
“It often takes an outsider to create something disruptive, yet culture is both sanctioned and sustained by the insiders.” — Michael Margolis, STORY 10X.
These paradigm shifting stories from underserved, disenfranchised communities aren’t the ones being greenlit by Netflix or Disney, or promoted by Random House. These creators don’t have 100K subscriber mailing lists that enable the pre-sales of their books to ascend the NY Times bestseller list. Even with the democratization of distribution, how is outlier content supposed to be found amidst billions of YouTube uploads and heavily promoted movie star offering, where we already have discovery and retention issue? And even if a ‘non classical’ story makes it way to the forefront of collective consciousness, we are still conditioned to quickly move on to the next story, looking for our next dopamine ding. The new stories that can lead us towards a cohesive future facing narrative are simply lumped in with the rest of the content fighting for for air and eyeballs in the ‘Attention Economy’… Commodified into neural candy.
“The tools we use to live, work, learn, and play — Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Amazon, and more — are all cash registers waiting to make a sale.” — Ashley Gentry, ‘Broken Attention Economy’
If we can’t find and connect these important stories, how will we craft our new narrative?
But wait a second. How do we even know that stories and the overarching narrative can have that much impact in our current world? We just have to take a look towards the ‘right’… to those looking to take us back. The right has succeeded in much of its agenda because its stories are cohesive, discoverable and amplified; one knows they only need to turn to Fox News or Rush Limbaugh (or the President’s press conference) to hear a unified set of stories (thus cohesive narrative) that people are rallying to get behind. But these stories embrace division and toxic nostalgia, celebrating conspiracy theories and denying a disprovable climate emergency.
“Now, there is a vacuum. There is no credible story that explains the world and predicts the future or explains what is to be done in the future. This vacuum is being filled not with sensible visions for the future. It is being filled with nostalgic fantasies about the past.” — Yuval Harari
And in the third month of this year, as we raced towards a Democratic nominee, a wild stock market, Australian wildfires on the back of California blazes, a melting Arctic, new things and dings assaulting us at every second, we hit the unthinkable.
ACT 3. THE STOP GAP (Now here this)
Now.
Here.
This.
Breathe. This phrase is one of my favorite meditations. It roots me in time and space. It forces me to take a breath and pause (and yes, you probably first read ‘now hear this’, I did too).
This pandemic gives us that collective pause. The Stop Gap story of my imagination, a wildly illogical fictional ‘reset’, came to be.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
— Pablo Neruda
It is the most unnatural of states to be in as a human being. Free of physical contact. Stuck in place, time moving differently than we are used to, days no longer having the same meaning (though retraining yourself to wait for more than 24 hours for your Amazon order *could* be construed as a good thing). Robert MacFarlane’s recent book on ‘deep time’ called Underland, looks at vast geological timescales, timescales outside our human experience of weekly calendars and fiscal years. And he suggests in his work, prior to the pandemic, for us as humans to expand our perception and think in this realm of deep time.
“… a radical perspective, provoking us to action not apathy. For to think in deep time can be a means not of escaping our troubled present, but rather of re-imagining it.” — Robert MacFarlane, UNDERLAND
A powerful thought as we are forced to recognize, together, the true fragility and changing nature of the world. This deep time and the reason behind it gives us the permission to recognize that the rules and stories that were holding our world together are fragile fictions, tenuous and breakable.
Countless have written about the pandemic as mirror, reflecting harsh truths about our world. But this pre-pandemic quote also speaks to me considering the topic at large:
“If we want to change specific systems, we need mirrors to help us understand existing narratives and their impact, and the tools to author new ones” — Ella Saltmarshe.
Here we have it: A tragically perfect mirror to reflect our systematic short comings (twice the number of black and brown people have died from COVID-19 because of economic inequities and healthcare access disparities). I, by no means, am the only one pointing to the systemic changes that should occur because of what the pandemic is reflecting — how the pandemic can be an ‘accelerant’ to fixing our broken healthcare system and crumbling infrastructure, how it’s exacerbating escalating wealth inequality, poverty and homelessness, plastic pollution, and reflecting an economy that values dollars over wellness, influencers over doctors. Not to mention a noxious political system, where even a disease can become partisan.
“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our Pre-Corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction…” — Sonya Renee Taylor
But this pandemic offers more than a mirror. It offers (putting my science nerd hat on) a gravitational lens. First theorized by Einstein, gravitational lensing is when a galaxy with massive gravity creates a gravitational field that distorts and magnifies the light traveling along side it, bringing into view locations in the universe we have never been able to see before.
This pandemic has created colossal gravity, with all of us tethered in place across the globe, yet still connected. It reveals our society’s shortcomings and then magnifies them, shining light on new truths we hadn’t yet considered. One truth that has been magnified is The Unknown. The unknown and its sibling ‘uncertainty’ is inherent to life, but as part of our pre-pandemic daily life has been swept under the rug. However, now ‘the unknown’ is omnipresent; every facet of life reverberating with it.
“If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.” We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, “— Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity.
The phrase ‘Navigating The Unknown’ is now splashed headlines, offering a pipe dream of peace of mind. Why do people en masse turn to the movie Contagion? Because this is the only story we have (even if it is fictional) to give us a lens through which to analyze our own current predicament (thankfully Soderbergh took his research seriously). The lack of clear story surrounding the virus (and distrust of scientists and the media) have created a pandemic riddled with partisanship and polarizing reactions. If we don’t have a clear COVID-19 story that we all agree on, the rest of 2020 will be smothered with more uncertainty because of the lack of cohesive plan to ‘reopen’ the country with a vaccine still half a year away.
But as our popular stories are laced with ‘certainty’ and finite endings they don’t serve us or teach us how to be resilient in the face of this uncertainty. We need new stories to do so. With new characters who properly represent ALL of our communities.
Because guess what? Our earth bound gravitational lens also magnifies new heroes. And perhaps, false ones.
It’s clear who are the heroes in this pandemic: nurses, doctors, food workers, delivery people, custodial staff, scientists, people who educate, save lives, and enable us to eat. A person who puts purpose and the greater good ahead of their own. They are heroic in their own deeds, especially in this time of peril, but are most impactful in their unified action. They are a collective force; no singular doctor can save everyone, only the medical system they function in (and we now see how underfunded it is).
Harari speaks in a recent conversation with TED’s Chris Anderson how heroes of the past were often portrayed as ‘the workers’, whose collective physical efforts were central to rebuilding society post conflict and wars. But as has already been discussed, the image of blue collar workers, of laborers, has become irrelevant. The future, instead, is being steered by a handful of billionaires, tech geniuses and media tycoon pow wowing at Aspen retreats with their Wall Street power brokers. These lauded heroes, no matter how well intentioned, speak of a rarified future, of quantum computing, big data, Artificial Intelligence, genetic engineering. No wonder we don’t have a national narrative that looks to the future — no one has written one that people can understand — and no wonder Trump’s divisive rhetoric spoke to so many.
Perhaps hero culture in general needs to be examined.
“In a world as complex and interconnected as the one we live in, the idea that one person has the answer is ludicrous. It’s not only ineffective, it’s dangerous because it leads us to believe that it’s been solved by that hero, and we have no role.” — Lorna Davis, TED Radio Hour
Indeed, as much as social media is lauded as the democratic connector and amplification of voices, the heroes it creates are just as easily overthrown. As Rutger Bregman states, “Yesterday’s hero is toppled tomorrow at the first awkward remark or stain of controversy.”
But won’t the established billionaires save us? Just three month ago Jeff Bezos announced the formation of his 10 billion dollar Earth Fund. But as Franklin Foer of The Atlantic wrote “the fund is a triumph of philanthropy and a perfect emblem of a national failing.” The piece continues on to point out that in a healthy democracy, the world’s richest man wouldn’t be able to painlessly make a 10 billion dollar donation. Instead of needing to rely on his ‘generosity’, we should be able to have a national, collective response to climate change and the funding to do so. Because built into that gift are Bezos’ biases and his corporate strategies. Foer continues, “It hardly seems likely that the Bezos Earth Foundation will seek to erode the very basis of the fortune that funds it.”
There is no one ‘woke’ politician to save us. No one doctor or scientist can ‘vanquish’ the virus (we also need to stop with the war analogies). We can’t rely on the messy swath of Twitter tribalism to sustain a new savior. And it’s clear the billionaires can’t just throw money at this pandemic, or any global problem, without systematic bias. So in our storytelling, the lone hero that we see represented across entertainment and literature doesn’t serve us anymore. Our threats are existential, interconnected, and they can only be conquered by the collective and by systematic change.
“The work of systems change involves seeing systemically — looking at the elements, interconnections, and wider purposes of systems — and acting systemically. Story plays a vital role in helping us do both of these things.” — Ella Saltmarshe
So if there was ever a time in these last moments of ‘deep time’ stuck at home, to realize that we are lacking a fundamental global narrative that envisions our collective future, it is NOW.
ACT 4. A NEW NARRATIVE (Ego to Eco)
“How often do you hear anyone invoke the 22nd century? Even saying it is unfamiliar to us. We’ve come to not have a future”. — William Gibson
Welcome to Act 4.
Because Act 3 isn’t the end. Act 3 is the end of our own personal story — the Campbellian hero returned home, stronger and wiser from their journey. But now it’s time to use that experience and knowledge alongside others. This 4th Act is where we unite to write a collective narrative that can help us envision a positive, progressive future. Futurist Monika Bielskyte calls this the Protopia -a proactive, collective endeavor with ‘plurality, community narrative and an evolution of values’. We need this protopic narrative, especially as the country is now (perhaps too early) being opened up and we are given agency for our own actions.
“The virus holds up a mirror in front of us. It forces us to become aware of our own behavior and its impact on the collective, on the system. That mirror gently invites us to make a few personal sacrifices that benefit the whole — to shift our inner place from Ego to Eco.” — Otto Scharmer
Scharmer is an MIT Sloan School lecturer and founder of the Presencing Institute which uses an evolved systems approach to tackle institutional and organizational change towards the betterment of our planet. It advocates a move from Ego to Eco, focusing on the well being of the whole system instead of ones self. (Otto Scharmer also wrote the statement “the future arrives first as a feeling”.)
I love this idea of Ego to Eco. It invokes a powerful image of collaboration and a holistic outlook. It suggests a ‘metanoia’ — a shift of heart. So I suggest in this 4th Act we shift our focus from our role as the hero of our own story, to becoming the supporting character in a larger story, starring the planet (the supporting characters are always the meatiest roles anyway). I believe that if we widen our lens, deepen our focus and expand our story, connecting it to our community, society and the planet as a whole, we will be more empowered to face our uncertain future, emboldened by purpose, compelled to tackle problems along side our neighbors IRL and virtually.
Astronauts speak of the Overview Effect when they first glimpse Earth from space. A cognitive shift of awareness through awe. Borders, countries, cultures disappear. The ‘stories’ which run our societies, that Harari speaks about? They vanish, and only the natural planet in its fragile glory is taken in.
This new narrative can be that for the rest of us. Our new stories can be an antibody for anxiety. We don’t yet know the ending, but we are all involved in the creation process.
But shifting the focus from Me to We doesn’t mean that we shelve our diversity or individuality. We should embrace our individual goals and dreams, but also reevaluate how we pursue them through this larger collective lens. We are not all the same, that is humanity’s strength, especially when we amplify marginalized voices. Indeed, authors of the the 6th Pathways to the Great Transition state:
“The narrative goes that without representation of the oppressed and the marginalized, we are perpetuating oppressive power structures, and any discussion about systemic change is worthless.”
So how do we collectively embark on this new narrative, especially taking into account the imperative of antiracism, where inclusion and amplification of POC voices are paramount? I don’t have a clear answer, that’s why I’m writing this. This is where I look to my community and beyond for collaboration. But here are some initial ideas:
As an individual:
1. Speak up and acknowledge the power of story and that we are a world without a collective future facing narrative that serves the whole. New stories and the narrative they form need to be prioritized, even if it’s scary to contemplate an uncertain future or examine issues that are foreign or challenging. We need to start talking about stories as a community, imagining them, uniting around them. It could be at book club, at a rally, at school, at a virtual library event. Let’s champion new stories that tell the truth about this country’s racism and what we need to do to remedy the pains and hardships inflicted.
2. Become more aware of the type of stories that we are consuming as they shape our brains and create systems that we live our lives through. There is always a place for nostalgia but not one that drags us backwards to a time that can and should no longer exist. Let’s reconsider our constant need for ‘dopamine dings’ and novelty. Let’s recognize the ills of hero culture and not be lead down the path of expecting one exceptional human to save us or supply us with answers. Even if they could, the very nature of social media culture will topple them.
At the industry level:
3. Hollywood and the entertainment/ media industry at large need to start shifting their view of story from commodity to change agent. They must elevate discourse around the scared nature of stories and champion new diverse future facing voices — bringing them from ‘the margins to the mainstream’ (A phrase from Rutger Bregman’s excellent piece on neoliberalism in The Correspondent). Storymaking companies must expand stories beyond the binary / zero sum formula, the Quest myth and the lone genius myth / hero’s journey framework. The industry should encourage stories that reflect diversity, point to our systematic failings (films of Ava DuVernay, Participant Films), and embrace the interconnected nature of a global society (Soderbergh does this well in Babel, Traffic, Contagion).
Imagine If as Keith Cunningham (author) supports, there is a media task force, where 10% of profits are dedicated to creating better future facing storytelling that incorporates our existential systematic issues and reflects our interconnected globalism. Imagine If a joint Netflix Amazon Disney produces a cinematic event across platforms weaving a global narrative tapestry (an expansion of a Global Citizen type event or FOX and NatGeo’s release of 2014 COSMOS). Imagine If playing before every theatrical release is a public service announcement from the coalition of entertainment and media championing the importance of stories in our ever changing world. As traditional Hollywood struggles to stay relevant in a Snapchat Tik Tok world, they can reassert their position in entertainment by recasting a spotlight on the positive power of big storytelling.
4. Technology companies and Silicon Valley must integrate new immersive technologies into the mainstream and improve our digital interfaces. As long as we have lithium batteries and an internet, technology will be integral to storytelling. As stories evolve, so do the ways we share them. We must consider Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality and their future iterations (XR) as part of this new storytelling toolbox and aim for mass integration and education; this technology cannot just be for the privileged. The best way to experience an ‘Overview Effect’ is through VR, while AR adds depth and context to the world around you. Before long social media platforms like Facebook will have VR worlds that will shape how we see our own real world. Imagine If there is an open source VR environment with a Minecraft building element where people could ‘build’ new innovative tech or create new social systems and you can see it play out in this virtual world. Imagine If companies could then bid on that innovative tech to build out in the real world.
Along these lines, I believe that our internet interfaces are outdated and limited. Beyond the ‘walled gardens’ of apps, we are shackled to algorithmically driven social media sites and monopolistic search engines to enter the web. The digital world is our mirror world, we need a better interface beyond a profit driven library styled search engine and UX (user interface) to access it.
5. We must CONNECT the myriad diverse stories, progressive movements and future facing ideologies which already exist across our digital ecosphere. Story discovery needs to go beyond the Google search engine ranking or the Amazon / Netflix algorithm. Competition, which is at the heart of capitalism, is a fatal flaw in our ability to craft a unified narrative. It cannot be a zero sum game looking for eyeballs and ad money when story is fundamental to society’s well being, not just its balance sheets. Let’s use this gravitational lens and deep time (and the aforementioned better interfaces) to reveal novel and noble narratives. I believe that if more future forward stories and initiatives, causes and foundations can be connected from their tiny corners of the internet powerful new narratives can take form. Imagine If larger iterations of national curators and publishers like TED and NPR are built to shine lights on and connect the non profits, institutes, foundations, media companies and thought leaders who exist in this progressive story space (my brain goes to The Sloan Foundation, the Simons Foundation, Participant Media, Ava DuVernay’s Array Now, The Geena Davis Institute, The Presencing Institute, The Afrofuturist Podcast, Tiffany Shlain’s Let It Ripple, the late Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions and Story Collider.) I only need to look at my twitter feed and see incredible creatives across the arts, business and science, all with complementary visions for a vital, sustainable future (and I am actively expanding my feed with POC). There must be a way to cross pollinate the creative individuals and institutions who exist today.
From Government:
6. The lack of narrative is a national problem and should reverberate at the highest levels. The market economy will not fix this problem. Already there are cities, like Detroit, who have a ‘Chief Storyteller’ and companies like Microsoft that have Chief Narrative Officers (I know that because I was hoping to coin the term). This topic needs to be pervasive at the federal level, reflected in the strengthening of an arts and sciences initiative. We must re-invigorate the National Endowment for the Arts and re-open the Office of Technological Assessment, and perhaps expand the role of the Poet Laureate.
Don’t doubt, this upcoming election will be determined by whomever weaves the most compelling story of what the future of America can look like. So we need to fucking talk about it. (Finally got to swear).
“Those who control the fantasy, control the future.” — Monika Bielskyte
It all sounds incredibly basic, doesn’t it? Re-empower and expand our sense of shared stories in order to build a collective, inclusive narrative that takes into account our uncertain future and the elements contributing to it. We can rebuild community and thus tackle necessary systematic change so we can all flourish along side the planet. But of course, in reality, it’s a Herculean challenge ripe with unseen monsters ready to awaken.
But I’m ready to embark on the adventure (guess I’m going on my hero’s journey a bit late). This post will launch a Tumblr (yes, it’s still a thing and, hey, there’s no paywall) where I will capture and share all that I can which pings this post in any way, my small attempt at linking all the progressive, thoughtful, future facing nodes on the web. It will also allow me to dig more into the issue of systemic racism in story and the narratives we need to build to help overturn it. And I look to you, the reader, with hope, to engage our collective imagination. I am ready to invoke action around this, not just press publish and hope for clicks. Who’s with me?
“Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is… the most potent force in the universe.” — Kevin Kelly (co-founder Wired)
End Credits.
As I finish writing this, two typhoons have pummeled the Philippines and West Bengal and one is en route to Delhi. Severe rains in east Michigan punctured holes in a dam, flooding a county.
As I finish writing this, people in EVERY STATE OF THIS COUNTRY and in 100 other countries have taken to the streets to protest the murder of George Floyd, the toxic fabric of our police and the systematic racism pervasive in society.
We must unite around a shared, diverse vision of the future otherwise climate change and the disenfranchised communities most at risk by it will be the ONLY story.
So I return to this idea of community or chaos. And again to the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:
“I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “where do we go from here” that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are 40 million poor people here and one day we must ask the question, why are there forty million poor people here? And when you begin to ask that question you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. One day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. “America, you must be born again.””
Welcome to the beginning of the 4th Act. Your chance to become part of the most revolutionary Story (with a capital S) this galaxy has ever seen.
Or at the very least, you can take this moment in deep time to consider it.
Will you?
