"We don't need a new story"
long live stories, myths and grand narratives
Jonathan Rowson seems frustrated in his article We don't need a new story. I almost never disagree with anything he writes, until now. My counter is that it is all stories all the way down.
There are nuances contained in the words story, myth and narrative that I will completely ignore in this article.
From John Vervaeke I learned an example of the power of story.
About two thousand years ago there was a great power called the Roman Empire. Far from its center, a man named Jesus was born and he sparked the start of a new religion, a new story. The story was spread throughout the Empire by a man named Paul. The story touched and transformed more and more lives as times passed.
Three hundred years later, Roman Emperor Constantine the Great ordered an end to the persecution of Christians. A few decades later, before the end of the fourth century, Christianity was proclaimed the official religion of the Roman Empire. That is what Vervaeke calls stealing the culture. That is what we need now, says Vervaeke, a new story powerful enough to transform lives and steal a culture. That is the religion of no religion.
At the end of last year I published a plea, Help Build the Cathedral With Me. I was responding to a “6-part series on personal mythology as a response to the meaning crisis” by Brendan Graham Dempsey. We can reinterpret our own lives as myths contributing to the creation of a grand new narrative.
At age eighteen I was captured by the Myth of Truth and joined a cult. And chasing the Myth of Progress, I worked hard at getting ahead in my career. These myths dominated my life and shaped my actions.
Rowson writes,
By all means squeeze another story into the back of the car before you set off on your social change adventure, but you’ll find there’s a narrative traffic jam on the road to anywhere you want to go.
Yes, but… we have too many stories and not enough powerful, grand new narratives.
What the ‘we need a new story tribe’ are angling at is that the story of modernity is ending, and it’s not that they are wrong as such… That story of science, reason and progress is running out, and perhaps individualism and consumerism and (bogey man alert!) patriarchy are on the way out. As more and more people lose confidence in that story, it is almost a self-fulfiling prophency that it will come to an end. So what’s the new story?
I know people in the SPACE who believe that by creating the story that modernity is ending we are creating the reality that modernity is ending. That, in my opinion, is to reduce a very complex situation down to one simplistic explanation. I am not buying that story.
But there are so many distinctions to make here that it’s maddening.
Am I again feeling the frustration of Rowson or am I projecting?
The problem is that the simplistic diagnosis in question - “we need a new story” betrays its own subject and fails to inform action.
And I completely agree. But the need for more than just stories does not negate the need for stories. We need articles, podcasts and videos, but we need much, much more.
Rowson references the Make America Great Again! story and helps me make my case. In 2016 that story trumped the basket of deplorables story. My sense is that the winning story of 2024 has not yet surfaced, but this is probably just my wishful thinking.
By the way, the Make America Great Again! story has been around since before the American Revolution. Before MAGA was American Exceptionalism and before that was Manifest Destiny. Same (powerful) story.
…so what do we expect a new story to be or do?
I expect a new story to be transformational, changing actions, changing lives on a scale like the Christian story.
Finally, “We need a new story” is lame because while it sounds innovative and insightful to say we need a new story, it amounts to narrative bypassing (did I just make that up?) and entails no political commitment.
Sadly, I see nothing political worth committing to. But I have more stories to tell. Maybe my story will spark some action, or not.
I believe that everyone has a story to tell and I am telling mine, The Life of John Stokdijk, an average and ordinary life. Every life, every story, has some wisdom that can contribute to the collective wisdom of humanity which we can magnify with AI. That wisdom can solve the metacrisis. Nice story. Let’s make it so.
More stories about stories:
About Narratives, posted June 16, 2020
I sense Jonathan's urgency and frustration in his piece which I share. The issue with stories, as I see it, is their tendency to emphasize the 'what' and 'why,' whereas true transformation lies in the 'how.' Regrettably, most individuals remain deeply entrenched in dualistic thinking, relying on the mind rather than the heart to grasp this poetic aspect. Nonetheless, I find myself longing for a new grand narrative that fosters cohesion among us, even if seems impossibly out of reach.