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Chapter 7: The Human Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 7: The Human Story

The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Chief Seattle

We are story-telling animals. And all of history is the human story, our story. So, if today we are at the precipice of the singularly most disruptive change in how we live, how we organize ourselves collectively, and how we relate to the rest of the world, then we were led to this point by the story we have told ourselves – about who we are, where we’re coming from, where we are going and what is our proper place in the universe.

This story takes many forms and shapes – religious, secular, scientific, economic, literally, and artistic. But all tell of humanity’s “transcendence” of our animal origin, our growing mastery over “nature” [because it belongs to us, not the other way around] and a future of “abundance” [that is “better than we think”]. It is the teleological story of civilization, progress, humanism, and, most of all, a species whose manifest destiny is to become God.

What makes it dangerous is that we have forgotten it is a story. Because it has been told so many times by those who see themselves as rationalists or scientists, objective and impartial, true and good.

Up until the 20th century, all human civilizations took nature for granted. It seemed gargantuan and we never imagined we could damage, let alone threaten it. Today we are no longer so humble. Worse than that, even if progress in science and technology is a fact, progress in humanity is, at best, lagging. Because intellectually, technologically, economically, and scientifically humanity has progressed immensely. But psychologically or spiritually we have not moved that far. [As noted by Robinson Jeffers, human nature has no more changed in the last 10,000 years than the beaks of eagles.] And, unfortunately, while we have learned a lot about the birds, bees, fish, and oceans that doesn’t mean we’ll save, rather than destroy them all. [Ourselves included.] Especially since our current story tells us that the universe is ours for the taking and we are free to do with it as we please.

In fact, all of our current crises are self-created. If we look carefully at all the problems we are facing today we would realize that they are all the same. Things like nuclear proliferation, global warming, environmental degradation, and species extinction, even pandemics are all actually the same thing playing itself over and over again in different realms. Namely, humanity’s technological power far surpassing our wisdom to use it in a safe, productive, non-homicidal, and non-suicidal manner.

Yuval Harari notes that we jumped from the middle of the food chain, where we spent more than 2 million years, to the top only within the last 100,000 years. But because of our meteoric rise, we are ill-adapted to our current position of power and supremacy. And many of the calamities that followed – be it wars against other humans or the way we treat the environment, are due to that fact. Bears, wolves, lions, and sharks all evolved to be at the top of the food chain over many millions of years. And they are evolved to be in balance with each other and the world around them. We are not. This is why Harari argues that “Armed sheep are far more dangerous than armed wolves because they are not used to be in a position of power.”

We also moved from a view where “mother nature” was the all-powerful giver and taker to a view where we could and should “master” or “conquer” her. So now we are the wise giver and taker of life. And it is right and proper it is so. Because we are Homo Sapiens – the “wise man.” [A Freudian Oedipus complex at the scale of our civilization?!] And that is also a result of the myth that humanity isn’t a part of nature, but apart from it.

To be clear, our current human story consists of 4 main parts:

1. The story of progress.

2. The story of the supremacy and centrality of humanity.

3. The story of our separation from nature. [Are we a part of the world or apart from the world?]

4. The story of becoming Gods

The Industrial and Scientific Revolutions, Capitalism, Colonization and Imperialism, Climate Change and species extinction, soil erosion and ocean acidification, pandemics, Transhumanism, and Artificial Intelligence [AI] are all consequences and/or examples of the impact of our story. A teleological story of manifest destiny, transcendence, conquering nature, and, ultimately, the universe. A story that has brought us to our present and will guide and inform our decisions into the future. A story that gives meaning and value not only to us but also to the universe and everything in it. A story that can tip the scales towards extinction or survival.

The human story.

As E.O. Wilson noted:

Humanity … arose entirely on its own through an accumulated series of events during evolution. We are not predestined to reach any goal, nor are we answerable to any power but our own. Only wisdom based on self-understanding, not piety, will save us.

Part II: Our Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Part  II: Our Story

Gods always behave like the people who make them. Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse

Before we have a story, any story, we must first have a storyteller. Therefore, the most important story, that which all other stories are derived from, the story-of-all-stories, is the story of the storyteller: the human story.

The human story has been written and rewritten several times already. The last time was somewhere between the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution when we dethroned God as the central authority in the Universe and took his place instead. Since then our story has spread the myth of the supremacy and centrality of the human being – of how we are the pinnacle of evolution, the supreme intelligence, and the masters of nature. And everything we have done since then, together with everything we are likely to do in the future, will stem from that story – the story of who we are, what’s our place in the universe, what we are here for, and where we are going.

It is, therefore, this story that is the cornerstone of our stunning progress and fantastic accomplishments. It is also the same story that underpins our failures and current predicaments – be it climate change, environmental destruction and species extinction, nuclear war, terrorism, pandemics, or even artificial intelligence. For it is this story that gave us Auschwitz and took us to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. And it is this story that will likely determine if we are going to go extinct like the dinosaurs, or if and how we might populate the universe.

Our modern challenges are not only new but also self-created. And exponential technologies – such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, big data, synthetic biology, 3D printing, crypto blockchains, and nanotechnology, are already causing both negative and positive change. But new kinds of challenges require new kinds of thinking. And self-created problems require first acknowledging and then learning from past mistakes. Finally, since we think in and are ruled by stories, we must rewrite the human story yet again. Because our current story is facing many new challenges. And recent events have shown it is starting to fall apart.

But before we can write a new story we must understand how the current story came to be, what are its main elements and what has been its impact. Only then can we hope to write a better story. This is not just a philosophical exercise but a question of survival for all life on our planet. Viktor Frankl, a Nazi Holocaust survivor, said it best:

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

Chapter 6: The Biology of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 6: The Biology of Story

Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing the contrary that the mind is itself the principle element of creation. Rabindranath Tagore

It is arguable whether it is proper for us to be classified as Homo Sapiens because it is arguable as per how wise we actually are. But, in this chapter, I will claim it is much less arguable that we are proper Homo Narrative. Because even before the time humans started to huddle around campfires, even before we were able to speak, story was at the core of what is human.

Human biology has evolved around and wired for 2 main types of stories:

The first one is the story our human brain tells us about the world and who we are in it. Because our brain has evolved to produce a single story of “reality”. And that story isn’t strictly true, comprehensive, or accurate. Rather it is a story designed to make sense to us. Because our brain is able to perceive only a tiny fraction of the universe around us. It has evolved to filter out a number of crucial details and take shortcuts into creating the story of the outside world inside our heads. And we have developed a variety of evolutionary, physiological, and psychological biases. Thus, according to neuroscientist Anil Seth, our brain’s story is a single, unreal, “hallucinated” story. And, since we are all hallucinating all the time, Dr. Seth claims that “reality is just a hallucination majority of people agree upon.”

In other words, reality is a story. A story that a sufficient number of people accept as true. Furthermore, we don’t just passively experience the world but we actively generate it. So it comes as much from within as it comes from without. Finally, story is the natural way in which the mind takes in data from the outside world and then processes it so that we can make sense of it.

The second type is the story we tell and hear from others. Because we are evolutionarily selected for being good storytellers and good listeners. This is due to the fact that story is the best way of communicating information, especially when we had no writing. So people who told the most captivating stories usually had the most crowded campfire and rarely went hungry. Those who remembered well the stories about the migration of the herds, the seasons of the year, the best ways of securing water, food, shelter, and fire, had the best chance of survival. Those who didn’t were less likely to survive and pass down their genes.

So whether it is perceiving and processing the world inside our heads, or sharing practical information with others, story is critical to human survival. And, in biology, things that provide benefit to survival get selected for.

Now that we have some general idea about the biology of story let us look at 2 interesting examples:

When my wife Julie was 7-years-old she had a problem with warts. The dermatologist gave her a prescription but it didn’t work. Then he gave her another one but that didn’t work either. He tried freeze-burning the warts with the same success. He kept trying different things but for over a year of treatment, the warts were not only still there but now spread from one to both hands. Finally, after trying everything else without success, the dermatologist said he had just received a new miracle treatment but Julie had to visit him monthly for 6 months and get a shot in her bum. Now, my wife has always been very needle and blood averse but she really hated her warts. So she had no choice but to do what she had to. And, after 4 or 5 months of injections, the warts were gone. Then on the last month, her mother asked the doctor:

“What is this new miracle treatment that finally managed to cure all my daughter’s warts?”

“Oh, that”, said the doctor. “That miracle treatment is called placebo.”

What is a placebo? Placebo is a story. A story about a medicine that you thought you took but never did. Yet it often works. Like my wife, many people experience either a measurable improvement in their medical condition or alleviation in terms of suffering, sometimes both. So, the story actually makes a medical difference in a measurable portion of the population. According to Dr. Matthew Bruke from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, patients who believe a treatment will work and are treated kindly by a trusted clinician, do better. Take these factors away, and studies have found lower results for active treatments as well.

Current research also suggests that detailed treatment “rituals” – like injections or IV placebos, tend to lead to a stronger response than sugar pills. Other studies have found high placebo effects for long-accepted treatments such as surgery for shoulder pain and stents for angina, where researchers found no significant difference in patients who thought they received the procedure than those who actually did. In fact, Dr. Burke suggests that if those treatments were put through a placebo-designed trial today, they would have trouble getting approved.

It is hard to argue that placebo is not a fantastic example of the biology of story. Another fascinating case is that of memory champions who use a spectrum of tricks to help them remember. One of their most powerful tools, however, is inventing a fictional story that allows them to link chronologically a very long list of random and seemingly incompatible items. An interesting element of this fictional story is that the crazier and less plausible it is the easier it is to remember. Another one is that it turns out linking information to a narrative and a place may help memory more than linking information to a place alone.

I hope that the above examples have demonstrated that humanity is properly Homo Narrative because we have evolved and are wired for story. So much so that even when we fall asleep our minds can’t help it but keep spinning more stories that we call dreams. That is how fundamental the biology of story is to our species. As Jonathan Gottschall observed:

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.

Chapter 5: The Importance of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 5: The Importance of Story

It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story. Patrick Rothfuss

Stories are not just stories. Stories matter. Because, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, if one has a sufficiently strong “why” one can endure any “how.” And the “why” comes not from facts or events. It comes from the story we attach to them. This desire for meaning is often stronger than our desire for survival because meaning provides motivation or indifference, even apathy. That’s how important story is.

For example, if one is suffering greatly one can decide that it is meaningless to go on and give up on life. Or, like Viktor Frankl, one can choose a story that attaches positive meaning to their suffering and thus be motivated to endure even the living hell of Auschwitz. This is true for individuals as well as larger groups of people, such as corporations, religions, or nations. As Frankl said:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

In other words, we are free to choose our story even when we are not free to choose our circumstances. Because the story is our “why” while the circumstances are merely our “how.” And the story is what ultimately makes the difference. Because a story is something that helps us feel connected to a reason and, more importantly, to a purpose. Let’s look at some examples at both the individual and the collective level.

The Japanese island of Okinawa is home to some of the longest-living people in the world. One often-quoted reason behind Okinawan longevity is their concept of Ikigai. Ikigai comes from 2 words: iki – which means “to live,” and gai – which means “a reason.” So, literally, ikigai translates as a “reason to live”, “something that makes life worth living”, “a meaning for/to life”. Furthermore, Ikigai is pretty close to the French concept of raison d’etre. It is a sense of a personal mission and it is commonly believed that if one loses their Ikigai one dies. [A claim strongly supported by Victor Frankl’s own observations in Nazi concentration camps. See Man’s Search for Meaning]

Every great leader has a great story. For example, if you’re Socrates your story is: “I know that I don’t know.” If you are Buddha your story is “life is suffering”. If you are Mohamed your story is “there is only one God and his name is Allah.” If you are Martin Luther your story is “reformation.” If you’re Galileo your story is “And yet it moves.” If you’re Martin Luther King Jr. your story is “I have a dream”. If you’re the Beatles your story is “all you need is love”. If you are John Lennon your story is “Imagine all the people”. If you’re President Kennedy your story is “We shall put a man on the moon”. If you’re Steve Jobs your story is “think different”. If you’re President Bill Clinton your story is “It’s the economy, stupid.” If you’re President Obama your story is “Yes, we can.” If you are President Trump your story is “Let’s make America great again.”

In the case of larger groups of people – such as corporations, story is the glue that brings everyone together and motivates them to cooperate and overcome obstacles. And so, in the past couple of decades, the most successful organizations have come up with what’s been called a Massively Transformative Purpose [MTP]. [Salim Ismail, Exponential Organizations, page 53]

An MTP is the distilled essence of a story that captures who this organization is for and what’s its mission or purpose. For example, Google’s MTP is “organize the world’s information.” TED’s MTP is “ideas worth spreading.” Deep Mind’s MTP is “Solve intelligence. [Use it to make the world a better place.]” Calico’s MTP is “solve death.” Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation MTP is “cure all disease.” Doctors Without Borders’ MTP is “medical aid where it is needed most.” Elon Musk’s MTP for Tesla and SolarCity is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” while for SpaceX it is to “backup the biosphere by making humanity a multiplanet species.” Patagonia’s MTP is “We’re in business to save our home planet.” Lego’s MTP is “Inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.” [Having an MTP is particularly important for Millennials for whom the story of money is often not a sufficient “why.”]

Larger groupings of people such as religions and nations also utilize the power of story to forge their respective religious or national identity. Thus Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism all tell their own mythical stories. And the more we believe in those stories, the more we identify ourselves as Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Hindu. But nations or ideologies such as Liberalism, Humanism, Feminism, Communism and Capitalism do it too. So, a Japanese identifies with the story that Japan – Nippon, is the “land of the rising Sun”. [Or “the land of the Gods.”] An American identifies with the story of “the land of opportunity” where everyone is free to pursue the “American dream.” A Chinese may identify with the story of Tianxia – or “all under heaven.” A communist may identify with the story of equality or “to each according to their need.” A capitalist may identify with the story of personal freedom, the “invisible hand” of the “free market” and the “virtue of selfishness.” A humanist may identify with the story that “man is the measure of all things” since humanity is “the pinnacle of evolution” and “the supreme intelligence” on our planet. Each of those levels requires a story in order to create, inform and guide the identities of its respective constituents. As Lisa Cron notes:

Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution — more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to.

Chapter 4: The Power of the Storyteller

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 4: The Power of the Storyteller

The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. Steve Jobs.

Before we have a story, any story, we must first have a storyteller. And that storyteller is a god, because within their narrative they are all-powerful, almighty and omnipotent. That’s why religion is among the most powerful stories of our civilization. And, the storyteller of such a popular story is, of course, a god. Or the son of God. Or the prophet of God. Or in the image of God. He sets the rules and the laws, what is good and evil, what is right and wrong, what is and what is not possible. He tells us how to dress, what to eat, how to live, how to relate to each other, who must marry whom, how to bring up our children, where we are coming from, why we are here, what is the purpose of life and where we go after death. If we believe his story, we are going to not only listen to but also obey his “commandments.”

It is for this reason that nations and even corporations are also made by mythical stories. Because myth-making is team-building is nation-building is world-making – stories told on a different scale. The myth helps us make sense of the world as well as establish our proper place in it – whether as individuals, corporations or nations. It gives us both meaning and purpose. So, as long as we all believe in the same story, we will cooperate. And we are likely to obey the people who tell those stories. This is true not only in religion and politics but also in business, entertainment, music, art, science, etc. Because those who tell the most popular stories are the most powerful people. And ultimate success in telling a story grants access to ultimate power.

Up until now, it was humans who told stories. Naturally, those stories end up with humans being the central entity. But let us examine how our place in the story has changed through time.

Historically, we started with the story of animism where everything around us was imbued with a spirit [or a soul] and was, at least in some sense, holy and to be respected. There was no hierarchy among humans, animals, trees, stones, and rivers, and we were not above them in any way. One day we killed a wild animal to feed and clothe ourselves. The next day an animal could kill us to feed itself and its offspring. We had respect for all living things and considered them as equals in the great web of life.

Then the story of Theism brought hierarchy, and centralization of power, in the hands of many or one God. Since we humans – the storytellers, were naturally in the image of God [or God was in the image of us ;-] we placed ourselves just a step below Him, and all other animals got pushed down the ladder. The world became our “garden,” and everything in it was ours for the taking, including all “soulless” animals.

Finally, we came up with the story of the centrality of the human being – of how we are the pinnacle of evolution, the supreme intelligence – i.e. the sole measure, beginning and end of everything, and the masters of nature. So we made quick work of God and replaced him with us. Then we downgraded the animals even further down to the rank of mere Cartesian automata – machines unable to think, feel or suffer. [Or “resources” to be “harvested.”] Consequently, we could enslave and kill them for our pleasure, food or sport, by the billions, and without guilt. [Every year we kill over 70 billion animals and 1.3 trillion fish and other aquatic organisms.]

The idea that humans are or will be gods is a natural consequence of the power of the storyteller. Given that we are the storyteller, we are, by default, the heroes. Because no one is the villain in their own story. And that is why those who write the story [or history] are always good, benevolent, generous, right and wise. [It is also why we called ourselves Homo Sapiens – i.e., wise man. Because we naturally think we’re wise and because it was men who did the naming.] But now, with the rise of artificial intelligence, that may change again. And the day a computer can tell a sophisticated story – one that can make others laugh, cry and [most of all] believe, is the day humanity may lose control of the story. Because, as we already saw above, the storyteller inevitably ends up not merely as the hero but also as God, the most powerful entity or species. [And if that turns out to be the case, can we blame the Godlike AI’s if they come up with the story of AI-ism and end up treating humans the same way we “human-ists” treat animals?!]

In short, humanity’s power lies in the fact that we are the storytellers. If we lose our power to tell our stories we would lose everything. As Salmon Rushdie says:

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives – the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change – truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.

Chapter 3: The Power of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 3: The Power of Story

We suffer not from the events in our lives but from our stories about them. Epictetus

The most powerful stories are stories about things that don’t exist. Because our fictive language gave birth to legal fictions, social constructs and imagined realities. So much so that today imagined things are more powerful than real things. Trees, rivers, fish, animals and even the climate depend on our imaginary constructs for their future survival. There is no money, law, justice, inalienable human rights, religion, love, friendship, capitalism, corporations, nations or humanity outside of our common imagination. Never-the-less it is such fictitious entities that will decide the fate of the world, ourselves included.

The more fictitious a story is, the more powerful that story is, provided it has a large enough number of people embracing it. Because stories that spread don’t just win – they change the world. This is true of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as much as it is true of Communism, Capitalism, Humanism, Nationalism, Feminism, Trumpism, Black Lives Matter, Brexit, MeToo or human rights. For example, the most popular story on our planet is money. Because almost everyone accepts and therefore believes in money. But money, regardless of its form – be it gold, bitcoin or paper money like the dollar, is basically trust. Trust in a story, which in the case of bitcoin, doesn’t even have a physical representation but is entirely digital – i.e. fictitious.

In human civilization, not only everything but also everyone is a story. And that is true at every level we can think of – individually, collectively or globally, because each of those levels requires a story. The same person can embrace many different stories that give her meaning, which also set the spectrum of what is and what is not possible for her. For example, someone can be a mother, daughter, vegetarian, lesbian, police officer, Muslim, black and American – all at once. And each of those stories provides such powerful meaning that the person may be willing to kill, live or die for it. Thus, while our identities are little more than a hodge-podge of often contradictory stories, they determine our actions. But if we change our story we change our identity. And if we change our identity we change our actions, and therefore we change our future.

Conversely, people who have not embraced or have lost their personal story feel lonely, unmotivated, lack meaning, feel depressed and are at risk of suicide. But people who have discovered their “calling” have basically found a compelling story and decided to embrace it as their own. When many people embrace the same story we can have large-scale cooperation among millions of humans, who are otherwise all strangers to each other. Thus, the power of our civilization is built on the power of our stories – our belief in them, our desire to spread them and our willingness to live or die by them.

Losing those stories is not merely devastating but, both figuratively and literally, potentially mortal. That is why Jacque Ellul noted that to destroy someone is to destroy their story. And this is true of individuals as much as it is true of groups of people – be it ethnic groups, corporations, organizations or nations. Therefore, we ought to be very careful in rewriting our story. Because if we end up destroying it without offering a better alternative we can end up destroying our civilization. As the Dark Mountain Manifesto warns:

Human civilization is an intensely fragile construction. It is built on little more than belief: belief in the rightness of its values; belief in the strength of its system of law and order; belief in its currency; above all, perhaps, belief in its future. [The Dark Mountain Manifesto page 5]

The power of story is hard to exaggerate because stories inform and guide our relationship with each other, the rest of the world and even the future. The good news is that stories are told by storytellers. So we can choose to get in charge of our stories and gain power by becoming the storytellers. Taking responsibility for and, ultimately, rewriting our stories is the path to our new selves and therefore our new future. This is where the ultimate power lies. And that is why, both Plato and the Hopi Indians recognized the fact that “those who tell the stories rule the world.”

Chapter 2: The Story of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 2: The Story of Story

The limits of my language means the limits of my world. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Humanity has searched for meaning since its beginning. And we find it in story. The story that we tell ourselves. Thus, a world devoid of meaning becomes meaningful. But this meaning is given by and designed for us. And it is created in language.

The truly unique feature of human language is not its ability to transmit practical information about animals, rivers, stones, and trees. This feature is present in the languages of many other species such as whales, dolphins, apes, elephants, birds and bats, even bees. What makes human language unique is its ability to transmit information about things that don’t exist in the physical world at all – like gods, money, law, ethics, corporations, and so on. In other words, what makes our language unique is its ability to tell fictional stories. That is why ours is a fictive language. And this fact is very important for the two key features of our civilization:

1. Large-scale cooperation: Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons rarely cooperated in groups larger than 150 [Dunbar’s number]. This placed a rather low upper limit on what they could accomplish. Homo Sapiens, however, when given a powerful enough story, can exhibit cooperation among millions of strangers working towards the same goal. And what we can accomplish is of unlimited scale. Both positive and negative examples abound in history from wars and genocides through sports events, religious rituals, social movements, construction projects such as the Great Wall of China, or technological and scientific ones such as the Large Hadron Collider and space exploration.

2. Fast [cultural] evolution: What this means is that when we change the story, we change the culture. When enough people switch the story they believe in we have a revolution. For example, in 1789 the population of France switched almost overnight from the story of the divine right of the king to the story of the sovereignty of the people. [“Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”] Now known as the French Revolution, this phenomenon shows how cultural revolutions, in contrast to genetic ones, are very fast. This is the main reason why humanity has outstripped all other species in evolutionary terms – because we are using culture, not genes, to evolve faster. Every revolutionary paradigm switch – be it the French Revolution or the Scientific Revolution or the Industrial Revolution, is accompanied by a respective cultural switch in story about what the dominant paradigm could or should be. That new story is in turn told by coining new language about new political or legal rights, scientific concepts, or business metaphors such as the invisible hand, evolution, survival of the fittest, etc. New stories require new language and thus the expansion of story necessitates the expansion of language and the expansion of language creates opportunities for new stories.

In short, without our fictive language, we can’t have a story. And without a human story, our human civilization will not exist. So, the story of story is the story of our language. Keneth Burke said it best:

Language does our thinking for us.

Chapter 1: The Definition of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 1: The Definition of Story

We started our thought experiment with Kenneth Burke’s definition of story as “equipment for living.” Burke offers a great start but it is Jeff DeChambeau who really brings all the essential elements together in defining story as “information processing technology.” And, whether we realize it or not, it is among the oldest, most powerful, and longest-lasting technologies we have. But let us break it apart and take a closer look to see how and why DeChambeau’s definition works so well.

The first thing we ought to note is that story is about information. It started around the Cognitive Revolution 70,000 years ago when we had no writing and story was the vehicle that carried information from one person to another, one generation to another. Then we invented writing and moved from the oral to the written word. Story got even more powerful because we could suddenly send information both across space and time. Even today, in the age of 24-hour-news, social media, YouTube videos, and audio podcasts, the most popular and powerful memes still come wrapped in some kind of story. Because story was and continues to be the best vehicle for capturing, carrying, and transmitting information.

The second is that story is about processing – i.e. organizing said information in a way that provides new insight we did not have before. In other words, a story can take data and make sense of it. So it turns information into knowledge. Because there is a point to using story, a lesson to be learned. It is for this reason that Walter Benjamin notes: “The value of information does not survive the moment in which it was new. It lives only at that moment; it has to surrender to it completely and explain itself to it without losing any time. A story is different. It does not expend itself. It preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time.”

The third part is that it is technology because story is a conceptual tool created by Homo sapiens. For example, Kevin Kelly defines technology as “anything useful invented by a mind”. For Angus Fletcher “technology is any human-made thing that helps to solve a problem.” As any good tool, we can apply story to many a problem to help us understand, make sense of and deal with it. No story, no way to organize information, no way to process it, no way to make sense of, remember, or understand. Because story is ultimately about understanding and solving problems. [More on that in Chapters 6, 7, and 9.]

Story also has very specific features, characteristics, and structure that make it both powerful and unique. And it is neither simple narrative nor mere propaganda.

For example, story is different from narrative just like chronicles are different from history. Because chronicles and annals are simply a sequence of random chronological occurrences, without any connection, common theme, or thread. This is why they are so boring, tedious, hard to follow, and hard to remember. To turn a narrative into a story we need a unifying theme, a greater point of view, a moral, a lesson, a vision or a promise that will allow us to not only remember and organize but also process and understand what has occurred, why, and what could or should be next.

That is why Hayden White argued that the moment we brought story to narrative is the moment we gave birth to history. In the words of David Campbell “history proper requires the narration of events so that they are ‘revealed as possessing a structure, an order of meaning, that they do not possess as a mere sequence.” For both White and Campbell, it is only after embracing a meaningful structure that history proper breaks from the ranks of the ancient annals and chronicles, and claims its modern-day place among the other sciences.

Story is also different from propaganda because story is for the audience, not for the storyteller. Thus the storyteller is not the hero – the audience is. This is a critical point to understand. A story is not to serve the storyteller’s ego or agenda. It serves the audience – informing, entertaining, enriching, and teaching them something worthwhile. So a good story is not merely entertaining but transformational. It is a promise for something the audience longs for. That is why your press release is not a story. Neither is your latest news, greatest achievements, biggest product launch, volunteer work, and charity donations. Those are all about you. Those are all propaganda.

Finally, a classic story has a particular structure – i.e. it has a beginning, middle, and end. So, while the characters, places, or even the objectives can change, the structure remains mostly the same:

The Beginning: Shit happens. [That is why, for example, hard-boiled detective story-teller Raymond Chandler noted: “Trouble is my business”]

The beginning sets the problem and creates intrigue – i.e. it hooks the audience to the plot and whets their curiosity as per how the problem might be resolved. It spells out the who, what, why, when, and where?

The Middle: Shit happens to [good] people like us.

This is the struggle – where all the drama of the story unfolds, while our protagonists – who are in some important ways very much like us, struggle to overcome the problem. What was the struggle? What was done to overcome it?

The End: What we learn from shit.

This is the resolution – what did we learn from this particular story.

In short, the structure of a story is basically a roller coaster where we go down and up and down and up again. As David Sloly noted in his TEDx talk:

“Stories are like roller coasters – they’re only any good if they’re coming up and down.”

Part  I: Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Part  I: Story

People always find it easier to be a result of the past rather than a cause of the future. Unknown

Are we just billiard balls in a predetermined cosmic game of pool?

Or are we free to choose our future?

My thesis in this book is that our future is indeed determined. But not by some unbreakable and deterministic law of nature. No. Our future is determined by a story that we have created. Because ours is a civilization of story. And we are Homo Narrative – a species of story. So much so that today humanity lives and dies not by facts but by and for our stories. And this has gone so far that at present the fate of actual, non-fictional entities – such as animals, rivers, trees, mountains, oceans, and even our planet, is determined by stories – such as money, religion, law, corporations, nations, and international organizations.

In other words, in our civilization, what is real and we can touch, see, feel and smell, is ruled by what is fictional and doesn’t necessarily exist outside of the shared human imagination. All future possibilities – what is and what is not possible, are not determined by past events or facts on the ground. They are determined by the stories we attach to those because we are story-telling animals. And that is true for us individually – as persons, or collectively – as organizations, businesses, nations, and even for our civilization. We all build our future upon the story we tell ourselves.

Whether it is Climate Change, Brexit, or the election of President Trump we have witnessed many powerful examples where neither the facts nor the events of the past made a sufficient difference to the future outcome. What did and does make the difference is the stories attached. Therefore, if we want a different outcome, we ought to focus on changing the respective stories within which those facts and past events fit. Because only after one has embraced a new story will she be able to reinterpret the same old facts and events in a new way and thereby take a different action.

I claim that our story determines our future. But I am not claiming that anything is possible. Geographical, biological, physical, and economic forces do create constraints. But those constraints leave sufficient space for us to choose our future and not be bound by determinism. Yes, human choices are limited and human freedom is freedom within constraints. So it is not our freedom from external conditions but our attitude towards those conditions that embodies our free will. And attitude is derived from story: a positive story creates a positive attitude and a negative story – a negative one.

The same applies to events. Yes, the past does exert a choke-hold on us all. But we can break free if we can change the story.

In the next 18 chapters I will demonstrate how the above claim is true at every level: individually – as private persons; collectively – as corporations and organizations; and globally – as a civilization. No matter the level, new outcomes come only after the large-scale dissemination of new stories. For as long as the dominant story remains the same, no meaningful change can or will occur.

In short, my thesis is that it doesn’t matter if you are an individual, a company, a nation, or an international organization – change your story, change your future. Because our stories are our compass to the future. But they don’t just point the way. They frame what’s left and what’s right, what’s back and what’s forth, what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s possible and what’s not possible. They frame our space of possibility and motivate us to act or not to act. That is why we have to get into the story if we want to break free of the story. As Brenee Brown notes:

When we deny our stories they define us. When we own our stories we get to write a brave new ending.

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

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It is harder and harder to make sense of life. Everything is changing, all the time, at a faster and faster pace. Our civilization is struggling to keep up with exponential technology and disruptive change. Our age-old institutions, politics, economics, ethics, religion and laws, even our environment, are so fundamentally challenged, that we risk collapse. Our stories have gotten so divorced from reality, so divisive, so inflexible and so inept to adapt to and explain our present, let alone guide us towards a better future, that we often feel like helpless passengers on a Titanic spaceship Earth. No wonder Aristotle observed that “When the storytelling goes bad in a society, the result is decadence.”

But why is this the case? And, perhaps more importantly, how is it that bad storytelling can keep, if not bring, a whole society down? Is that not simply overstating the power of story?

Literary theorist Kenneth Burke famously noted: “Stories are equipment for living. Human beings need storytelling in order to make certain sense out of life.” If that is true then our equipment for living has gone obsolete. And unless we upgrade it we are going to go obsolete too.

It was this process that Fred Polak had in mind in 1961 while observing:

Any student of the rise and fall of cultures cannot fail to be impressed by the role played in this historical succession by the image of the future. The rise and fall of images precede or accompany the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society’s image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive. (Polak, 1961)

That is why we desperately need a new story. A story that will not only help us make sense of the world today but also unite us as a species of human beings. A story that will motivate us to stop bickering and resolve our common problems. A story that will inspire us to achieve our common goals and guide us towards a better future for all sentient beings on our planet.

We have to rewrite the story. Our story. The human story. Because the old stories that brought us thus far are no longer useful. They’ve lost their vision and grandeur. They’ve become petty and short-sighted. They’re stuck in a past that never was at the expense of a future that can be. They divide us and keep us bickering while our civilization is facing unprecedented diversity and depth of existential challenges. Those stories are not simply our history. They are now our chains. And unless we break them, they will be our death sentence.

So, if it is true that old stories or bad stories can bring us down, then, it is worth exploring if or how new stories, good stories can bring us up.

The human story that brought us into the 21st century was written and rewritten several times. The latest major update was perhaps during the industrial revolution. It is time to rewrite it again. We need a new story. A brave story. An unreasonable story. A story that can inspire, unite and motivate us to break free from the past and create the best possible future.

This is what this book is about. It will examine how the current human story came to be, how it works, what’s its impact and importance, and why we are currently witnessing it fall apart – politically, economically, philosophically, ecologically, and even socially. It will then argue that to survive and thrive in a world of exponential technology and disruptive change, we must rewrite our human story – individually, collectively, and globally. Finally, it will end by proposing a framework for as well as several possible new versions of our human story.

Needless to say, this is a pretty ambitious goal. Thus this thought experiment may fail because many of the ideas I will be putting here are not yet fully formed. Some are raw. Others are probably wrong. Or bad. But as a guest on Singularity.FM once said: “Big ideas are born bad.” So I will not shy away from sharing my bad ideas with you. And, hopefully, among the gravel and the dust, there might be some nuggets too. But you be the judge as per how big or bad my ideas are. Either way, while I feel I am not quite ready for this journey, it is a journey I must begin. Because, whether I succeed or fail, I know I would be better for trying. Hopefully, you can benefit from it too.

And, if, in the end, there is enough good in this book to make a difference – to you, the world, or anyone at all – great. If not, then, at least I can say I tried. Either way, thank you for coming along.

 

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

I make no claim to predicting the future. I make up stories. Stories are better than predictions: predictions tell us that the future is inevitable. Stories tell us that the future is up for grabs.

Cory Doctorow

 

Suggested Table of Contents:

Part I: Story

  1. The Definition of Story
  2. The Story of Story
  3. The Power of Story
  4. The Power of the Storyteller
  5. The Importance of Story
  6. The Biology of Story

Part II: Our Story

  1. The Human Story
  2. The Science Story
  3. The Technology Story
  4. The Capitalism Story
  5. The AI Story
  6. The Politics Story

Part III: ReWriting the Human Story [this is the part I am least ready for]

  1. The Poison and Cure of Story
  2. The Danger of a Single Story [and the Power of Many]
  3. The End of Story
  4. Uncivilized Art: Stories Beyond [Trans]Humanism
  5. The Last Story
  6. More chapters…