It’s a “Story Problem”: What’s Behind Our Messed-Up Economy

  by David Korten

  
 The peoples of earlier times prospered from the guidance of simple stories that offered answers to their deepest questions. We need those now more than ever.

Photo by Porsche Brosseau / Flickr.

For people, generally, their story of the universe and the human role in the universe is their primary source of intelligibility and value. ... The deepest crises experienced by any society are those moments of change when the story becomes inadequate for meeting the survival demands of a present situation. —Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth

Document ActionsAccording to evolutionary biologists, the first living organisms appeared on Earth some 3.6 billion years ago. As the organisms increased in number and diversity, they organized themselves into a planetary-scale living system. Trillions upon trillions of individual organisms were constantly experimenting, testing, and learning. In the process, the living system evolved toward ever-greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility. In the course of this grand evolutionary journey, these organisms filtered excess carbon and a vast variety of toxins from Earth’s air, waters, and soils and sequestered them deep underground—thus creating environmental conditions suited to the needs of species with ever-greater capacities for conscious self-reflective choice.

We humans live by stories and have a particularly passionate need for stories that give our lives meaning and direction.

According to evolutionary biologists, the first living organisms appeared on Earth some 3.6 billion years ago. As the organisms increased in number and diversity, they organized themselves into a planetary-scale living system. Trillions upon trillions of individual organisms were constantly experimenting, testing, and learning. In the process, the living system evolved toward ever-greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility. In the course of this grand evolutionary journey, these organisms filtered excess carbon and a vast variety of toxins from Earth’s air, waters, and soils and sequestered them deep underground—thus creating environmental conditions suited to the needs of species with ever-greater capacities for conscious self-reflective choice.

We humans pride ourselves on being the most intelligent of the species made possible by the supposedly lesser, mostly microscopic organisms that transformed Earth from a toxic dead rock into a living jewel. Now, in an insane fit of arrogance, we devote our best minds and most advanced technologies to accelerating the extraction and release of those sequestered carbons and toxins back into Earth’s atmosphere, waters, and soils. We do so in a foolhardy attempt to dominate and suppress the natural processes that maintain the conditions essential to our existence.

Our current life-destructive and climate-disruptive—but financially profitable—expansion of tar sands oil extraction, deep-sea oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, and mountaintop removal for coal is a particularly visible current example.

It seems that despite all of our extraordinary scientific and economic advances, we humans are a species out of touch with reality.

Millions of people now ask, "Why do we get it so terribly wrong?"

I believe it’s a story problem.

Story awareness

We humans live by stories and have a particularly passionate need for stories that give our lives meaning and direction—sacred stories that serve as our guide to what is important and worthy of our respect and care. These are familiar examples:

1. The story of a Distant Patriarch who by his will created all that is and rules it from afar. In this story, God is sacred and it is an article of faith that God is all-knowing and all-powerful.
2. The story of a Grand Machine universe that mechanistically plays out its destiny as its spring unwinds. In this story, objective knowledge and the scientific method are sacred and it is an article of faith that a combination of mechanism and chance explain the dynamic processes of creation and that any form of intelligent agency is an illusion.
3. The less public story of an Integral Spirit engaged in a sacred journey to discover and actualize its possibilities as it manifests in and through all the expressions of creation. In this story, the unifying spiritual field of love, life, and the living Earth that births and nurtures us are sacred. It is an article of faith that we achieve happiness and spiritual fulfillment through our service to the health and vibrancy of the community of life.

The Distant Patriarch and Grand Machine stories have a highly visible public presence and powerful institutional sponsorship. The Integral Spirit story, in its many variations, generally lacks institutional sponsorship and public presence.

Photo by David Roessli / Flickr.

I explore all three in greater depth in an essay, "Religion, Science, and Spirit: A Sacred Story for Our Time," and suggest the need for public conversations about their quite different implications for how we live. A foundational purpose of these conversations is to raise what Rev. Stephen Phelps, senior minister of New York’s historic Riverside Church, calls our "Story Awareness."

The essay has generated significant interest and discussion. Some readers suggest, correctly in my view, that many adherents to the Abrahamic religions identify more with a universal spirit than with the Distant Patriarch story and many scientists, perhaps even a majority, privately reject the narrow Grand Machine story. Most agree on the need for a conversation that transcends traditional cultural boundaries.

It seems that virtually everyone with whom I’ve discussed the essay holds in his or her heart some version of the story of a universal, unifying spirit. Only a few, however, probe the deeper questions at the core of the Integral Spirit story, specifically:

• "What is the purpose of the illusion of separation?"
• "How does the illusion relate to the expression of agency throughout creation?"
• "In what ways might individuality and diversity be essential to creation’s extraordinary capacity for self-organization toward ever greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility?"

Please go here to continue this article: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/the-story-problem-behind-our-messed-up-economy

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"A Sacred Earth legal system will recognize that nature is the foundation of our human existence and that we survive and prosper only as members of a vibrant, living Earth Community. Therefore, life is sacred. Our Earth mother is sacred. The rights of sacred Earth Community— the rights of nature—are therefore the most sacred of rights." - David Korten