The Importance of Story
change the story, change the world
TCalling all storytellers! We need a new narrative. If any of us SJWs want to effect lasting change, we will need to change the subconscious baseline viwe of reality for our species. We need a move from this top-down, patriarchal, monotheistic idea of how life works and what its all about, to something more sustainable.
Storytelling, for me, is so much like staging a home for sale. Most humans need an example shown to them before their brains can fully grok a new concept. In stories, we get to see what a utopian life might be filled with—and it’s not all rainbows and unicorns.
But, if we want to see all humans have equal rights, ocean currents restored, clean air and land, wild horses lives and habitat respected and protected—then we need a new narrative seeded in our souls.
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This article was originally published on Substack. You can read the original here.
Audio Transcription:
All right, what are we talking about today? Let's talk about stories. Storytelling, why, why it's so important. I was, you know, talking to clients and friends and all of that recently, and I'm a huge proponent of conscious storytelling. And, um, for so many reasons. For one, I started talking about this in the context of Mary Magdalene.
I had done that priestess training program. And I am no Christian. But it is a pervasive narrative in the world. And right now, we have a lot of people who believe that there is only one Supreme Being and that Supreme Being is a man. And I have been sharing with any storyteller who would listen to me, who would sit in my presence long enough to hear it, how important I feel it is that we raise a female deity up to the same level, at least like as Jesus, right?
So here I'm in this Mary Magdalene program and I feel like Mary it a wonderful inroad for that. Now, since taking my pilgrimage, I also believe that there's a lot of value in Mary and her teachings and her story as a human to maintain her humanness. But I think that we so in light of that, perhaps we open up the narrative to God having a wife again or something like that.
Now, I don't really believe in God or gods. I am an animist. And I believe that life force energy runs through all things and that there are aspects of everything that exists in the waking life. That aspects of these things, beings, people and whatnot exist in the dream time. Everything to me has consciousness. But, you know, we can map that on to these different things.
So the reason that I believe in stories and storytelling, why it's so powerful, for one, people believe all kinds of stories. All kinds of stories are running our show from religion to Marvel Universe to all of these fun little stories that we have running in internally about ourselves and others, men and women, all the things that run our show.
Whether or not those stories are factual, often they are not. And yet, those internalized stories are the driving forces for the decisions that we make. And then if we look back at entire lifetimes and collections of lifetimes, we can see the deep, deep, deep impact of what an overarching narrative will produce.
So the importance of storytelling and knowing, knowing what the story is that is being delivered, all of its little aspects. Um, yeah, so it was coming up a lot today. I was, I, uh, I think of storytelling in this kind of a context as the same way that I think of staging a home.
Um, staging a home, particularly I live in San Francisco, so in these, uh, um, wealthier housing markets, people at one point discovered, oh, if I have a really nice looking home with this, you know, magazine style setup with the furniture and the art and all of that, it actually gets a higher bid. I can get a higher price point for my home than I can if it's 100% empty.
Because most people cannot see in their mind's eye what their bed and sofa and dining room table would look like in this house that they're looking at. So if it was just empty, it looked like it was kind of small. You didn't see how things were going to be laid out in there. But as soon as you put furniture in there, particularly, you know, beautiful furniture that has never been actually used. Well, all of a sudden, you're getting $200,000 and $300,000 more on your home.
So it is, I believe, with human consciousness in so many ways. Hence the power of stories in all of their forms, whether it's radio, television and movies, or the written word. Humans, I think, often need concepts laid out to them, laid out for us, in simplistic, easily digestible forms, right? So then we can either make metaphor out of it or see something quite literally.
So Gene Roddenberry tried to take this on by showing us potentially what we could start achieving in a post-utopian society. Once humans reached a point of deciding that they didn't want to fight each other anymore, what could we do? And then the story writers discovered there were challenges with that because, well, if there's no conflict, how do you drive a plot? They found a way and they found a way that was actually very, very successful.
Part of the reason why I think it was so easy for these dystopian tech bros to live out this dark, sadistic fantasy is because it's been laid out for them masterfully, beautifully. You know, I was mentioning Soylent Green today and George Orwell with 1984. Of course, those are the obvious examples, but there's so many more.
Ursula Le Guin and even Handmaid's Tale, right? Those were things that these authors could see coming down the pike, but also they so masterfully illustrated for us the what, the why, and the how that those with less abundant access to their own imagination were able to grab hold of that image and bring it into reality.
Now, I think, is the time. Now is the time to create a new narrative, a new vision of reality. Maybe take it back to a very old vision of reality, pre-church, pre-Christianity. Of course, there is no going back. So what can we do? What can we do?
If you've been here for any length of time, you know I am a huge proponent of animism. I actually think that humanity needs to embrace an animistic perspective, whether or not you believe in God or a God or many gods, to have an understanding that the earth has consciousness, that the rocks have consciousness, that the plants have consciousness, that the kitty has consciousness. Excuse me, that the birds have consciousness, that the water has consciousness, the clouds have consciousness, the wind has consciousness, and that we're all co-creating this reality together. We're all living out our waking dream together, and it all has value.
If we don't, in my opinion, if we as a collective, as humanity, don't embrace this notion we will perish. I know, it sounds so catastrophic. I'm such a catastrophist. I suppose, I suppose. But, I mean, there's no sense pussyfooting around some of these ideas and why it is so important.
It's funny to me that things like storytelling are frowned upon until one can pitch the right story to the right person to be produced by the right people. And then it's revered. But Hollywood, Hollywood for the Druids was for making wands, making wands to control things and beings, outcomes, to create an illusion of reality.
So if life is a dream and we are participating in a co-authored story, and we don't really like this story that's playing out very much. Let's get together and co-author a new story. I would like that very, very much. One where we consult with the birds and we seek wisdom from the clouds. We talk to our grandfathers, the trees. We hold everything that exists with reverence.
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