Op-Ed: Everything we tell ourselves.....

   ....about America and the World is wrong.

    Why we need a new story that gives meaning to the world.

   December 29, 2012 by Charles Eisenstein


   Every culture has a Story of the People to give meaning to the world  Part conscious and part unconscious, it consists of a matrix of agreements, narratives and symbols that tell us why we are herewhat is important and even what is real.

   I think we are entering a new phase in the dissolution of our Story of the People, and therefore, with some lag time, of the edifice of civiliation built on top of it.

   Sometimes I feel intense nostalgia for the cultural mythology of my youth, a world in which there was nothing wrong with soda pop, in which the Superbowl was important, in which the world's greatest democracy was bringing democracy to the world, in which science was going to make life better and better.

   Life made sense. If you worked hard you could get good grades, get into a good college, go to grad school or follow some other professional path, and you would be happy.

   With a few unfortunate exceptions, you would be successful if you obeyed the rules of our society; if you followed the latest medical advice, kept informed by reading the New York Times, and stayed away from Bad Things like drugs.

   Suer there were problems, but the scientists and experts were working hard to fix them.  Soon a new medical advance,  a new law, a new educational technique, would propel the onward improvement of life.

   My childhood perceptions were part of the Story of the People, in which humanity was destined to create a perfect world through science, reason, and technology, to conquer nature, transcend our animal origins and engineer a rational society.

    From my vantage point, the basic premises of this story seemed unquestionable. After all, it seemed to be working in my world.

   Looking back, I realize that this was a bubble world built atop massive human suffering and environmental degradation, but at the time one could live within that bubble without need of much self-deception.

   The story that surrounded us was robust. It easily kept anomalous data points on the margins.

    Since my childhood in the 1970's, that story has eroded at an accelerating rate.  More and more people in the West no longer believe that civilization is fundamentally on the right track.

   Even those who don't yet question it's basic premises in any explicit way seem to have grown weary of it.

   A layer of cynicism, a hipster self-awareness has muted our earnestness.  What was once so real, say a plank in a party platform, today is seen through several levels of "meta" filters to parse it in terms of image and message.

   We are like children who have grown out of a story that once enthrallus, aware now that it is only a story.

   At the same time, a series of new data points has disrupted the story from the outside.  The harnessing of fossil fuels, the miracle of chemicals to transform agriculture, the methods of social engineering and political science to create a more rational and just society-- each has fallen far short of its promis, and brought unanticipated consequences that threaten civilization.

   We just cannot believe anymore that the scientists have everything well in hand.  Nor can we believe that the onward march of reason will bring on social utopia.

   Today we cannot ignore the intensifying degradation of the biosphere, the malaise of the economic system, the decline in health, or the persistence and indeed growth of global poverty and inequality.

    We once thought economists would fix poverty, political scientists would fix social injustice, chemists and biologists would fix social injustice, chemists and biologists would fix environmental problems, the power of reason would prevail and we would adopt sane policies.

   I remember looking at maps of rain forest decline in National Geographic in the early 1980's and feeling both alarm and relief- relief because at tleast the scientists and everyone who reads National Geographic is aware of the problem now, so something surely will be done.

   Nothing was done.

   To tead the full article, go to http://www/alternet.org/visions/everything-we-tell-ourselves-about-america-and-world-wrong?