‘Your system is very good for the people of Utopia; it is worthless for the children of Adam.’
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
‘It is easy to forget how mysterious and mighty stories are. They do their work in silence, invisibly. They work with all the internal materials of the mind and the self. Beware the stories you read and tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.’
- Ben Okri
‘Possibility is not a luxury, it is as crucial as bread.’
- Judith Butler
‘… we dream in narrative, day-dream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate and love by narrative.’
- Barbara Hardy
The car had gone. Partly because it needed repairs I could not afford, but also because of my growing dislike for cars generally, and the blight they cause to our towns and cities. I can now look down smugly at drivers, especially those with 4x4’s and SUV’s!
So, I am waiting on a bus one afternoon with a couple of other folk at the stop. It is just a short hop between towns to visit friends, but then a longer journey to follow later that same day. The bus pulls up at the stop a little late. The door opens but the driver puts up his hand to hold us back from boarding. There is a drunk man on the bus harassing the driver. The driver phones the police. He gets out of the bus and the drunk man follows him. He is filming the driver on his mobile phone and challenging him to a fight. The driver, a much larger man, is still on the phone to the police. The police suggest to the driver that he boards us new passengers waiting at the stop, and try to leave the drunk man out on the pavement. The driver manages to communicate this to us in a low voice whilst the drunk man continues his rant. We pick our moment and clamber abroad. The door closes and the bus pulls away with the drunk man left behind, as planned. The wail of a police siren can be heard as we leave the town. When the bus reaches my destination, I congratulate the driver for keeping his cool in such a difficult situation. He is dismissive, but I think he’s pleased by the recognition.
Another leg of the journey and there are two drunk men at the bus stop. They are standing almost nose to nose, muttering a slurred conversation. They begin wheeling around, as if engaged in some strange waltz. It’s not clear, but it looks as if one of them may be holding a knife to the other’s ribs. There are not many people around and certainly no-one who looks capable of pulling apart two drunk men, if things get out of hand. It sounds like the two men may be cousins. A sorry tale of family struggle unfolds as they continue to wheel around in their weird dance. A bus arrives and passengers bundle abroad with a collective sigh of relief. The drunks aren’t getting on the bus.
I think about getting another car.
Now it’s the last leg of my journey, and I’m at Dundee bus station. It’s not especially late, but it’s very quiet. There are only two others there, apart from myself. One is a young woman. She is wearing a short padded jacket and grey leggings. It looks like she is wrapped in a little duvet and her legs are dangling out from underneath. There is also a young man in an enormous padded jacket. He is looking at the electronic displays at each bus stance that provide travel information. He reads them out loud, then circles away to another stance. Then he circles back again and repeats the process. He sees the young woman and walks around in a small circle before heading away to read another display of travel information.
A bus arrives and we all get on. The young woman sits just a couple of seats back from me. The young man is just across the aisle from my own seat. There are only a few others on board and they are elderly and asleep. The young man asks the young woman her name. She responds. There follows an awkward exchange of information on age, place of birth, destination, favourite colour, etc., etc. The young man gets up to sit next to the young woman. He explains that he is on the Autism spectrum and so his behaviour can be erratic. The young woman explains that her brother is in similar circumstances and she is his carer. She has left him with her father for the day, so that she can have some time to herself. Stories of care from relatives and friends now flow both ways. I risk a glance back at the two of them. Their padded jackets are pressed close together like bandages around weary souls. When I reach home I weigh up these incidents. Two drunken fights versus two stories of care and compassion. Which is the true story of where we are as a society? Or are these all stories of people just trying to make sense of a crazy world?
Getting the Facts
To give people information to allow them to make rational decisions might seem like a simple task. But, unfortunately, things are not so easy. We are very discriminating in the way we take in facts. We will tend to favour information that backs up our existing view of the world. (‘Confirmation bias’.) Meanwhile other information, which might not sit so happily with our world view, will just be blocked out completely. When we want to believe something, we ask; ‘Can I believe it?’ Any supporting evidence is likely then to justify the belief. When we don’t want to believe something, then we ask; ‘Do I have to believe it?’ Any contrary piece of evidence will then be enough to justify rejecting the belief. (From psychologist Tom Gilovich, as discussed by Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind.) In making our decisions, and arguing our corner, it is the heart and stomach that decide, rather than the brain. As philosopher David Hume said: ‘And as reasoning is not the source, whence neither disputant derives his tenets; it is vain to expect that any logic, that speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles.’ (David Hume — An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.)
To make matters worse, each of us holds usually a set of contradictory opinions and even different sets of contradictory opinions for different occasions. We prize the notion of ‘authenticity’, which suggests that there is a core to our being that constitutes a genuine self, but knowing this authentic self is a difficult matter, even if we could be sure that the authentic self exists. Getting the facts straight, and trying to equip people to discern facts, is challenging, to say the least.
Added to all this we generally just run on auto-pilot, and we ‘re-act’ rather than ‘act’ when circumstances demand. All this has just happened to us — it wasn’t a conscious choice to be like this. The culture that surrounds us as we grow up is a factor in how we arrived in this state of affairs. We absorb many of the thoughts and opinions that surround us, and then count them as our own. To go against cultural norms is a difficult and potentially dangerous thing. But living within cultural norms can be stifling and suffocating.
So I am urging a close scrutiny of culture — news, advertising, the pronouncements of politicians and religious leaders. Are they just repeating narratives that have lost their power and relevance? Or are they coming from a place of genuine compassion? Do they want people to be free to make their own life decisions and govern their own lives? Are they seeking to move us toward a new narrative? If yes, what are the motives for doing this? The number one question of this chapter is — can we change the story?
From Facts to Story
Despite the difficulties considered above, we still need to deliver some facts. The commons, governance, and even visions of utopia, have to be based on reality. Facts about the world — stating the problems we face with climate change, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity — need to be set in place. Beyond facts though, there are stories. Truth is not necessarily something set in stone. Truth is a journey. So stories are a way of embodying truth as it emerges and changes over time.
If anything, the problem we face is not a lack of story — it’s that we’re addicted to story. What I’ve tried to bring out in this book is that we are already surrounded by competing stories, competing utopias, of how life might be lived. We are swayed back and forth by competing stories and we are also swayed by how stories are presented to us and who presents them. Whose story will be heard?
Who gets heard in our society is a bit of a complex issue. It is mostly the confident, assertive and generally extrovert person who will be heard. Also the person heard, and who will be promoted or achieve other success in life, will likely be taller, white, male and ‘well presented’. Looks, charm and charisma form a natural pecking order before any concerns of ability or common sense. And then of course there is celebrity. Someone who has celebrity status seems to acquire the right to speak on almost any subject and to get an audience. The daydreaming introvert though, may have one critical advantage. The daydreamer — if they ever get a chance to speak — will weave a story. The person may be forgotten but the story will be remembered.
How then do we go about setting a new story in place? Should we change the external circumstances so as to bring about a change in the lives of people? This is what many current governments try to achieve. They may seek to improve people’s circumstances, jobs, security, housing, transport, etc. to get happy citizens. Happy citizens make better choices and act more responsibly. This is the current story of governance we are often offered, although we may question, of course, if this is not just a facade for what is really going on. Is it enough? Theodore Zeldin reminds us: ‘A myth appears solid only until it is found to be absurd, soluble in water and laughter. Once it is dissolved, the facts it used to hold together are released; what once passed for truth falls apart, and it can be reconstituted afresh.’ (Theodore Zeldin — Happiness.)
A new story is not something just invented. It is not a fantasy. It is a way to put together the facts so that they form a narrative that explains the world and gives us some guidance about how to live. Alisdair MacIntyre (After Virtue) tells us: ‘I can only answer the question “What am I to do?” if I can answer the question “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?”’ How we respond to stories is also a strange process, as we saw with how we respond to facts, above. It is usually for personal reasons that people will choose to adopt a new story. Any new story then, needs to make a personal appeal.
We also, each of us, weave a story of our own lives. Which story will allow us to maintain a sense of our own worth, offer us genuine pleasure, deal fairly with everyone and not trash the planet? And how can we link that to our own personal stories? That’s the quest in a nutshell.
From all of the above, I think that an appeal to our sense of our authentic selves and our hearts’ desires, needs to be part of any new story. At some point in our lives — perhaps at many points — we realise that who we are in our authentic selves is at odds with the culture that surrounds us. (Notwithstanding what was said above, I think we have to go with the notion that we believe in and want to benefit our authentic selves.) Then we can ask, how do we find the courage to live authentically rather than follow the herd? Our authentic selves look for a story of the world in which we are the heroine or hero. The key to a new story is to adopt a new way of living such that we are still the heroine and hero and not the sad victim. Stories need to inspire — to give us hope. Most important for a new story, I think, is for us to re-align where our pleasure is found. The heroine or hero is on a quest for pleasure — pleasure that makes life satisfying and worthwhile. This is the narrative that needs to be offered and the story needs to be broad enough for people to realise it in different ways.
So how do we solve this problem — presenting people with facts, and a strong argument that may be contrary to their current opinion? Presenting people with an alternative story that may be miles away from how they currently see the world? Far from changing their minds, it is likely to result in them being even more entrenched in their opinions. Perhaps there are many routes, given the variety of media at our disposal today. But I want to emphasise one key method here, and that is meeting people face-to-face, in small groups. We have seen this can influence people because we all fear being shamed. But it also has a more positive effect. Small groups can share stories, especially people’s own personal stories. This may have nothing to do with the issues that are contentious between them or about any ‘big questions’ of politics or the economy. But sometimes the sharing of personal stories can allow people to let go of their defences. The ‘solution’ to disagreements then, is often not a direct weighing up between contrary opinions. Remember the quote from Chapter 10 — ‘Out beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.’ Good governance is not about contesting the right-ness or wrong-ness — it’s about providing that field. Theodore Zeldin, quoted above, describes meeting a Muslim imam. The imam blasts Zeldin with his views on the decadence of Western culture. Zeldin remains silent. After a long rant, the imam hugs Zeldin warmly. Zeldin asks the imam why he has acted this way. The imam simply says, ‘because you listened’.
Every life is a story, and every relationship, friendship and family is a shared story. Listening is the first step in building a story with another person. The story has the potential to transcend the need to be ‘right’. This might seem a few stages removed from just trying to change people’s opinions and get them to vote on a particular policy as we do in contemporary politics. But I suggest hearing people’s stories is a much better way. Personal narratives, and the sharing of personal narratives are ways to build relationship and community. It is only from this that real changes — ongoing changes, relating to our changing world — can come about.
The Voice of Dissent
There is some hope already. Experiments have shown that just one dissenting voice allows others to question current knowledge, and perhaps adopt an alternative view. A new story is possible. We saw the critical importance dissent holds in the governance system known as Sociocracy. The message here is that it’s good to question and it’s okay to make mistakes. On this basis, I am happy for people to disagree with everything that follows! But, in the spirit of Sociocracy, I ask that any dissenters have good reasons for proposing their own story or for objecting to mine.
Daydreaming
Now I must celebrate the virtues of daydreaming and staring vacantly into space! Perhaps you were the child told off in school for gazing out of the window when you should have been listening to teacher. One way or another, the world sends the message that daydreamers are lazy, dysfunctional or otherwise horribly damaged. I want to offer the opposite message. The daydreamer may eventually turn to work and achieve much more than those ‘regular’ people who seem more focused. The regular person is probably going to adopt a mindset that becomes an increasingly stifling routine. The daydreamer is either dreaming or working away at some project that engages them (sometimes despite, rather than because of school). I leave it to the reader to decide which pupil will grow up to be the more interesting and entertaining. We need more dreamers in the world, so that new stories can take hold. Otherwise we are stuck with the narrative of those ‘regular’ people that no-one seeks to question, because no-one is around to consider that the world could be a very different place.
Education Without Character
As we mentioned in Chapter 12, a style of education that encourages young people to question is something of a two-edged sword. Has it led to a distrust of experts? Or has it led to a healthy scepticism? Perhaps both. Questioning though, as I’ve suggested above, is a first step to being able to change to a new story. Gandhi’s social sin of Education without Character has a bearing here. Education — whether deliberately, or by default — is instilling stories of what society is about. It could be said that education is currently only preparing young people for the jobs market, with this, in turn, allowing them to earn a living in future, and that this is sufficient. It could be said that education is falling behind even in this role, as a world that is rapidly changing needs new types of jobs for the future. But there is something very dubious about education based only on ‘progress’ and results. It just apes the mindset of society that has already got us into such a mess. Children are born undivided from their wild natures. We force them into classrooms, then offices and factories, and along the way cast doubts on the value of daydreaming and imagining. We are separated from our wild selves, our making, and our shared life with the rest of the planet.
What about a story of an interconnected world? A wild nature that deserves our responsible care? A wild nature within each one of us that means we all have intrinsic value? Community? Beauty, pleasure, silence, slowness and peace? Grace, kindness, conversation, humour? Art, celebration, carnival? Meanwhile Plato reminded us that the most effective education is that a child should play amongst beautiful things. There are teachers out there who instil such values into their students. But often they are the ones who are swimming against the tide. Our current story of Privatopia is looking for obedient drones.
Tom Hodgkinson observes:
‘One thing that depresses me greatly is the argument I hear trotted out with tedious regularity by other parents, usually said about boys. “He’d better toughen up, because it’s a tough world out there. It’s a competitive place…”. Why not say, “It’s a wonderful world out there, so let’s make him wonderful!” The solution to the world being full of arseholes is not to add to the problem by making your own son into an arsehole. Set a good example!’
Tom Hodgkinson — How to be Free.
Name your Pleasures
The suggestion throughout this book is that it is the social relations of pleasure that form the basis of any changes in society. The new story is primarily a story of pleasure. In Chapter 11, on Pleasure, we looked at what this might be about. I suggested there that genuine pleasure is about taking a broader view of life, trying to see what may be for our long-term contentment and fulfilment, rather than just catching some fleeting fun or entertainments where we can. Also, each of us being unique, it is a good thing to accept our strangeness and difference — to celebrate our radical otherness. So, a new story should not be a blueprint for how everyone should live. It could instead be about each of us finding our own pleasures, which will lead to our eudaimonia — our flourishing. The task of the rest of society is to facilitate this process. Getting to know another person, or getting to know ourselves better, unmasks this beautiful parallel world that we all inhabit. All relationships are shared dreams and shared stories. So let’s go where the love is. And the starting point of love is surely to be accepted, just for who we are. We saw a deep connection between compassion and pleasure in earlier chapters. Pleasure that is about connection with others has a quality to it that transcends the material comforts that the consumer capitalist world seems to promote.
Let’s talk then about pleasures. Theodore Zeldin (The Secret Pleasures of Life, An Intimate History of Humanity, Conversation, Happiness) has focused very much on personal encounter as the key to human flourishing and happiness. Zeldin looks at a profusion of historic examples of how humans have organised both public and private life. His conclusion seems to be that a deeper exploration of private life, through intelligent conversation with others, is the key to a better public life. He seems to feel that we have a lot still to explore — largely because, for various reasons, we have found it difficult to express our feelings or it has been dangerous to do so because of the surrounding culture. Zeldin does not seem to have any particular notion about where a deeper conversation may lead us. He just emphasises the need for adventure and imagination. We might conclude that we are often stuck in our lifestyles because we find it difficult to speak to others about what might really make us happy. So good conversation may be a way to set us free and give us the confidence to try new things.
A new story is asking us: What are our real sources of pleasure? There are different pleasures. Naming our pleasures is a way of allowing others to name theirs. I hope that the reader at this point will drift off into a reverie about what would make life wonderful. I’d suggest we may be surprised at just how many people share a similar desire to break free and follow their dreams. It is only convention — the established stories about how the world should be — that keep us from our hearts’ desires. John Stuart Mill (On Liberty) said: Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded, and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time.’
Name your Fears
In Chapter 5, on small-scale community, we looked at M. Scott Peck’s idea of a ‘broken’ community and understood this to refer to an openness and vulnerability to others. That vulnerability is in large part about naming our fears. Fear is not necessarily bad — it can be a message to us that things need to change. Instead of trying to communicate our strength and self-sufficiency, naming our fears may serve us better in realising a new story. The fear within our culture of Privatopia might be that we are missing out. Why be the person who does without a car, a mobile phone, foreign holidays, a bigger house, a higher salary? Won’t this just mean that other people — openly, or behind our backs — will consider us as weird, or sad losers, or both? (If someone says, ‘I really admire your principles’ then that’s a definite sign they think you’re weird.) But really, deep down, others may share our concerns for the future. If we speak simply and sensibly about our fears, then it will allow others to be more open about theirs.
The Current Story
Most of us in Western culture are caught in the pervading story of capitalism and what I have described as Privatopia. We unconsciously adopt the story of Privatopia and some of its assumed aims of rising consumption, economic growth, improving technology and the dominance of money. Most of us are obliged to work for money and so, as John Holloway has pointed out, participate in the reproduction of consumer capitalism. There is something skewed about us as Privatopians. (I am having to include myself here — we are all in this, even whilst some of us are trying to escape.) The defensiveness of our lifestyle is increasingly vicious. The contempt for authority. The sense that one’s own opinions count far more than any expert, but also a deep resentment if those opinions are ever questioned. The sense of entitlement. The outrage that is felt when anything might impinge on our lifestyle or happiness. The narcissism, and inflated sense of self-worth (since, after all, there is no-one else that matters in Privatopia) is starting to be the mindset of a whole culture.
It’s tempting to say, so what? That, after all, would be Privatopia’s response to itself. But there are victims of our Privatopian lifestyle — the nations suffering poverty because of our excess; suffering the effects of climate change because of our neglect. The future generations who will be paying heavily for the mess we have left them. The poor and struggling within the richer nations. Privatopia may seem like just the norm for those of us in these rich nations, but it is jam for the few and crumbs for the many. Privatopia’s belief in growth and improvement means that it is poised to move inexorably towards a Cornucopia, but the concern raised by this book is that both the current Privatopia and the future Cornucopia are deeply problematic.
We also adopt some of the mindset that sits alongside these aims — the power-over, power-under dynamic. Erich Fromm, in The Fear of Freedom, describes some of the characteristics of this mindset that might best be described here as authoritarianism. There is an admiration for power, but also a deep hatred and envy of the powerful. At the same time there is a desire to defer responsibility to the powerful — to allow them to control us so that we can avoid thinking and deciding for ourselves. So we are ambivalent in terms of our power-under relations. Likewise we can have a contempt for those perceived as weak and will seek to dominate them, despite our hatred of authority and our wish to be controlled ourselves. So we are ambivalent in our power-over relations as well. Fromm explains how relationships (such as employer/employee and between spouses and partners) can vacillate between these different responses. Matthew Fox (Original Blessing) adds an obsession with death to the list of strange characteristics that Western culture has adopted. We can see from this how the power-under/power-over dynamic blends so well with consumer capitalism. There is a powerful elite of the super-wealthy, whom we admire and hate in equal measure. Money itself has a position of absolute power. Many people — whilst complaining about the need to work for a living — nonetheless welcome the routine of regular work. It means we do not have to think about how we would really wish to live because, we tell ourselves, we have to earn a living. There seems to be no choice — and part of us welcomes the lack of options. As such, we tend to protect our self-interest and no other strategy makes sense in such a world. This, I suggest, is our current story.
Much of this is entirely subconscious. The average person would probably not perceive themselves as displaying the characteristics I’ve described above. So embedded are the thought patterns, and the ‘appropriate’ emotions that accompany them, that there is seldom an opportunity to spot an unusual thought or response, let alone really to spend time to consider where it has come from. The many distractions of the modern world keep us locked into our cognitive dissonance — holding these conflicting values of capitalism and power relations on the one hand, and a belief in autonomy, freedom and community on the other. Fromm offers some hope by way of really knowing other people. In good relationships — whether with friends or family — deeper conversation can bring to the surface the many contradictions under which we all labour, as we have considered above with Theodore Zeldin. Communities are a means by which deeper conversations can be facilitated. The fact that we can at least see there is cognitive dissonance — conflicting stories in our lives — is maybe even a positive sign.
From what we have explored above, we might observe that changing the story is not going to be an option, unless there is some way out of the damaging power relations that afflict most of us one way or another. The power relations, in turn, cannot be healed (turned around to power-with, as Starhawk might say) unless we wake up to the inherent contradictions in our lives. In this book, sitting alongside changes to governance, we have identified the need for personal change, and noted this is often achieved through good community. Henry George (referring to socialism) summed this up well: ‘The ideal of socialism is grand and noble; and it is, I am convinced, possible of realization; but such a state of society cannot be manufactured — it must grow. Society is an organism, not a machine. It can live only by the individual life of its parts, and in the free and natural development of all the parts will be secured the harmony of the whole.’ Without this belief that people individually can improve and that humanity collectively can improve, we will struggle to see any real change, no matter what systems we may try to put in place. In a similar vein, enforcing moral behaviour (through system change) does not make people better in themselves (as John Locke argued, in relation to enforcing religious belief, and Ronald Dworkin argued, more generally, for all kinds of enforcement towards a ‘better’ life.) Rather, it should be the free choice of citizens to take up better values and better behaviour.
A Story of Isolation or a Story of Trust?
Charles Eisenstein (The Beautiful World that our Hearts Know is Possible) suggests that we carry with us a story of living a separate, atomised life in an indifferent world — what I have identified as Privatopia in this book. This story is overtly or covertly affirmed by so many aspects of Western culture — it becomes the way in which we define the self and our relationships. So most of us have been raised with an acceptance of separation. The moneyed, commodified economy has had the effect of increasing atomisation of our lives. We have become fiercely defensive of our property and our individuality without realising that this is a symptom of the isolation felt in the absence of true community. Maybe the reader feels conformable with the world the way it is with respect to the autonomy and individuality that seems to be on offer to us (and indeed the writer fe