The Need for a New Story

What is a story?

When I say we need a New Story, what does that mean? What is a story anyway?

Well a story is something we believe individually, or as a culture, that gives structure and meaning to our lives. It tells us who we are, where we come from, and why we are here.

These stories that program our lives are mostly unconscious. We very likely aren’t aware they so dominate our lives.

We might believe that we make free choices and come up with our own well-thought out ideas, but nothing could be further from the truth. In reality we are just responding to our unconscious programming.

So where do these stories come from?

In our modern world, these stories come from our parents, other family members, friends, school, religion, the media, culture and so on. When we are little we uncritically absorb all this information. It is so voluminous, we can’t possibly hold it all in our conscious mind, so we bury it. There it unconsciously programs most of our thoughts, beliefs and actions.

Ancient cultures are different. They embody their stories in myths that often contain a creation story, telling people where they come from, who they are, and what their purpose is. It informs them how they fit into the whole cosmic scheme of things.

However, the modern worldview of science and reason came along and disproved these stories, causing a paradigm shift in their understanding of nature, the world, and themselves.

Zeus and other gods and goddesses don’t live on Mt. Olympus, the universe wasn’t created 6,000 years ago, and evil wasn’t caused by opening a box or biting into a piece of fruit, just to site a few examples.

This was a major blow to people’s understanding of themselves and their relationship to the cosmos. Science and reason were disproving the existence of God who created the morals, values and rules that govern the universe, informing people how to live their lives.

Nietzsche on the Death of a God

The German existentialist philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, has arguably the best expression of the profound effect the, “Death of God” was to exact on people. In his parable of the Madman, he wrote:

“Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

This was Nietzsche’s statement about the consequences of the Death of God, and by that he meant all absolutes and fixed points by which we can guide our lives. Truth, Beauty and the Good have now lost all meaning. There is no longer any basis on which to judge them.

So that leads us to ask, what does that do to our story, the set of underlying beliefs and guidelines that give our lives direction, meaning and purpose? It destroys them

So what passes for our story now? Well, since the creation stories were central to any ancient worldview, we could say our modern day creation story now has to fill that void.

What is our Modern Story?

But what is this modern day creation story? It’s the Big Bang theory. It’s a story that tells that 13.8 billion years ago there was a massive explosion that birthed this universe out of nothingness and it has been expanding and evolving ever since.

Why did this explosion happen? No one knows. It was just a freak accident as far as we know. How did the universe then subsequently evolve from that initial explosion to ourselves and the world we have now?

Again, we don’t know. The best answer we can give is that it was a fluke occurrence, a random event. In short, it was all one big accident. We shouldn’t even be here. Nothing should be here. As Nietzsche said, “Do you not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?”

So what are the underlying values we modern people are supposed to take from this story to run our lives? How does it tell us where we came from, who we are, and what our purpose is? What direction does it give us?

This story answers these questions by telling us we are meaningless purposeless accidents living in a meaningless and purposeless universe.

What kind of story is that? Certainly the “tough-minded” realists among us will tell us to suck it up. This is just the way it is. It’s reality. If you want to retreat into fantasies about God and some divine moral order, you can do that, but you will just be fleeing in fear from this grisly reality.

What are the Consequences of Life Without God?

So given that scenario, and the fact we are here by accident, how should we live our lives? It would seem the best thing to do since there is no God or moral order, would be to turn oneself (our ego) into one’s own God and worship that by pursuing our own individual self-interest and gratification divorced from other people’s pursuit of the same thing. It would lead to English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ “War of All against All”, where only the strong survive.

We should pursue our own desires and pleasures at the expense of other people and the environment. If other people or nations get in our way, we attack and hopefully defeat them because we both can’t have those precious resources.

Sure we can dress it all up with nice sounding comments about freedom, equality and democracy, but when push comes to shove, those ideals will go the way God did as we are seeing now.

Now, I don’t want to be too harsh on the modern worldview of science and reason. It has given us a lot of benefits.

While the Big Bang theory does lead to the consequences I just outlined, it also has given us valuable knowledge about how the universe and ourselves came to be. In fact, we can’t really have a creation story now that doesn’t include all this scientific knowledge.

The modern worldview has also given us important advances in medicine and technology that have improved the lives of many.

So, while I attack the modern view, I also want to preserve the best of what the modern worldview has given us, while getting rid of its worst aspects.

The Pre and Post Rational Fallacy

Integral philosopher, Ken Wilber, sums it up best with his pre and post rational fallacy. What he means is that the modern view distrusts any perspective that doesn’t worship reason and science as the unquestioning God of modernity.

Both the pre and post rational perspectives do question the power of reason, but they do it differently. The problem with the modern view is it doesn’t understand the distinction.

The pre-rational doesn’t trust science and reason at all. If scientific findings disagree with ingrained beliefs, the believers will reject the science and cling to their beliefs even though they have no rational or empirical basis for them.

But the post-rationalist, while also questioning reason and science, doesn’t reject them so outright. Post-rationalists are willing to accept all the verified scientific knowledge, but they also think reason and science have their limits.

In short, if science and reason can’t see it, touch it, smell it, taste it or hear it, it doesn’t exist.

A post-rationalist would disagree. How, for example, does science explain the touch of a loved one or the beauty of a sunset? They reduce these profound experiences to something they can observe and measure, like chemicals in the brain.

So the upshot of all this is that we need a new creation story to once again give meaning and purpose to our lives.

The New Story

We can see the division, the factions, the wars, the battle for resources, the environmental degradation as a direct result of living from what we are conditioned to believe are meaningless, purposeless lives in pursuit of endless pleasure. We do so to cover up the yawning void in the center of our soul. The result of this endless lust is to turn our beautiful planet with its magnificent life forms into a graveyard cruelty and barbarity.

This new story must include all the scientific evidence of the Big Bang story, but it must also give us a new foundation, other than accident and random chance, to explain the creation and evolution of the universe.

This new story encompasses the whole planet as the Big Bang story does, but this new story doesn’t divide us, it unites us.

This story will tell us we are not random accidents, living separate and alienated lives divorced from everything around us. Instead this new story will once again unite the whole planet, while giving everyone not only meaning and purpose to their lives, but meaning and purpose to this whole cosmic adventure of which we are all a part.

Suffice it to say, there is not enough room here to go into more detail, but if you are interested in learning more about this new story, read my new brief book entitled, The Magical Universe: Answering the Call of Climate Change for Personal and Global Transformation and/or continue to read my posts here on Medium.com where I will approach this new story from many different angles.

For more information on The Magical Universe. Click this link: The Magical Universe