ReWriting the Human Story - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Power of Story We suffer not from the events in our lives but from our stories about them. Epictetus The most powerful stories are stories about things that don’t exist. Because our fictive language gave birth to legal fictions, social constructs and imagined realities. So much so that today imagined things are more powerful than real things. Trees, rivers, fish, animals and even the climate depend on our imaginary constructs for their future survival. There is no money, law, justice, inalienable human rights, religion, love, friendship, capitalism, corporations, nations or humanity outside of our common imagination. Never-the-less it is such fictitious entities that will decide the fate of the world, ourselves included. The more fictitious a story is, the more powerful that story is, provided it has a large enough number of people embracing it. Because stories that spread don’t just win – they change the world. This is true of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as much as it is true of Communism, Capitalism, Humanism, Nationalism, Feminism, Trumpism, Black Lives Matter, Brexit, MeToo or human rights. For example, the most popular story on our planet is money. Because almost everyone accepts and therefore believes in money. But money, regardless of its form – be it gold, bitcoin or paper money like the dollar, is basically trust. Trust in a story, which in the case of bitcoin, doesn’t even have a physical representation but is entirely digital – i.e. fictitious. In human civilization, not only everything but also everyone is a story. And that is true at every level we can think of – individually, collectively or globally, because each of those levels requires a story. The same person can embrace many different stories that give her meaning, which also set the spectrum of what is and what is not possible for her. For example, someone can be a mother, daughter, vegetarian, lesbian, police officer, Muslim, black and American – all at once. And each of those stories provides such powerful