Stories are powerful technologies
They have consequences.
People are starting to notice this.
Here’s a few to start…
- Stories of infinite economic growth on a finite planet.
- Stories of accumulation and productivity as measure of success.
- Stories of 'nature' as resource to human progress.
- Stories of war and violence as the only way to protect freedoms and keep us safe.
These stories are decaying, exhausted, falling apart, more of us are recognising this.
They may be real, but they’re not true, as Jay would say.
They’re not rooted in life itself, they are rational stories.
Selfish stories one might say.
One of the biggest illusions in these stories, that have dominated the shaping of westernised cultures and systems, is that they all all assume separation.
That there is no consequence to living by these stories.
There isn’t a bigger story ( in my view) right now that is coming apart than the foundational story of separation.
A duality of existence, that we exist outside, separate of everything else.
Because we’re not separate selves - I mean over half of our body is non-human cells and we’re carrying trauma and intelligence in our bodies today from a long line of ancestors who lived before us.
We’re not separate from each other - if we were why are so many experiencing overwhelming grief for the ongoing violence and suffering in Gaza right now ?
We’re not separate from Nature - I mean look at climate and ecological breakdown - we are the weather.
Stories are relational, how we relate to life within us and around us determines the stories we decide to carry, navigate by and shape our realities.
Stories live through us.
If we want to bring new stories into our cultures
- That connect us in new, imaginative and regenerative ways
- That bring care, love, diversity and joy for life to the centre
- That put life at the centre
Then we need to (un)learn to relate to life in new ways.
To bring new stories through us.
From a wider intelligence of life entangled with us on this living Earth.
We need to Remix.
We have just opened applications for Year 2 of The Remix, a 6-month creative adventure of (un)learning & radically reimagining this dominant story of our times: the story of separation.
As Guest teacher Bayo Akomolafe said to the cohort last year
“We need new stories, but new stories are not entirely left to us.
The invitation as we depart on The Remix is to listen and to be in touch with things that are not yet storied.
To open ourselves to strange encounters.
Maybe then the terms and the words and the sentences for new stories will happen to us.”
Maybe you're ready to join us ?