We Are All Story Tellers

It has taken me some time to formulate how I think about things now. This is part one of a series, in which I describe what I call The Framework. Why should you care? Because it may save the world some day. Or Not. But first, a story:

Once upon a time

Once upon a time, when I was twelve, I rebelled against my church-going parents Republican upbringing and declared myself an atheist and a socialist. Then I read Atlas Shrugged and became a radical free market libertarian atheist who believed man was a rational animal and that there existed an observer-independent objective reality. Then for fifteen years I was a practising Buddhist and my whole world view began to change again, ideas swirling in the air like autumn leaves. Then I joined a writers group and learned that writing is a blood sport, not for the faint of heart. Now I find myself somewhere to the left of center, in a place between a democrat (small d) and a socialist (small s), and spiritually somewhere between agnostic and atheist, yet with a generally Buddhist sensibility informed by scientific discipline, and a relaxed ecumenical acceptance of other’s religious beliefs, to the extent that they accept my own beliefs as equally valid and requiring no conversion. This acceptance extends not only to people whose views differ radically from my own, but even to my earlier selves, with understanding and compassion rather than repudiation. I am at peace, and life is a grand adventure, the world though sometimes dark is a beautiful and interesting place, ready to be explored.

The Conundrum

Well now, that was a good story. It had a definite beginning, middle and end, a few pretty metaphors mixed in for color, and all the strings were tied up with a bow so everyone can leave the theatre satisfied as the credits roll. But is it True with a capital T? I don’t know, but it makes a good story, and most of the bits really happened — as if that mattered.

It has not escaped my notice that most people have not arrived at the level of serenity reached by the hero of the story. Indeed, the tone of discourse throughout the world appears to be quite the opposite, and a day does not pass that some war or other atrocity does not occur, rooted in the firm belief held by one or more people that they are the sole owners of an elusive entity called The Truth, and that stern, even fatal, measures must be taken as the world in their view will never be made Right until everybody else in the world is Just Like Them. Like most other drugs, the idea of The Truth can be highly addictive, and is highly seductive.

Once upon a time, I was myself a subscriber to this mindset, and believed that the world will only be made right when we all become scientific socialists, join communes like Walden Two, grow vegetables and marijuana in geodesic domes and practice free love. And then, once upon a time I believed the world would only be made right when we all accepted Reason as our only absolute, capitalism as the only valid economic system, we all wore black turtle-necks with gold dollar signs on chains around our neck, and strove to be John Galts and Dagny Taggarts and agreed with everything Ayn Rand ever wrote. And then, once upon a time, I believed that the Lotus Sutra was the highest teaching of the Buddha, and that the world would only be made right when we all understand the principle of esho funi, and shiki-shin funi, and how all suffering derives from the illusion that absolute happiness can derive some something outside of oneself.

Three radically different perspectives have come and gone, passing through a single person. What is the common thread? The answer, I realised later, only began to emerge in my years with Cathy Colman’s writer’s group.

The Framework

The title of this piece says it all, and is the essence of what I call The Framework. To be clear, permit me to put an actual Frame around the statement to make it signify that this is the core of how I now view and understand the whole world which has such people in it:

We Are All Story Tellers

This should be put on large signs and placed over every church, synagogue and mosque, every classroom, every scientific laboratory, every research institute, every house, every government building, and on the lapel of every human being on and off the planet, so that every time we encounter such a sign, we need to repeat this, to ourselves and everyone within hearing, to remind ourselves that everything that comes out of a human beings mouth in the form of words is a Story, and nothing more.

Because that is who we are, and it is our nature, our species’ primary tool of survival, and our destiny. We make up stories, and we tell them to each other. The good stories we remember, and repeat them to others, adding a bit here and their to make it a better story or to fit the taste of the audience, or to clear up discrepancies in the narrative. Sometimes the stories just entertain, sometimes they give hope, sometimes they help build suspension bridges. Just a few minutes from our house, the red sandstone canyons are covered with native american petroglyphs carved thousands of years ago. Though their exact meaning may be lost, the story remains: Once upon a time, they still say, there was a man, a woman, and — perhaps — a snake.

We are all story tellers. That is my story, and I’m sticking with it.