#CHANGETHESTORY

7-Generation GTB is empowering people (generations) in place (bioregion) to #ChangeTheStory for resilience and regeneration. But #ChangeTheStory to what? We are living into the story of Bioregional Earth, which is at the level of a worldview or Overstory.

A civilization is very much about the bigger story we all share over time – the meanings, values, and structures that guide us collectively. As our stories crumble, we crumble – individually and collectively. People are feeling fear and uncertainty about what the future holds for themselves and even our human civilization. Deep narratives from our past are breaking down and we're trying to recraft them.

Story is not a trivial thing. From an article on Relational Systems Thinking: "Most of us trained in the Western traditions of the academic world have been taught to rely on our chronically overdeveloped reason… [But Indigenous understanding] lives in stories… These stories are of course archetypal, they are dynamic, there is always an unfolding going on, whereas Western culture which has largely displaced other cultures over the past several hundred years, particularly the last 75, privileges abstractions; succinct, clear, de-contextualized characterizations. 'Tell me what you know; don't tell me a story.' We go from lived experience, something you can touch and feel and tell stories about, to an abstracted description and we consider that a higher form of knowledge. We consider that more refined, which is kind of bizarre in a way. They both have a function… The danger of the Western approach is that all you get is abstraction, you end up with almost no lived experience. Somebody is considered an expert because they can talk a lot about something, or they've written books about it. In the social science or the domain of human living, the consequence of this disconnected abstracting is that we struggle and struggle with how to 'implement' ideas, how to do it, because we start off thinking that's a lesser kind of knowledge. This creates a false dichotomy between knowledge of the head and knowledge of the hand."

Story is the most effective way human beings have to navigate through the world, find psychological cover, nurture healing, imagine possibilities, pass values on to generations that follow us. Stories bring mental order to chaos, some meaning to the seemingly meaningless. Says author Virginia Burges, "A story is a fundamental system on which to create an experiential palette, an understanding of life. Stories are the nearest thing we have to a map of the soul's journey."

Stories also provide us with a collective decision-making matrix.

But just as a map is not the territory, a story is not the thing that the story is about. In a relatively stable system, there will be a number of standard stories we can use to guide collective decisions with some reasonable expectation that outcomes will be positive. The biggest problem with stories is when we substitute telling them for meaningful action to deal with the real issues the stories are about, especially in a dysfunctional system. When the overarching system is breaking down, one by one the stories that were reasonable become more and more clearly absurd – and we're increasingly left to face a void of meaning, alone.

As we work to #ChangeTheStory, the intent is what master storytellers call a new Grand Narrative, an Overstory, meaningfully and vitally connecting us in the context of all other living things on this planet at this moment in time that holds past, present, and future (long now). This is as vital as water – and just as difficult to grasp.

This new/old story, a story of Bioregional Earth, is deeply informed by an Indigenous worldview. For Indigenous peoples, everything rests on right relationships within Natural Law. Together with various Indigenous collaborators locally and internationally, we are weaving together Western and Indigenous ways of knowing to find a "third way" forward in a time of uncertainty. How can we heal our relationships with each other and the Earth?

To be clear, this isn't a single, written story with a beginning, middle and end. It's a living, multifaceted story that really has no beginning or end, only an ever-evolving middle. It may be expressed and take shape in many ways.

This is also a story that should slide in time. As we re-evaluate stories of history (e.g. North America was "discovered"), three narrative opportunities are in play: the story of what happened (rethinking historical stories, who told them and from what perspective), the story of what now (if we change our understanding of history, how does that change what we see/value today), and the story of what next (can we find the imagination and courage to see and pursue new possibilities). We have a chance to reconceptualize the past, present, and future.

If the ultimate goal is at the scale of an Overstory, then the storytelling has to be both intensely human in the current moment and timelessly mythic, co-created across generations. In the words of Nobel-winning poet Octavio Paz, "The myth is not situated on a definitive date, but on a 'once upon a time,' a knot in which space and time are intertwined. The myth is a past that is also a future."

A 7-Generation Bioregional Earth story is, by its very nature, a complex story. Journalist Amanda Ripley wrote an insightful piece on complicating the narratives. How do we respond effectively to the different stories different people hold, and move forward collectively in some way? We must "go beyond the clichés and name-calling and excavate richer, deeper truths, at a time of profound division… Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason… The lesson for anyone working amidst intractable conflict: complicate the narrative. The natural human tendency is to reduce that tension by seeking coherence through simplification. Complicating the narrative means finding and including the details that don't fit the narrative – on purpose. First, complexity leads to a fuller, more accurate story. Secondly, it boosts the odds that your work will matter – particularly if it is about a polarizing issue. When people encounter complexity, they become more curious and less closed off to new information. They listen."

Human beings, through relationships with each other, create stories of meaning. Author and ecophilosopher Dr. Roy Scranton writes, "The human ability to make meaning is so versatile, so powerful, that it can make almost any existence tolerable, so long as that life is woven into a bigger story that makes it meaningful. It's at just this moment of crisis that our human drive to make meaning reappears as our only salvation… if we're willing to reflect consciously on the ways we make life meaningful – on how we decide what is good, what our goals are, what's worth living or dying for, and what we do every day, day to day, and how we do it."