The Fertile Unknown

The New Storytellers

An issue of In Context magazine was exploring the idea that these times require a "New Story" in which David Spangler, who wrote the book Emergence, The Rebirth Of The Sacred contributed an article entitled, "The New Storytellers: How we live the story is as important as its content.” The old story no longer serves us. This article explored the idea and that we become the “New Storytellers” in order to tell (and live) this new, emerging story.

It is asking that we not only craft a new story for ourselves, but that we use interactive, improvisational methods do so. The new story is cocreative and participative. It is asking us to come from new ways of being, thinking and imagining. It requires us to be innovative, open, pattern breaking and new paradigm making. It requires us to work, communicate and interact differently. And it requires us to become conscious cocreators with what is emerging. I have included just a short excerpt and highly recommend the full article, found at http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC12/Spangler.htm

I would like to reflect on the question, "If a New Story is emerging, is there also a new Storyteller?” To understand my question, consider the difference between a lecture and a story. A lecture conveys information; it is a one-way flow of ideas. A good story, in contrast, not only conveys information, it also inspires involvement…The difference is more than metaphorical…the New Story itself is about participation; it is about living in a co-creative universe in which we are involved...It is about our power to contribute...

The lecture/story dichotomy is not the only way of examining this metaphor of the New Story. Another is to look at the kind of stories that can exist. A story can excite us, involving us subjectively and imaginatively, and still leave us in the position of being a relatively passive audience. On the other hand, a story can be structured and told in such a way as to demand our direct involvement in its unfoldment. A good storyteller can do this. So can a new kind of storytelling that is evolving and becoming popular in our society - interactive fiction and role-playing games…

Whereas traditional forms of fiction such as films, dramas, and novels simply carry you along to the author's predetermined conclusion, these newer forms create conditions in which everyone is involved creating the outcome, and the story is shaped by acts of mutual participation…The function of the content, like that of the storyteller, is to invite, inspire, and even require involvement… 

When physicists state that the universe is more like a thought than a machine, that everything and everyone is at some level in touch with and affected by everything and everyone else…then we enter a world in which our individual lives and contributions can affect far more than we realize…We do not just live on the world but we live in it and with it…in interactive creative relationship. We are points of creative emergence for the world's ongoing unfoldment…it is only a matter of time until a Newer Story emerges…it is we who provide the conditions through which the New Story can live and evolve and be a creative force of vision for humanity…

The shift from one paradigm to another, one age to another, is thus not defined only by the emergence of a New Story. If that is the way we see it, we risk gaining not a New Story but a New Lecture. Instead, at this time in our history, we must perceive that this shift is also and more accurately defined as the emergence of New Storytellers, who are none other than ourselves.

 

A New Politics: The Emergent Party

The Emergent Party is a new political party in the UK. I am curious to track their progress because their principles are those of an organization setting the ground work to become a creative and innovative working culture. They are setting themselves up is an open system where new ideas and directions have time and space to emerge. Included in their principles are (I have shortened the descriptions - view the complete version on their web site):

Trusting and Appreciating - We will trust that most people want to be honest, responsible citizens and do good work, and that our role in Government is to help them and in particular to remove the things that prevent or inhibit them from doing their best.

New Thinking (multiple-possibilities thinking) - Move away from the idea that there is only "one way" and therefore only one route to the "truth" or to the "solution" or to "success" (we call this either/or politics). Instead we will promote the concept that there is always multiple potential solutions to our problems.

Dialogue - Make decisions wherever possible after engaging in dialogue (inclusive, non-judgmental, many different truths) with the stakeholders, rather than through debate and argument (either/or, judgmental thinking).

People Policies planned around the "New Psychologies" - Base our people-policies on what we know and can learn from how people behave when they are happy and successful, rather than only from how people behave when they feel threatened, fearful, disenchanted, useless, helpless, etc.

Co-operation - Acknowledge in all we do, co-operation works better than competition when we wish to innovate, to drive out waste, and reduce costs, complexity, and duplication

Education that means drawing out and understanding - Redefine the meaning and purpose of Education and to put the joy back into learning.

Interdependence - The recognition that in order to achieve our goals, others must achieve their goals also.

Role Model - We know that people believe what you do, not what you say. In Government there are many opportunities for us to influence people and business by how we go about things.

What sort of a Party will we be? We will see what suggestions emerge as people offer their ideas about how we can do things differently and better.

The Participation Age

The DaVinci Institute, a futures-focused organization, produces programs they call A Night with a Futurist. Each month a well-known visionary leads the discussion on some aspect of the future world that we are all co-creating.

What caught my eye about the upcoming program, "Eco-responsible Computing in the Participation Age" presented by Sun Microsystems, was their description of the Participation Age. The Participation Age they describe is a framework that honors the interconnected, interdependent, experiential way humans beings are naturally designed to co-create as an integral part of a larger system (organizational, social, economic, ecological):

We are in a transition from the Information Age to the Participation Age. In the Information Age, information itself was at the center of the stage and its creation and control was of paramount importance in technology. In the Participation Age, information does not take center stage - human interaction does. The Participation Age is built on a model of networked human beings who share, interact and solve problems. This participation creates ideas, information, opportunities, entertainment, and value - both social and economic - everywhere on the network.