We’re honoured to include this article by Alina Siegfried in KD2023. Alina is the author of: A Future Untold - The power of story to transform the world and ourselves.
Our world is built upon stories. Stories that tell us how we should live. How we should behave. Who should have power, and who does not. These collectively held narratives underpin our understanding of “how the world works”. And in many cases, they have taken us down a dangerous path where social inequality is increasing, our climate is rapidly changing, and we have destabilised the natural operating system of the entire planet.
But these stories are not set in stone. They are not laws of nature. Because it was we – humans – who created these stories, we have the power to change them. We need new stories, stories of the kind that have the power to inspire at scale – we used to call these myths.
The word myth has nowadays become synonymous with “lies”, “untruth”, or “a thing we believed before we knew better”. Yet long ago, myths were revered as holding a seed of innate human truth, wrapped up in a story to make it easier to communicate. To make the changes we need, at pace and scale, I believe we need to reclaim the power of myth, as set out in my book A Future Untold: The power of story to change the world and ourselves.
Here, I share ten new myths for humanity. They are new only because they are alternative trains of thought to the way that many of us have become accustomed to thinking. In truth though, these mythic narratives are not new – they are ancient – and for some, they never left. Many of these concepts have been nurtured across countless generations, within the home fires of indigenous cultures, the world over. Taking inspiration from the knowledge systems of these cultures, while taking care to regenerate them and their people after centuries of historical forceful extraction and appropriation, will be key to building a more beautiful world.
Myth #1: From Me to We
From advertising designed to appeal to our desire to stand out, to the global health and wellness industry, our western societies are underpinned by a narrative of individualism. In an unequal world, we pride ourselves on our own achievements, and blame others who do not achieve such success for their own misfortune. But we are all in this together, sailing through space on this little blue marble. We humans are a social species; we need each other. and we are each interconnected. When the health of the collective suffers, we all suffer.
Myth #2: From Tree to Me
From there it stands that if we are all interconnected with each other, we are also interconnected with nature. Think of the phrase “natural resources”. Those two words tell a story about our perceived relationship with the natural world, that elements of it are there. But we cannot separate nature from ourselves. We are nature; what we do to it, we do to ourselves.
Myth #3: From Sustainability to Regeneration
Most people are familiar with the concept of sustainability. But given the interconnected ecological crises our planetary system is facing, sustainability is no longer enough. It is no good to sustain a broken system. We have a duty to repair the harm that we have caused through actively regenerating natural systems, social systems, and cultural systems.
Myth #4: From Stuff to Enough
We have been sold a narrative that the mark of a successful and happy life is to accumulate a lot of material wealth and buy a lot of stuff. We’re told this is good for our economy – but the question begs itself, what is the purpose of our economy? Is it infinite growth and financial accumulation, or is it to meet our needs in a way that nurtures healthy, thriving societies? We need a new story of what constitutes a happy life – human connection, love, and being content with having enough.
Also – we’re not always the best at recognising the links between our consumption behaviours and climate change. Xx isn’t just about riding e-bikes and eating less meat. It’s about questioning the embedded carbon footprint in every purchase decision you make.
Myth #5: From Scarcity to Abundance
With an exponentially growing population to feed, a linear economy, and our seemingly insatiable desire to buy more things, it’s easy to think that many resources are scarce. But much of this scarcity is manufactured, built on a bunch of outdated economic narratives. One third of food produced globally goes to waste. Fluctuating commodity prices mean that it’s sometimes cheaper for a farmer to let crops rot in the field than pay the labour and transport to harvest and ship them. 80% of the environmental impact of our products, goods and services is baked in at the design phase of our take-make-waste linear economy, which throws away perfectly good things. By reimagining our businesses and nurturing local economies, we lean into a new narrative of localised, circular economies.
Myth #6: From Competition to Collaboration
The narrative of competition being the best driver of innovation underpins our global free-market version of capitalism. This narrative may hold some truth, but when it’s held up as the singular truth by which to run our economies, we run into problems. We cannot solve our problems by working in silos. Building on the circular economy, a lot can be achieved in terms of producing less stuff and fostering abundance, by cooperating together in networked ways. We have the technology to share resources and ideas, to keep useful materials in use, and collaborate with those who have complementary skills.
Myth #7: From Human Doings to Human Beings
It might seem counterintuitive at this point to say that most of us need to slow down. There’s so much to be done, our planetary and societal challenges require widespread action, right now. But it’s also true that most of us in western society are busier than ever, more distracted than ever (thank you, Internet in my pocket), and expected to work longer hours. The narrative that we need to work harder and longer hours is one that needs to be disrupted with new myth. There are times for doing, and times for not doing. Through periods of rest, quiet contemplation, and connection with loved ones and with nature, we may find unique and creative ways to solve our problems.
Myth #8: From West to the Rest
Many of these concepts have always been present in the background, in indigenous cultures. Indigenous cultures don’t need to be reminded that we all exist within a system, and that everything is interconnected. Western science, economic narratives, and the deification of rational thought have allowed us many advancements as a modern species. Yet it has also served to split the world up into siloes. We have valued cognitive function above other forms of knowing. If we listen quietly, we find that there is room in the future for the human functions of sensing, feeling, and intuiting, to hold up a mirror and show us what we already know deep inside.
Myth #9: From Mankind to Humankind
The elephant in the room in each of these new myths so far. We cannot achieve cut through on our most persistent problems, if more than half of
the world is excluded from the conversation. demonstrated by the gender wage gap, the low wages paid to jobs traditionally done by women such as caregiving and teaching, the high rates of domestic violence against women, and the make-up of governance boards. We need to value the gifts of all genders equally. If the hard work of changing our predominant systems and the narratives that prop them up falls upon the shoulders of women and gender minorities, while men continue business-as-usual, we don’t stand a chance as a species.
Myth #10: From Now to Forevermore
Our current narrative tells us that life is short, enjoy it while you can. But when we step back and look at the wider picture, human beings have existed for just a minuscule blip in the history of the earth. If the entire history of the Earth was condensed into 24 hours, Homo Sapiens have been around for less than a second. Perhaps if we focused less on quarterly planning, three year election cycles, and thinking only of our own lives.
I encourage you to download the Deep Time Walk app (on Apple Store & Google Play), plug in some headphones, and take a 4.6km narrated walk through Earth’s history. I guarantee it will make you pause for thought, and ponder just what it is that we have to lose if we don’t radically shift the stories that underpin the way we live.
