Introduction

February 28, 2015

This book is about human stories and how they shape and influence our relationships to one another, to other species and to the planet. The power of our narratives to include and exclude, and how we have become the ‘Lorax searching for the last lorelai.’ The myths, fables and metaphors of our childhood stories give us embedded and over time unconscious archetypes of good and evil, and indeed, it’s all a question of the stories we are told that so influence our day to day decisions.

It is also about stories within stories, how the story of science may give us false illusions that we can manage the planet for our own ends and that is possible to understand the laws of the universe, that the trolls under the bridge are only illusory. Another story embedded in this book is our own story about life and its meaning, for each of us has undergone unusual transformations that we would wish on no other but that have given us a unique window into the meaning and purpose of life. And it is a story about the failure of sophisticated human societies to ask the right questions, for without knowing the right rabbit hole in which to go down, you can never get to the real solutions, the deep changes necessary for living more harmoniously on this planet. Finally, it is also new stories based on the right questions that give us hope for our future, a future where we reconcile old relationships and build new relationships based on listening and learning again from our roots, the revisiting of our old stories and the power of new stories to carry us and our children’s children into more sustainable futures.