with storytelling animals it’s hardwired
into us and we’re all born with an
innate storytelling ability in their
pretend play toddlers as young as two
and three years old create elaborately
constructed dramas which they act out in
all of the voices of the characters
which which they which they make up and
these dramas that they construct and not
just about polite chitchat at dolls tea
parties they’re positively existential
they reflect a world that’s often dark
and dangerous like the worlds and the
fairy stories that they so often love to
be told so stories are the way that we
first begin to make sense of the world
around us and to construct the world
around us they’re kind of the stars that
we navigate by from a very early age and
their lessons can be deep and very rich
and very memorable gold is never a good
goal always there may be a door to
another world learn to look for it never
ever try to maim yourself by squeezing
your foot into a glass slipper that was
constructed for somebody else always
leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find
your way out of the dark forest and most
important of all never ever take off
your skin and leave it unattended the
characters in stories can be great
learning tools for us for us as well and
I think when I was a child I probably
know more from the characters and
stories than I did from the people
around me and I loved the very solitary
heroines who always won through against
all of the impossible odds
my favorite story tell a fairy tale in
the world I think at the time was um
Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the
12 of the Wild Swans I’m not sure
whether you know that story it’s about a
princess called Eliza whose brothers are
turned into swans by the inevitable
wicked stepmother and she is the only
one that can save them and the only way
that she can save them is she has to go
into graveyards in the dark of the night
and with her bare hands pluck stinging
nettles
and from the stinging nettles she must
strip the fibers spin the fibers into
yarn weave shirts from the yarn once
remit one for each brother and then when
the brothers put the shirts on
they’ll be transformed back into men
again now as if this wasn’t enough she
has to do all of this while remaining
completely silent she may not tell her
story to anybody under any circumstances
because of this silence and her
proclivity for hanging around graveyards
in the dark of night
she’s almost burnt at the stake by a
very suspicious Bishop happily just as
the fires lit under her her brothers in
the form of swans come swooping in and
save her just at the time when she in
turn saves them by casting a shirt of
each brother and each brother in turn is
transformed back into a man again all
will except the last brother because she
hasn’t had time to finish this shirt so
he’s always half man and half Swan that
story captured my imagination in so many
ways I hardly know where to begin it
taught me that transformation always
comes from the prickly the stinging
things that no matter how close you get
to burning health may still come and
that even today a nettle is never just a
nettle to me it’s still a symbol of all
of things that might be possible even
when all hope is gone so the tasks that
have to be undertaken in these stories
that we grow up with and not just the
stuff that shirts are made of but
they’re the stuff that souls are made of
they show us a different way of being in
the world a world that is very very rich
with enchantment and we’ve always told
stories as well that explain how the
world is since the dawn of human
civilization we’ve sat around campfires
we’ve gathered in huts and royal palaces
to tell each other stories about how the
world came to be as it is today and what
our place in it is and these explanatory
stories are called myths and myths still
with very weighty matters they deal with
gods and heroes with the creation of the
universe with a meaning and purpose of
life all of that kind of thing and miss
because of this explanatory value
underpin the beliefs and morals of
civilizations they’re kind of the guide
and mythologies if you like the guiding
narratives that we live by which is
curious when you think that we often use
the word myth to datum to mean a
falsehood and all cultures whether they
recognize it overtly or not have these
guiding narratives that that we live by
these guiding mythologies and they’re
not always religious myth all that urn
mythologies or narratives there can be
secular too so let’s just take an
example of a couple of those that I
think are underpinning the way that we
view our civilization today first of all
there’s a myth of more and this is a
mess of progress more more MORE
everything this is a myth that tells us
that every generation has to have more
stuff than the generation before it has
to have bigger houses better jobs bigger
cars has to live longer has to be more
beautiful it tells us that we have to
produce more stuff all the time and
consume that stuff because if we do
apparently we’re told we will be happier
and healthier and if we don’t the
economy will stop growing and who knows
what terrible things might happen if the
economy stops growing so we’re locked
into this strange dystopian story where
all of the characters in it are called
consumers and where those characters are
defined by what they buy but what have
we stepped out of that story for a while
and asked as if that asked ourselves if
that was really the story that we wanted
to be in asked ourselves if instead we
didn’t want to think of a story that
made us rather than paddling in the
shallows of more-more-more made us delve
more deeply into the well of the world
that we already have and the things that
we already have then there’s the myth of
the hero and it has kind of tied up with
a myth of more because today’s hero’s a
little bit different from heroes of the
past today’s heroes they’re not just
about being the best that they can be
they’re about being better than other
people and you see this all the time in
in today’s books and movies you see it
particularly in myths where you have
superheroes because everybody wants to
be more powerful
special than everybody else vampires are
the new superhero it seems we’ve kind of
grown out a little bit of Batman and
Superman and teenagers all over the
world who want to be more special than
their peers want to be vampires
everybody wants to be Harry Potter
nobody wants to be a muggle and so this
is a result of of an underlying
narrative in our culture which tell it
which encourages us to be
individualistic and competitive and
always to want more of everything so
what would a post heroic story look like
what would that look like if we could
find a story that that amassed us more
deeply in the world rather than putting
us above it outside of it looking down
on it from a point of privilege the past
heroic story is about learning to live
more deeply in the world we have now
it’s not about individuality and
competition it’s about building
community and recognizing diversity so
in the post aerobic story you don’t want
to slay the dragon you want to make the
dragon part of your team but as unique
fire-breathing skills it’s a word it’s a
story in which you leave your own
stomach half empty so that you can give
half of your bowl of porridge to the
starving mice and then someday along the
line the mice might come and help you
sort the wheat from the chaff in the
post heroic story you don’t necessarily
go straight and get the hand of the
golden haired simpering princess you
face you stand up tall and you face the
blue faced boar tusks stinking hag in
you kiss her those of the post heroic
stories poster oeq stories are not
stories of more they’re stories of when
we have had enough like the beautiful
old Irish story of the glass Gavilan the
cow of Plenty this was a car whose milk
was so plentiful that she could feed the
whole land of Ireland and she would
wander around the country and she would
allow each person who wanted it to come
with a single pail and to fill the pail
with her milk until one day a greedy
woman brought a sieve and many pails and
because the sieve was never full she
pay enough to fail up pay enough to pay
through the sieve until the cows milk
ran dry and then the glass goblin ran
off disappeared and was never seen again
in the Isle a violent and post heroic
stories and not about strength they’re
about compassion like the beautiful old
European stories of the Grail where the
knight who is on a quest for the Grail
must ask a question in order to attain
the Grail and to heal the wound of the
Fisher King and to heal the wasteland
that the world has become and the
question that the knight must ask is a
very simple pointed what ails thee
doesn’t matter what the answer is it’s
not about answers in the post Arabic
story it’s about knowing the right
question to ask a question of compassion
so these are the stories which offer us
more enriching values by which to live
but the thing is most of us don’t
necessarily think of things like
progress and heroism as underpinning
cultural mythologies it’s not really
presented to us that way it’s presented
to us as not as a story that we can pick
or choose but as how the world actually
is but how the world is according to
those mythologies of progress more
heroism it’s really good only for the
wealthy and most powerful people on the
planet it’s not particularly great for
the starving millions in the desert
countries and it’s certainly no good for
the animals who are caught up in the
sixth mass extinction of life on this
planet because our underlying cultural
mythologies are literally costing the
earth they’re not doing us very much
good either because although we’re
certainly richer than the generation
before us was certainly not happier and
you can see that in all the mental
health statistics in this country very
very clearly and the myths that each of
us lives by our personal Mis the stories
we tell about ourselves and our place in
the world are played out within the
framework of that cultural mythology so
if our the the guiding Mythology of our
culture is rich and nourish
then it inspires us it gives us meaning
but if our cultural mythology becomes
arid and heartless then we in turn
become alienated and ruthless if you can
no longer live by the cultural mythology
the guiding culture mythology the
stories that previous generations
happily told about themselves if you
think that that’s failed and that it’s
not adequate then in a sense you fall
out of myth than to fall out of myth is
to fall out of meaning because above all
myth is about meaning change begins
always with imagination and I think it
belated it begins primarily with a
mythic imagination with the ability to
reimagine stories that are better
stories that that help us to see our
place in the world differently that
entwine errs and meshes back into the
web of life on this planet rather than
standing above it and so if the myth
that is underpinning our culture is
failing let’s transform it why not
humans have always been miss making
creatures and Carl Jung once said that
if if the cultural mythology is dying if
it’s proving itself to be an adequate
for the needs of the people and the
planet then the myth making power
resides in individuals that the birth of
a new personal myth in the imagination
of one individual or a group of
individuals can literally spread and
change the world so it’s the people that
I like to call the mythical misfits who
kickstart the transformation of culture
because they reimagine stories which
help us to fall in love with the world
all over again the stories which we and
chant us which we enter and our children
in which we enchant the world in the
stories which help us to reimagine
ourselves and our children and the world
so when the great blazing bonfire of a
begins to flicker and die few individual
flames usually remain and when those
flames got little bit of air to them and
begin to lean in towards each other then
they can start a new fire so with the
sparks of our own mythic imagination
you [Applause]
into us and we’re all born with an
innate storytelling ability in their
pretend play toddlers as young as two
and three years old create elaborately
constructed dramas which they act out in
all of the voices of the characters
which which they which they make up and
these dramas that they construct and not
just about polite chitchat at dolls tea
parties they’re positively existential
they reflect a world that’s often dark
and dangerous like the worlds and the
fairy stories that they so often love to
be told so stories are the way that we
first begin to make sense of the world
around us and to construct the world
around us they’re kind of the stars that
we navigate by from a very early age and
their lessons can be deep and very rich
and very memorable gold is never a good
goal always there may be a door to
another world learn to look for it never
ever try to maim yourself by squeezing
your foot into a glass slipper that was
constructed for somebody else always
leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find
your way out of the dark forest and most
important of all never ever take off
your skin and leave it unattended the
characters in stories can be great
learning tools for us for us as well and
I think when I was a child I probably
know more from the characters and
stories than I did from the people
around me and I loved the very solitary
heroines who always won through against
all of the impossible odds
my favorite story tell a fairy tale in
the world I think at the time was um
Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the
12 of the Wild Swans I’m not sure
whether you know that story it’s about a
princess called Eliza whose brothers are
turned into swans by the inevitable
wicked stepmother and she is the only
one that can save them and the only way
that she can save them is she has to go
into graveyards in the dark of the night
and with her bare hands pluck stinging
nettles
and from the stinging nettles she must
strip the fibers spin the fibers into
yarn weave shirts from the yarn once
remit one for each brother and then when
the brothers put the shirts on
they’ll be transformed back into men
again now as if this wasn’t enough she
has to do all of this while remaining
completely silent she may not tell her
story to anybody under any circumstances
because of this silence and her
proclivity for hanging around graveyards
in the dark of night
she’s almost burnt at the stake by a
very suspicious Bishop happily just as
the fires lit under her her brothers in
the form of swans come swooping in and
save her just at the time when she in
turn saves them by casting a shirt of
each brother and each brother in turn is
transformed back into a man again all
will except the last brother because she
hasn’t had time to finish this shirt so
he’s always half man and half Swan that
story captured my imagination in so many
ways I hardly know where to begin it
taught me that transformation always
comes from the prickly the stinging
things that no matter how close you get
to burning health may still come and
that even today a nettle is never just a
nettle to me it’s still a symbol of all
of things that might be possible even
when all hope is gone so the tasks that
have to be undertaken in these stories
that we grow up with and not just the
stuff that shirts are made of but
they’re the stuff that souls are made of
they show us a different way of being in
the world a world that is very very rich
with enchantment and we’ve always told
stories as well that explain how the
world is since the dawn of human
civilization we’ve sat around campfires
we’ve gathered in huts and royal palaces
to tell each other stories about how the
world came to be as it is today and what
our place in it is and these explanatory
stories are called myths and myths still
with very weighty matters they deal with
gods and heroes with the creation of the
universe with a meaning and purpose of
life all of that kind of thing and miss
because of this explanatory value
underpin the beliefs and morals of
civilizations they’re kind of the guide
and mythologies if you like the guiding
narratives that we live by which is
curious when you think that we often use
the word myth to datum to mean a
falsehood and all cultures whether they
recognize it overtly or not have these
guiding narratives that that we live by
these guiding mythologies and they’re
not always religious myth all that urn
mythologies or narratives there can be
secular too so let’s just take an
example of a couple of those that I
think are underpinning the way that we
view our civilization today first of all
there’s a myth of more and this is a
mess of progress more more MORE
everything this is a myth that tells us
that every generation has to have more
stuff than the generation before it has
to have bigger houses better jobs bigger
cars has to live longer has to be more
beautiful it tells us that we have to
produce more stuff all the time and
consume that stuff because if we do
apparently we’re told we will be happier
and healthier and if we don’t the
economy will stop growing and who knows
what terrible things might happen if the
economy stops growing so we’re locked
into this strange dystopian story where
all of the characters in it are called
consumers and where those characters are
defined by what they buy but what have
we stepped out of that story for a while
and asked as if that asked ourselves if
that was really the story that we wanted
to be in asked ourselves if instead we
didn’t want to think of a story that
made us rather than paddling in the
shallows of more-more-more made us delve
more deeply into the well of the world
that we already have and the things that
we already have then there’s the myth of
the hero and it has kind of tied up with
a myth of more because today’s hero’s a
little bit different from heroes of the
past today’s heroes they’re not just
about being the best that they can be
they’re about being better than other
people and you see this all the time in
in today’s books and movies you see it
particularly in myths where you have
superheroes because everybody wants to
be more powerful
special than everybody else vampires are
the new superhero it seems we’ve kind of
grown out a little bit of Batman and
Superman and teenagers all over the
world who want to be more special than
their peers want to be vampires
everybody wants to be Harry Potter
nobody wants to be a muggle and so this
is a result of of an underlying
narrative in our culture which tell it
which encourages us to be
individualistic and competitive and
always to want more of everything so
what would a post heroic story look like
what would that look like if we could
find a story that that amassed us more
deeply in the world rather than putting
us above it outside of it looking down
on it from a point of privilege the past
heroic story is about learning to live
more deeply in the world we have now
it’s not about individuality and
competition it’s about building
community and recognizing diversity so
in the post aerobic story you don’t want
to slay the dragon you want to make the
dragon part of your team but as unique
fire-breathing skills it’s a word it’s a
story in which you leave your own
stomach half empty so that you can give
half of your bowl of porridge to the
starving mice and then someday along the
line the mice might come and help you
sort the wheat from the chaff in the
post heroic story you don’t necessarily
go straight and get the hand of the
golden haired simpering princess you
face you stand up tall and you face the
blue faced boar tusks stinking hag in
you kiss her those of the post heroic
stories poster oeq stories are not
stories of more they’re stories of when
we have had enough like the beautiful
old Irish story of the glass Gavilan the
cow of Plenty this was a car whose milk
was so plentiful that she could feed the
whole land of Ireland and she would
wander around the country and she would
allow each person who wanted it to come
with a single pail and to fill the pail
with her milk until one day a greedy
woman brought a sieve and many pails and
because the sieve was never full she
pay enough to fail up pay enough to pay
through the sieve until the cows milk
ran dry and then the glass goblin ran
off disappeared and was never seen again
in the Isle a violent and post heroic
stories and not about strength they’re
about compassion like the beautiful old
European stories of the Grail where the
knight who is on a quest for the Grail
must ask a question in order to attain
the Grail and to heal the wound of the
Fisher King and to heal the wasteland
that the world has become and the
question that the knight must ask is a
very simple pointed what ails thee
doesn’t matter what the answer is it’s
not about answers in the post Arabic
story it’s about knowing the right
question to ask a question of compassion
so these are the stories which offer us
more enriching values by which to live
but the thing is most of us don’t
necessarily think of things like
progress and heroism as underpinning
cultural mythologies it’s not really
presented to us that way it’s presented
to us as not as a story that we can pick
or choose but as how the world actually
is but how the world is according to
those mythologies of progress more
heroism it’s really good only for the
wealthy and most powerful people on the
planet it’s not particularly great for
the starving millions in the desert
countries and it’s certainly no good for
the animals who are caught up in the
sixth mass extinction of life on this
planet because our underlying cultural
mythologies are literally costing the
earth they’re not doing us very much
good either because although we’re
certainly richer than the generation
before us was certainly not happier and
you can see that in all the mental
health statistics in this country very
very clearly and the myths that each of
us lives by our personal Mis the stories
we tell about ourselves and our place in
the world are played out within the
framework of that cultural mythology so
if our the the guiding Mythology of our
culture is rich and nourish
then it inspires us it gives us meaning
but if our cultural mythology becomes
arid and heartless then we in turn
become alienated and ruthless if you can
no longer live by the cultural mythology
the guiding culture mythology the
stories that previous generations
happily told about themselves if you
think that that’s failed and that it’s
not adequate then in a sense you fall
out of myth than to fall out of myth is
to fall out of meaning because above all
myth is about meaning change begins
always with imagination and I think it
belated it begins primarily with a
mythic imagination with the ability to
reimagine stories that are better
stories that that help us to see our
place in the world differently that
entwine errs and meshes back into the
web of life on this planet rather than
standing above it and so if the myth
that is underpinning our culture is
failing let’s transform it why not
humans have always been miss making
creatures and Carl Jung once said that
if if the cultural mythology is dying if
it’s proving itself to be an adequate
for the needs of the people and the
planet then the myth making power
resides in individuals that the birth of
a new personal myth in the imagination
of one individual or a group of
individuals can literally spread and
change the world so it’s the people that
I like to call the mythical misfits who
kickstart the transformation of culture
because they reimagine stories which
help us to fall in love with the world
all over again the stories which we and
chant us which we enter and our children
in which we enchant the world in the
stories which help us to reimagine
ourselves and our children and the world
so when the great blazing bonfire of a
begins to flicker and die few individual
flames usually remain and when those
flames got little bit of air to them and
begin to lean in towards each other then
they can start a new fire so with the
sparks of our own mythic imagination
you [Applause]
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