going to tell you why stories are going
to save the world I’m going to do this
to begin with through the medium of
story and this story like all stories
begins with silence it happened here for
the touching of the ankles and a
swelling of the belly a baby was born
and it was beautiful and healthy in
every single way and normal in every
single wave of one instead of a belly
button
a little silver cross at the top of a
screw and he was fine his mom Esther
loved in the same when he was getting
changed for PE you know he he faced the
wall so no one saw his little silver
belly button or anyone swimming he will
one those long blue and white striped
swimming costumes we show this to just
above the knees you know his then with
the times and cuz them with the times
when he met a girl he looked at her she
looked away she looked at him he looked
away maybe some you know what love is
like when they’re gonna get married they
never saw each other naked until the
wedding night or prim and proper
Presbyterian values and a guest of the
day before the wedding and this boy is
so nervous so he goes to his mama like
all sensible nervous boys he says mama
I’m so afraid that she’s going to see my
Ilsa the bellybutton and think I’m a
freak he’s gonna leave me on the night
of our wedding his mama looks at him
with a crinkled wisdom of age she says
my darling boy you’ve got to talk to the
woman you’re gonna marry you’ve got to
communicate with your partner for the
rest of your life or else or else what
do you have and if she sweats this small
stuff
she was never right for you anyway it’s
nice right
and he knows deep down that this is the
right advice but he also is for this
deep-seated fear and he says mama I
recognized that that’s the right thing
to do because there anything else I can
do to avoid this confrontation she says
well you know my advice but if you won’t
take it you could always go down to the
woods see what the she will do for you
that she as I’m sure you know are the
garlic fairies and these people aren’t
Tinkerbell they live in a world just
parallel to ours millimeters beneath and
their advice sometimes goes awry because
they don’t know
what it’s like to be a human being but
he decides he’s going to risk it and it
goes down to the woods finds a nice
clearing strips naked so is a good bet
when you’re dealing with the she he lies
down that clearing pretends to be asleep
as the Sun sets and the moon rises he
peeks through his eye and he sees
beating down upon him is a beautiful
silver moon being as he watches down
that Moonbeam floats a beautiful elegant
slender silver spelt and Sybil and she
holding a beautiful long elegant slender
silver belt and civil and Phillips
screwdriver and she kneels on the heath
beside him and slots that into his
bellybutton and twists and out from his
belly comes a beautiful long elegant
slender silver cross headed screw I with
a screw in one hand and a screwdriver in
the other hand that she drifts back off
up that Moonbeam when she’s gone at
least his feet I’m normally says I’m
healed then his bum falls off thanks
thank you there’s no time so 20 years
ago John McInnis spoke at this
university and he said the fairy world
is a metaphor for the imagination and in
this story despite it being clearly
modern phallus written by Patrick
Rothfuss I’m led to believe it involves
a hero stepping out into the world
facing or shouldering the burden of an
inadequacy encountering the other in a
natural liminal space struggling and
returning having changed and this is
true of most stories in the Celtic cycle
people meet the other in a natural space
where the two worlds meet and return
haven’t been humbled I’d like to know if
you’ve ever stepped out into nature and
fealty or I’ve been around you the
tremendous other you felt very small but
connected to the deep linear to the
place that you’re standing this is our
friend cat Mallos in a farm in Spain and
this is John Muir who famously walked
through the Yosemite Valley and
converted to a Cathedral he says these
mountains are God’s words writ large
he felt connected to a wider creation
you can see in his face having an
experience this is me having an
experience in a liminal rhododendron
bush this is the Berwick stone circle
which is near oh I grew up these stones
have been there for thousands of years
and if you look there’s a second circle
of stones around the ones that still
survived and this is a very heavy place
when you stand there you can feel the
two worlds meeting the Coniston fells
look like a pregnant woman lying on her
back and they supposes why they built
the stones there and when you come here
it’s very hard to feel like you’re king
of the world the landscape is wild and
there’s this sense of the other
encouraging enough because of this sense
of the other this has become a site of
preservation people don’t build their
and imagining the fairies that realm of
imagination has led to an actual
conservation through laissez-faire
conservation ethics so these are the
characteristics of the Celtic myth as
you can see our story wither with the
bum screw despite being modern fit every
one of them I like to draw attention
particular to the numinous which is what
is encountered in the liminal space CS
Lewis who popularized this term
describes a numinous like this instead
of one believed there was a mighty
spirit in the next room the disturbance
should be profound one would feel wonder
and a certain shrinking a sense of
inadequacy to cope with such a visit on
this feeling may be described as all and
the object which excites it is the
numinous so newness is a transformative
power we encounter in natural spaces in
Celtic mythology again the newness is a
transformative power which is
encountered in natural spaces in every
story in the Celtic mythology you may be
asking why this is important why is it
important that we have this sense of
ourselves that’s generated by exposure
to the natural world I argue that it’s
very important because our place in the
world determines how we understand the
world or how we view ourselves in the
planet will affect how we contextualize
ourselves in the planet this is somewhat
ruined by Izzy’s fantastic talk because
it of course
a creep by Donald Trump which would be
good you can move this line on hard to
believe if we hadn’t just just analyzed
it so this is obviously a certain
narrative about the environment
obviously he’s denying the environment
on the on the highest level but he’s
also making other narratives about it
the first is that the climate is a
comparable or a laterally coherent
priority with US production it’s an
economic object but not a moral
necessity so even by denying climate
change he’s making all these other
narratives and assumptions about the
climate and putting into a conceptual
scheme was not a viable thanks this is
what seems to be an opposite view this
is a solution to solve climate change a
man named David Keith he wants to use
jets and rockets to put sulfuric acid
into the atmosphere and this is his plan
to cheaply and easily stop global
warming and while he’s well-intentioned
I’d argued that he has the same
destructive narratives that the current
president has he views humanity is
floating above a mechanistic world which
can be controlled and manipulated in a
way which suits the human interest
without regard for other other beings or
other life fortunately he was never
allowed to do this yet and I think that
that might be something to be grateful
for because while this would solve one
human problem it is another form of
pollutant with uncertain consequences I
think that both these people Trump and
Keith are going naked into the woods and
they’re waiting to see what the reaction
would be from nature and I wish I could
take them both and make them feel the
numinous either through story or taking
them up to Berkeley comment because when
you contextualize yourself in that way
when you imagine yourself going into the
woods and meeting the great other or
when you listen to the story of Jemima
Puddleduck and imagine yourself as a
duck with duck friends and duck things
to do it becomes very hard to hold on to
that image of humans as a be land
end-all of experience and when you
decentralize yourself from the human
story and
look at yourself as part of a rich
family of life you’re doing Deep Ecology
before you even know that you can doing
it and we can trick people almost or
guide people into bringing things that
were otherwise distant very close to the
power of story this chart I think shows
how we normally understand reality as
objective facts which then filter out
and become myths and legends but if you
move to the next slide actually I think
that there’s a lot more of the other way
around so if any of you have studied
philosophy of science here at the
university lacketh or shun-kun a few
knots you might know that our
observations about the world are laden
with our theories about the world and
what we choose to look for
scientifically it’s not arrived at
scientifically that’s a product of our
culture and importance of other forces
and pressures so what we believe in the
collective unconscious for instance if
we believe that we need a mechanistic
solution to climate change or if we
believe X Y then these will lead us to
certain conclusions there wouldn’t be
possible to get a different vision of
our place in the world and I think
storytellers have a very unique position
with one step in the collective
consciousness as held by the myth the
poetic with all its environmental
information and one step in forming
people’s conceptions of themselves in
the world and realities document
anywhere it doesn’t heed any equipment
it can be done for free I think it’s a
very good tool and if you doubt me take
a look at these fine men on the right is
John Muir you may recognize him from
earlier he was born pretty close to here
in Dunbar moved to America and he’s
broadly credited with inventing the
modern National Park project he wasn’t a
politician his own political career
failed its Hensel Lobby broadly failed
instead he was famous at the time for
his nature writing mostly fictional or
quasi biographical talks about his
travels in nature and his poems and on
the left is Theodore Roosevelt who in
his life did create five national parks
18 national monuments and 53 wildlife
reserves and quoted Muir’s language all
the time and Roosevelt obituary of John
Muir which he wrote after he was death
he says no man
was more able to influence contemporary
thought in action and John Muir say that
again there was powerful man on the
planet said that no man was more able to
impose contemporary thought and action
than this poet and storyteller
thanks to conclude I say the
storytelling is a unique capacity to
bring what is otherwise distant into a
realm of understanding through metaphor
and through fable when we imagine
ourselves as other creatures and these
centrioles are socially human experience
we are able to empathize with that which
is otherwise refined out of our sphere
of understanding through a reductive
language and I think that if everybody
listened to one Celtic myth a day or
went into nature to experience in
numinous once a day we were living in a
very different planet thank you very
much [Applause]