We need to tell a new/old story. Humans are social creatures of a shared story. We tell ourselves into being who we are by the stories we share. From First Peoples’ Songlines, rhythmically repeated and updated to incorporate the latest world developments, to Harry Potter novels and The Matrix movies, we remember and become the stories we believe in.
And traditionally our origin stories, fables, fairytales and myths also contain the fundamental Morals and Virtues, that remind us how to be our best selves. Or warn us of the dangers in following the darker side of our human nature.
Right now, America is leading the world in a headlong rush, back down into the dark side of humanity. And it’s in pursuit of an age old evil, “pleonexia – the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others” (thanks to Wikipedia).
Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre wrote about this more than 40 years ago: “The ‘something at work in the community’ which counteracts the tendency to produce a virtuous and happy community is the all-pervasive influence of pleonexia… in the form of the usury inflicted on society by an individualistic economy and market in which land, labour and money itself have all been transformed into commodities.”(After Virtue, A. MacIntyre, Duckworth, London, 1981, p.239).
That was eons before the world wide web opened up “life in the cloud”, and soon after social media exponentially cranked up the individual commodification of account holders and their influencers. Creating what economist Yanis Varoufakis calls “Cloud serfs, cloud proles, and cloud vassals” in the brave new world of TechnoFeudalism (Varoufakis, Vintage 2024, p.214).
Behind this creeping cancer of the bodypolitik was a mind worm takeover that neuroscientist Prof. Iain McGilchrist has described eloquently in his two books The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009), and The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (Perspective 2021).
The following series of six articles will explore some stories about money, a living wage, social housing, the public estate (or commons) and tax (or the total lack thereof), gangster and vulture capitalism and its partnership takeover with the “rentier” TechnoFeudalists, running the permanently parasitic recycling, financialised cloud economy that now lives like a nest of hydatid tapeworms inside all of our minds, souls, and e-bank accounts.
Plus it will explore the only hope for our future, in reclaiming circularity in managing our relations with the Earth and each other. And reviving active belief in the old notion of the moral role of the shared stories among us all, that contained what MacIntyre called “a traditional account of the virtues, the concept of narrative unity and the concept of a practice… (that) connects story-telling with the form of human life” (MacIntyre, p.226).
The “form of human life” that we must urgently reclaim, while fighting for the very life of Mother Earth, is one that sees humans as fellow creatures alongside all other life forms, humble in the face of the mystery and wonder of the universe. Where all life is precious, everyone deserves a living wage and social housing. And the stories we tell remind us to rebalance ourselves when ego, hubris, greed and despotic discrimination have got hold of the wheelhouse.
Right now we are far from that place, because disaffected American citizens have chosen to elect a lying shyster who promised them whatever they wanted, but who is already dismantling the framework of the society they felt let down by. So the dominant story right now is an unfolding chaotic nightmare in the making.
One thing we can do is develop our own narrative, and ground it in the morals and virtues that we know stand the test of time. Even though they have been hidden under nearly 50 years of neoliberal BS and its “machine mind” amoral thinking, fuelled by the false notion that competitive self-interest is the true nature of human beings, not caring for each other and the Earth.
Here is where one of several storyteller buddies joins us. American social anthropologist and Occupy Wall Street activist David Graeber chronicled the years of moral decay during the neoliberal plague, best illustrated by his book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (Simon & Schuster, NY 2018). Graeber argued strongly that ordinary people need to be brought into the conversation about shaping a better future, before his untimely death in 2020. One of his favourite expressions is now the title of a collection of his essays and talks: “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” (D. Graeber, Penguin Random House, UK, 2024).
That time is now folks, and dumbstruck apathy while watching Trumpageddon (and its clones around the world) in horrified shock is no way to serve ourselves, our children and grandchildren, or the common good, let alone the Blue Planet (about to be seriously browned over again).
So far we have allowed the fearmongers and snake oil salesmen to dominate the storytelling about our world, whether in America, Europe or Australia. The mining and resources industry and Murdoch-backed, Fox News-promoted shock jocks and wedge politics experts have succeeded in telling a bad story very well. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast every time”, is an apt maxim from the business world – “the vibe” won, over logic and rationality. The foxes are running the henhouse.
Meanwhile, social democrats like Australia’s Labor Government and the now defunct Democratic Party in America, have done a very bad job of telling a marginally good story. About their attempts to improve the old-style manufacturing and service industry economies of Australia and the US. They did create more jobs, pay off significant debt, and move far too slowly towards clean energy transitions. But they did nothing to stop the cloud pirates on the high seas of the world wide web, or the banking and stock market parasitic puppet masters of debt and financialisation.
So the only way out of this mess is to reclaim the story we tell ourselves about the future of humanity and the globe. Which will only work if it’s rebuilt from the ground up with a set of morals and virtues, that are rewoven into our shared social fabric. Like Joseph’s coat of many colours. That’s what this series will set out to explore, guided by the greatest environmental conscience maestro and humanistic storyteller of the modern era, Dr Seuss’s The Lorax. And, just to honour our new motto, “Talk Local, Narrate Global”, we’ll include some peculiarly Australian morality tale figures, like Bunyips and Kurdaitchas, Mimi ghosts and the Pookacky man.
This is part one of a six-part series – On tax reform, social housing, a living wage and the public estate
Dr Robbie Lloyd has been a national journalist, public affairs director, education and community health reformer for over 50 years. He works with First People and those with Lived Experience of mental health challenges, disability, alcohol and other drugs, DFV, ageing and trauma. Robbie now works in community wellbeing reform.