The Power of Stories, Part 4
Trust in a Post-Truth Era
a bookcase of sorts - my bedside table with current reading (fiction and fairy tales on top and scripture underneath)
I didn’t mean for this article to drag on so….thanks for sticking with me while I work these things out in my own head.
I think we are in the Underworld and haven’t figured it out yet. Both inside and outside us….The strange thing about the Underworld is that it can look an awful lot like this one. It’s not situated in those esoteric graphs and spiritual maps we study, it’s situated as a lived experience….
Martin Shaw, storyteller
My partner has often said to me that we are in a post-truth era and, although I hate to hear that, I know it to be true. Peco, who writes Pilgrims in the Machine here on Substack, recently wrote about this predicament; as he says, “live not by technological lies”:
Lose trust, and nations and civilizations will crumble, no matter how wealthy or powerful they are.
Otherwise, we are forced to adopt a suspicious mindset where we are never quite sure if we are engaging with the creative work of an actual person versus a machine (or a person coaching a machine). The work might be technically brilliant, but if we know or suspect a machine is behind it, then we will never shake the feeling that we are being played, manipulated, duped.
What happens when large segments of society live by technological lies in their education, their work, their personal lives? There is a risk that we will move away from the ideal of truth, and away the ideal of meritocracy, of a meaningful connection between effort and achievement, and instead drift toward a “skeptocracy”, where we are chronically skeptical or suspicious of the success of others, doubting if their achievements are based on actual effort or talent.
Who wants to live in a Skeptocracy? No wonder so many people suffer from ‘free-floating anxiety’. If you can’t trust the words of others how are you to navigate this realm? In college I took a Social Psychology class and in it we learned there are a few universal commonalities in all human societies, one being truth in dialog - the belief that the other person is being honest and genuine in almost all cases. Ubiquitous and implicit, honesty underpins our interactions with others…until now.
The storyteller, Martin Shaw, in his essay Navigating the Mysteries addresses the necessity of orienting ourselves toward truth:
Making a covenant with honesty: Take agency of the life that forged you. I’ve written before that we all have a prayer mat we kneel on, though many of us forget to look down. Stop glancing around and comparing yourself to others; instead gaze pointedly down at your mat. Catch its scent. Your mat constitutes everything that has grown you up to this point, especially the good stuff. There is a troubling spiritual idea that you actually elected to be born into the family you showed up in, the town you were raised in. There comes a point where it is childish to choreograph our personal history anymore. Tell it straight.
Make a covenant with honesty. Honesty is often a case-by-case disclosure. Orientate to what feels like truth. Endless fictions fatigue us. Be your naturalness, then commit to the lively disciplines such naturalness is calling forth in you. When you are trying to be honest in your loves, your dealings, your fundamental ground, you begin to become authentically yourself. Be accountable. This is absolutely the best position to navigate the mysteries from. Over time one mystery reveals itself, and then delightfully another opens.
When you are dishonest, you break connection with your soul. Something essential is weakened. Lying reduces your wingspan. Stay honest to the shape you came here to embody. Refuse to be a hologram or engage in acts of ventriloquism.
If your life feels peculiar, flamboyant, occasionally shameful, then those are the markings of that emerging authenticity. The more you settle back into your naturalness, the less likely you are to be endlessly buffeted by unease and unseated by paradox. If you are steady in your own precarious character, you recognize these energies as fundamental to the business of both living and deepening. Such honesty will also introduce both limit and consequence into your life. It creates a code, a kind of gallantry. Not from the outside, but from a daily, sometimes troubling, discourse with your own soul.
This kind of work creates a root system that is clear and well watered. Eventually it could create an old-growth human being. Let’s stop devouring for a second and take stock of the innumerable benefits we have already received. This begins by lowering our gaze to what’s beneath us.
“When you are dishonest you break connection with your soul”….this is a beautiful metaphor. And, this is what is happening today; dishonesty is severing our link to our soul, both as individuals and as a collective. The soul of our culture is being severed from the Sacred as well. Where does this lead? To a Machine society. This is where the stories of Scientism and Skeptocracy lead.
Shaw also suggests in his essay that we ‘reach out to nature and history’ as our guides. I like this notion very much. I have always been in love with the Natural World, but History is something I avoided, until recently. My association with History was just a long list of horrific deeds performed by humans to harm other humans and, frankly, I wanted nothing to do with it. But more recently I have come to be able to separate out human error and folly from the lessons History can teach - the stories of those who lived through terrible times and have left their legacy of learnings behind - people like Hannah Arendt, Aleksandr Solzenitzyn, Jesus and other figures from Scripture.
“Honesty will introduce both limit and consequence into your life” Shaw points out. Honesty binds us; it confines us to “our human and earthly limits”, according to Wendell Berry. In this day and age our culture does not want anything to do with the antiquated ideas of boundaries or limits (I have written about the necessity of limits before). Moreover, we seemingly want to do away with consequences to our actions or consequences to our lies, as Peco has alluded to above - doing away with the idea of a meritocracy.
So, if we cannot trust each other where does this leave us? How do we navigate this seemingly insurmountable dilemma? Ruth, Peco’s wife, has a suggestion - shift back to a more analog life:
Some of this change will be prompted by the realization that trust simply can no longer be fully established in the digital realm. Some of this change will also emerge out of the recognition that work, education, and creative writing and art are simply better when firmly grounded in the analog.
Ruth offers ideas around living a more analog life, her ‘Analog Renaissance’! Have a read, look at her lists of great books, her feelings about art, the classroom, the workplace and much more.
To finish up, I want to advocate for a return to the Old Stories - the stories we need are already here, they have evolved with us through the ages of human history, they are the ‘living body of myths’. Not only myth, but history, legends, Scripture. They orient us to our past, to our future and to the present. Our obligation now is to return to Them and to reject the stories of Scientism. It is also a necessity to look to Nature and Creation for inspiration.
Let’s end with another passage from Martin Shaw to bring this article back to Part 1 where it started. What we attend to, where our focus lies, creates our reality. ‘Move from seeing to beholding’…
Move from seeing to beholding: To see a situation is to catch the facts of the matter. To behold it is to witness the story. If you dwell entirely with statistics and data, you will be a burnt match within months. Move from just seeing the world to beholding the world. Seeing is assessment and analysis; beholding is wonder and curiosity. It’s not that we don’t need the former, but when we crank it up excessively, we always damage the latter. Make space for the miraculous, make space for grace—these energies show up constantly in our lives. To behold them is to bear witness to them. To celebrate them. That’s an infectious and noble position to take. Difficult situations require sustained beholding. They are not necessarily to be dissected or defeated but sat with. Could there be a third way that arises from fidelity of attention?
Some ways I stay analog:
The School of Evolutionary Herbalism
Batsford Textile & Craft Books
Sally Pointer Heritage Education
Enjoy - Nx