Clarity Part 3: This is a Crisis of Story
To summarise the journey of this writing exercise so far: we are in crisis, and while they have a vital role in keeping open the space for hope, no politician or party is going to solve it for us. The idea that even the very best of them could do so is Restaurant Hope, and that is false hope.
To see the full picture, and to find another way forward, it’s time to look at this moment through the lens of Subject, Consumer and Citizen as three competing stories of the individual in society.
A crisis of the Consumer Story, created by the Consumer Story
This is because the crisis is not a crisis of politicians, or even a crisis of political systems, but a crisis of story.
Humans are storytelling and crucially also story-dwelling creatures. We need stories to live by. To tell us who to collaborate with. What to create. Who to care about. How to be good.
The story we live by today — the story we are trapped in — is the Consumer Story.
The Consumer Story holds that our role as individuals is to pursue self interest, choosing the best option for us from those that are offered. It holds that the corresponding role of organisations and leaders is to channel that self interest and make it add up to the collective interest. And it holds that this will result in the best outcomes possible, because humans — Consumers — are inherently and inevitably self-interested. The most dangerous implication of the Consumer Story is that we can expect no better of each other than this.
But in fact, it is the Consumer Story that is the problem, not human nature. The story has given rise to all the great challenges of our time, and it will not be possible to face them from within its logic.
We can’t solve the crises of loneliness and mental ill health from within a story that tells us we are narrowly defined, isolated individuals, because the story created the crisis.
We can’t solve the crises of inequality — regionally, nationally, globally — from within a story that tells us the world is a competition for status, because the story created the crisis.
We can’t solve multiple ecological crises from within a story that we are separate from nature, and that happiness is to be found in ever increasing material standards of living, because the story created the crisis.
And we can’t solve any of these from within a political system that is as much an expression of the broken story as the crises themselves: where our agency is equated to voting, a one-off choice between a fixed set of options, and we’re conditioned to make that choice on the basis of narrow self interest.
Worst of all, when we deny this reality, we compound our crises, creating a vicious cycle — and opening the door to the Subject Story.
The return of the Subject Story
Entirely understandably, when politics fails to provide solutions to crisis, people lose trust, and become angry. Entirely understandably, when politicians and institutions see this anger, they in turn lose trust in people, seeing them as not only selfish but dangerous — and withdraw power further from them. Entirely understandably, the cycle continues. And this is where Milei and Trump, Orban and Putin come in, saying “Don’t trust them. Trust me.”
They represent the return of an older, darker story of who we are: the Subject Story, as in “subjects of the king.”
The Subject Story holds that our role is to keep our heads down, do as we are told, get what we are given, offering our obedience in return for protection from chaos. It holds that the god-given few know best, and will lead us to the best possible outcomes; if some (many) are harmed along the way, this is unfortunate but inevitable.
These Subject Story leaders are happy to name the chaos, acknowledge the brokenness, because doing so allows them to position themselves as the solution.
It is a dark bargain and demonstrably false, but it becomes increasingly attractive in times of uncertainty. That is especially the case when the only alternative we are offered is Canute politics, with its invitation to suspend our disbelief and pretend everything is fine.
The path of the Citizen Story
Authentic hope lies in the fact that we do not have to choose between the Subject Story and the Consumer Story. There is another much older, bigger, more truthful story of who we are: the Citizen Story.
The Citizen Story holds that all of us are smarter than any of us. It holds that we the people should neither do as we are told nor pursue our individual self interest, but instead contribute our ideas, energy and resources to the pursuit of the best outcomes for society as a whole. Our role is not just to choose between options, but to shape what they are. It demands that those in positions of power and influence adopt a new role too: their mandate is neither to command nor to serve, but to tap into our collective capacity, designing systems and holding space for us all to get involved.
In the rest of this writing exercise, I’m going to turn from clarity to imagination (see the Introduction) — asking what it will take to build a Citizen Democracy out of the wreck of Consumer Democracy, and create a new virtuous cycle of trust.
This has to mean, as Taiwanese Digital Minster Audrey Tang insisted in the interview for my book, with government trusting people — not just imploring people to trust government.
I don’t think Citizen Democracy exists in full anywhere in the world at the moment, but there are many places and there have been many moments where it has been expressed. I intend to look to them and figure out what it would take to build out from there.
To bring the work of clarity to a head, though, my conclusion is to set a very personal challenge. In order to find a way forward, we will have to begin with this bigger idea of who we are, or we will fail. What that means, collectively and individually, is that we must start by believing in ourselves and in each other, at exactly the time when anger and hatred are rising, and when faith in humanity is hardest to maintain.
The Citizen Story insists that it is precisely because of who and what we are that authentic hope exists. That humans are collaborative, creative, caring creatures who can and want to shape the world for the better.
The Consumer Story we have been trapped in has co-opted this nature, giving us false ideas of how to be good; the Subject Story threatens to replace these with even worse. Both are essentially species-level self-hatred complexes: humanity telling itself that its challenges can only be overcome in spite of its deeper nature, not because of it.
Instead, we need to see that it is the stories we have been inhabiting that have caused our problems, not our fundamental nature.
In her astonishing book Together, Ece Temelkuran comes to a similar conclusion in her pursuit of an alternative to Restaurant Hope, challenging her reader to preserve faith in humanity as the foundation of any meaningful work to build the future. In typically poetic prose, she brings this challenge to a head:
To be disappointed in humanity is such a banal reaction, and such heartbreak requires no labour at all. To love other humans is not a broken hearts club; it is a philosophical and political responsibility that should be worked on with all the faculties of the mind, sometimes pushing our mental and emotional skills to the limit. It is a perpetual political action and a moral stance that is not for the fainthearted. It is the most serious invitation to challenge the bloody history of humankind.
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This is the fourth piece in a writing exercise I’m undertaking at the start of 2024 to figure out what I see as the work that needs doing in the world, and the work I need to do. Check out the Introduction for a little more framing, and Clarity Part 1 and Part 2 for the first steps in the logic. If any of it sparks something in you, post a comment or email me, I’d love your thoughts. If you want to stay in touch, you can join my mailing list here.
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