[P2P-F] Fwd: Towards a New Myth - or no myth at all?

Thu Jun 14 07:51:41 CEST 2018

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <douglas at rushkoff.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 8:52 PM
Subject: Towards a New Myth - or no myth at all?
To: rushkoff at simplelists.com

I've been working hard with my Team Human team on podcasts, live events,
the Team Human book, and more.

We're doing a Team Human Live in NYC on June 21
<https://humanteamlive.splashthat.com> with Mark Filippi, founder of
Somaspace <http://somaspace.org> and the guy who showed me how our
neurotransmitters change over the four phases of every moon cycle. Time is
not generic, and certain weeks are better for some activities than others.
This ain't astrology, but chronobiology. It's free for Team Human
subscribers, $20 for all others. Info: https://humanteamlive.splashthat.com

We're doing a Team Human Live in London on July 9
<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/douglas-rushkoff-pat-cadigan-rupert-sheldrake-team-human-live-tickets-45192464879>
with queen of cyberpunk Pat Cadigan and biologist Rupert Sheldrake. Pat
Cadigan birthed the cyberpunk genre, and Rupert Sheldrake discovered
morphogenesis. Produced in collaboration with Virtual Futures. Free for
Team Human subscribers, 20quid for all others. Info: https://www.eventbrite.
co.uk/e/douglas-rushkoff-pat-cadigan-rupert-sheldrake-team-
human-live-tickets-45192464879

We're doing a Team Human Live in NYC on July 19 with Parker Posey, to
celebrate her new book You're on an Airplane
<https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/youre-on-an-airplane-parker-posey/1127118914?ean=9780735218192&st=PLA&sid=BNB_DRS_New+Core+Shopping+Top+Margin+EANs_00000000&2sid=Google_&sourceId=PLGoP210215&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4f70j6XR2wIVWFuGCh0qMwR3EAQYAiABEgIezfD_BwE>,
as well as her new Netflix series, Lost in Space. Ticket info TK. Free to
Team Human subscribers.

The Team Human book - a manifesto! - will be coming out in January 2019.
Yes, you can pre-order from Amazon
<https://www.amazon.com/Team-Human-Douglas-Rushkoff/dp/039365169X> or any
independent bookseller through Indiebound
<https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393651690> right now, which helps a
lot. The price will be lower/discounted by the time the book comes out and
you get charged. It is gorgeous and fun and inspiring and a plan of action
to save and celebrate our species.

The Team Human podcast <http://teamhuman.fm> is getting picked up by more
radio stations every month. We welcome XRAY in Portland to the Team Human
family. Please come to the website, click on Support, and join us. If you
sign up at the $25 level or more, you'll get an autographed copy of Google
Bus now, and an autographed Team Human book, too, before it's generally
available!

And now, for something new. I'm going to be sharing my weekly Team Human
monologues here, but in print form. I hope you enjoy them. They
top-of-mind, most honest ruminations. This is me being vulnerable.

DO WE NEED A NEW MYTH, OR NO MYTH?

This is the true, biggest challenge I’m facing as a writer and thinker.
Myth: Do we need a new one, or do we need to dispense with them altogether?

I used to direct theater. I left the theater because I got increasingly
dissatisfied with its reliance on stories with clear beginnings, middles,
and ends. Aristotle's narrative arc with its rising tension, crisis, and
catharsis wasn't just predictable, but dangerously limiting. Things look
bad, but as long as you accept the hero's solution, everything gets solved
and you can go back to sleep. Crisis, climax, and sleep - the much-too-male
approach to everything from sex to religion, capitalism to communism.

I left theater for the net, which seemed to offer a more open-ended,
connected form of sense-making. So I wrote about that, and the
possibilities this opened for everything from economics to society. In my
books, I usually tried crashing a set of myths - but then usually offer
some alternative at the end. So in my religion book I smashed the myth of
apocalypse and salvation, but offered an alternative path toward consensus,
progressive collaboration. In another, I exposed the fallacy of
hand-me-down truths, but then offered an alternative of collective reality
creation. In a graphic novel, I undermined the authority of the storyteller
(me) and then have a character hand a pencil to the reader as if through
the page. In a book on Judaism, I smashed the idolatry that infected
Judaism, but promote a new, provisional mythology of communal sense making.
In my books on economics, I crash the cynically devised mythologies of
capitalism and corporatism, but offer a new one of circular economics and
sharing. In my Team Human podcast, I regularly crash the myth of the
survival of the fittest individual, but offer a new evolutionary history of
interspecies cooperation.

Better myths, like cultural operating systems, should yield better results.
But if they are all myths, are they all ultimately destructive?

Even science falls into the trap. We get an idea - say, that agriculture
was a wrong turn - and then “see” evidence that hunter-gatherers worked
fewer hours than we did after the invention of agriculture. I have even
quoted this ‘fact’ from neuorscientist/sociologist Robert Sapolsky, and
others, before realizing it’s based not on science but a story.

People and institutions come to me to help develop a new myth for 21st
Century, for digital times. But mythology feels more like the product of a
television media environment - imagery and hallucination. The digital media
environment is about fact. Memory. It all takes place on memory. That’s why
we’re fighting less over who believes what, than what really happened.
Where did humans come from? Are things getting better or worse? And the
myths are no longer adequate. The stories are not up to the task.

I think Team Human’s job may be to find ways to work together without an
overriding mythological construct. We should do something in a new way
because it’s just better, on an experiential, practical, or scientific
level. Growing food in a certain way - not because it’s connected to Mother
Gaia, but because it keeps the soil alive. Not a metaphor. Reality.

If we are destined to think and communicate in myths - if that’s our nature
- then we can at least accept that we all use stories to understand the
world. Understanding another person means listening to their story - and
sharing one’s own - but accepting that both are just stories. Myths are
ways of connecting the dots between the moments of human experience. They
create a sense of continuity and purpose, even though there may be none. Or
myths may help each of us trace a path of cause-and-effect through a maze
of reality that is so interconnected it would just overwhelm us to
comprehend it in its entirety. We each make our own myth to explain the
journey we happened to take. But it's more of a convenience than a reality.
And we can look back on our lives, and come up with a new myth to explain
it. The myth is not for someone else, it's for ourselves.

Of course we can still listen to one another’s perceptions and sense-making
- and then gain some empathy for why they’re thinking and acting the way
they do - without necessary believing any of it. And, maybe more
importantly, without trying to get them to exchange their mythology for
ours. Understanding other people's myths, unconditionally and without being
threatened by them, has helped keep me sane during this particularly
tumultuous cultural moment.

So what’s Team Human’s job: to come up w a new myth? Or break them all?
Whatever we decide, it should be a conscious choice.

This essay started as a monologue on TeamHuman.fm. Please come listen!

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