Control, And Other Illusions - Dark Mountain Project

[hatrack]

What if there was more than one story? What if there was more than one story about you: about your life, about who you are and what you do and where you came from? What if you told one story to your parents, say, and one to your boyfriend and another to your children? What if you told one story to your employer and one to your secret lover and one to your neighbour and one to the doctor and another to the postman? What if there was a story you told at parties and another you told at job interviews?

And what if all of these stories were true, but all were partial – all were designed to display a certain, favoured aspect of your self to a certain audience? And what if this selective communication was not conscious, not planned, not manipulative or cunning, but was what just seemed to happen when you opened your mouth? And what if everyone was doing it?

This is what we all do, every minute of every day, whether we know it or not. And what is true of our selves is also true of the culture we come from and have been raised within. Which story do you tell about civilisation? Do you tell the one about humankind’s long, slow, steady evolution from idiocy to enlightenment, or the one about the collapse of indigenous knowledge in the face of the onslaught of modernity? Do you tell the one about the wonders of modern dentistry or the one about soaring rates of clinical depression? Do you tell the one about the Clean Air Act or the one about climate change? Do you tell the one about the death of the peasantry and the theft of common land or the one about the unbeatable yields of genetically modified crops?

What do you like talking about? Poverty or poverty relief? Overconsumption or consumer choice? Literacy or language loss? Earth Day or ecocide? Democracy or corporate power? Twitter revolutions or children enslaved by Facebook? Do you tell different stories to different people? Do you tell different stories to yourself?

EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-04-29/control-and-other-illusions

[phantom power]

1. recommend

[hunter]

2. Ursula K. Le Guin -- Always Coming Home

Not sure why, but this essay evoked that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always_Coming_Home