How to De-Zombify People

An extraordinary imaginative power to reinvent ourselves is at large in the world, though it is hard to say how it will counteract the dead weight of neoliberalism, fundamentalisms, environmental destructions, and well-marketed mindlessness.

So if we find ourselves the inheritors of a political, economic and cultural narrative that is leading us well and truly in the wrong direction, then it appears we have little choice but to come together and collectively rewrite a more resonant human story. But how do we do this? What are the narratives that need replacing? And which new ones might

“How effectively does this story persuade?” Can we actually inspire people to better ideas and behavior by telling them that their future is nothing but a dystopia of environmental and social chaos?

Hollywood movies and too many government pandemic plans still presume that most of us are cowards or brutes, that we panic, trample each other, rampage, or freeze helplessly in moments of crisis and chaos. Most of us believe this, even though it is a slander against the species, an obliteration of what actually happens, and a crippling blow to our

frame the looming catastrophes on our doorstep as a collective call to adventure, an invitation to rediscover one another and in the process cultivate whole new ways of being.

The intersecting catastrophes unspooling all around us don’t offer an escape from reality, but an intensification of it. So we have a choice: (1) Accept this reality. Accept the full toxic soup of conditions we’ve put ourselves in, as well as the thick, messy, profoundly human dramas playing out amidst it. And awaken to the burdens — of grief, hope