Fresh Ideas: Becoming a story telling activist

Your brain, neuroscientists say, is wired for storytelling. Give it facts and it constructs a story. But what if the facts have changed, yet the story we tell ourselves stays the same?

On April 20, Naomi Klein, author of the best-seller “This Changes Everything,” spoke at the University of Nevada, Reno, and said our climate crisis today is the end result of clinging to an old story of “Mother Earth as mother lode.” Centuries ago we based capitalism on a cultural story of unlimited growth and today our outdated economic model — our old story — has us at war with life on Earth. What is desperately needed is broad-sweeping activism to get government to take action and “debates during which new stories can be told to replace the ones that have failed us.”

A year ago, though, in a Fresh Ideas column (April, 1, 2015), I took issue with Klein. In her book she stated, “It is not enough to focus on ourselves ... meditate and shop at the farmer’s market and stop driving ... it will never work,” yet I argued only through cultivating self-awareness can we dismantle the stories we tell ourselves. What I didn’t admit to was the real reason I took issue with Klein: I didn’t want to face my own personal stuck narrative of “I am not an activist.”

That night of her UNR speech, though, I could no longer hide. As she spoke of activism as our only saving grace, I fidgeted when my inner voice said, “But that’s not me.” As she showed slides of protestors (an enormous pod of kayakers blocking movement of an oil drilling rig) while explaining how activists have successfully prevented additional infrastructure lock-in to fossil fuels, I noticed how I listed my same lame excuses: I don’t have time, I’m not patient in groups, and I’m not an angry person. Even as she explained how current low crude oil prices have delayed the more environmentally damaging types of fossil fuel mining (tar sands and fracking) and how this is the perfect time to accelerate our “no” to fossil fuels, I assured myself I was doing enough (not using a clothes dryer in warm weather).

Ugh. My excuses glared at me. Still, I wasn’t ready to become an activist. It wasn’t until the end of her speech, when Klein said the new climate movement is one that understands a common vision that unites us, that a shared dream is far more effective than fighting for our differences, when I discovered why. When she described how Canadian climate organizations have created a “Leap Manifesto” to say “yes” to a vision of what we want our future to look like instead of “no” to the fear of where we are heading, suddenly, I became curious. What would a new economic model look like? How could our social systems support the earth rather than go to war with it? By using my imagination and creating a vision, I felt an eagerness to change, too. All I had to do was take my mind’s natural talent — storytelling — and use it!

Of course, my mind still prefers to travel its worn-out neural freeways. But, thanks to Klein, I now have an off-ramp, a “yes.” The facts are, the planet is heating up. The new cultural story is, if I act on behalf of Mother Earth, she reciprocates. To date, I’ve made a few small changes like moving Index 500 monies to impact investments and that’s helping me to write a new narrative of “I am an activist” instead of “I’m not.”

Kathy Walters, the mother of a teenage boy, works for Kirkwood Mountain Realty and lives in Gardnerville. Currently, she is working on her memoir “Enough.”