The Myths That Rule Us

Re-Discovering Optimism in Challenging Times

"Myth is the way we make sense in a senseless world." -Rollo May

My last piece explored how our mind makes a mental model of our world based on experience and expectations, and how that model dulls our awareness and keeps us from being more immersed in our experience, limiting our perception and creativity.

In this piece I’m going to explore how many of the perspectives we adopt are unhelpful or even disempowering, and that we can critically examine our views and intentionally adopt myths that better serve us.

I spend some time exploring the bleak realities we face today, which I feel is important, even though these perspectives sent me into a spiral of despair. But if you keep reading I share how I regained my inspiration and optimism, in spite of the seemingly insurmountable challenges we face (feel free to skip down to the Re-Discovering Optimism part if you’ve had enough to despair about lately).

The Myths That Rule Us

Myths are often thought of as fictions, but here I’m using the term as it was originally intended; a myth is a story that helps us make sense of the world and our place in it.

I use the term myth here with no regard for the objective truth of it. Instead I am staying these are the stories I encountered in my life that helped me (and others) make sense of the world we are living in.

The Myth of Progress

I remember in grade school I was taught what I like to call The Myth of Progress; that we are constantly advancing in many ways and our quality of life is increasingly improving; that we are learning from history and the world is becoming more just. In some ways this is true, in other ways not — but this was very much my belief in early life and it also represented the beliefs of my culture.

Now I do believe that we are still progressing in many important ways. There is no doubt that science, technology, medicine, and other important disciplines are continuing to progress and have positive impacts on the quality of life for many.

I also believe that we are generally progressing in a psycho-spiritual sense. That there is some sort of psychological or spiritual evolution happening, although not nearly as quickly as many hope (but still quite quickly in the grand scheme of things).

In this sense I am a big picture optimist, yet I believe we must make dramatic change to avert large scale disasters and realize a better world.

My goal here is not to convince people of the problems we face, and I assume most readers are somewhat aware, so I will only briefly explore them and offer further resources that helped shape my view of these problems and their potential solutions.

My real goal in writing this piece is to offer hope and inspiration for all of us to stay mindful of what’s important and keep working towards a better world despite the scale of the problems we face.

Realities of the Climate & Energy Crisis

The Myth of Progress first started to break down for me when I began to learn more about the climate crisis. At first I was skeptical because there was debate and mixed opinions and the consequences of climate change felt somewhat vague or abstract.

But many of the hard facts made it very real for me. It is estimated that about 150 species go extinct every day. Even if it was only a fraction of this, it would still be an alarming amount.

Deforestation destroys entire ecosystems, and is happening worldwide. I find this loss alone to be truly heartbreaking. Forest fires are also getting worse year after year, further destroying forests and biodiversity.

It was actually Daniel Pinchbeck — an author best known for his writings on psychedelics, spirituality, culture, and prophecy — who helped me realize the scope of the climate crisis. A rare voice of grounded pragmatism in the new age spiritual scene, he relentlessly researched the climate crisis and explored innovative ideas on how we can restructure our systems to avoid the coming catastrophes.

This was the basis of his 2017 book How Soon Is Now: From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation. I bought this book the day it was released and loved it, hoping it would inspire meaningful change. Unfortunately the masses weren’t so receptive, as many mainstream outlets refused to review it because it didn’t fit neatly into traditional book categories (and also likely because it is sounding the alarm on an issue most people would rather not think about).

I theorize that one of Pinchbeck’s issues is that he is often too far ahead of his time. He published Breaking Open The Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism in 2002, well before psychedelics reemerged as a hot topic in popular culture.

In the case of How Soon Is Now?, I also imagine people being far more receptive when climate and energy issues start to impact us in ways we can no longer deny and we begin to collectively feel the urgency of our predicament.

I won’t get into the full scope of the climate catastrophe here, but if you want to explore the depth of the predicament we’re in you can check out Jem Bendell’s fantastic book Breaking Together: A Freedom Loving Response to Collapse. Jem is a climate scientist who presented at The United Nations and Davos conferences but was critical of the climate science today (he claims only scientists claiming optimistic outcomes are being funded and platformed) so he put together a multidisciplinary team to look at the hard facts and the results are not very optimistic (reader be warned).

Nate Hagens also has a compelling thesis about our growth being tied to energy surplus, and that we are heading toward a major reorganization due to the unsustainable and temporary nature of our current growth-based system, which has been propped up by cheap fossil fuel energy. He has a fantastic podcast called The Great Simplification that explores environmental, social, and global issues in depth. Hagens makes a compelling argument for the our predicament in this 45 min talk (also here’s a 4 min summary of his thesis, and here’s a 32 min video giving a more thorough overview of his argument, but I find that the 45 min talk linked presents more compelling data to back up his thesis).

The Rise in Inequality

Aside from the climate crisis, inequality is increasing globally. In the 80s a public school teacher or bus driver earned enough to support a family and eventually own their home. Now that would be impossible. Gary Stevenson of Garys Economics explains what is happening economically here; essentially the ultra wealthy are able to buy up all the assets and avoid taxes, leaving the tax burden primarily on the middle class, even though the vast majority of wealth is being hoarded by the ultra rich.

Despite the worst wage to cost of living ratio in modern history, the stock market has still been trending upwards and many experts are predicting a coming recession and even a likely depression, in which case things would be much worse for working class people.

The trends here are clear; our quality of life is declining quickly and Gary is a clear voice addressing this issue thoroughly and pragmatically. His understanding of economics and ability to explain what’s happening and what needs to be done about it are very compelling and worthy of consideration.

“People are at best an asset to be exploited, and at worst a cost to be endured. Everything is optimized for capital, until it runs out of world to consume.”

― Douglas Rushkoff, Team Human

Seeing Our Predicament Clearly

As I learned more about the realities of the world, I became less optimistic about the future. This shift from optimism to pessimism impacted me dramatically. I lost a great deal of my drive and ambition. Everything felt gloomy.

I’ve noticed that older generations still largely cling to The Myth of Progress, and I think many use it to justify inaction. They think the setbacks we’ve seen are only minor or temporary. They believe we will overcome these hiccups, that technology will eventually solve all the problems it created, and we will be back to progress shortly.

In this way The Myth of Progress is actually detrimental to our progress. It’s a delusion that keeps us from seeing the gravity of the situation we are now in. The younger generations seem more attuned to reality, for the most part. It’s hard to convince them that things will be OK when things are clearly not OK.

As uncomfortable as this is, we need it. For us to create a better world for everyone we need to change many systems and give up many comforts and conveniences (at least in the short term). This is the hard truth of change — that it’s not easy and requires compromise. People rarely change when they are comfortable; it is discomfort that motivates us to take action, and much action needs to be taken.

The trap here is to end up in feelings of powerlessness and despair. I’ve spent my time stuck there, and only found myself coming out of this space recently.

In retrospect I think I needed time to process this grief. To accept the degree to which mass injustice and suffering will continue and even increase. It’s hard to fully fathom.

I’ve come to realize that if I expect things to be better around the next corner, if I put too much hope in a long-shot politician or social movement, I will inevitably be disappointed.

At one point I really believed a mass “awakening” would happen. This reflected my own “awakening” — a shift in values resulting largely from psychedelic experiences — where I decided our collective wellbeing was more important than my own individualistic comforts.

I was ready and willing to work towards a better world. I was game to give up my comforts and personal ambitions, exchanging them for goals of collective wellbeing. I believed that together we could advert disaster and realize a sort of utopian vision. I held this vision and it carried me for some time.

But inevitably reality hits. Eventually I couldn’t ignore the depth of our predicament.

When people feel a deep sense of lack — lacking financial security, lacking security in resources, lacking meaningful connection, lacking meaningful work or employment, lacking self-determination, lacking community, lacking cultural engagement, lacking a sense of belonging, lacking love — we end up in a scarcity mindset and we fixate on meeting our own individualistic needs.

Like a squirrel knowing that winter is coming, we collect and hoard nuts. I see this everywhere; an uncertain future leads people to focus on accumulating resources to ensure their survival.

This has resulted in a culture of hyper-individualism. We can’t trust anyone else to take care of us, so we need to take care of ourselves. There’s no safety net. If I get sick and can’t work, I can’t trust my community to take care of me. And that’s no slight at my community, I’m sure they’d love to if they could, but they’re so busy trying to keep their own heads above water, they don’t have the time, energy, and resources to care for those in need.

“The myth of individuality made capitalism possible and has sustained it to this day.”

― Douglas Rushkoff, Team Human

But what about the ultra wealthy? Those who do have the resources to care for others?

Well it seems like they suffer from the same lack. Not a lack of resources, but just a feeling of not having or being enough, or some general fear of the future that drives them to keep accumulating more power and resources.

I’ve come to see that success, power, and validation give a high similar to drugs. You get a hit, it feels good, but the high quickly fades, leaving a desire for more.

The high of power is so intoxicating that nearly everyone gets hooked. When you’re hooked on power, your biggest fear is losing your power, because it’s the only thing that makes you feel good.

People ask why these billionaires need to keep accumulating wealth when they have more than they could ever spend? It’s not about having what they need, they are hooked on the high of power, and life becomes one big power game.

Carl Jung had a hot take on this:

"Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other."

Jung is implying that if there was more love there would be more sharing and less hoarding of resources, less desire to fill an emotional void with the high of power accumulation (or at least that’s how I read it). But this fear of lack, fear of not having enough, fear that things can go wrong at any minute so we must hoard what we can… this fear keeps us from opening up to the possibility of love.

It’s a valid fear. I know people who have opened their hearts and wallets to communities or meaningful projects, only to be swarmed by vultures, taking them for everything they can.

This individualistic survivalist mindset is so deeply rooted, so evident everywhere we look, one can’t really be blamed for believing that that’s just the nature of the world; a kill or be killed type mindset inevitably prevails and individuals feel justified in their ruthless and selfish hoarding of resources.

Re-Discovering Optimism

All this paints a bleak picture. The thing is though, it’s all fiction.

It’s not fiction in the sense that these things aren’t true. But these are all narratives we’ve constructed based on selective information.

Reality is in fact far too complex to sum up into narratives. Any stories we tell ourselves are made up. It’s a choice in the sense that we select what facts to piece together to create a narrative.

This accounts for how people or groups can have such dramatically opposing perspectives on issues. It isn’t that one view is more or less moral (although there often are objective moral discrepancies), it’s that each side has a narrative that justifies their stance.

While I see all these narratives I’ve presented above as important and more or less true, all stories are partial truths. The problem is, when a compelling narrative really takes hold of us, it feels anything but partial.

“Psychology shows us that our fictions are not less real than our so-called realities. They are the images we live by.” -James Hillman, Healing Fiction

The stories we tell ourselves rule us. Whether it’s stories of sin and salvation, stories of competition and success, stories of love and connection, stories of awakening and self-realization, or stories of doom and gloom; these are all narratives we make up to make sense of our lives and the world.

It’s become increasingly obvious to me that we cannot cohesively grasp the full complexity of the world (try as I might), and so we do our best by creating myths; stories that guide us in understanding our world and creating a sense of personal and collective meaning.

These myths come to rule our lives. They operate as the framework from which we evaluate every experience and inevitably make value judgements, on ourselves as well as others.

Now I think the narratives I’ve laid out in this piece carry immense value because they present important issues that pose real threat to our collective wellbeing. But if I only hold these myths, if I only live by these stories, I find myself feeling disempowered and apathetic.

If our myths are meant to serve us in creating meaning, these stories only do half the job. Sure, they present the problems I feel need our collective attention, but they are all lacking something that is fundamentally important; that our myths should not disempower us and rob our lives of meaning, that they should empower and inspire and support us in feeling meaningfully connected to the world.

"People don't have ideas, ideas have people." -Carl Jung

It’s for this reason that I’ve started to intentionally weave my own myths to elevate my spirit and inspire me to act in meaningful ways. Instead of focusing on the scale of the problem we face, I focus on where I have impact and also pull inspiration from other people and movements enacting meaningful change.

A pragmatic, well-balanced view of the world only does me so much good. I also need to see things in a way that imbues my life with meaning; I need myths that uplift my spirit and inspire me to action.

I choose to see myself as part of an informal network of change makers. I look at those caring for the vulnerable, building community around meaningful values, practicing compassion and kindness, and standing up for what’s right — and I choose to feel a sense of camaraderie with them.

I don’t worry too much about the big problems that I can’t impact; instead I focus on where I do have impact, and trust in my fellow compassionate humans to do the same. For every challenge we face, there are people somewhere doing something about it.

Instead of feeding into the myths of the problems, I’m feeding the myths that are part of the solutions.

“being human is a team sport.” -Douglas Rushkoff, Team Human

Now of course the scale of the challenges we face and the mass complicity in destructive and oppressive systems does not naturally imbue optimism. I know that we aren’t going to turn things around overnight. But however long it takes — even if it takes generations — I want to be part of that movement.

When I truly align with the good, when I resist excessive selfishness and act with kindness and compassion, I feel aligned with my values and this gives way to a sense of integrity. I’ve come to learn that there is in fact no better feeling than that — to simply know that one is doing the right thing for the collective good. To know that one’s actions are aligned with compassion for all beings.

Being in integrity is a subtle feeling, and yet it is very significant. It is perhaps less exciting, but far more fulfilling, than the pursuit of power. Those intoxicated by the pursuit of status and power are unlikely to discover this truth.

Living in a way that’s aligned with my values, genuinely caring about others, and having my actions reflect that, brings a sense of peace to my being. This isn’t some grandiose thing, I’m not making huge personal sacrifices, but I do my best to act compassionately, to care for and support those I cross paths with, to not do harm, and to act thoughtfully and responsibly.

I’m not perfect but I don’t beat myself up for my faults. I just simply try to do the right thing, empathize with others, and own up to and learn from my mistakes and shortcomings.

You see, compassion is a win-win. When we practice compassion, we have a positive impact on others while also feeling better ourselves. The Dalai Lama said:

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."

While on some level this is simple, on anther level it’s quite difficult. It is the nature of our mind to judge and blame others; to point fingers at those we believe are responsible for our pain or even the pain in the world, stoking our righteous anger.

We see this pendulum swinging back and forth, between liberal and conservative rulers and governments, each blaming the other for the worlds problems.

In Buddhism this is call Samsara. It’s the cycle of suffering. We all have reasons to be angry, and when we vilify and wish harm on others we feel justified. But that only creates further separation and polarization, leading to never-ending conflicts we are too entrenched in to ever resolve.

“What we are, the world is. If we are greedy, envious, violent, nationalistic, the world is that. The world is not separate from us. To bring about a radical change in the world, we must begin with ourselves.” -Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti had a radical take on this. That peace is only possible in the world when we find peace within ourselves. He claimed that all violence is the result of inner conflict, and if we want a better world, we must work first to create more harmony in ourselves.

In Buddhism this is practiced by wishing compassion for our “enemies”. Jesus too taught to love thy enemies and suggested we pray for those who persecute us.

When you recognize the cause and effect nature of violence and persecution, it becomes obvious that the only way to end these things is to resist stoking the righteous anger within and instead move towards empathy, forgiveness, understanding, and compassion (this was the basis of my previous piece Political Anxiety and Creating A Better Future).

Making a better world for everyone begins with overcoming our own judgments and working towards being more empathetic, understanding, and compassionate.

As we practice non-judgment and compassion we become more self-less. Our thoughts and actions shift away from worrying about our own wellbeing and towards the wellbeing of others.

There is in fact a great relief as we learn to be more self-less. Buddhism teaches that much of our suffering and feelings of isolation or disconnection are the result of our identification with a sense of self. The less we feed into this identity, the more free we become.

“Authentic spirituality is not about accumulating knowledge, but about shedding the layers of illusion.” -Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

One of the greatest things we can do to challenge the primacy of the self is to act compassionately. To do something for another without the expectation of anything in return. The more selflessly we act, the more selfless we become.

Ultimately the most meaningful change we can make, both in ourselves and the world at large, is to move away from individualistic or tribal thinking/values and to care for the wellbeing of the world as an undivided whole.

I know we are far from this goal, but I truly believe this is the trajectory we are on; that one day the feeling of collective care will be strong enough that there will be no more feelings of lack.

The conflict and violence we are seeing today is disheartening but try not to get overwhelmed by the scale of the issues we face, as that doesn't do anyone any good, and instead focus on the areas you have impact. Look for ways to practice kindness and compassion, as even the smallest acts of genuine care ripple outward and inward in ways we may never fully comprehend.

I've learned that the myths we choose to live by determine not just how we see the world, but how we show up in it. When I shifted from dwelling on narratives of collapse and despair to embracing stories of connection and collective care, I didn't become naive or ignore reality — I became more effective. I could see the problems clearly while also maintaining the energy and hope needed to be part of the solutions.

The future remains uncertain. The challenges we face are real and significant. But I believe that within each of us lies an innate capacity for compassion that, when awakened and practiced, can transform not only our own experience but contribute to the healing of our world.

This isn't wishful thinking — it's a conscious choice of which myth to live by. And in choosing myths that serve our highest potential rather than our deepest fears, we create space for the very transformation we most need.

The world doesn't need us to be perfect. It needs us to be present, compassionate, and willing to act from our deepest values despite uncertainty. In doing so, we become part of the story of healing rather than the story of harm.