I love this topic. There are a lot of pieces to it and it’s hard to wrangle all of it of course but I’ll just throw in some thoughts.

At the essence, to me this is how smaller stories inform greater stories, and how we can collaborate on living stories into new mythology. I think this topic strikes at the core of reality creation. There are three areas of study that are exciting to me on this:

  1. Future experiment: I’ve been dreaming up a collaboratively researched future story that is largely fiction (what else can it be?) but that is informed by inventors/social scientists/thinkers of a world 100 years into the future. In this world all problems are not solved of course, we are still human, but many of the ones that we struggle with now have moved along considerably. This includes energy, food, water and yes even racial relations. The main point of the experiment is to actually give our imaginations a chance to breathe into a future that is not, well, shitty. I have only gotten through the first chapter of Doug’s book but that is a great example of foundational research to inform how we can get through.
  2. Leadership Mythology Creation: I believe that the small stories inform the large stories. As such, a big part of my work is helping visionaries bring their greater work into being. It takes the form of a story-driven book, but nowadays what is a ‘book’ in the leadership world anyway, but a living collection of constantly unfolding stories and ideas that travel. I’m brewing up the idea of a more collective experience on this front, a legacy experience or ‘ethical will’ creation that brings our human lessons to the forefront in the form of story so we can see which ones are the most shared and which onesbubble/aggregate to the top.
  3. Smaller Reality Experiments. Belonging is essential for reality creation. The idea of ’Stop the Steal’ is a great example of reality creation and a reality split. What are the component parts of this story, and how has it taken off so incredibly? What does it feed, and what feeds it? Large media, small media, broken dreams, pioneering values, old stories, racial separations, the whole bag. We can see how realities split, so why can’t we get ahead of this?

Jay Golden, Chief Story Officer and Book Coach at Retellable


On Jun 16, 2021, at 8:27 AM, Douglass Carmichael wrote:

Ken writes What would it look like if we could source a bunch of these that would have the ability to wake different populations of people up and move them into a more coherent way of being that is congruent with creating a regenerative and ultimately thriving future for our species and the small planet we all share?”

The worry is that waking up different populations and getting to coherence contradict each other.

It's like we need a new kind of social science that can deal with leadership, hierarchy, the nature of groups, belief, myth, humanity past the dunbar number. I like Bruno Latour’s managing the critical zone, the narrow band of life and air that cover the earth at a thickness less that the skin on an apple and within which all known life in the universe is present. . Bt most social thinkers imply that if we do better there will be no losers. This just might be impossible. If so how to continue a public presence?


On Jun 16, 2021, at 8:08 AM, Ken Homer wrote

What would it look like if we could source a bunch of these that would have the ability to wake different populations of people up and move them into a more coherent way of being that is congruent with creating a regenerative and ultimately thriving future for our species and the small planet we all share?


OGM Belonging and Big Narrative

From Ken Homer Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 1109 PM