 The poet Muriel Rookheiser said the universe is made of stories and Stories are really something that we're made of too We tell them about our yesterdays and our tomorrows and they tell us what to expect from life and from other people and Somehow we take all of these different narratives that were part of and we weave them into something that helps us understand Why things are the way they are I'm here today to tell you about one story that is changing everything and how that one story is Creating what I call a monoculture Our personal stories don't exist in a vacuum they're actually surrounded by larger stories the stories of the culture and These larger cultural stories are something that we're hardly conscious of because we take them so for granted But they're actually a hidden infrastructure that informs our lives and at certain points in history One of these larger cultural stories takes over the others So in the Middle Ages we could say that the dominant story was about religion and by the 17th century We could say that the story was about science, but in our time the story is economic Because of the rise of this economic story six parts of our lives are being fundamentally reshaped our work our Relationships our communities our physical and spiritual health our education and our creativity are changing or have already changed It's one story that's changing everything When most people hear that today's dominant story is economic they tend to think that means the story is about money But the economic story is actually a nuanced web of beliefs and assumptions about three things Who you are as a human being what the world is like and how you and that world interact So point number one who does the economic story say you are While among other things the story says you're somebody who's self-interested and rational You're constantly calculating what is and is not to your best advantage Ideally you're also Entrepreneurial you're somebody who adds value wherever you go and you are an individual the story does not see you as a group member with group responsibilities and Point number two what is the world like well in this story the world is a world of markets and these markets are supposed to be able to operate without limits and Practically that means that all kinds of things that used to be buffered from markets things like Healthcare the arts religion education and government are brought inside of markets So if we look at education We once thought of it as a public good a service to humanity a cornerstone of democracy But in the monoculture it becomes the education services industry. It's something for us to buy and sell It's a competitive advantage and a private and personal investment Take the environment. We once thought the oceans and the forests were intrinsically Valuable maybe because we thought they were beautiful or we thought other species had a right to coexist with us But in the monoculture nature becomes Ecosystem services and we put price tags on those services things like trees water and air And then we either argue that we can't afford to save the environment or that we ought to save the environment because it pays to save it Important number three. How does this story say you and the world interact? While the story says our relationships with other people are competitive Impersonal and transactional It's really a relationship between buyer and seller and that means we're supposed to monetize our connections and build our personal brands And we can tell how we're doing by constantly comparing ourselves to everybody else Now as a result of all of this we are slowly losing our ability to express ourselves in non-economic terms We are losing the diversity of our values We are losing these other languages that we once spoke in different areas of our lives the language of family and community of Creativity of the common interest and the public good and that's how one story is changing everything The challenge is to learn how to recognize the economic story in action Then we can decide whether the monoculture will keep shaping our lives or whether as Tolstoy said We're ready to throw off our habitual path and recognize that we are made of more than one story. Thank you