Jean Houston

The beginning of a New Culture - the harvest of the genius of the human race…

I

once asked an old Australian aborigine woman how we humans differed from wallaby, and kangaroo and Emu bird. “Why mate, she replied, “We’re the ones who can tell the stories about all the others.” She then proceeded to tell me marvelous tales about the Dream Time past when the creative spirits moved over the land, shaping it, naming it, calling it into being, and generally getting it ready for the human populations which they were soon to create.

We understand why the story teller has occupied so potent a role in almost every society. She is a midwife of souls, the teller of truths so large that only story can contain them.

Story telling is the oldest form of teaching, and the basic vehicle for the transmission of culture from one generation to another. Jesus taught through parables. The Hindu lives in a culture knit by the great stories of the Ramayana. The Sufi is trained through the stories of Nasrudin. All of these great teaching stories are available on multiple levels, simple enough for the child, yet complex enough to engage the deepest levels of reflection.

When story is present, it sustains and shapes our emotional attitudes, provides us with life purposes, and energizes our everyday acts, consecrates our values. It provides both context and the momentum that comes from meaning. Everything has a certain level of coherence when the great story is present.

Now, the traditional story has become nonfunctional, and it works only in a limited orbit. We see its dissolution in every phase of our lives, especially those that have to do with wisdom and values.

And the quickie replacements of modern programs are tangential, ephemeral, incapable of sustaining the life situations that we need.

Clearly we need a new story, a new set of orderings, a deepening of our values.

Several months ago, I took a group of my students to explore the temples and traditions of Ancient Egypt. What surprised us most was that when we left the ancient temples we were greeted everywhere

by Egyptians beaming at us and chanting, “ObamaObamaObama!”

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Even the French tourists came up to us, heartily kissing us on each cheek, and with rare benevolence telling us, “We love you Americans again…ObamaObamaObama!”

Upon returning home I was on a teleconferene call with 20 of some of the world’s most gifted innovators and cognoscenti, and the gist of their remarks was “ObamaObamaObama!”

Now, I know as well as you that the larger story here is not about a man, but rather about the sense of a new story having entered into

The author with the Dalai Lama

time; a door in reality has opened, a possibility has appeared, the world just might have turned a corner.

What do we do about it?

By exploring new ways of being in both values and aesthetic forms, human development and the genius of culture in ways that point us to our full engagement as players in the new story.

For, if we can continue to remember and value story, then, in spite of all our challenges, there is the possibility of a release so profound that deeper structures of consciousness are tapped in both psyche and society, and a new pattern of connections emerges. This is the time, as William Irwin Thompson says, of, “The prophetic moment, the annunciation of a new myth and the beginning of a new culture.”

The culture of this new story is one that I call “In the midst of the turmoil of too-rapid change, an extraordinary light has arisen.” Factors unique in human history are poised to help us become more than we thought we ever could be. We glimpse in this new century the coming of a planetary society which heralds the end of ancient enmities and the birth of new ways of using our common humanity and its various cultures. In fact, we will need a gathering of the potentials of the whole human race and the particular genius of every culture if we are going to survive our time. I have spent close to 40 years studying the nature of the human potential and about 30 studying cultural potentials and harvesting them for use in education, health care, social welfare, personal growth, work, art, and creativity. I have found that challenges that arise in one culture can often be met by applying strategies developed in another.

This is a tremendous change, and once it is in full flower, the world will have turned a corner. This is the first time in human history wherein we have the harvest of the genius of the human race.

In the format of our future Fine Art periodicals, we will explore and give practical advice in discovering both skills and inner development that will allow us to face the challenges of a time unique in human history where what we do and how we act can make a difference as to whether, as a species, we grow or die.

Jean Houston in Indonesia

This does not mean that we are going to heal the hurts of nations. But it does mean that we can offer you liberating thoughts, ways and activities that encourage you, the reader, to think and act in ways beneficial to both self and society. In words and images, we will present a full spectrum of ways designed to evoke new capacities in at least four areas: sensory and physical, psychological, mythic and symbolic as well as spiritual. We hope to entice you into high sensory development, radical empathy, luminous intelligence and a polyphrenic nature (enjoying and utilizing the many selves you contain within you).

We hope that the values offered here will stimulate a passion for the possible and a capacity to take on the tasks of a world in transition.

Welcome to the new story.

— JEAN HOUSTON

“Her mind is a national treasure.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

www.jeanhouston.org

Dr. Jean Houston – scholar, philosopher and researcher in human capacities – is considered to be one of the foremost visionary thinkers and doers of our time.

She is the founder of a program of cross-cultural mythic and spiritual studies – dedicated to empowering change agents and people around the world by teaching history, philosophy, the new physics, psychology, anthropology, myth, and the many dimensions of our human potential. She is also the founder of training programs in social artistry which enables leaders to extend their own development so as to more adequately deal with the social challenges of today’s world.

The author of some 26 books, she has worked in over one hundred countries, holding conferences and training seminars with government leaders, educational and business institutions and organizations. As a consultant to the United Nations she brings training to leaders in many countries, helping to produce new pioneers – Social Artists, working on the frontiers of the emerging global society while deepening their own cultural and artistic values.

Buckminster Fuller called her mind “a national treasure.”

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