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When the stories a society shares are out of tunewith its circumstances, they can become self-limiting,even a threat to survival. That is our current situation.

DAVID KORTEN, The Great Turning¹

On May 7, 2001, journalists gathered for a press briefing at the White House. Ari Fleischer, President Bush’s press secretary, had nothing to announce that day but invited questions from the assembled crowd. Rising energy costs quickly became the lead topic, with one of the early questions evoking a strong response.

JOURNALIST: “Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?”

MR. FLEISCHER: “That’s a big no. The President believes that it’s an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life.”²

While presidents come and go, Mr. Fleischer’s “big no” remains a powerful force in our society. It is the voice that doesn’t question the way we live. This conviction grows out of a particular story about how things are in our world. By story, we don’t mean a work of fiction but rather the way we make sense of the events we see happening.

In this chapter we identify three stories being enacted in our time, as mentioned in the introduction. The first assumes that our society is on the right track and that we can carry on with business as usual. The second reveals the destructive consequences of the business-as-usual mode and the progressive unraveling of our biological, ecological, and social systems. The third is about the groundswell of response to danger and the multifaceted transition to a life-sustaining civilization. Recognizing that we can choose the story we live from can be liberating; finding a good story to take part in adds to our sense of purpose and aliveness. We will explore how these stories shape our response to global crisis.