OPINION: Creating a new story in Northern Ireland

DEVOLUTION in Northern Ireland is back up and running. Stormont is working again. Adults acting as adults at last, we hope! It’s amazing how the child in us can take centre-stage and dictate. Life in the North is a classic example of the vagaries of humanity and the human condition. It is society written large wherever there is conflict. Who is right? Who is wrong? All play the blame game.
Authors Brian McLaren and Gareth Higgins (a native of Northern Ireland) have some insights that could be useful to the politicians in the North as they get back to work. In their book, ‘The Seventh Story: Us, Them and The End of Violence’, McLaren and Higgins say there are seven ‘stories’ of being human. Gareth Higgins writes: “Human beings are storytellers. It’s how we make sense of everything around us, from whether or not we want to get up in the morning, to how we can contribute to world peace. So if you want to change your life, and if you want to change the world, you have to begin with stories.
“Currently, six primary stories shape our lives as individuals and as societies. They give our lives meaning, direction, and drive, even though many of us have never given them a name. As soon as we name them – domination, revolution, isolation, purification, accumulation, victimisation – we start to notice something: these stories do not work. Instead, they drive us apart, create more suffering, and fail to answer the question of how to make a better world. The sun is setting on our old stories.”
He claims there is a seventh story, one that is ‘misunderstood and hidden, but available to everyone … a story that upends what we think we know about religion, politics, economics, art, and even storytelling itself’.
We start out thinking that to rule over others is the way to be happy – domination (the first story). Invariably there is repression and that gives rise to revolution (the second story). Overthrowing the rulers (revolution) isn’t always a great idea because it often replaces one group of oppressors with another. This gives way to isolation (the third story).
Not having much luck in those quarters, people try an experiment: ‘merge’ the domination and isolation stories. This leads to purification (the fourth story). This experiment means they try to get rid of the people they don’t like, who look or sound different, or whose customs are not like theirs. That would ‘fix’ things.
Naturally, this leads to further unease and suffering. People then move to ‘accumulate’ things. These can be ‘toys…or nations’. There is no real difference! The only common denominator is that people continue to hurt each other through this focus on accumulation (the fifth story).
Another story is then created, victimisation (the sixth story). This is where people make sure that everyone knows ‘we are victims’. ‘We suffer because of our identity’. ‘No one has ever suffered as much as we have’. Even that story cannot last and fails.
All these stories fail because of a basic problem: human beings are being set up to compete against each other. That is not how humanity works. We are dependent, interdependent (and some, who acknowledge the spiritual dimension within us, would even say, we are also ‘deopendent’ - dependent on God.)
Reconciliation is the seventh story, and it the story we all need to be part of. All human beings are interdependent, not just on each other but also with the Earth. Reconciliation plays the same ‘game’ as the other stories, but with one major difference. We all still get to ‘win’, but not at the expense of others. Love is central. It is a path of openheartedness toward others. This story can never fail, unlike all the others.
We are tired of hierarchical structures, some on top, others on the bottom; one good, others bad. The comparison of opposites continues unabated. We think in terms of domination rather than dominion. In the Bible, humans were given ‘dominion’ not ‘domination’ over creation. Dominion, as in the creation story, is a permission-giving power. ‘Let there be light’.
We are created ‘in the image and likeness of God’, that’s why we have dominion, a partnership, with each other, the earth and all of creation. Let’s pray for ‘dominion’ in the North, living reconciliation. Israeli/Palestinian papers please copy.