THE MYTH GAP

With his extensive background as an activist and policy adviser to the British government and the UN, Alex is in a unique position to reflect on environmental and political developments concerning what he characterises as the crisis of unsustainability over the last 20 years. He asks the question: what happens when evidence and arguments aren't enough? The rise of the Tea Party, Brexit and the election of Donald Trump demonstrated to him that the thinking of NGOs (and Remain in the 2016 referendum) as insider technocrats with a fact-lead analysis was powerless against populist outsiders with a value-led story. Alex also observed first-hand how high-level UN negotiations collapsed into national interests where politicians are grandstanding for their own domestic electorates and revert to economic self-interest. The outcome of the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference made him and others realise that what was required was a mass movement to support a restorative economy, one with a shared culture and values and enabling congregating spaces with the aim of bringing others along rather than holding the high moral ground and polarising matters through enemy narratives. Alex also criticises what he calls Collapsitarianism as a self fulfilling prophecy brought about through passivity and fatalism.

Generically, myths are designed to explain the world and ourselves by providing a larger narrative and coherent story. Alex contends in his title that we are missing just such a myth to help create and shape our reality and sense of purpose. In the second part, he proposes five myths for a new century: a larger us, a longer now, a better good life, redemption and restoration. This involves extending our empathy horizon and a vision 'capable of achieving non-zero-sum outcomes at the global scale' (p. 74). He quotes Tony Leiserowitz referring to climate change (and one could extend this to environmental challenges in general): 'you almost couldn't design a problem that is a worse fit for our underlying psychology' - like frogs in slowly heating water, we fail to take the long-term seriously and react to immediate emergencies with short-term considerations. And as a species, we are probably as an adolescent stage. Moreover, as Jaron Lanier observes, 'the dominant story is machine-centric. It's technological determinism (p. 50). Prophets can play an important role in a narrative of redemption, as Alex observes, quoting Walter Brueggeman: they force people to face up to reality, help them deal with the corresponding despair and give them the hope for the future. Part of this hope lies in the centrality of restoration - sustainability is insufficient. Restoration is about 'healing, repairing, resurrecting environments and returning them to their natural state' (p. 73).

In formulating what he calls an Everlasting or Cosmic Covenant, Alex brings in the work of Margaret Barker on Jerusalem's lost First Temple with a corresponding loss of the goddess consort of Yahweh - she is Wisdom while the covenant 'is a vision of the unity of all things, and how the visible material world relates to another dimension of existence that unites all things into one divinely ordained system' (p. 83). Things fall apart when we have a science divorced from wisdom and a plundering economy exploiting the earth to the limit, giving rise to dysfunctional systems embodying structural and spiritual evil: as Acton famously said, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. A central concept is that of sacrifice leading to restoration, which is interestingly illustrated in the classic work by CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling. In the Hebrew tradition, every seventh day is a sabbath, every seventh year the land lies fallow and every 49th year there is a Jubilee acting as a major reset. Sacrifice acts as a driver of restoration where the covenant heals creation and brings it back into balance.

In spite of our technological capacities, we find ourselves 'in a situation of extraordinary vulnerability' as the events of the last few weeks have decisively demonstrated. We need to find a higher unity of purpose based on planetary rather than national identities, interests and values. This means becoming aware of the limitations of our current views and ways of thinking, as David Bohm articulated his concept of dialogue. Any potential mass movement would have to embody local as well as international elements in terms of community and a sense of belonging to a larger whole. Indeed, community is one of six themes proposed here, the others being personal transformation, social transformation, purpose finding, creativity and accountability. It remains to be seen whether we are capable in the short term of extending our boundaries and empathy horizons to include the whole of humanity, and this is where visionary leadership is essential, along with grassroots initiatives and pressure. Above all, we need to reimagine and re-articulate the future, which Alex characterises as Eden 2.0. Crucially, economic activity must sustain environmental health, as also articulated in the 2030 UN sustainable development goals. Revisiting the Earth Charter might also be a good starting point and those who would like to become more directly informed and involved can visit Alex's Collective Psychology project at www.collectivepsychology.org - overall, this a lucid and well argued contribution towards a collective narrative that can overcome the myth gap of the book's title.