An Introduction
[intro music, first variation of Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition]
Hello, and welcome to Negotiating Reality! I’m your host, Eric Hekler.
If you’ve ever had that nagging sense that something in our culture is, well, off — but struggle to articulate exactly what it is, I hear you! What is going on right now?!
If you are feeling that way, you’re in the right place! And probably losing sleep. But mostly, you’re in the right place.
Here, we won’t JUST wallow in existential dread, though, honestly, sometimes sadness, grief, confusion, anger, and some good old fashion schadenfreude ARE absolutely legitimate feelings.
That said, we’re ALSO here to make sense of things and to overcome the temptation to just give up.
Because let’s be honest: We are living in a time when everything that once seemed solid is unraveling, from our civic institutions to our relationship with nature to our spiritual moorings. If it feels like reality itself is up for negotiation, that’s because, right now, it is.
But here’s the twist: As I look around, I can’t help but think that we’ve got the wisdom we need to navigate this mess—it’s just scattered across history, disciplines, and cultures and shrouded from us by our own confident ignorance, emotional blindness, and good bit of addiction to want to get more from less.
The goal of this space is to unearth, gather, organize, and put that wisdom to work. Think of it as a giant, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural lost-and-found for the values, knowledge, skills, and practices we need to get through a crisis era together.
If history has taught us anything, though, it’s the value of confronting deep contradictions through equal parts seriousness and humor. We’re here to be thoughtful, not dull. Because if we can’t laugh when confronted with our own absurdity, then what’s the point?
[song from Pictures at an Exhibition]
How This Podcast Works
Right now, this podcast is structured around two main types of episodes:
Aphorism Episodes: These episodes center around a potent little phrase or insight—an aphorism. Think of something like Robin Wall Kimmerer’s "All flourishing is mutual." I’ll unpack the aphorism’s meaning, provide context, and explore how it might apply to our current moment from my perspective (and, as a bit of foreshadowing, I’m going to do this not once but twice in this very episode, stay tuned!).
Negotiation Episodes: After an aphorism episode, I’ll invite people to negotiate. This will include people I reference and some who disagree. I will also hopefully have some of you listeners—to negotiate with together. With all guests, we’ll discuss things like: Where does the idea hold up? Where does it fail? What are its limits? What are better ideas? Why? And, critically, based on these ideas, what should we be DOING now. If you want to negotiate, pitch an idea! Seriously (but not too seriously)!
Beyond the podcast, we’ll extend these conversations into online forums, chats, and discussions on Substack for those of you who want to join in but don’t want to get in on a full episode. I’m also creating text-only posts that go deeper into topics that are touched upon in each podcast for those of you who want to dork out with me (and, yes, I LOVE to dork out, so anyone who wants to go there, let’s do it!). To learn more about these extra features, please visit my substack page at negotiatingreality.substack.com
How’s that sound? Good?
If not, totally cool! Probably best for you to stop now and thanks for exploring this!
I wish you all the best in navigating this moment! Truly!
If this does appeal to you, great! Let’s do this thing!
Next step before the first aphorism? Some guiding principles.
[intro music, first variation of Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition, continuing]
Guiding Principles
1. This is a No-Pressure Zone.
This space is about good-faith conversations with a splash of persuasion and dramatic flair; not a place of coercion or manipulation. If we end up agreeing on something, it’s because we’ve actually done the work—not because I pulled some Jedi mind trick on you. (Always found that trick to be both super-cool and super-creepy at the same time, but maybe that’s just me).
2. Consent Over Consensus.
Rather than forcing agreement, I aim for a zone of tolerance where we can acknowledge differences without rejecting each other outright. Consensus is the altar of perfection we seem to be killing ourselves on right now; consent is our good enough savior!
3. Play Freely, Conclude Carefully.
Academia and public discourse alike can fall in love with abstract ideas (myself included!). Here, we embrace playfulness as a tool to keep us real —we invite laughter as a reminder that nobody has an airtight grip on reality (least of all, me). With this, we will use laughter and playfulness to help us see when we are mistaking symbols and representations of reality as reality itself. We’ll also use play as a way to explore alternatives. To help us ask questions like: what else might be true and for whom, when, and where? How do we know? What should I do now? With that said, we’re going to get into big topics and, with that, there’s going to be some big ideas we are going to explore. Big ideas demand big justifications, so we’ll also check ourselves before we wreck ourselves and the Planet.
4. Situate Discussions in Space and Time.Context matters. I’m focusing on the United States (aka Turtle Island), but I’ll be drawing on wisdom from many traditions. This isn’t about American exceptionalism—far from it! It’s just about starting where I am, doing the work where I live, and being honest about what I know (and what I don’t).
For transparency, I come from a Western European and Christian lineage. Not because I think it’s the best or the only valid perspective—just because it shapes the bubble I’m speaking from. We all have bubbles. I want to be upfront about mine so you can keep that in mind.
If you're curious about my background, I’ve put together some text-only posts over at negotiatingreality.substack.com.
And since my knowledge has limits (spoiler: I don’t know everything), I actively welcome others with deeper connections to different wisdom traditions to join me in the negotiation episodes. I want to honor the space and time I come from while also making room for others—this is how we develop a cross-cultural lost-and-found. So, if you’ve got insights to share, consider this an open invitation. Let’s negotiate reality together.
5. Honor Different Ways of Knowing.
We’ll draw from three broad sources:
The Objective Way: Science, philosophy, technology, and the humanities.
Spirit’s Way: Spirituality, religion, and ethics.
Nature’s Way: Indigenous wisdom, ecology, and living in reciprocity with the rest of nature and life.
So… how’s this sounding?
…
Still here?!
Wonderful!
Now that we got all the background stuff covered, it’s time to start exploring.
Let’s get into our first aphorism!
We are the 7th Fire People.
Wait, what?!
Let me explain.
[music, slower variation of Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition]
Across different perspectives, one thing is clear: we are living through a crisis.
You can explain it in scientific terms: Earth’s planetary regulatory systems—the finely tuned processes that keep our world in a "Goldilocks zone" for life—are breaking down. You can frame it in social and political terms: growing wealth inequalities, civic decay, and the fragmentation of our institutions. Or you can see it through a spiritual lens: humanity has lost its tether to the transcendent, and the result is deep, existential disorientation.
Whichever angle you take, the result is the same—reality as we’ve known it seems to be collapsing under its own weight.
Quick aside!
Reality isn’t collapsing! That doesn’t make any sense.
Instead, what IS collapsing are the symbols, representations, systems, and institutions we’ve created to help us tether to reality. In scientific circles, this is called a paradigm shift. Think of it as if the operating systems that run everything else and connect us to reality are no longer working and are in desperate need of an update. It’s like we’re trying to run generative AI on Windows 95 or even DOS. (Remember DOS? Me neither.)
In my estimation, we are living through a crazy big paradigm shift that includes the need to change our civic, spiritual, and natural foundations…or by analogy, our civic, spiritual, and natural operating systems. These operating systems tether us to reality and, by extension, help us live lives that are aligned with life, love, light, and wholeness.
We’ll return to this but let’s get back to unpacking the aphorism.
Daniel Schmachtenberger describes this moment bluntly:
"We're at The End of History…meaning we're at the end of a human civilization defined by [this pattern]… The thing that has been more successfully dominant, extracted more, grown its population more, increased its violence capability [more] wins… That thing with exponential Tech [when bounded by] planetary boundaries self-terminates. So either we're at the end of our species or we're at the end of our species being defined by those parameters. [emphasis added]"—Daniel Schmachtenberger, An Introduction to the Metacrisis, Stockholm Impact/Week 2023
Hmmm….
So, where do we go from here?
This is where the Seventh Fire Prophecy offers us something precious—both a warning and an invitation.
[music from Pictures at an Exhibition continued]
The Prophecy and Our Choice
Citizen Potawatomi and Distinguished Professor Robin Wall Kimmerer shares the wisdom of the Seventh Fire Prophecy in Braiding Sweetgrass, describing a moment in time when humanity stands at a crossroads. One path stretches ahead, lush and green, inviting us to walk barefoot in harmony with the world. The other is scorched black, a trail of cinders that cuts the feet of those who walk it.
As a quick aside, if you are interested in understanding the full prophecy, from the 1st Fire People to the 7th, I’ve written a text-only summary that includes direct quotes from Braiding Sweetgrass. Feel free to check it out on the substack page for this podcast at https://negotiatingreality.substack.com/. Even better, read Braiding Sweetgrass or listen to the audio version, which Professor Kimmerer narrates herself. In my view, it is a very valuable book to make sense of our times, right now (as is Tim Snyder’s book On Tyranny, which I’ll get to a bit at the very end).
Here's a quick excerpt of some of the key points I’d like to highlight for today to help you understand the aphorism.
“The people of the Seventh Fire do not yet walk forward [emphasis added]; rather, they are told to turn around and retrace the steps of the ones who brought us here. Their sacred purpose is to walk back along the red road of our ancestors’ path and to gather up all the fragments that lay scattered along the trail. Fragments of land, tatters of language, bits of songs, stories, sacred teachings—all that was dropped along the way. Our elders say that we live in the time of the seventh fire. [emphasis added]… The Seventh Fire prophecy tells that all the people of the earth will see that the path ahead is divided. [emphasis added] They must make a choice in their path to the future. One of the roads is soft and green with new grass. You could walk barefoot there. The other path is scorched black, hard; the cinders would cut your feet….The path is lined with all the world’s people, in all colors of the medicine wheel—red, white, black, yellow—who understand the choice ahead, who share a vision of respect and reciprocity, of fellowship with the more-than-human world [emphasis added]….”
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (p. 369). (Function). Kindle Edition.
We are the 7th Fire People.
As the 7th Fire People, before we can move forward, we must first look back. Our work is to retrace our steps, to gather the wisdom we have lost—our fractured languages, forgotten songs, and sacred teachings. We are called to remember, to reconnect, and to restore.
We are the ones who will determine whether our children, the 8th Fire People, inherit a world of green grass or scorched earth.
What This Calls Us to Do
To be the 7th Fire People is not simply to acknowledge the crisis we are in—it is to take responsibility for shaping what comes next.
This means:
Reclaiming wisdom—drawing from history, science, philosophy, spirituality, indigenous traditions, etc to build a foundation for a better future.
Negotiating reality—engaging in deep, honest conversations about where we are and where we need to go, and, through this, updating our civic, spiritual, and natural operating systems that tether us to reality.
Taking action—not just theorizing, but applying what we learn in real, tangible ways, choosing to take whatever actions we can take now that are moving towards the green grass.
We are at a moment of decision, and no one is coming to save us. The responsibility—and the opportunity—belongs to us.
So, what will it be? The green path or the scorched earth?
And, by the way, why is the scorched earth so attractive, alluring, and addictive? What do people get from choosing the scorched earth? Is there any way they can have those needs met without choosing the scorched earth path?
In my opinion, to do our job here well, we will need to come up with a good answer to those questions. It’s these sorts of questions and more that we will be exploring here.
Let’s step into our role as the 7th Fire People together.
If you are STILL with me, then I want to take one final step for today…
bonus aphorism time!
[music, the chicks picture song from Pictures at an Exhibition]
In the future, I’ll try to stick to just one aphorism per episode—but for this first one, I felt like we needed to go deeper to really get to a good place to start and grow out from.
If you need a breather, seriously—pause, reflect, and take it in at your own pace.
When you are ready, please come back for the final bonus aphorism.
Still here? Sweet! Last bit of new content.
Aphorism number 2.
History is rhythmic—listen to the echoes.
In the United States, e pluribus unum—out of many, one—captures a foundational tension. How do we create unity (unum) while honoring diversity (e pluribus)? This isn’t just an abstract ideal; it’s a healthy paradox we’ve been wrestling with since the beginning and will need to continue to wrestle with in the future. It’s healthy in that we actually do NOT want to resolve this tension. We want to live and grow through it. Right now though? Well, let’s just say we’re in a moment where the wrestling has turned into an all-out brawl.
James Davison Hunter, in his book Democracy and Solidarity, argues that American society once had a healthier way of working through this tension. He calls it the Hybrid Enlightenment—a kind of intellectual and cultural breathing rhythm between two key perspectives:
Spiritual Leaders (or what Hunter calls foundationalists)—religious, spiritual, and community figures who provide the deep, common-sense wisdom, ethics, and cultural stories that ground society. Think Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Technocratic Leaders (or proceduralists)—philosophers, scientists, legal minds, and policymakers who craft the rules, systems, and contracts that allow a diverse society to function. Think John Dewey (of the Dewey decimal system used in Libraries among many other accomplishments).
For much of American history, these two perspectives engaged in a working through—sometimes in harmony, often in tension, but in dialogue. This dynamic helped us navigate deep contradictions, like the coexistence of the ideals of equality with the reality of slavery and the genocide of Indigenous peoples. It wasn’t perfect—far from it—but it kept the conversation alive.
Fast-forward to today, and something has gone terribly wrong. The dialogue has collapsed. Or as Hunter says, “the agreements that hold our disagreements” are no longer present. The institutions, or the operating systems to continue with that analogy, that once nurtured these leaders—churches, universities, civic organizations—have suffered massive blows to their credibility. Trust is in free fall. And as a result, we’re losing the ability to engage in the kind of negotiation that kept our society from falling apart.
The echoes of history are loud right now. But are we listening?
[Music from Pictures at an Exhibition]
Learning to hear the rhythms
If you zoom out, you’ll see that this breakdown—and the need for renegotiation—follows a rhythm across time. I find this fascinating.
As predicted by Neil Howe and his late colleague William Strauss in the classic Generations (the book that coined “Millennials”), we are living through a Fourth Turning—a historic civic crisis phase that occurs roughly every 80–100 years. Each of the crisis turnings calls us to renegotiate “the agreements that contain our disagreements.”
Howe and Strauss trace these cycles/ rhythms all the way back to the Enlightenment, identifying alternating civic and spiritual reorientations. Here’s how the pattern plays out:
1st Turning: A major civic re-orientation, such as when Galileo and other’s work reimagining scientific methods at the start of the Enlightenment. These are the turns where our civic operating systems are updated.
2nd Turning: A breakdown in spiritual beliefs and structures, often growing out of the changes made during the 1st turning.
3rd Turning: A spiritual re-orientation, such as Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation (which preceded and seeded The Enlightenment, a 3rd turning precedes a 1st turning), which led to a restructuring of spiritual understanding. These are the turns that update our spiritual operating systems.
4th Turning (the type of generational turning we are living through today): A crisis moment where the civic foundations are breaking down and need to be re-imagined.
History is rhythmic—listen to the echoes.
This cyclical rhythm serves as both a warning and a roadmap. If history teaches us anything, it’s that ignoring moments of renegotiation doesn’t make them disappear—it just makes them more painful.
Take the Civil War, for example. According to historians Howe and Strauss, it didn’t follow the usual generational rhythm of crisis and renewal. Instead, it arrived ahead of schedule—before the right generational archetype, the ones equipped for true civic transformation, were in place. It’s like trying to install a massive software update before your system is ready—things crash, bugs multiply, and suddenly, you’ve got a much bigger mess on your hands.
What we needed was a full-scale reboot—one that permanently erased slavery from our civic hard drive instead of leaving it lurking in the background, ready to corrupt the next version. But with Lincoln’s assassination, that update got interrupted mid-install, leaving us with a glitchy, half-baked system that quickly devolved into Jim Crow and, now, mass incarceration. The need for that update never went away; it just kept getting postponed—each delay making the errors more painful to fix.
And here’s the kicker: if Howe and Strauss are right, our current moment is, in many ways, still a continuation, in part, of that unresolved conflict. The Civil War may have technically ended in 1865, but the work of fully untangling its legacy and erasing slavery? That’s been buffering ever since. The good news? This time, we actually do have the right generational archetype—Millennials—to take responsibility for finally updating our civic operating system. No pressure!
If you want to dive deeper into how these generational cycles shape history, Howe’s recent book The Fourth Turning is Here is worth a read. It provides a summary of Howe and Strauss’s theory and work and then uses that lens to make sense of our present moment. What we are living through right now.
As I listen to the rhythms of history, I can’t help but also think that there are more rhythmic patterns than just these generational waves. I’m pretty sure there are also large multigenerational rhythmic waves. These multigenerational rhythms are bigger in that they involve times when the civil and spiritual, and perhaps even natural foundations were all breaking down together and thus need to be re-imagined together in a relatively short period of time.
It is that bigger rhythmic wave, which my hunch has been occurring every 200-400 years in Christian culture (mapping on roughly to big shifts in the church, think the various councils, like the Council of Nicaea, which gave us the Nicaean Creed) that I think we need to also be listening to and dancing with right now.
Those are the echoes from history we need to be listening to and starting to learn how to dance with instead of against.
[Music from Pictures at an Exhibition]
Multigenerational Echoes
I see three historical moments worth tagging—points when a kind of multigenerational, multi-operating-system update seemed to happen. As a reminder, I come from a Western and Christian lineage. With this, I chose moments relevant to that lineage. That’s not to say this rhythm has only happened in Western culture—it’s just that these are the examples I can speak to with some confidence.
I have a strong hunch that these kinds of multigenerational shifts happen in other traditions and cultures, too—I just don’t know enough to speak on them with any authority. If you do, I’d love to hear about them! Whether it’s from Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Confusist, Taoist, or any other traditions, I’m all ears. Let’s compare notes.
So, here are three moments from Western history where it feels like the multiple foundations cracked, systems broke down, and something new emerged (or didn’t).
1. The Work of Paul and the Founding of the Christian Church (roughly 50–80 CE).
Paul, in becoming the rock of the Christian Church, faced a breakdown of both civic and spiritual order. His response? He reshaped foundational beliefs (Was Jesus the Messiah? What is salvation?) while simultaneously rewriting the rulebook (Reducing 613 Jewish laws down to a paraphrase from Jesus, “Love God; love thy neighbor. Everything else is commentary” to enable Jews, Gentiles, and Pagans alike to join the church). In short, he merged foundationalist storytelling with proceduralist rule-making. We’ll come back to each one of these critical moments of history and others in future episodes. For now though, if you’d like to learn more about this moment, I recommend Doug Metzger’s Literature and History podcast, particularly the episodes on the New Testament (episodes 76–85, with episode 79 focusing on the Pauline Epistles: link).
2. Protestant Reformation (1500’s) and the Enlightenment (1600’s)
Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation reoriented the spiritual world by making faith more direct and personal. What did Luther do? He wrote his Small Catechism in a common language to help every day people develop a direct and personal relationship with God. He also, famously, posted the 95 Theses, challenging the structure and rules of the Catholic church. With this, he engaged both in a spiritual update, involving develop a direct relationship to God, and a civic update, in the form of challenging the Christian Church to better align with this personal spiritual pursuit.
3. The Bronze Age Collapse (1177 BCE): What Not to Do
While technically pre-Christian, I’m also aware of one other key moment that is definitely part of the Western Lore I’ve grown up with. In the first two, my sense is that the civic and spiritual foundations both collapsed together and thus were renegotiated together. As I’ve been looking for examples of when our natural systems collapsed, I’m drawn to The Bronze Age. While historians debate the causes, a common hunch is that major changes to the climate of the Mediterranean resulted in mass migrations and the breakdown of the natural systems people were reliant upon. With this, it led people to wage war and “get their part of the pie” so to speak.
This resulted, not in a transition, but a collapse. Civilizations imploded, trade networks vanished, and societies fell apart for 200 years. With this, the Bronze Age Collapse is a good place to look to see what might happen to us if we can’t figure out how to keep ourselves from taking the scorched earth path. Again, we’ll explore this one in more detail in future episodes too but, for now, in my view, one key takeaway is clear: when leaders fail to renegotiate, when institutions crumble under the weight of their own contradictions, the result isn’t adaptation—it’s collapse.
A quick detour before we wrap up
As historian Tim Snyder, author of On Tyranny and On Freedom, reminds us, history is full of patterns—but it’s not a pre-written script. Tyrants love to act like their rule is both inevitable and eternal. "This is just the way things are," they say, as if history were a bad sitcom doomed to endless reruns. But we know better.
Take the 7th Fire Prophecy, for example. It doesn’t say, “Well, here’s how it’s all going down, better get comfortable.” No! It’s a call to action—a giant cosmic Post-it Note reminding us that we have choices to make. History isn’t just a linear chain of events; it’s a swirling, tangled mess of interactions between living beings—some about power and struggle, others about resilience and rebirth. It stretches from the birth of stars to the evolution of ecosystems to, well, us—awkward, wonderful, pattern-seeking humans. And yes, some patterns keep showing up, like the unfortunate tendency of people to dust off the “How to Be a Tyrant” playbook and act like it’s a good idea. (HINT: It isn’t. It’s a choice that usually leads to scorched earth).
But here’s the kicker: learning from history isn’t about getting comfy with the idea that things are set in stone. It’s not about assuming the world we were born into will keep running on autopilot forever. Instead, it’s about seeing the past as a guide—full of potholes, sure, but also filled with wisdom and healthy patterns. By listening to history’s rhythms and patterns, we can better understand how our actions today shape what could come next.
So, as we glance backward, let’s do it with curiosity and intention. History is wild, weird, and always unfolding, shaped by the choices we make every day. And if we take it seriously (without taking ourselves too seriously), maybe—just maybe—we can build a future that’s more just, loving, compassionate, joyful, and full of light. One with a whole lot more mutual flourishing… and a whole lot less suffering.
OK, let’s recap and wrap this up!
[Return to Promenade 1]
Alright, folks, let’s do a quick rewind before we step forward into future episodes.
Here’s what we’ve covered—consider this your TL;DR version with a bit of extra flair.
First off, welcome to Negotiating Reality! This is a space for anyone who feels like something about the world is just… off—but can’t quite put their finger on why. If you’ve been lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering, What the hell is going on?!, you’re not alone. And congratulations, you’re in the right place (I hope!)!
Now, let’s be clear: this is NOT a doom-and-gloom podcast. Sure, sometimes existential dread is reasonable reaction to what’s happening, but we’re also here to figure things out—to negotiate reality instead of just resigning ourselves to it. Because, let’s be honest, giving up is so last season.
We’ve established a few key principles:
No-Pressure Zone: Good-faith conversations only. Jedi mind tricks not included (but wouldn’t that be cool?).
Consent Over Consensus: We don’t need to agree on everything, just enough to keep talking without wanting to throw a chair.
Play Freely, Conclude Carefully: Big questions deserve both playful curiosity and careful thought. And, of course, a well-timed joke when you can pull it off..
Situate in Space & Time: Context matters. We’re mostly looking at the U.S., but we’re drawing from wisdom all over the world.
Honor Different Ways of Knowing: Science, spirituality, and indigenous wisdom all have something to bring to the table—let’s not pretend otherwise.
With that, we went through our first aphorism.
We Are the 7th Fire People.
We’re standing at a crossroads. One path leads to renewal, restoration, and reconnection—the green grass path. The other? Scorched earth, a path of destruction and short-term gains that, in the long run, leads straight off a cliff.
The Seventh Fire Prophecy, shared by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass, tells us that before we move forward, we must first look back. We must gather the wisdom we’ve lost—our fractured languages, forgotten songs, and sacred teachings—and use it to guide our next steps. Because let’s be real: if we don’t learn from the past, we’re just going to make the same mistakes of our Bronze Age Ancestors while blaming each other on social media.
So, what does this actually mean? It means taking responsibility. It means negotiating our way to a future where we don’t just survive, but thrive. It means having some hard conversations, asking uncomfortable questions—like why the scorched earth path is so tempting sometimes—and figuring out if there’s a way to meet those needs without torching the planet.
Given that we need to look back before we look forward, we then went through the bonus aphorism.
History is rhythmic—listen to the echoes.
History may not be a rerun, but it sure loves a remix. And right now? We’re in the middle of another greatest-hits compilation—one of those Multi-Generational Turnings where everything feels like it’s falling apart because, well, it is (just like it did during the time of Jesus Christ, the times between the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, and the Bronze Age Collapse. And, again, I’m sure there are others, particularly from other cultures, which I’d love to hear about from you all and, if anyone knows more about these from different cultures, let’s create a negotiation episode about it together!).
America has had a way of working through big contradictions. There was a kind of dance—a back-and-forth between spiritual leaders (storytellers and moral anchors) and technocratic leaders (system-builders and rule-writers). Think of it as a philosophical jam session between Dr. King and John Dewey. It wasn’t always harmonious, but at least they were playing the same song.
Fast-forward to today, and the instruments are smashed, the stage is on fire, and everyone’s just yelling over each other. Trust in institutions has cratered, dialogue has turned into a shouting match, and the old negotiation table is gathering dust.
But here’s the thing—this isn’t new. Every 80–100 years, it seems that American society has been hitting the update button on one of our operating systems (thanks, Howe and Strauss for helping us to see it!). And if we zoom out even further, there might be an even bigger cycle—every 200–400 years is my hunch…. This is when the civic, spiritual, or even natural operating systems break down together, demanding a total reboot and remake of multiple operating systems that tethers us to reality. My sense is that we are in one of those big multiple update moments.
So, what do we do? We start by listening to the echoes from history. From Western and Christian history this includes:
Paul’s time? Civic and spiritual collapse. Solution? Rewrite the stories and the rulebook together (Jesus is our savior; Love god, love thy neighbor, everything else is commentary).The Protestant Reformation? Civic and spiritual disruption. Solution? Reorient faith; Reinvent institutions (Build a direct relationship with God; Simplify the church to support direction connections with God).The Bronze Age Collapse? Natural and civic breakdown. Solution? Well… there wasn’t one. Everything fell apart. For 200 years.
Again though, history is NOT some cosmic rerun stuck on autoplay—it’s a wild, messy choose-your-own-adventure, and we’re all holding the mic at the karaoke bar. Sure, tyrants love to act like their rule is inevitable, but history reminds us that nothing is set in stone—except maybe bad statues. If we pay attention to the past’s greatest hits (and worst flops), we can remix the future into something way more just, joyful, and full of mutual flourishing—while minimizing suffering.
Can you start hearing the rhythm? Can you sing some of the healthy riffs our ancestors sang? The echoes are bouncing around us. We need to start learning how to dance WITH those rhythms, instead of trying to fight them, and how to sing the good riffs that lead to green grass.
So here we are, standing at history’s crossroads again (just as our ancestors did and just as our progeny will need to do in their time, if we can get our stuff together).
The past isn’t telling us exactly what to do—it’s just screaming at us through a megaphone saying: We’ve got some solutions that might help if you’d stop shouting at each other on social media and start listening to your ancestors from across Planet Earth!
The echoes are loud. The question is—are we ready to listen and learn from them?
The choice is ours.
If you would like to choose to go on this journey together, please subscribe, share with others, or leave a comment.
And please do add comments. What’s coming up for you? How is this making you feel? What are the sorts of concerns you hope we can explore together in this space? Where do you see the bright spots of people working through this moment well? Who, or when and where, are you looking for guidance right now? What are you doing personally to help us all step towards the green grass? What struggles are you having that we need to overcome together? Where might you be feeling the draw to the scorched earth?
Please visit negotiatingreality.substack.com to find the full script of this episode. There you will find links to all of the work I referenced and I also include an acknowledgements section of all of the people who helped me to craft this episode. This definitely takes a village and I’m grateful to my friends, family, and colleagues support.
I look forward to connecting with you in the comments section, in future episodes, and in online chats!
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Donna Spruijt-Metz and Kabir Kadre for providing valuable feedback and suggestions on this.
All music used was Royalty Free and available as via Creative Commons and found here: https://archive.org/details/MUSSORGSKY-STOKOWSKIPicturesAtAnExhibition-1965/01.+Promenade.mp3
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