Jeanie and the Dragons  

 

A Story to Increase the Self-Esteem of Humanity

   

Summary: The goal of this project is to write a fairytale-like story that will help people re-evaluate humanity’s prospects. Many people are pessimistic for the wrong reasons, and this story can correct their thinking, and also give hope that’s well-grounded and not based on panaceas.

 

In the story, the dragons symbolize deep-seated doubts that dominate humanity. Perhaps the greatest doubt goes something like this, “There have always been wars and great suffering, and since human nature doesn’t change, there’s always likely to be wars and great suffering.”  Since this doubt has been with humanity for perhaps thousands of years, the doubt is symbolized by a huge dragon, as big as a 100 story skyscraper, that exhales streams of fire a half mile long. It dominates humanity and makes people feel bad about their future.

Jeanie is a girl who can tell stories that kill dragons. At first her stories kill small dragons, small insecurities that people have, but as she progresses, she kills bigger and bigger dragons. All along, no one believes she can slay the greatest dragon, because everyone accepts that because of human nature there will likely always be wars and suffering.

Jeanie breaks down the dragon in three steps. The first step is weak. She rightly points out that you can’t predict the future based on the past. The second step is stronger. She points out that while there has always been wars and suffering in some part of the world, in other parts of the world there has been peace and stability. It’s because in these parts of the world, the people had the skills, support and structures to solve problems and prevent instability. She introduces superprograms as a structure that can help people learn and change more efficiently. But the deathblow to the dragon comes from telling a story about a man who has not been very successful in his love life. After many years of failure he tells himself, “Since I’ve always been a failure with women, I’ll probably always be a failure with women.”  A friend of the man points out that the man has created a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. Now his attitude and low self-esteem will repel or turn off women. The friend points out to the man that he needs to do two things to break the pattern. First, give up his self-fulfilling prophecy. Second, learn behaviors that will attract and please women. Jeanie points out that humanity is just like the man. Humanity has taken on this self-fulfilling belief and must let it go. Humanity also must learn the behaviors that rebuild and maintain peace and stability. As she finishes the story, the dragon that had seemed immortal, withers, falls down and is almost dead.

Jeanie then turns to the people watching, and says something like, “No story can completely kill any of these dragons. Ultimately the only thing that can kill pessimism is action: People improving their lives. People taking steps to improve the world. These dragons will revive if you do not begin to take action. My stories were just meant to give you confidence that the dragons could be killed. Ultimately, your fate is in your own hands.”

 

Project status: About a dozen parables and teaching stories have already been written. Each of these stories deal with a different doubt or source of pessimism.

 

Plans and Needs: The stories need to be woven together into this story of stories. Also a graphic artist is needed to create drawings of Jeanie and the various dragons.

   

Potential Impact: The impact of the story is that it could remove much pessimism and anxiety about our mutual future. It could also be a small funding source if a book were created.