Christiana Figueres is adamant that this is the moment in which we are collectively writing the future of humanity. Christiana Figueres is worth listening to. She is the Costa Rican who was one of the architects of the Paris Agreement. We are constantly writing humanity's future (and living the future others have written for us). However, as existential risks swirl around us, threatening to combine in a perfect tornado, it feels more important than ever that we step into our role as authors of our collective destiny.

This authorship involves a creative imagining and a vivid communicating and is achieved, most powerfully, through stories. Stories set humans apart from other living organisms on the planet. They have the capacity to shift the minds and moods of nations, yet in turn are influenced and affected by the particular language (down to individual words) with which we choose to communicate them.

This chapter looks at archetypal elements of the great stories. It identifies the story that has dominated human culture over recent generations and some other stories it has ignored. It engages with the remarkable rewriting that has been taking place during the COVID-19 crisis, the language used and the lessons this offers for us as we build a new narrative and share the stories that flow from it to create the future we want for our descendants.

This chapter tells its story from the perspective of its teller, so is a white, Western, privileged version of where we have been and where we are going. It focuses on a possible positive future, but in describing some of the positive effects of the pandemic only, it is not intended to be dismissive of the enormous pain and disturbance many have suffered. It offers one reality, by no means the only one, but hopefully one that contains sufficient traces of universality to offer something for all readers.

The magic ingredients

The following table identifies, with reference to The Wizard of Oz, the core elements found in most of the great stories, as distilled by the Stronger Stories initiative.