Jeanie and the Dragons  

 

A Story to Increase People's Optimism

   

Summary: The goal of this project is to write a fairytale 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 wishful thinking.

 

In the story, the dragons symbolize deep-seated doubts that dominate humanity. Perhaps humanity's 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 50-story skyscraper, that exhales streams of fire a quarter-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.

In the climactic section of the story Jeanie breaks down the dragon in four steps. The first step is weak. She rightly points out that you can’t predict the future based on the past. When the people hear and understand this, the dragon shrinks, but only a tiny bit.  It laughs at her.

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. Since many people haven't thought about this truth, when people hear it, the dragon shrinks by a quarter of its size.  But it beats its chest and says, "I'm still plenty big enough to dominate. It's true that some people learn, but in every era a huge proportion of people fail to learn."  When people hear this, they despair again, and the dragon grows a little and laughs.

But Jeanie then describes superprograms as a structure that can help people learn and change more efficiently. The more attractive it sounds, and the more useful, the more the dragon shrinks.  It is now half its original size.  Yet again it gloats about its staying power.  It ridicules Jeanie for thinking she can defeat it.  It has always been since the beginning of human history and it will live forever, it says, because human history has been so dark that people will always despair.

Jeanie says that she has one more story to tell.  She tells 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, shrinks to a height of only 30 feet, then it collapses and is almost dead.

Jeanie walks over to it and puts a foot on top of its head. It can do nothing, being almost paralyzed.  She says to the people watching, “No story can completely kill any of these global dragons. Ultimately the only thing that can kill pessimism is action: People improving their lives. People taking steps to improve the world. This dragon and all 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 eight 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. The story could be spread as a book, as a PDF and also as an online cartoon video.

   

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.