The Story of B

It's amazing how books can change your life. Seriously. I feel afraid and intimidated by how quickly this trend seems to be fading. Our technology is moving so incredibly quickly. The idea that bookstores are becoming a thing of the past, that even actual books are being replaced by "eBooks". Really?? Does anyone else find this a bit alarming that we're becoming more and more dependent on technology? Doesn't it feel just a little unnatural the way our lives completely revolve around this thing we've developed called the World Wide Web?

I had a dream that I was a spokesperson at a music festival. I knew one of the bands who happened to be headlining. They let me have 5 minutes to speak to the enormous crowd. I was part of an organization that did social experiments. My speech went something like this:

"How's everyone doing tonight? (Cheers) I want to take a moment to ask you a couple questions. How many of you have a Facebook page? (About 95% cheer) How many of you don't? (5% cheer) I want you to take a second and introduce yourself to the person to your right. Now turn to the person behind you, shake their hand and say hello. Now, how many of you were alive before the Internet was invented? (Small % cheer). How many of you have lived your entire lives with the Internet? (Majority cheer). 

"Wow, that's amazing. I want you to know, that although Facebook and other social networking is awesome, our society is finding it increasingly more and more difficult to hold meaningful conversations with new people face-to-face. It's crucial that we don't lose this thing called 'interpersonal relationship skills" - so while it may have been difficult for you to shake a stranger's hand and introduce yourself, I want to encourage you to give this a try every once in awhile. After all, we're not machines. 

"That thing that separates us as humans from other species - the ability to reflect on ourselves, the ability to form relationships with each other...we can't lose this to technology. We can't allow ourselves to only interact when we're sitting at a computer or talking through a phone or tweeting to thousands of faceless profiles. We can't only share our opinion when we're safely guarded behind a generic Internet profile. We need to remember what it feels like to stand up for what we believe in when we're actually standing in front of another human being. 

"Thank you for your time. If you're interested in learning more about what we do or participating in other social experiments, please visit us online at (website). Enjoy the show!"

I've always been somewhat skeptical of our culture. Of the way things just "are". Who decided this? How did our society evolve into what it is today. Into what is considered "right" and what's considered "wrong." It just seems a little...contrived. 

I have always been an incredibly spiritual person. Since I was born into an LDS family, I thrived in that form of my spirituality. As a child, I would share my feelings and my strong beliefs. Adults in the church would approach me and tell me how strong of a spirit I had and how much they enjoyed hearing me speak. I felt so at home. I still have much respect for that religion, and really, all religions today. Even though I feel deep in my soul that these organized religions are missing something truly big, I have respect for their efforts and their genuine objectives. 

But even as a young kid, I felt as though something was missing. How was everyone so certain that what they believed was truly the ONLY truth? And that it was the complete truth?  There was just something that wasn't quite right.

In college, I took a Women's Spirituality course and it was one of the big factors that changed my life. I learned that for millions of years, humans lived in this world in peace. They lived in what we refer to now as "matriarchal cultures." Today, and since the days of the invention of Agriculture, our society and culture has changed to live in a "patriarchal culture." Bit of a difference. This doesn't mean that originally women ruled and now men rule, although it's not too far away from that. Women were respected and they were naturally leaders. But the culture back then just fell into more of a peaceful way of life. I won't go into the details here, but I will say that this way of life definitely seems to make more sense (and not just because I'm a woman). 

The Story of B explores this idea in such a perfect way, I don't imagine many people could read this book and find ways to logically argue with the concepts presented. After reading the book however, I realized that this wasn't just a beautiful and ingenious story some great author made up. I realized that it was doing exactly what the characters in the story were doing - attempting to change our way of thinking, in order to save our species. Yes, I know this is a bit dramatic. But read the book. Then we'll talk.