A long long time ago in a place far far away there was a vast and radiant kingdom. The king sought to understand his people better. He summoned the kingdom’s three best mirror-makers and gave them a challenge:
“Each of you shall craft a mirror that tells the truth and it will hang in my throne room forever. If you can’t deliver, off with your heads!”
It’s amazing how the monarchy got work done in those days. Anyway, the three hapless mirror-makers got on with the task. Heads are precious things!
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I have been thinking about the phrase “A New World” and its many connotations.
In his writings from the early 1500s, the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, after whom “America” is named, coined the term “mundus novus” or “a new world”. The Americas were seen as a blank slate – a mythical place to build new societies, exploit new lands, escape old social, political & religious structures.
I too came from the proverbial old world to the new world a quarter of a century ago. My father a technocrat was enamored with President Kennedy. So the story of America I heard most often was of Kennedy challenging the Americans to put the man on the moon and the success of the Apollo program. Other stories spoke of American freedoms and the courage of its soldiers in World War II. Looking back, I suppose the story that got transmitted to us was that that America was “the land of the free and the home of the brave”; that famous line condensing American identity into freedom and bravery. We heard almost nothing of slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, or even the more recent Vietnam War. To my father and to most of us in India at the time, America was a place where life was free and every person was brave, intelligent, and scientific. We were told a single story of America.
When I arrived in America in the year 2000 – before Social Media and Google – people would often ask me about my life in India. Some would ask if we all lived in palaces, others if we lived in huts & were too poor to offered food, yet others if our mode of transportation was elephants and a few asked if there were snake charmers on the streets. The cherry on the cake goes to the person who asked me if I ate “eyeball soup” – clearly their only story of India came from watching Indiana Jones Temple of Doom! Either way, they would look at me with surprise when I told them that the majority of Indians lived in apartments, ate regular food albeit more spicy, and traveled by buses & cars. They too had heard the single story of India.
Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie has called this “the danger of the single story” . She writes “the danger of the single story is that it robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.” The way to create a single story, she says, is to show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become – stripped of their complex, vibrant and flawed humanity.
The trouble is the lure of the single story has been with since the dawn of civilization. For much of human history it was necessary for a group’s survival to identify the enemy quickly and vanquish it. The single story is coded into our pre-historic brains. – a siren call to our tribal instincts to sort the world into us vs them, good vs evil, right vs. wrong. From the Mongolian Empire to European Kingdoms, from Chinese dynasties to Sumerian Clans, from Native American tribes to Colonial settlers, the single story of us vs. them has indeed been the oldest story of the world. And the chaos and conflict it causes has littered the pages of history.
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The king commanded the mirror-makers to appear before the court.
The first mirror-maker, a realist, had forged a mirror from smoked glass with a frame of twisted iron. It showed the people’s violence and greed, their wars and betrayals. The king saw blood, hunger, sorrow, and the need for justice & retribution.
The second mirror-maker, a romantic, made a frame of silver & gold with a mirror of rose colored glass. It showed all the people as noble, kind, and pure. The king saw laughter, generosity, and love, and the need for unity and compassion.
The third mirror-maker brought only a shard of glass.
“This is broken,” the king said offended.
“No, Majesty,” he replied. “It is honest. Every person’s truth is a shard — none shows the whole. But if you gather many, you may begin to see something that comes closer to THE TRUTH – which is what you asked for.”
The king – humbled – proclaimed a hall of mirrors be made and invited all to bring their own shards , their own stories to create a shared truth about their kingdom.
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Amerigo Vespucci was wrong. There was no such land as “mundus novus”, a terra nullis, a blank slate. People had lived here for thousands of years.
But then, two hundred and fifty years ago, a few men came together in Philadelphia and imagined what a truly new world could look like. They gave the old world — which also comprised America at the time — A NEW STORY. This new story was far more complex than the old tale of caste, class, and inherited status.
And now, it is our turn.
Will we continue to see the world through the mirror of iron or the mirror of roses? Or do we have it in us to pick up a shard of glass — and invite others, especially those we disagree with, to bring their shards too — so together, we can create A NEW STORY FOR THIS NEW WORLD?
Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also a trained facilitator for Crossing Party Lines moderating conversations that bring people together across their political divides. Swati is also an environmentalist and lives in a Net Zero Energy home with her husband. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com