Everybody's Story - a summary

In his book, Everybody’s Story Loyal Rue uses keywords in the title of his book to start telling us his story. He starts with the importance of stories. He tells us human brains are designed to automatically make up stories. It searches backward across time to recall past events and forwards in time to paint pictures of future events. During this process, it can even help make decisions for present issues. Stories that are pleasing will endure over ones that are not. Along with the word story, he defines epic as a series of great achievements narrated in grand style. As humans, he tells us, we long for an epic filled with great promises. Rue argues that stories filled with fundamental facts and ultimate values become wisdom traditions. He believes these are important as they educate our thinking and feeling to better handle any problems that come along the way and we as humans have a huge problem on our hands. We are responsible for the way we have abused our earth’s natural resources. Conditions such as global warming, ozone depletion, toxic waste, water pollution, poverty, crime, injustice, exploitation, and extinction of species are all results of our abuse. Our children will be subjected to more suffering and a reduced lifestyle from what we are accustomed. The author tells us we are living in a world in which the natural and social systems giving us life are to the point of collapse, but we can and must have a solution to this problem. He believes the wisdom tradition of the epic of evolution is the answer. It’s the intellectual and moral means to live in harmony with reality and integration of evolutionary cosmology and eco-centric morality. This integrated story is full of potential for uniting our species around a common understanding of how things are and which things matter. Accomplishing this feat won’t be easy. There will be pushback from fanatics of economic growth and those opposed to a universal global solution. What about opposition from the religious crowd? There is nothing in everybody’s story to rule out the belief in a personal deity, but at the same time, it’s not an essential part of it either. Will this be enough for them to adjust to the epic of evolution? Will their current religion be eventually displaced by other emerging forms of religion? It’s too soon to tell. Science is the answer to overcome the opposition opines Rue. “The new wisdom tradition is based in part on the belief that we will continue to make progress in science and there will be enough science expertise to overcome the lure of money. Also, once scientists are trained, they are as a group notoriously difficult to control politically.” He would teach kids science in a story format of everybody’s story that would be easier to learn and make the story of matter, life, and consciousness and why it matters part of the college core curriculum. Having a wisdom tradition of shared awareness of how things are and which things matter, tells us in basic terms who we are, where we came from, and how we may be able to live. Buying into and implementing this tradition will save our precious planet and give us a life worth living.