Craig Chalquist, PhD, PhD
October 16th, 2024
Those whose hope is weak settle down for comfort or for violence; those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born. – Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope
Every successful social movement expands a smaller guiding story into a more spacious one. So does every successful psychotherapy, revolution, creative innovation, and world-changing invention. In the United States, women, people of color, queer people, and others long subject to oppression pushed back against the story of how they lived and were seen and expanded it despite all reactionary resistance. They won’t go back to a smaller story.
Yet when we study why movements, transformations, and innovations succeed, we tend to reduce them to smaller factors: a leader’s decision, a therapist’s intervention, social statistics, good promotion, the market. All such factors are relevant, but too often the role of guiding stories goes uninvestigated.
A personal example:
From early on until my thirties, my self-definition—my guiding story—included viewing myself as a future psychologist. When I learned that psychology was a large and complex field, I trained to be a psychotherapist and practiced the craft for nine years, always with the intent of becoming a clinical psychologist. By my forties, I no longer wanted to be either, and a revelation thanks to a therapy supervisor propelled me into education.
After being a full-time graduate educator for the past twenty years, I asked myself: What is it I really do? Teach, of course, and occasionally administrate. Lead. Write and present, philosophize, consult, and many other things. Whatever my work, I always address guiding stories. I coined the word “loreologist” to describe myself as a mentor, teacher, and consultant with resources for exploring the limits and possibilities of the personal and collective lore (“keystone fictions”) we navigate by to deepen, expand, or replace it. Why? So that instead of staying stuck in our stories, we can author and elaborate them.
“Loreologist” comes closest to what I thought “psychologist” meant when I was younger. Abraham Maslow, whose work started me on this path, wrote the following, which I was startled and gratified to rediscover recently in his journals:
…The whole new emphasis on identity, values, life purpose, selflessness is clearly not medical or clinical. It can best be understood & pursued in a different way, for instance on model of the philosopher or the (nonsupernatural) religionist…i.e., to be a good man, fully developed to height of powers, rather than a sick man seeking to get rid of symptoms. Is a new profession called for—personologist? Counselor? Psychologist? Psychoconsultant?
Loreologist! Training others in how to work as one is on my list of tasks at this point in my life. Instead of taking our guiding fictions and tales so literally, demanding of them absolute Truth, Authority, or Proof, what if we did our keystone storying and restorying creatively and playfully? What will serve us in our chaotic time for a frame of orientation, purpose, and meaning? “What we need most, therefore,” Maslow added, “is a system of values, a religion-surrogate, an ethic, a way of life.”
“Lamplighters” is my term for people who help make beneficial change in the world by mentoring us about enlarging or outgrowing the guiding stories that confine us. Lamplighters are deep restoryers.
Imagine a kind of relational detective who examines the patterns of interaction going on inside us, between people, in organizations, or in current events, looks for stucknesses in the keystone fictions behind these patterns, and suggests openings in their recurrent plots, character roles, typical twists, or ancient motifs to allow movement into new and more spacious possibilities for living.
Lamplighters are visionary, psychologist, philosopher, bard, and detective rolled into one. They are enchantivists, deep educators, story change mentors, reimaginers, practical visionaries, worldview therapists, sages of soul, Round Table Knights of the World Soul, and heralds of hope. Imagine a team of wizards fanning out to make magic in desolate places. Alone or together, lamplighters conjure beyond the actual with the possible.
Notice how often our explanations (stories) about how things are lack a future. “It’s always been this way.” “It can’t be changed.” “You can’t fight city hall.” “There will always be war (racism, sexism, poverty, etc. etc.).” Such fictions reinforce passivity. Every revolution, life-altering insight, world-changing invention, and belief-widening movement disproves them by restorying them into a new tale with wider options.
For two decades, one of my keystone fictions has been that an ongoing effort to bring more of this kind of content into higher ed would change the field. Instead, I have seen numerous exemplary instructors who teach it leave, harassed by the ongoing atomization and mechanization of learning. I’ve watched deep and transformative programs and entire schools close in defeat. I feel the burnout myself.
Which means it is time for a new guiding story. It starts with a question: What if a wisdom academy outside higher ed trained eager and diverse learners in how to become restoryers? Stay in touch to see where this story goes.
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