In his most recent blog, The New and Ancient Story, author and de-growth activist Charles Eisenstein explains why gathering at the New Story Summit is important.

“Most of the people going to the New Story Summit don’t really need to be made aware of the benefits of regenerative agriculture, nonviolent communication, sociocracy, meditation practice, and whatever else is on the agenda. We may not be skilled in all of them or know their details, but I don’t think the reason we go to most conferences is to add another modality to our toolkit. (If that is what we want, there are trainings for that.) We go in search of something else, neither the problem nor the solution, but a third thing.

That third thing is what addresses our failure to implement the solutions, or, on a personal level, to live into them fully, to trust them more deeply, and to sustain ourselves in a world that thinks we are crazy. At their best, gatherings like the New Story Summit renew the optimism that sustains me in my work. Yes, I might also pick up useful tools and concepts, but the main benefit for me is to be plugged in to the field that such gatherings generate. On my own, I cannot sustain a belief in that which I serve. I lose sight of it amidst the ugliness and despair of the ecocide, ethnocide, injustice, and ambient brutality of the society around me. I need a sangha, a community of people who also serve what we are calling the new story, and whose service tells me that my own service is not in vain.” – Charles Eisenstein