The Moonshot Celebration Myth — A vision for the creation of a unifying narrative

I gave a TEDx talk on Wednesday titled From Nationalism to Planetism: How a time travelling game is designing a United Planet in Harmony with all life”. Before my TEDx talk is published I wanted to share this video which touches on many of the themes I spoke of. I chose not to include this moonshot celebration legend in my talk as it has been hard to find historic record of this party. However, I was told the story by the legendary Barbara Marx Hubbard as an example of creating the future we wish to see. She shared with me an epic tale that following JFK’s famous moonshot speech, James Webb, who ran NASA at the time and through the Apollo programs had a celebration party of landing on the moon in 1961 as a way of creating a collective belief that landing on the moon is possible.

I was so inspired by this story as it gave me an instant epiphany that we could do this as a means of celebrating the future we wish to see. It was where the seed of the idea for the UP Game came into my awareness. It began a long journey towards my realisation that celebrating the future we wish to see is a way to shape the narrative and culture into the realisation of that vision.

One of points I made in my TEDx talk focuses on this strategy:

“We are being conquered by dystopia in a meta-crisis of narrative. So many of the stories we tell about ourselves, our world and our capacity for transformation are not aligned with the thriving of future generations. Our world is in need of a new unifying narrative of the future. And when we see that the narrative is the front line of transformation we will understand that the future we create is closely correlated to the stories we believe about the future. This is called Hyperstition which can be summarised as the science of self fulfilling prophecies — when a group of people share a belief they accelerate the positive feedback loops that bring that belief into reality.

The results follow the narratives. Stories are like living entities with a resonance and a capacity to go beyond time. A well told story can break the illusion of time. For this reason we tell stories of the future in the present tense where our greatest visions have been realised. The future is not something to predict, but rather something to achieve.”

Whether James Webb threw the Moonshot Party we don’t know for certain. But what I do know is the legend that he did is valuable to illustrate the power of a collective belief in making the seemingly impossible — in fact possible. For me, the realisation of the United Planet is a Moonshot for the Regeneration of Gaians. The creation of a United Planet in harmony with all life is such an audacious Moonshot I consider it a Earthshot (or my personal favourite Gaiashot). I would love to see many more Earthshot solutions gain popularity such that we can have radical hope for our future whilst remaining deeply committed and rooted in action.

I hope this story and the Gaian Oath touches you in this Aether Day UPGrade which focuses on the creation of a unifying narrative — I am certainly laying my heart and hopes open!