“I just have an issue with protagonists…it makes more sense in my mind to show that this is a collective effort over time and over a large geographical space or galactic space…because it’s not just one person’s story.” - Becky Chambers, author and guest on Resisting dystopia, a conversation at Long Now

Does our culture put too much emphasis on who’s a ‘main character?’ On who’s the hero? These questions bounced through my mind while listening to this conversation, against the backdrop of tech geniuses working to dismantle the constitution and federal government.

Perhaps, as Garrett Bucks suggests in his recent essay, our focus on heroes rather than neighbors is what leads us toward dystopias.

As I witnessed during my years in Silicon Valley, the march of technological progress is taken one small step at a time. Rarely is a breakthrough made by one person. Instead, countless communities of people passionate about what it is they’re working on contribute their voices and time and talents.

When one voice becomes the ‘lone genius’ upheld, technological progress doesn’t seem to really benefit that many. Instead, that voice tends to take on other frequencies; ones that hoard resources and make unilateral decisions about whose needs matter and whose needs don’t.

What’s the antidote? I don’t know, but I think Annalee Newitz, in talking about the importance of many small stories cumulating into much bigger narratives, as opposed to the one protagonist driving everything, gives us a starting place:

“One of the things that appeals to me about having a story that takes place over a very long period of time…is that it allows us to dream a little bit beyond the confines of a single life and one of the things that I think tempts us into this dystopian mindset is that we are actually trapped in a really short period of time…One of the most valuable aspects of storytelling is allowing us to see that bigger canvas and to understand that our lives are connected to something much much bigger.” - Annalee Newitz, author and guest on Resisting dystopia, a conversation at Long Now