019 - We Live Inside a Story We Create

This is a special conversation with award-winning Israeli author Yair Assulin, we begin to take a deeper look at a major shift underway in humanity and consciousness, which Assulin describes as living in the subjective story we tell ourselves about our reality and the world around us. Big changes and upheavals happening across the globe suggest the story we’re telling ourselves is no longer the right story and doesn’t reflect reality. It’s time for a new story. Join Aviv Shahar and Yair Assulin as they engage in a rich discussion on today’s topic, We Live Inside a Story We Create. KEY TAKEAWAYS 01:54 – Aviv Shahar welcomes author and columnist, Yair Assulin, to reflect on today’s conversation, We Live Inside a Story We Create04:29 – Yair expounds on his belief that the world needs another “flood”07:51 – Telling the high-level story of humanity10:27 – The Age of Politics13:46 – The Century of the ‘How’ and the Century of the ‘What’17:07 – Three steps we must take in order to survive and grow22:15 – The impact of technological advances on the connected story of humanity and core observations from Yair32:10 – The diminishing role of the Nation State35:32 – New crafts that Yair has37:34 – Central characters that are emerging in the new story of humanity39:48 – Yair reflects on seminal moments in his story45:30 – What inspired Yair to write his first novel, The Drive51:19 – The rise of China and the inevitable collision with the West53:21 – How Yair responds to comments made on social media57:47 – Yair shares his thoughts on the spiritual realm1:02:09 – The one Biblical figure that Yair identifies with the most1:03:23 – What Yair hopes to be writing about five and ten years from now TWEETABLE QUOTES “My project is to understand society’s, companies’ and an individual’s consciousness. I’m curious about consciousness, the idea of consciousness. I think this is what makes us human beings, the concept of living inside a subjective story. This is what I’m trying to understand, and this is my project in many fields: in my novels, in my columns, when I teach. It’s all part of my journey to understand the way that consciousness works.” (03:45) (Yair)“We have to understand that something fundamental is changing, that something fundamental is no longer relevant. The story that we tell to ourselves about our reality is not the right story anymore. We have to create a new story.” (06:20) (Yair)“What’s happening in the world is not important. What is important in stories is the meaning that we give to what is happening. And I think this is something that we must remember when we’re trying to understand what’s going on now. It’s not about the world, it’s about the way we see the world.” (24:01) (Yair)“I think that today we’ve really redefined these fundamental ideas of space and time. This is the way human beings understand the world, through space and time. And we see that the idea of space is fundamentally changing. And the idea of time is also changing, not the days or the years or the minutes, but the tempo of time, the way time moves, the way we sense time, it’s all changing.” (39:05) (Yair)“I think that the fundamental distinction between China and the liberal order is always the question of freedom.” (51:42) (Yair) RESOURCES MENTIONED Portals of Perception WebsiteAviv’s LinkedIn Aviv’s TwitterAviv’s WebsiteYair’s Book