In some parts of the world, the competition for "the right way to do things" is reflected in economic policies, and in other places through religious views and politics. More often, it is varying combinations of all three. Almost anywhere in the world, some group is trying to prove its superiority in thought and action.

What is the driving force behind this intense desire to be right? Why do we go to war and kill fellow humans over it? The idea that others aren't like us must have started it all.

Now that we've reached a point where the whole world fits in front of a single digital mirror we can see nearly everyone everywhere. How different are we when the lowest common denominator is: They are wrong and we are right?

Stephen Stills had it right when he sang, "Nobody's right, if everybody's wrong." In the United States, it feels like an echo of the 1960s, 1890s, 1750s and further back in time.

Like in all of nature, humans seem to be going through endless cycles of expanding and contracting, while struggling between scarcity and abundance, fear and love, and more. In the past 500 years this cycle has intensified.

Along this evolutionary road, fear of a new sort was injected into our system. Some say it happened about 15,000 years ago with early agriculture. Very soon, every "discovery" poured gasoline on the fire but none like gasoline itself.

Over the past 150 years, men and machines have ripped through whatever fabric of our ancestral consciousness we had left. And because the machines made manual work obsolete, men had little to do.

A false economy was created. An economy based on easy prey, fear and desire. War machines were built for everyone and a consumer culture that shone worldwide was born.

Humans need stories. They matter to us. The best stories are ones in which people can get so caught up in the narrative that they "lose themselves".

That is where we are today: lost in a story. But I think a story should make one feel found and safe, not fearful and alone.

In the past, men would have been too busy hunting and gathering to write such a complex work of fiction. But now with so much less to do, it's mostly men, often white men, who write the script, direct the show and sell the merchandise. It's hard to see that many from the audience have left the building while a small percent still applaud.

But the story isn't really that old. It is just one more trip around an evolutionary cycle. I imagine we're still getting used to the Gregorian calendar and the electric light bulb, not to mention the airplane and texting. I believe we are now feeling the full effects of changes that have occurred in the past thousands of years.

We must come up with radically inclusive ideas.

Asleep in China's ancestral consciousness is a deep understanding of balance and harmony within the natural world. If China awakes this sleeping place, it has the potential to benefit all of humanity in profound ways.

The writer is a musician and author based in New York.

(China Daily USA 09/16/2014 page9)