An essential narrative is
Humans lived for 200,000 years on the surface of the earth, gathering food from animals and plants and feeding fires with gathered wood. that was the background to the building of empires with small amounts of dug-up minerals but we still lived on the surface of the earth. Water power was added, mostly for small textile factories. Then coal was discovered as useful and the process led to steam and rapid growth of "the economy,\” a hungry superorganism that has become a highly integrated system across cultures with industrialization that took us through colonization and WW 1-2. Population grew and we got the hockey stick, now living not only on the surface of the earth but under and above it (5apprx 4, 000 million people per day). Climate disruption clearly emerges from this matrix As Rosencrant and Guildenstern said, "Was there ever a time we could have said no?
I think everyone of us should be able to tell at least this, and hopefully an improved version of a basic story. There are certainly other narratives. For example a narrative about food from prefire humans to cooking at the current level of delight. But don't scorn throwing a freshly caught fish on a fire-heated stone covered with freshly plucked leaves, Only if we try our own narratives can we learn.