Identities For Life And Death: Can We Save Us from Our Toxically Storied Selves? - Hardcover

Working from the Shakespearian metaphor, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players,” Pellegrini argues that only by understanding how our storied selves develop can we acquire the tools to modify the roles they dictate for us to play on the stage in the theater of real life. The author deconstructs a wide variety of what he calls “toxic,” dehumanizing, death-oriented self-scripts as well as “creative,” humanizing, life-oriented narratives of groups as well as individuals.

Following the Native American parable of two wolves engaged in mortal combat within us, one good the other evil, the fundamental premise here is that our identity determines which of our inner wolves we feed and thus, which of them will prevail. Pellegrini maintains that what’s at stake in this battle between humanity’s collective inner wolves, is not just the quality but the very survival of life on earth. From this perspective, as individual and group selves are humanizingly or dehumanizingly narratizedby the way we exercise our God-given free will in the choices we make, so shall life be impacted throughout the world. To advance the cause of “detoxifying” identities in our global society, the author presents a rationale and program for an international grass roots social movement aimed at achieving a universal sense of belongingness to a “global life system.

[You can watch and listen to a video in which Dr. Bob Pellegrini talks about this book, and why he wrote it, by entering “Identities for Life and Death” in the search bar at youtube.com.]