ABSTRACT
The study of personal storylines is one way to examine people’s ongoing struggle for purpose and meaning. By scrutinizing storylines in this way, we can begin to understand how the human species is responding to changing historical and cultural circumstances. We will review how historical circumstances have changed in the period of almost 70 years since the end of the Second World War. By seeing how storylines endure over long periods, or are subject to ongoing and precipitous change, we can assess how human meaning-making is responding to changing historical circumstances. Pursuing an analogy with global warming (for, in a sense, both of these contemporary changes emanate from the new juggernaut of globalized commerce), we can judge whether contemporary changes in human storylines are subject to change on a normal scale, or in a seismic epochal manner.
