Great Turning
Allow yourself to imagine that a wonderful future is still possible.
Our spaceship is burning and no one seems to be able to do anything about it. Instead of actively trying to solve the crisis, our world leaders argue over who’s responsible.
The lack of meaningful action from our political leaders frustrates us because they have long branded themselves as the big problem solvers, the only ones capable of fixing our broken systems. Meanwhile, our business leaders insist that they’ve cornered the market on innovation. If business and government can’t fix our world, who can?
In their book Active Hope, Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone point out that there are three dominant stories playing out in our world today: Business As Usual, the Great Unraveling, and the Great Turning. Most of our business and political leaders are telling us the story of Business As Usual. In other words, everything is fine, so why would we make drastic changes that threaten our way of life (i.e. my place in power)?
Business As Usual is the story that our current way of doing things is working just fine and that people who say otherwise are lying. Corporate leaders talk about how capitalism is the greatest wealth builder ever known and that if we just keep doing more of the same, we’ll all live at a high standard of living. The media reports mostly on this story, so it’s a familiar one to all of us. It’s also based on an impossible premise of unending growth. We live on a finite planet, so we cannot grow indefinitely, and all evidence suggests that we’ve already reached and passed the limits of that kind of growth. We are destroying our planet faster than it can recover on its own, so this story is more about denying reality than it is about describing a real future.
Dystopian novels and movies illustrate the many ways the Great Unraveling storyline might play out. In this story, we recognize that the way we are doing things is destroying our planet and that it can’t last. Following this to its logical conclusion, the Great Unraveling asserts that at some point, the natural systems we depend on will fail, there will be disease, famine and wars over what’s left of our resources. In this story, we are already too late: the Earth is already too damaged and people are too set in their ways to change. It assumes that the fundamental nature of humanity is that it is destructive and warlike, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
But there is another story: the Great Turning. In the Great Turning, we don’t deny the truth and we don’t implode, we figure out how to operate our planet properly, and we thrive far into the future. It’s the story of how we manage to form life-sustaining relationships with each other and the planet and avoid annihilation. In this story we are capable of changing ourselves and our world; we can find ways to work together, despite our differences; we can heal what we have damaged and learn to increase life rather than destroy it; and we are not inherently warlike, but cooperative.
So which story is true? All three of these stories is playing out right now, so in a sense, they’re all true. The question is really which one will end up being our future? That depends on what we do. Which future do we strive for?
It’s important to understand that all three stories are happening right now. There are many people proceeding with their lives as if nothing will change, that business as usual will continue indefinitely. There are many who are preparing for the great unraveling, storing food, weapons and other resources so they can be one of the survivors. And there are many people—many more than you might realize—who are working toward the Great Turning: activists, scientists, designers, makers, artists, entrepreneurs, and poets; thinkers and doers of all kinds who want a better future for themselves and their children.
This book is about helping write the story of the Great Turning. It’s based on a kind of faith that we are not destined to fail, to die by the millions or billions, to lose all we’ve created. We have the option of success, of realizing a world with freedom, security and purpose.
We can imagine our descendants telling their children, years from now, the story of how we managed to avert disaster and change the direction of humanity.
Therefore:
Choose to help write the story of the Great Turning that our descendants will tell their children in the future; allow yourself to imagine that a wonderful future is still possible.
To reinforce the story of the great turning, look for ways to renew your Faith In Life.