Regenerative Transition
The Great Turning - Joanna Macy
The renowned soul Joanna Macy was an activist and a scholar of buddhism, systems theory and deep ecology. She conceived a model for a transition to a regenerative future, which she called The Great Turning. She described three stories of our time:
- Business as usual where there is no need to change how we live, economic growth is key, and it’s all about getting ahead.
- The great unravelling points to the disasters, the climate, ecological and social crises that business as usual is driving.
- The Great Turning is described as the transition from an industrial society fixated on growth to a life-sustaining society committed to the healing and recovery of our world.
The three dimensions of The Great Turning.
The three dimensions provide a broad outline of what is necessary to challenge the stories of business as usual and the great unravelling that is happening around us. They are a helpful framework for our work as activists and particularly relevant for a movement that wants to frame the work within a culture of regeneration.
XR and the story of The Great Turning
We can view our XR movement as fitting into the Holding Actions category linking with our communities and our call for Citizen’s assemblies to enable the development of Life-Sustaining Systems and Practices. Or we could consider this for a model as a whole for our movement, our NVDA being Holding Actions and our Culture, P and V’s and our SOS being the Life-sustaining systems and practices. In either view, a shift in consciousness is a key component. In Joanna Macy’s view this meant a shift to a scientific and spiritual realisation that we are deeply connected within a web of nature. From that sense of belonging in the world we grow our compassion, courage and determination and nourish ourselves in that wider relationship which protects us from burnout. In the story of the Great Turning, changing the self and changing the world are mutually reinforcing and essential to each other.
Joanna Macy developed an empowerment tool that has been used in workshops around the world for decades. It is the Spiral of the ‘Work that Reconnects’. It emerges from the story of The Great Turning creating a pathway to transform our grief about what is happening to the earth and beings we love into Active Hope that energises us to take our role in the Great Turning. These workshops are often offered within XR and have been a source of inspiration for XR Actions and gatherings.
You will find an exercise based on the The Spiral Process in the Resources section, which was developed through a collaboration between Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone.