The Great Turning, Joanna Macy
The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization.
The ecological and social crises we face are caused by an economic system dependent on accelerating growth. This self-destructing political economy sets its goals and measures its performance in terms of ever-increasing corporate profits—in other words by how fast materials can be extracted from Earth and turned into consumer products, weapons, and waste.
A revolution is under way because people are realizing that our needs can be met without destroying our world. We have the technical knowledge, the communication tools, and material resources to grow enough food, ensure clean air and water, and meet rational energy needs. Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they may well call this the time of the Great Turning. It is happening now.
The Great Turning, Trailer
At a time when everything we love seems to be at risk, Joanna Macy offers a kind of road map for this unique moment in human history when we must come alive to our truest power, to "look straight into the face of our time," and to participate in the Great Turning.
What is the Great Turning? It is, as Joanna describes it, the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining one. It is, she believes, the third major revolution of human times, after the agricultural and industrial revolutions. This one, though, has to unfold much more quickly. The good news is that it is, all around the world.
“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth,” says Joanna, “Is not that we are on the way to destroying the world — we've actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.”
Paul Hawken calls this "Arguably the greatest interview of our time with one the wisest women of our time. Heartbreakingly inspiring, practical and transcendental, transformative words that Joanna Macy has conjoined so beautifully in her life and work."