In their book Active Hope, Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone say that the Great Turning has already begun, that many of us simply don’t see it yet, because we are immersed in it, just like when you see an impressionist painting up close and it seems like just a bunch of arbitrary colored dots, but when you step back, take a bigger view, you can recognize the shapes.
To help us perceive the beginning of the Great Turning, they propose 3 dimensions in which they categorize citizen actions, which is helpful to think about the groups that could join this great work of collective art:
1. First dimension: Groups that are engaging in “holding actions” to hold back and slow the damage caused by “business as usual”, protecting what is left of our natural life-support systems and countering the unraveling of our social fabric:
- Community gardens and native species gardens in urban contexts;
- Community movements for housing and defense of public space;
- Cyclist communities defending road space;
- Solidarity cooperatives whose core activities include caring for people and the environment;
- Communities and collectives defending air, water, soil, forests, ancestral territories, biodiversity;
- Collectives that organize to care for and protect those who have been harmed by society, wars, exploitation, hunger, and injustice.
2. Second dimension: Groups that are rethinking and recreating ways of occupying the present, redesigning the way of thinking and living, re-inventing life-sustaining systems and practices such as:
- Community currency collectives;
- Alternative banks that seek social and environmental benefits IN ADDITION to monetary gains;
- Groups dedicated to regenerative agriculture;
- Community-supported agriculture (such as agroecological farmers markets or regular and direct-to-consumer sales systems);
- Local and direct sales cooperatives between producer and consumer;
- Bio-construction collectives;
- Social enterprises that seek to contribute to their local communities and the natural environment;
- REwilding projects;
- Solidarity and community energy management groups;
- Learning communities;
- Ethical financing systems.
3. Third dimension: Collectives that invite us to change what is “normal”: to shift our consciousness
Human beings have always been, above all, collaborative and communal, but in recent decades we have been shaped, taught, and surrounded by a concept of political economy supported by endless publicity that teaches us to be individualistic, consumerist, and destructive. The third dimension of the Great Turning, as proposed by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, encompasses collective initiatives that, in myriad ways, invite us to be part of the paradigm shift, to escape “destructive normality” and reconnect with the humanity latent in all of us, to recognize ourselves as part of nature, as all indigenous worldviews have taught us for millennia.
NOTE: These lists are not intended to be exhaustive: if your collective is dedicated to any other activity that seeks to stop or reduce the damage caused by the industrial growth society, promotes a society of care, is designing and devising new ways of living well on the planet, or is dedicated to contributing to the paradigm shift, join us!
To all those who are part of these types of collective activities, we invite you to create a collective canvas following one of the collective creation guides to reflect your community experience and share it with the many humans who do not know that this is possible, who live immersed in dominant advertising.