The Great Turning Or The Great Unraveling: It’s Our Choice with Joanna Macy

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Macy points out, “Our earth is alive. It's not a supply house or a sewer, it is our larger living body with vast evolving intelligence that we are totally a part of and we can draw on.” She encourages us to face the facts of our immense planetary challenges. However, rather than allowing these realities to shut us down, we can choose the practice of active hope. She encourages us to choose the story of “The Great Turning” rather than “The Great Unraveling.” She describes the “Great Turning” as a vital, creative response and wholesale revision of our values and our perceptions toward this precious planet. She encourages us to get together with others to find our way through, as together we imagine the future we want. (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)

Bio

Joanna Macy, Ph.D., (1929-2025) was an eco-philosopher and a respected voice in the peace, justice, and ecology movements. She was the author of many books and a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, Macy has created a groundbreaking framework for personal and social change that brings a new way of seeing the world as our larger body.

Joanna Macy’s books include:

• Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings (Co-authors, John Seed, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess) (New Catalyst Books 2007)
• World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal (Parallax Press 2021)
• Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects (co-authored with Molly Young Brown) (New Society Publishers 1998 and 2014)
• Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (New Society Publishers 1983)
• Active Hope: How to face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power (co-authored Chris Johnston) (New World Library 2022)
• A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time (Shambhala 2020) 

To learn more about the work of Joanna Macy go to www.JoannaMacy.net

Topics explored in this dialogue include:

• What are the three great revolutions of human history
• Why we need to look at our sorrow and fear for the world
• Why we need to sit with other people who are coping with overwhelm in these times
• What is the Gaia theory that the earth is alive
• Why is it important for us to imagine a world in which we’d like to live
• What is the process of speaking to future generations about this time we’re living in
• What is The Deep Time perspective of expanding the temporal context of our lives
• What is the promise of “discontinuous change” that jumps evolution
• How we direct our actions to follow either the story of “The Great Turning” or “The Great Unraveling

Host: Justine Willis Toms    Interview Date: 7/25/2012   Program Number: 3446

Music Playlist

From Album: Quiet Mind: The Musical Journey of a Tibetan Nomad
Artist: Nawang Khechog
1991 Sounds True #STA M001D

Opening Essay: Track: 01 Year of Tibet
Music Break 1: Track 03 The Flight of a Shepherd Boy
Music Break 2: Track 06 Giving and Forgiving
Music Break 3: Track 04 Freedom in Exile