What is Voices?
We are amid a global transformation: a shift from an an exploitative relationship to the Earth and it’s people to a life-sustaining and generative way of being.
Some are calling this shift the Great Turning. We find evidence of this transformation everywhere. We see it in the smallest changes, from a family deciding to plant a vegetable garden or moving their money from a big bank to a credit union, to the largest movements, such as the recent progress to guarantee the rights of nature or the new fervor behind the quest for racial justice in the United States.
And these Voices are the stories of how it is happening.
These are the stories about the new ways of living and being—which perhaps may be old ways—that are emerging out of and in service to this transformation. These are stories of the ways people around the globe are working tirelessly and courageously for positive social and environmental change. These stories are about people who are creating a better world on behalf of all being alive today and the generations that lay before us, and how they are doing it.
Voices explores the stories of the Great Turning and how it is playing out in the world.
What is the Great Turning?
“The Great Turning is the essential adventure of our time: the switch from the industrial growth society to a life sustaining society.”
There are many ways to describe the Great Turning, a phrase originally coined by Buddhist scholar, ecophilosopher, and activist Joanna Macy. Simply put, it refers to the shift in consciousness taking place in the hearts and minds of people around the globe. People are transitioning out of an exploitative relationship to the Earth and each other to one that is life-sustaining and generative for all.
Because of this shift, more people are engaged in positive change than have ever been before on the planet. This shift in catalogued in the writings of Joanna Macy, as well as in Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest.
One key element of the Great Turning is that it is happening in conjunction with the Great Unravelling, which is the collapse of our social and ecological systems. We see evidence for this in things like heightened wealth inequity, climate change, and increased militarization of the police.
Macy refers to the Great Turning as “the essential adventure of our time”, because we do not know how it will end. We do not know if the Great Turning will take hold soon enough to preserve the Earth’s potential for life. It is the hero’s journey happening on a planetary scale, and we do not know where it will lead us, or how it will end. Nevertheless, with courage and love we set out on this journey.
Sally Neas is an educator, writer and researcher living in Davis, California. She became a writer at age 7, when a story she wrote and illustrated won a local writing contest. She is currently a graduate student studying climate change education at the University of California at Davis in their Community Development Master’s program. She has written for Yes! Magazine, Modern Farmer, Taproot Magazine, Civil Eats, The Santa Cruz Weekly and The Good Times. When she is not writing, leads backpacking trips with Bay Area girls.