The Great Turning

A group of us took the 4.20 to London on Monday to hear Joanna Macy talk. It was the first warm evening of the year, and walking through St James’s Park at dusk, we breathed deeply the first scents, and were dazzled by the thick white cherry blossoms. Even the pigeons were nuzzling each other romantically. It was magic to experience natural wellbeing in the middle of a city.

Macy is an 80 year old deep ecologist. We are, she said, living in an extraordinary time: our generation is participating in the necessary and unavoidable transition from an Industrial Growth society to a Life Sustaining society. And like so many life ventures, like sowing seeds or giving birth, it’s not certain we’re going to make it.

There is, Macy says, a taboo about talking of such things, and people often say, don’t worry; it will be all right. But, she says, that’s because so many of us are afraid of the feelings that might come up on accepting the problem. It is totally appropriate to feel both deep gratitude for and connection with all that is, as well as the great sadness of the earth. Having powerful emotional responses can help us move out of overwhelm to discover untapped sources of creativity, courage and power, says Macy.

Let us start to listen to the voices of all beings. Let us listen to the voices of our ancestors, who lived embedded in the web of life; they are speaking to us now and we are hearing them. If we were to listen to the voices of our children seven generations ahead, what choices would they want us to make now?Joanna Macy calls her approach the Work that Reconnects. That for me sums up the Transition Towns work and the emotional place I live in order to remain sane and effective during this extraordinary Great Turning.

For more information about a weekend in Sussex woodlands exploring the Work that Reconnects please see www.changingworlds.info/courses

The Upside of Down

When Jeremy Leggett spoke to Transition Town Lewes about peak oil and climate change a year ago, he told us that when peak oil hit, the economy would take a nosedive, recover temporarily and then go into a terminal decline. I never understood the reasoning behind that; surely markets adjust slowly and evolve to new ways of doing things?

I’m not an economist, but I’m starting to put the pieces together. Nobody’s spelling it out, but could the soaring price of oil and the collapsing economy be linked? Oil keeps hitting progressive price milestones, and just going up, which is what Leggett said would be a sign that Peak Oil had come in to the traders’ consciousness. If something is likely to be in shorter supply in the future, its price will go up, right? Meanwhile, our economy is, like a pack of cards, based on debt on the assumption of future economic growth. That assumption is based on ever increasing supplies of oil and other natural resources which, we all know, is the fatal dream that we’re starting to wake up from.

So if we are indeed witnessing the beginning of a systemic collapse, as many commentators are saying, the prevailing culture can either Keep the Show on the Road at any cost (including building runways and nuclear power stations and invading countries with the remaining fossil fuels) or Live within our Means. This will mean a radical although probably life saving rethink of all the assumptions of the Western Empire. As Richard Heinberg, who is talking in Lewes on 25 March, writes, ‘Economic contraction may be bitter medicine, but it's part of the cure for what ails our planetary home. However, we can manage this contraction either foolishly or intelligently.’