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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Joanna Macy
Read between
January 9 - February 21, 2023
Each of us sees only a fragment of this potential future, so the next and fourth part of the workshop involves piecing together information yielded by different people’s imaging to build a more coherent picture of what this future offers. How are decisions made? How does education work?
imagine how we got there.
construct a “history” of the next thirty years from the perspective of this possible future.
Finally, we need to see the role we play in this process.
what are we doing that helps build the future we hope for? There will be many things, and some mig...
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A powerful mental shift takes place when we stop telling ourselves why something can’t happen.
envision a hoped-for future, we strengthen our belief that it is possible. By inhabiting this vision with all our senses, imagining what colors and shapes we see, the expressions on people’s faces, the sounds we hear, the smell, taste, and feel of this future, we bring ourselves there in a way that activates our creative, visionary, and intuitive faculties.
when people approach a problem by imagining that it has already been solved and then look back from this imagined future, they are more creative and detailed in describing potential solutions.8
Transition movement idea that each community could develop its own “energy descent plan” grew out of this visioning process.
Imaginary hindsight can be applied to a range of timescales. If we’re facing a challenge in the next twenty-four hours, we can imagine its successful resolution a day from now and then look back from that point at what we did to get there.
The story of how we rose to the challenge directs our attention to the steps we need to take.
this view, a visionary impulse is not something we invent; it is something we serve.
Something that inspires me at the moment is …
the goal of brainstorming is to spark creative thinking, the process is guided by three rules. First, we don’t censor, explain, or justify our ideas. Second, we don’t evaluate or criticize the ideas of others. And third, we save discussion for later. We’re creating options, not editing them.
The challenge is to listen for the vision that calls us most strongly and to recognize that to follow this well, we will need to refine our focus so as not to dissipate our energy.
when we dare to believe our vision is possible and dare also to act on this belief, extraordinary changes can take place.
Letting go of a hope, relinquishing it, can be a positive act when it is a feature of acknowledging the new conditions we face.
drawing on the fellowship of allies, by serving a purpose much bigger than themselves, by discovering strengths previously hidden from view, and by having enough humility to learn from others.
When encountering the inner voice that would stop us, how do we know whether it is protecting us or blocking us?
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.7
personal context
face-to-face
cultural
ecospiritual
How we think about the value of what we do is crucial.
we don’t see our role as important, we are less likely to take the steps required to function at our best.
We can decide to give significance to our steps of Active Hope.
each nourishing activity becomes an ally adding to our context of support.
asking for help can feel like an admission of weakness.
When we move from struggling by ourselves to acting as part of a network, we experience the shift in power expressed by the phrase “I can’t, we can.”
the group applies what they learn to initiating a change in the world.
study,
strategy,
mutual su...
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“When tens of millions of people make such choices in the space of a few decades, we are witnessing not simply a mass of personal departures but an exodus at the level of culture itself.”2
Each of us has a reference group of those we compare ourselves to in determining what is normal or appropriate behavior.
It is not so much that people don’t want to know their neighbors, it is that they don’t know how to connect with the people living next door and build community.
The desire to take part in the healing of our world seems to be just below the surface, waiting for an opportunity and outlet for expression.
contact with the natural environment can be powerfully restorative to our well-being.6
We can think of this shift as changing our map to one that puts the healing of our world at the very center of things.
This includes all endeavors to build a sustainable culture, along with everything that promotes the concurrent shift in consciousness and perception.
means applying our skills, experience, networks, enthusiasm, and temperament to the healing of our world.
Our degree of enthusiasm can act as a guide, like an inner compass, that helps us steer toward the sort of activity we’ll want to continue and deepen for the long term.
place of fit as where “your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”4 When we find this convergence, the Great
Turning works through us in a way uniquely our own.
A satisfying process is more like a good story that has both ups and downs.
and effort draws out our aliveness. This is what Active Hope is all about: when we live this way, the boredom and emptiness so prevalent in modern society simply disappear.
“The object of the game is to see how much you can lower your spending while raising your quality of life.”11
With the consciousness shift of the Great Turning, we recognize ourselves as intimately connected with all life, each of us like a cell within a larger body. To call an individual cell “successful” while the larger body sickens or dies is complete nonsense.
Will we make it?
