What’s Next?
Joanna Macy, Protest, New Structures, Personal Change & Occupy
— a working paper —
Joanna Macy, a scholar, Buddhist, writer and activist, has written about the three necessary ingredients for a “great turning.” She says that there needs to be the “protest” part which includes resistance, blocking and refusal (see below for comments on the OWS movement). The next one needs to have the “new structures,” those new organizations and businesses that reflect what we really need and desire in a socially just and sustainable foundation, what truly sustains us and what we ought to be supporting. Third category, she writes about, is the need for “personal consciousness change.” And more importantly she says that these three categories are non-hierarchical, which can be problematic if one is totally enmeshed in one arena and not that concerned about the other two.
I have been using this framework to gage what is going on and what is possibly next, and giving us a sense of answering/exploring what is happening out there and inside here so that exploration of ideas can instill some excellent conversations and inner spaces... where people can meet and engage in debate and explore together since often times the new ideas often emerge during coffee discussions or at various workshops as in the relatively recent Occupy Wall Street workgroups.
