The Great Turning — Humanity's Potential for Collective Awakening
The teaching that humanity stands at a threshold of collective transformation — a 'Great Turning' from a destructive civilization to a life-sustaining one — is the universal hope that inspires all genuine spiritual and social activism.
Joanna Macy's concept of the 'Great Turning' — the movement from an industrial civilization that treats the Earth as a resource to a life-sustaining civilization that honors the sacred web of life — names what indigenous prophets, spiritual teachers, and social visionaries across traditions have described as the potential of this historical moment: a collective turning of human consciousness that could reverse the suicidal trajectory of the current civilization. The Hopi prophecy of the Fifth World; the Andean Pachakuti (reversal of the world order); the Lakota Black Elk's vision of the healing of the hoop; the Christian eschatological hope for the Kingdom of God; the Buddhist vision of a society governed by the Dharma; the Islamic concept of Khilafat (stewardship of the Earth) fulfilled — all describe humanity's potential for a collective awakening that is simultaneously spiritual, ecological, social, and political. What is universal is the recognition that this transformation, if it comes, will come not through force or technology alone but through a change in consciousness — in the values, perceptions, and motivations that shape all human action.
The Great Turning is happening now. And you are part of it.
Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson's This View of Life documents that cultural evolution — the transmission and selection of social practices — can operate as rapidly and powerfully as genetic evolution, suggesting that a 'Great Turning' in cultural values is genuinely possible within a few generations if the conditions for cultural evolution are intentionally cultivated.
Universal Wisdom