The Great Turning

There is a book by David Korten called the Great Turning. It has inspired quite a few sites. This one by Joanna Macy is particularly good.

It also reminds me of this oldie called Alli Alli in Free.

Remember?

We use to yell this out when we were playing hide and seek

or perhaps you used it in another childhood game.

It means that this part of the game is over.

You can come in to home base.

Without being captured.

Without being tagged.

Without being "it".

As I remember, the person who owned the yard,

where you were playing the game,

was able to have certain game naming privileges.

Including,

Alli Alli in Free.

We humans are in a unique cross roads in our evolution.

And we are faced with unique and substantial challenges.

For millennia, humankind has been building fires of one size or another,

and we have used these fires,

to drive away animals,

to cook them when we can,

to warm our loved ones,

to drive our machines,

to power our computers,

to destroy our enemies.

This fire has served us very well.

But now, the very atmosphere that we need to burn this fire in,

is saying,

No more.

Conveniently, but not necessarily helpfully,

the sticks that we have been using to fuel our fires,

which now lie farther and farther away from our homes,

are now half way used up,

and becoming more and more difficult to find.

Meanwhile, other growing powerful tribes want these sticks too.

And the forest cannot keep up with the need for more.

Therefore, some would reason,

We must use our bigger sticks to get more burning sticks.

One day,

a very wise man came into camp and he said,

"We have come to the time when we do not burn our sticks."

We can use our sticks to scratch the earth,

so it will bring forth more food.

We can stack our sticks to build great strong structures,

so our children will be warm.

We can point our sticks at the heavens,

so they will receive the energy from the universe.

We can even use our sticks to bring us to unknown new worlds.

But first, we must reshape our most powerful subtle stick.

We must bend it and place a tight string on it.

And launch the arrow of human potential.

We must reform our mind.

We must reshape our thinking.

We must give our positions up.

The old ways of thinking,

Liberal

Conservative

Environmentalist

Corporatist

Left

Right

Democrat

Republican

Libertarian

Justician

subject

object

me

it

Are passe.

At least they should be.

It's my yard.

And it's time for a new game.

We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.

-The Earth Charter (2000)

Alli Alli in Free.




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