What turns a crisis into a moment for substantive change? | Aeon Essays

We define a shift as social, political, economic and/or cultural transformation. From our perspective, we want shifts in the direction of ecological resilience and social equity, as an imperative. We believe that shifts can emerge from collective “aha” moments when social movements awaken the popular imagination to new possibilities and spark socia

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On the other hand, I am a believer in radical hope, by which I mean recognising that the chances of success may be slim but still being driven to act by the values and vision you are rooted in. Time and again, humankind has risen up collectively, often against the odds, to tackle shared problems and overcome crises.

The challenge we face as a civili

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Our job as activists is to have good ideas lying around, so that when the crisis occurs, the impossible can become the inevitable. The good news and the bad news is that here in the digital 21st century, we are really living through a great surplus of crisis. And in that world of crisis, there are so many opportunities for us to demand something be

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As individuals we are in transition between two stories that each define what it means to be a human. Our civilization is going through the same crisis. A convergence of crises is birthing us into a new world.

The human species is in the latter stages of the kind of transformation of context that only occurs every five hundred years or so. The meta-crisis is not merely ‘a lot of problems’ that we may or may not solve, rather it is the character of this time between worlds, where one world system is dying but another has yet to be born.

There is such urgency in the multitude of crises we face, it can make it hard to remember that in fact it is urgency thinking (urgent constant unsustainable growth) that got us to this point, and that our potential success lies in doing deep, slow, intentional work.

All these offerings can be seen as tools to maneuver cultural risk, like retroactive reputational or crisis management, but also tools to activate upon opportunities proactively: how can you react to emerging shifts, or even manifest your own?

While that would be fantastic, it feels more and more impossible without “collective social change”; these changes can occur through shifting norms and habits that will thus influence broader policy. “Shifts in development pathways result from both sustained political interventions and bottom-up changes in public opinion,” the report says. “Collect... See more