Читать книгу Active Hope - Joanna Macy - Страница 19

In 2010 polls for both CBS⁸ and Fox News⁹ showed that a majority believed the conditions for the next generation would be worse than for people living today. Two years earlier, an international poll of more than 61,600 people in sixty countries yielded similar results.¹⁰ With so many people losing confidence that things will be okay, a very different account of events is emerging. Since it involves a perception that our world is in serious decline, we take a term used by social thinker David Korten and call this story the Great Unraveling.¹¹

In our work with people addressing their concerns about the world, we’re struck by how many issues are triggering alarm. The list in Box 1.2 identifies five common areas of concern, and most likely you have some others you would add to this list. Facing these problems can feel uncomfortable, even overwhelming, but in order to get to where we want to go, we need to start from where we are. The story of the Great Unraveling offers a disturbing picture of where that is.

Box 1.2. The Great Unraveling of the Early Twenty-First Century

• Economic decline

• Resource depletion

• Climate change

• Social division and war

• Mass extinction of species