The Great Unravelling and The Great Turning
We are living through a period of major upheaval as we face the shadow of industrial growth culture. Old ways of dominating the rest of nature are falling apart. This is a time of great uncertainty, of chaos and suffering. The birth of the new is emerging in glimpses but its shape cannot yet be seen. We are in a liminal space of cultural breakdown and transformation.
UK politics has felt like a whirlwind over these past few months. From Boris Johnson’s resignation, Liz Truss becoming Prime Minister, the death of Queen Elizabeth, and now the appointment of Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister following Truss’s resignation – it has been hard to keep up.
As the recent Conservative, neo-liberal UK government dug in around the mantra ‘growth, growth, growth’, as it attempted to mobilise supporters by conjuring up an enemy called the anti-growth coalition, I see the desperate dying throes of fossil fuel interests. Not dead yet, still deadly.
This autumn, it is clearer than ever that we are in a political, economic and social mess, as well as an ecological one. The UK is in its own predicament, but it’s hard to think of a country that isn’t. And some kind of breakdown is inevitable, since even the best of political parties and governments are not willing to face fully into the societal transformation that would be needed to address the climate and ecological crisis.
Naomi McCavitt’s disturbing picture “Land o’ Plenty” evokes so much, with its combination of fantastic portrait, landscape and still life.
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