Reason and Revolution from a Piagetian Perspective

July 8, 2025  — Replublished as a way of remembering
the many conversations I had with Joanna Macy about
the quest for a few that would actually express our predicament.

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To my friends around the world,

I am holding all us anti-nuclear activists in the Light 
as Joanna nears the end of her physical time with us, and
as we give thanks for her life and teachings.

I wanted you to see attached PDF featuring my new Hobbit
avatar & nom de plume,  Bleep Bloggins,     This article 
is one of the ways I understand my own grief, and in a
larger sense, my own life and my relationship with Joanna.

Reason and Revolution from a Piagetian Perspective:
How the Emerging Thinking Capacities of Young People
Collide with the Self-deceptions of the Society Around Them

https://OneEarth.University/wp-content/uploads/Reason-and-Revolution-from-a-Piagetian-Perspective-rev2.pdf

Perhaps this is also one of the elements in teen suicide
and adult drug addiction. People are driven mad by
the things they can’t allow themselves to see, to say, 
and to feel.  Joanna did all three, and allowed everyone
around her to do all three:  see it, say it, and feel it,
empowered by a compassion that reached further 
than we could know.

One of the deep topics I began to explore in my long
friendship/apprenticeship with Joanna was that
our grief for world was not something that we were
going to “work through” (in psychotherapy terms).
It was much more something that we were going 
to need to learn to live with, and carry more gracefully.
The wreck of the planet at the hands of runaway greed
is an ongoing process.  We will never be happy 
about it. A major way of “living with” would be to 
consciously cultivate more gratitude, (a theme that 
occurs in many teachings).  The more gratitude we
could cultivate, the more grief we could carry
without collapsing.  

Another important process would be to unmask 
the lies, so that we could struggle against them 
consciously, rather than have those lies drag us
into depression from hidden places in the psyche.
This to me is the meaning of Joanna’s Truth Circle 
exercise. Facing the truth so often means 
unmasking the hidden lies, even though most of us 
would prefer not to be in a giant fight about these things
(war, slavery, ecological suicide) with half  or two 
thirds of the world around us.   

Darn!   But, this is the truth of my situation, and 
Joanna has been a true friend on this difficult road.

Love and blessings,

Dennis