System Change, Transformation, and the Question of Emotions

The need for a systemic overhaul is becoming ever more clear. While crises like the war in Iran or Ukraine, Covid or even the financial crisis from 2007 have always caused vulnerable people, especially in the Global South, to suffer first and most¹, disparate shocks are by now also clearly felt in industrial countries. In times of multiple crises (some have even termed this state ‘polycrisis’²), this feeling of a need to revisit the foundations of our political-economic system can no longer be ignored.

In Western democracies, the perceived lack of alternatives to a capitalist system is often causing feelings of panic, fatigue, and helplessness in the face of gigantic power asymmetries and negative incentive structures of late capitalism³. What good does it do me to rebel against the same oil companies for raising prices and polluting the environment when I am dependent on their products for my ride to work which I need to pay my bills? What difference does it make if I consume less when I know my job depends on economic growth with all its costs for people and planet? System change, however, requires action instead of fatigue, and hope instead of despair.

The process of facing fear in crises

One concept among many to counter this trend comes from the American environmental activist Joanna Macy. Her work builds on the concept of active hope⁴, which describes a state of readiness to engage and is enabled by an empowerment process over four steps: coming from gratitude shifts our focus from fear to trust and an appreciation of things we need to face the crises. By honoring our pain for the world, we can give space to the grief and recognize shared values as well as our interconnectedness with all life. Seeing with new eyes reveals the resources we can count on and the power we have to change things. Finally, *going forth enables us to act and heal together.

While this concept may sound difficult to simply put into practice, it provides a process to follow and tools to use in order to transform helplessness into action by using emotional access as a key tool. I recently had the experience of witnessing this process in the form of a seminar on ‘polycrisis and inner/outer transformation’. It was a course which, refreshingly, went beyond the usual skill-forming, job-market-focused course content to teach students a sort of doing culture and enable active hope by setting in motion their own projects to promote alternative practices. The collectivity of this shared experience made clear to me the interconnectedness among my peers. While the limitation here is that university students might be considered more homogeneous than people with more diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, the concept could prove valuable in different environments as well.

The worlds to gain

The tools that were used in this process of building active hope consisted of paired conversations to share emotions. Questions about gratefulness for individual and collective resources and commons shed light on positive things that can be activated. Acknowledging pain in a group context not only revealed the interconnectedness and shared experiences within the current system, it also made explicit the obvious fact that no one is alone with these struggles. Through active engagement with literature on the political economy of transformation, alternatives to the dominance of capitalism became clear, whether they are termed degrowth, solidarity economy, post-growth, or socialism. The final exercise consisted of acting together and putting into practice projects that either protect existing structures of life, enable a new economy with new regenerative practices, or shift consciousness to strengthen compassion.

The insights gained from exploring emotions individually and collectively can enable a form of active hope that is: reveal community as well as collective resources like support structures, civil initiatives or mobilization potential. The ability to transform overwhelming anxiety and realize agency is key to overcoming the adverse power structure in political economy. Coordinated civil power is one of the most important resources in the fight against corporate interests and autocratic tendencies⁵. While political top-down action like legislative efforts are crucial, they are significantly harder to put into practice without change-making that comes from the bottom upwards, diffusing into society and setting into motion a shift within the system⁶. In order to build these practices, agency is deeply needed and it can be unblocked by facing our emotions systematically and setting free the power of present, connected, and solidary human beings.

1. Sial, F. (2023). Whose Polycrisis? Developing Economics. Available at: https://developingeconomics.org/2023/01/27/whosepolycrisis/. ↩

2. Tooze, A. (2022, 28. Oktober). Welcome to the world of the polycrisis. Financial Times. ↩

3. Beckert, J. (2022). Verkaufte Zukunft: Dilemmata des globalen Kapitalismus in der Klimakrise. (MPIfG Discussion Paper 22/7). Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung ↩

4. Macy, J. & Johnstone, C. (2012). Active Hope. How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy. New World Library. ↩

5. Escobar, O. and A. Bua (2025). “Democratic innovation for change: A participatory corrective to deliberative hegemony.” Politics. OnlineFirst. ↩

6. Paech, N. (2021). Postwachstumsökonomie: Von der aussichtslosen Institutionen- zur Individualethik. zfwu Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik 22(2): 168-190. ↩