Relocalization - Doomers, Wheelwrights & The Concept Of Resilience - Energy Bulletin

[hatrack]

EDIT

So how does this concept of resilience relate to the “prepare-for-your-own-survival versus the-prepare-for-your-community’s-survival” debate? Firstly it is important to point out that this is really a discussion of two notional extremes, that we all position ourselves at different points along this spectrum at different moments and on different issues. For example, although I am committed to developing community-scale responses to energy descent, which I see as being the most effective response to peak oil, I also am planning to make my house capable of heating, powering and hot-watering itself without the grid if necessary.

Growing food, planting productive trees and so on, are all essential parts of this, but they are also all part of developing my own family’s resilience. Having some food put by, having candles and lamps in reserve, is all common sense and is a manifestation of resilience that our grandparents were all familiar with. I remember powercuts at my grandmother’s house, out came the candles and all the necessary things. As in any ecosystem, the resilience of the parts adds to the resilience of the larger system.

Clearly, individual and family resilence is key for a number of reasons. It is common sense to be prepared for any eventuality, to create some slack in the system. It is also important in terms of fostering a wider sense of self-reliance and of individual empowerment, which I alluded to in my recent piece about skills, the loss of the sense that one is able to turn one’s hand to anything, I think inevitably affects how one views impending shocks, be it peak oil or leaky roof. It is also important on a cultural level, and also on an economic level, as it fosters the skills that build a local economy and the reciprocity that is essential for a successful gift economy.

Where I think focusing purely on individual and family resilience is less desirable as a strategy is when it thinks that it will be the only effective solution. Zach’s analogy of preferring to have insurance rather than a fire extinguisher doesn’t really work for me. One could just as easily argue that engaging one’s community successfully in an energy descent planning process is a far more effective form of insurance than preparing oneself for individual survival. I would see it thus, if the analogy holds; that our most effective form of insurance will be the network of neighbours and relationships that we have built up around us, the shared infrastructure, economic, food producing and energy generating, that we have collaboratively created, and the degree of self-reliance we have engendered in people, in short, the degree of resilence in our wider community.

EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/24055.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. "...loss of the sense that one is able to turn one’s hand to anything..."!!!

Excellent point! Build a good country, and a good community, starting with re-gaining the sense that you can turn your hand to something--growing vegetables, sewing, creating a thing with hammer and nails, installing solar cells, re-designing/building your immediate environment to take advantage of natural heat and cooling, planting a tree, drawing your own Christmas cards on recycled paper...

I remember manual typewriters--a typewriter I could fix, because I could see and understand its workings.

I remember cars that family members and neighbors and strangers (if you were stuck) could fix, because they had understandable parts that everyone could see.

I remember when you sewed up a tear in a shirt, rather than tossing the shirt out and buying another one.

Very satisfying endeavors.

And there is really nothing as satisfying as growing and eating vegetables from your own or a community garden.

The people running our country may be nuts--enslaved to the panic and greed of the rich, terrified by the idea of not having enough money laid up in Cayman Island banks for the big crunch--but we don't have to be infected by their insanity. We may be unable to control them and their horrible behavior. Not that we should stop trying, but they have found new ways of election theft and of seizing our common funds for global predator resource wars, and, thus far, we have not been effective at curtailing them, let alone in getting our government back in public control. But we can re-create democracy locally, and can re-establish its fundamental conditions--self-sufficiency, and the sense that we are able to turn our hands to things.

Americans have never really lost the desire not just to be handy and self-sufficient, but also to be both helpful and highly creative and industrious. These are part of our national character, which six years of fascist rule--and decades of corporate rule--have not extinguished. It's just that there is no one at the top to provide any organization or inspiration. Imagine having an FDR or a JFK in charge of the country as we face the impacts of global warming--among them, climate disasters. Can you imagine what just a little boost would do? Americans would instantly rally. You would see millions of alternative energy projects spring up, for instance--at the crook of a finger from the President. We're seeing them anyway, to a more limited degree--with no national leadership. But imagine what just a little leadership would do!

So, the spirit is there! We just have to bolster and underpin it with the conviction that we ARE this democracy. There is no other. We need to put our hands to that, too. To counting the votes.

[The2ndWheel]

2. That's the price of specialization

"Imagine having an FDR or a JFK in charge of the country as we face the impacts of global warming--among them, climate disasters. Can you imagine what just a little boost would do? Americans would instantly rally."

See, I think the problem would get worse if that were the case. It would be solving large scale problems with large scale solutions. That's how we got to this point.

"We're seeing them anyway, to a more limited degree--with no national leadership."

Limits. What an odd concept.