Responses

If you connect the threads of the last three posts, I think it's clear that there are changes, challenges, and problems ahead, and that there are also tools (like the ones I learned at RUST and stuff from permaculture, etc) to deal with these changes and challenges. The question I'd like to address in this post is what is the scope of how we deal with this?

I think there are two possible responses to peak oil, climate change, economic collapse, etc. The first is to use the appropriate tools to make sure that you survive and perhaps even thrive. Sometimes this gets extended out to insure the survival of your family, those you love. The second response is to use those tools to make sure that the community, and even better everyone, or at least everyone possible, survives.

Individualist survivalists abound. If all you are interested in is protecting yourself, or yourself and your family, then there are lots of companies that will sell you the equipment, and lots of websites with information and plans.

But if your goal is general survival, community survival, the survival of everyone, while some of the tools are similar, the tactics are different. We need to reach out to one another, educate one another, and listen to one another.

There are folks that support a community survival approach. RUST (who I blogged about in my last post) is one. The Transition Initiative (see my post on Transition Towns, 10/16/08, for more on this) is another. The permaculture folks really get this (see my posts on Permaculture, 7/22/08, and Permaculture Principles, 12/24/09). It's not an accident that both RUST and the Transition Initiative came from folks trained in permaculture. And Joanna Macy's Great Turning (see my posts on The Great Turning, 11/15/09, and Social Change: My View, 6/29/10, for more on this) supports the idea of us working together to deal with the changes and to create positive change.

Working for community survival is a lot more challenging than making sure that you and your family survive, but it's the only way to create '... a world that works for everyone.'


Quote of the Day: "Community is not a simple solution to the world's problems; we know that simple solutions don't exist in any case. What it may be, though, is humanity's next evolutionary step, giving us the opportunity and the challenge of reconnecting with each other and with our environment, in recognition of what native people refer to as 'all our relations.'" - Helen Forsey