Only Self- Sufficient Local Communities Offer the Possibility of Quality Life in Future Generations - Dick Rauscher
Years ago, a good friend of mine used the metaphor of the Titanic to explain how humanity too often ignores reality. He said instead of preparing the life boats and breaking out the life-jackets, we tend to debate about how the chairs on the deck of the Titanic should be arranged before the ship sinks.
That metaphor is a good example of human nature and how humanity is operating today in the face of global warming, climate change and half a dozen other life altering changes that are coming. We tend to ignore reality when reality feels too big and too threatening. We freeze. We shut down. We focus on irrelevant tasks rather than preparing for the larger threatening realities……realities that feel too big and too over-whelming to even think about.
Global Warming, Climate Change, Storm Intensification and The Other Life-Altering Changes That Are Coming……. Are Not Metaphors!
Climate change, global warming, storm intensification, and the other life-altering changes that are coming are not philosophic issues to be debated. They are not metaphors. They are scientific realities that humanity will be dealing with far sooner than most of us can imagine. And those changes will be far larger and more impactful than most of us can imagine. They represent the unarguable certainty that life as we know it will experience radical change in the coming decades. The future will not be what it used to be.
Putting off the critical decisions we need to be making “now” regarding our own personal future, and the future survival of human civilization……is definitely not a good idea.
Preparation = Resiliency & Survival
The currency of adequately preparing for global climate change will be measured in resiliency and survival. Those who are prepared for the changes that are coming will be more likely to have the resilience and life-skills needed to cope with, and ultimately survive, those life-altering changes.
The evening news is an excellent example of what’s in our collective future; heat waves, droughts, flooding, extreme storms, catastrophic fires, rising ocean water/ice melt, climate migration from coastal cities, ecological collapse, species extinction……the list of life-altering changes that are already here, and expected to increase in severity, is a long one. When you include the inevitable changes that are coming listed in Appendix - A, the need for preparation becomes both urgent and essential. Surviving these changes will require the skills and resilience of small, well prepared, local, intentionally self-reliant communities that we will look at below.
As I discussed in the last Stonyhill-Nugget on systemic thinking……nothing happens in the natural world, or any other complex cultural system (human civilization), that does not directly impact each of our lives. So, it’s time to take preparation for resilience seriously. The climate crises will get worse, and as we will look at below, other equally important life-altering changes are coming. Life as we know it is going to change significantly in the years ahead. And everything, and everyone, will be impacted.
A Basic Problem: Denial and Rigid Ideological Subjective Beliefs Vs. Science, Facts, and Data
A basic problem in the world today is denial and the rigid, subjective beliefs that take priority over scientific facts and data. For example, climate change and storm intensification are rarely talked about on our major news programs. The forest fires currently devastating much of the world, 100 year mega-storms that happen yearly, increasing droughts and flooding, and the need for a new category 6 to talk about hurricanes, are all covered by the media as “breaking news”, but the focus is always on how “awful” and “tragic” those events are on the people impacted. How badly they need our thoughts and prayers! Unfortunately, the need to take concerted action to reverse global warming is all but ignored.
On the rare examples when global warming is even mentioned, it tends to be focused on the debate between those who are convinced that global warming is human caused, and those who scoff at that notion.
Those who believe humans are creating global warming believe the warnings of the overwhelming number of environmental scientists who present facts and data to support their concerns. They accept the warnings of the scientists who a) are increasingly convinced that human activity is directly responsible for global warming, and b) who are increasingly worried that we are rapidly approaching environmental tipping points. Points of no return.
On the other side of the issue are those who scoff at the notion that humans are responsible. They tend to be either inflexible ideological thinkers unwilling to openly examine their rigid beliefs, or persons who have a vested financial interest in continuing to burn our planet’s carbon reserves.
Their personal subjective “opinions” are rarely backed by scientific facts or data to support those “opinions”, they simply insist that any educated, thinking person “knows” that they are “right”. For them, the idea that humanity is creating global warming is ridiculous. And they are “right”. Period. Data and facts to support their subjective beliefs are not needed.
Human Denial Is Caused by A Fear of Reality
The problem of course is human nature. We want to believe the deniers! It’s easier to worry about the deck chairs than the fact that the ship is sinking. But denying the problem of global warming and the many life-altering changes that are coming is getting harder to do. The impacts of those changes are getting increasingly harder to ignore. Every day more of us are experiencing first hand the life-altering impacts of global warming. Destructive forest fires. The paralysis and gridlock in Washington. And the growing global economic and political unrest.
Anyone watching the evening news can see that the world is changing. Droughts. Floods. Fires. Heat waves. Storm intensification. Social unrest. Immigrant issues. Political gridlock. Global economic issues. We know the time for thoughts and prayers and empty hand wringing has passed. The time for denial is over. The time for debate is over. It’s time for action.
We know that recycling cans is a good idea, but we also know that the problem is far larger and more complex than simply recycling aluminum soda cans. But we ask ourselves “I want to be part of the solution, but what can I do? How can I make a difference? I’m only one person”.
So, what’s the answer.
What should we be thinking about? Or doing?
How do you prepare for life-altering changes this big?
What actions can we undertake?
Where do we even begin to address these issues?
Where do we start?
A Possible Solution: The Creation of Resilient, Self-Reliant, Sustainable “Local” Communities
From all of the research and reading that I’ve been doing for the last few years, I believe resiliency and survivability will require the creation of small, self-reliant, local communities. Communities that are capable of embracing sustainable, interdependent, cooperative, long-time frame problem solving.
So, what do we mean when we talk about the importance of resilient, self-reliant, self-sustainable local communities?
What do they look like?
How would we go about creating such a local community?
What are the skills that would be needed to build a local community that is both self-sufficient and sustainable over decades or generations? A community that could help us cope with, and survive, the changes that are urgently knocking at our door.
Perhaps the best way to talk about a self-sufficient, sustainable local community would be to list some of the more important skills, behaviors, values, ideas, concepts, and goals that individuals in this community would need to embrace and bring into the community.
For example, a recognition that…….
Only preparation for the life-altering changes that are coming will create the functional resilience required for survival and a sustainable future for our planet.
The changes that are coming will require humanity to challenge and re-invent the destructive “business as usual” global economic system that has created so many of the problems that challenge us.
Capitalism has created the modern world, unfortunately it is based on competition, greed, wealth inequality, consumption, resource extraction, exponential debt, and unlimited economic expansion on a resource limited planet. The more successful we are in creating a global economy based on capitalism (as currently structured), the faster we are a) burning off our planet’s non-renewable carbon energy resources and b) rapidly destroying our planet’s ecological ability to support life.
Resiliency and sustainability will require the courage to intentionally embrace change; a practice often resisted by the human ego.
Humanity has become an invasive species on our planet.
We have to radically reduce our footprint on our planet and redefine what it means to live a self-sufficient, long-term sustainable, quality life.
We have to distance ourselves from the current global economic food system that has us totally dependent on others for our own personal survival.
The ability to work cooperatively with other members in the community, embrace teamwork, and recognize that interdependence is the backbone of the community.
The community belongs to the land, not vice versa.
Building emotional roots with the land requires a long-term farming relationship with our roots firmly embedded in the land we use to produce the food we eat. The land that provides the community with food and sustenance.
The wisdom to know that the social morality of the community needs to be intentional and firmly embedded in the community identity.
The recognition that every person in the shared cooperative economy a) has a voice, b) belongs, c) is a co-creator of the local economy, and d) the caring for others is based on a compassionate, local, bottom-up form of governance.
A willingness to intentionally embrace increased simplicity, less consumption, and redefine the concept of well-being based on putting home and community at the center of one’s life; not wealth and power.
A recognition of the ecological limits of the community’s land….the land they call “home”, and lastly,
The recognition that we are all interconnected. The recognition that their local economy is based on cooperative, systemically interconnected, interdependent, sustainable, cooperation, team work, and empathy, not on competition, greed, and wealth inequality.
The Two Most Dangerous Threats to The Creation Of A Small, Viable, Self-Reliant, Sustainable, Local Community
Threat #1) The need to be “right”.
The most important insight that a self-reliant, sustainable, and cooperatively-interdependent local community will recognize, and embrace is the importance of taming the dangerous primitive childhood ego’s need to be “right”.
The need to be “right” is one of the most destructive thinking process’ embedded in the human consciousness. The need to be “right” is directly responsible for creating the tribal, ideologically rigid beliefs, polarized conflict, and violence so prevalent in our local and global human culture today.
The need to be “right” is unarguably the cancer that would most certainly prevent both the creation, and the long-term sustainability, of a self-reliant local community. It is far-and-away the most dangerous thinking process embedded in the collective human consciousness; the most dangerous threat to the survival of human civilization…...and even humanity itself.
Virtually every conflict, most of the violence, and most of the human suffering in recorded human history has, at its core, been created by ideologically rigid, black and white, either/or subjective beliefs, and the need to be “right”.
The imperative need to be “right” would effectively undermine compassion, inter-dependent cooperation, team work, empathy, compromise, and creative problem solving……the life blood of a self-reliant, self-sufficient, sustainable local community.
Threat #2) Not choosing to prepare “now” for the changes that are coming. (i.e. waiting for the various life-altering changes and crises that are coming to arrive before one begins to prepare for them.)
The creation of a self-reliant local community, could be an important and effective way to survive the life-altering changes that are coming, but creating such a community effort will never be successfully mandated…… socially or politically.
Creating a compassionate, inter-dependent community is not something that can be legislatively forced on us. Our human denial of change, our sense of independence, and our unconscious resistance to change, is far too unconscious and powerful. The local community I am suggesting would have to be a community created completely by choice. And every member of the community would have to be fully on-board and willing to fully embrace the interdependent nature of that choice.
So, could such a community be created today? Is that even possible? I believe the answer to those questions is unquestionably “yes”.
The Creation of These Local, Self-Reliant Communities Have Already Begun
As humans, most of us tend to embrace change only when our personal lives are impacted significantly and negatively. Only then will most of humanity be willing to intentionally embrace change and begin to prepare for the changes that are coming; changes that include climate change, storm intensification, exponential global and personal debt, the inability to feed one’s family or self, social collapse, climate migration, the mandatory powering down from petroleum energy, and all the many other life altering changes that are coming.
Unfortunately, if we wait until our lives are personally impacted by these changes, it will be too late to effectively prepare and create the skills and resilience needed to successfully cope with those changes. The impacts that are coming are life-altering and they will require significant time for us to effectively prepare for them.
The Transition Movement
Fortunately, there are those among us who understand that early preparation is the only way to create resilience when they are threatened by life-altering change. They call themselves the transition movement. And they have already begun the creation of self-reliant, local, small farm communities. ( https://transitionnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/The-Essential-Guide-to-Doing-Transition-English.pdf )
Those in the transition movement know if they wait for the changes to arrive, it will be too late for them and much of humanity to survive. They know the changes that are coming will seriously threaten the fragile infrastructures of our human civilization and human cultures. If the fragile infrastructure of human civilization collapses, they know life as we know it will come to an end. They understand the changes that are coming will represent a dangerous threat to the survival of those who are not prepared. They understand that all of the self-reliant local communities they are in the process of creating will need to assertively prepare for a future that isn’t what it used to be.
Developing The Basic Skills For Resilience and Hope
For example, those in the transition movement know that most of humanity lacks the basic skills required to survive without electricity for our refrigerators, gas for our furnaces, or petroleum for our transportation systems. They know most of us lack the skills to grow and preserve the food that would be needed to survive a winter climate. They understand that many would not survive more than a few days if water was no longer available from a tap. They know that preparation requires first acquiring and then teaching those basic survival skills to others in the community.
Interdependence and cooperation are not just philosophic words for those in a small local transition community. They define a way of life that every person in the community would have to embrace for their goals of survival and sustainability to be realistic and achievable.
The good news is these small, local, transition movement communities are already being created and quietly growing in many different countries around the world. These small, local, self-reliant, small farm communities represent a model of “hope” that so many of us are looking for.
When preparation becomes a priority, and we are serious about preparation and the creation of true resilience, we will find these transition communities ready to both welcome new members, and teach others the skills that will be needed when life-as-we-know undergoes change; the critical self-reliant skills that an inter-dependent, cooperative community of compassionate people would need to prepare for that challenging future.
Learning the survival skills, we will need in order to cope with the changes that are coming will not happen until we are ready to roll up our sleeves and begin to intentionally embrace the need to prepare; when we are ready to actively choose hope; when we are ready to intentionally embrace change, rather than simply waiting for change to arrive.
Hope reflects the realization that the changes coming are not the end of the world…. just the end of life as we know it.
Conclusion
The only way to mitigate the changes, challenges, and threats that are coming is by
choosing “now” to begin aggressively preparing for them,
knowing that going it alone will “not” be a viable option,
knowing that waiting until the changes actually arrive or simply hoping they will go away before we begin to prepare will also “not” be a viable option.
I am convinced that the best path toward resiliency and survival for the day those life-altering changes arrive, will require beginning “now” to either create, or join, a small, local, self-reliant transition community; a self-sufficient community that has the skills and wisdom required to build the infrastructures, sustainability, and resources that will be needed for long term survival and the creation of a quality life for themselves and future generations.
This is a time to embrace change and hope, not doom, gloom, and hopelessness. If you live in this universe, things “will” change. Period. So why get depressed about it, or resist the reality of change? Resisting change is a path toward insanity. Don’t go there. You will not win.
Insisting on the imperative need to be “right” will not work either. In fact, the conflict you will create inside a self-reliant community will most likely get you expelled very quickly. A community that embraces the skills and concepts of compassion, interdependent cooperation, and team work that I listed above will have very little tolerance for such behavior.
Summary
I believe humanity is at its moment of truth. We either recognize that “business as usual”, and the dangerous myth of unlimited economic expansion embedded in “business as usual”, is rapidly destroying our future and begin to intentionally embrace the changes we need to make in the way we unsustainably live our lives on this planet we call home……. or our future, assuming we survive, is going to be very bleak and very limited.
Change is coming.
Our level of personal, local, and global debt is out of control. (Debt creates a higher quality of life today, but it creates a poverty of life tomorrow when that debt has to be repaid).
The use of carbon-based energy is rapidly polluting our air and warming our planet.
Our global economic system is radically polarizing the planet into those who have access to the resources needed to survive, and those who don’t.
And the lessons of history are clear. Every empire in human history that has allowed wealth inequality to become extreme has experienced collapse.
Change is coming whether we are ready for it or not. The only paths that lead toward the survival of human culture will need to include a voluntary acceptance of down-sizing, increased sustainability, less consumption, powering down from carbon energy, simplifying our life style, reversing population growth, and protecting the ecological diversity of our planet.
And paradoxically, these are the very changes that are coming!
Our choice is clear. Prepare for them and increase our resilience and ability to survive them, or sit in denial until it’s too late for us to survive when they crash onto our shores.
Human civilization is far more brittle and fragile than most of us want to acknowledge. If we are going to survive, I am convinced each of us are going to need to begin to prepare……now. The day is coming when it will be too late. Humanity has become an invasive species on our planet. And nature has a long history of extinction as a lethal way of dealing with invasive species.
So, to briefly summarize, the only option that embraces a realistic sense of hope for me is to begin now……..
Creating small, local autopoietic (continuous self-creation), self-reliant, sustainable, small farm transition communities. ( https://transitionnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/The-Essential-Guide-to-Doing-Transition-English.pdf )
Small local communities that have learned to become self-sufficient and resilient to change.
Small local communities that have developed the skills and resources required to live and survive in a world that has radically powered down from petroleum and gas energy, and radically simplified, and downsized.
Small, local communities that have learned to live more sustainably on a very limited planet.
Small local communities that have learned to replace the contentious black-and-white certainty of rigid ideology, and the need to be “right”, with ability to compromise and use flexible, middlepath thinking; the evolved adult thinking process that actively searches for the truths that are always found on both sides of every issue……and then has the wisdom to create a path forward that embraces compromise and cooperation.
That is the kind of community I would be looking for if I was a few years younger than I am. I believe the pain is coming. I would encourage my younger readers to think about creating or joining a self-sufficient, self-reliant community that I’ve described above……actively, and soon.
If you are older, you might consider offering your skills and talents to this kind of community. The younger members of the community could use your experience, skills, and wisdom. Be an elder. Offer your wisdom. But avoid the need to be “right”.
Just saying. :-))
