I gave a talk last week about community resilience. As usual I came in from an academic 30,000ft overview perspective. While the group found it interesting and thought provoking. My sense was that they are still in the mind pattern of thinking all we need to do is tweak the existing systems, even though we know that they are all broken and corrupt. They are not alone, for so many still hang onto this idea even though they agree that we need a complete transformation to become truly sustainable.
We are now in a time of imagining a future that we can barely see yet. It will be the best of what we are capable of imaging if we choose to do so. If you don’t know what to imagine, nothing will change, except that which the powers-that-be give you. Let’s face it. The powers-that-be have their agendas that do not include us in any meaningful way. We must transform from a time of deep victimization into Freedom from conditioned suffering. True freedom is being authentic. We will find a place of unity and harmony by living lives with purpose and intention focused on a greater plan of sustainability.
I have also talked about the need for spirituality as a framework in which to live with more harmony. As I look at the world I see a lot of darkness, as do so many that dwell on all the negativities that perpetuate this lower consciousness. I was talking with a friend and she asked why there was so much evil in the world. That is a victim mindset. We can let ourselves be cowed by such negative things, or we can decide to transcend them. Evil is anything that denies you following your inner divinity, your best self. We transcend evil not by destroying it, but by ignoring it through living our best spiritual lives. We don’t try to beat or win – a conflict mindset. Instead, if we focus on triumphing above evil by recognizing how our problems are simply driven by the hierarchical owned mass media and social media ‘echo chambers’ that promotes fear (False Evidence Appearing Real) to keep us cowed.
Our beliefs within this echo chamber are now being weaponized further to create divisions among us. Instead of having crucial discussions that heal us when we understand different perspectives, we instead polarize further. That is evil at work. It is not a strange red being with a pitchfork, horns and an arrowed tail as commonly depicted in media, but merely our fears driven by negative programming. If we recognize and accept that there is a natural wisdom we can tap into for answers to our problems, then we can leave ‘evil’ behind.
Psychologists generally agree that wisdom involves an integration of knowledge, experience, and deep understanding that can embrace the uncertainties of life to think systemically and pragmatically. Psychologists Paul Baltes and others, define wisdom as “expert knowledge in the fundamental pragmatics of life that permits exceptional insight, judgment, and advice about complex and uncertain matters.” We all have innate expertise that communities can embrace for collective local decision-making that breaks out of the hierarchical trap of expecting political and financial leaders to have all the answers.
We already see examples of communities that have embraced different models of resilience thinking that reflect a higher consciousness. A community I have talked about before is the spiritually framed Findhorn ecovillage (see link) that was seeded in 1962. Its focus was living more in harmony with nature and creating a better quality of life for its residents. My schematic diagram shows how a lifestyle using scarcity economics, as our current economic model does, might increase the standard of living as consumerism dominates life, but ultimately leads to diminishment of happiness and overall well-being.
Resilience is about the capacity to bounce back. Yet, what do we bounce back to in our current global system – recession to status quo with the mythical ‘They’ still in charge? Have you ever noticed that ‘They’ always invent a mythical ‘Them’ whenever they want to provoke us into negativity? Is that the best future we can imagine? An endless cycle of conflict, violence, and scarcity. Isn’t 6000 years enough to be cowed by these socio-psychopaths? Let’s create our own world where we decide what resilience and well-being mean.
The great fear is that reducing our standard of living by living simpler will somehow make our lives harder. But the truth is that it will make our lives better. That optimum spot on my diagram is the sweet spot of optimum well-being and happiness. That spot for the USA was 1958 before the US went into high gear on consumerism and massive growth of the Military-Industrial-Big Ag-Big Pharma – Big Chemical industries. For most of the developed world that spot was the early 1960s, but then it all went into hyperdrive with the thrust of globalization in the 1980s that ignored the localized systems in favor of big profits.
In one of my first blog posts (see link) I discussed Re-localization and Community and the urgency (even back in 2018) of realizing how necessary it was to develop local energy and food systems for self-sufficiency. Relying on fragile large energy grid systems and food transportation systems that can bring catastrophic consequences is a foolish path to keep following.
Building resiliency means empowering individuals to be involved and have primacy in local decision-making. I recall travelling with the late Geoff Fagan (CADISPA) as he showed me examples of how small rural Scottish communities sought to build sustainable communities and resiliency throughout the remote Highlands. By living so remotely, these communities automatically live more simply. Yet, their reliance on big governmental policies in Edinburgh and London was a bureaucratic nightmare that had no understanding of their problems. When you live remotely, you are more aware of how fragile systems can be. Big government rules just don’t make sense for these remote communities. As such, many of them contacted CADISPA for assistance in rebuilding resilient and sustainable communities not reliant on any big government.
You don’t have to live in a remote place to recognize how reliance on fragile energy and food systems can get very problematic if supply lines and energy grids get unreliable, or even collapse. Building resiliency requires wisdom in recognizing that larger urban communities can quickly feel very remote when large scale systems become disrupted. If that happens, rather than the Hollywood catastrophe vision, I see a devolution of the way cities and large towns are managed. What used to be outlying villages on the edge of cities have now been enveloped by expanding cities and are now outlying suburbs. I can see them becoming more sovereign again as city governments find themselves unable to cope with disruptive events. Cities like Detroit show how easily a large city can become a garden city once the residents take charge of their own neighborhoods and create enclaves of self-reliance.
We can wait until the shit hits the fan and then panic, or we can plan ahead as communities and develop self-reliant which then will organically lead into sustainability. First step, build relocalized energy and food systems, instead of simply trying to make existing urban environments sustainable according to a failing economic system.
A few examples of resilience can be seen as examples to study. Rob Hopkins for many years has championed ‘Transition Communities,” the Findhorn Foundation has steadily built a large global following from its early days as a spiritual ecovillage. Throughout the world, several small communities have built resiliency and wisdom into their social structure. For example, the small Dutch town of Oosterwolde has required all residents to grow food on 50% of their property as a response to food resiliency. Examples in small enclaves exist everywhere, but do we have the collective wisdom to embrace them on larger scales capable of working in large towns and cities?
Expect big government to do it and you will be waiting a long time regardless of what ‘They’ say. If any sustainability project relies on ‘return-on-Investment’ then it will always fail because of reliance on a failed global economic system that maximizes profit over everything else.
To Be Continued ………………….
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