The idea of the resilient community clearly resonates. It makes a great deal of sense to many people and there are lots of efforts underway at transition. However, as always, the big question is: will these efforts be sufficient to make the transition before it becomes a necessity?
I'm not convinced they will be given historical precedent. So, the question then becomes: how do we improve our chances of building resilience? That's the question I've been grappling with for years and I think I've found the outlines of the answer.
Here's my thinking. So far, the main factors being used to drive a shift to resilient communities fall into the following buckets:
- Cost reduction. Lower cost food and energy to compensate for sagging incomes.
- Risk reduction. Protection from disruption (either from a global system run amok or intentional disruption by global guerrillas). Financial meltdown, tyranny, etc.
- Quality of life improvement. Better food. Helping the environment (deep risk like climate change, etc.). Greater community connectedness. Independence.
Each of these factors are valuable and all will become more imperative as time rolls on (as costs skyrocket, shocks multiply, and alienation from the global system grows), but as of today they are insufficient in and of themselves to drive the changes needed today. Why?
- Cost reduction alone is a trap. It's a race to the bottom without ongoing investments in productivity improvement. Negative sum economics never yield beneficial outcomes.
- Risk reduction requires an investment, that we don't have the funds for, before disconnection occurs. By the time it does occur, it's too late. Further, global financial models don't account for this (they have a yawning blind spot for risk as the recent financial crisis clearly demonstrated to us).
- Quality of life improvement is a discretionary activity. It requires an excess at the personal level, one that we don't have, to be effective. Quality of life becomes less important when you lose your job or your family goes without.
The only solution I can muster is to build a low cost networked system that reverses these drivers. In short, a network that shifts the drivers from a reduction in negative factors (cost, risk, and damage) into positive factors that impel and require it. This network isn't just a way to get people more in tune with the existing drivers of transition (as the vast majority of current efforts are), it's something new and different. I'll outline this network in the next couple of weeks.