Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As our daily lives are becoming increasingly destabilized by financial recession, climate change and perhaps political marginalization, self-organizing communities are also becoming a steady presence, from co-ops and community gardens to large-scale political movements like Occupy and the Arab Spring.
The obvious and important difference between this potential Sixth Great Extinction and all the others is that they had natural, unavoidable causes. There are fewer and fewer deniers now that our fossil-fueled grow-consume-lay waste-deplete global economy is the cause of this one.
So while I don’t advise anyone to get ready for an end of the world, I do think you’ll want to get right on the ball prepping for the end of YOUR world – the one that had enough fossil fuels to generate endless economic growth.
We are caught between an old system that no longer works and a new one that is trying to emerge. In recent times more and more people have grappled with articulating, what they see as the new economic model, with increasing confidence and detail. I believe that the ‘three C’s’ (the change-maker, cooperative and collaborative movements) now offer a credible alternative to traditional economic system. I’ll try to do that belief justice throughout this article in a way that is neither too philosophical or too niche to really have an impact.
Last year, at their national decision-making forum in Canterbury, British Quakers made a collective commitment to become a ‘sustainable, low carbon community’. This makes British Quakers potentially the first ‘Transition Religion’.
Have you ever noticed that some things in the world like to be disrupted? Rogue militant groups set out to garner counter-attacks that distract their opponents while draining their resources. Viruses encourage multi-cellular organisms to activate their immune systems in attempts to wipe them out. Teenagers seek the disdain – and occasional wrath – of authority figures in their lives.
I’m on my way home to Kyoto for a brief visit before returning for a for five final days of work in Fukushima. Deep learning continues for me and for all of us as we discover how to support communities in Tohoku in creating a new future.
That would have been the title of _Making Home_ except it is way, way too wordy, but that’s the gist of my book – that we don’t have a choice but to change our way of life, so we might as well find the best possible way to do it.
History is full of cases where the people got active on the big problems of their day by forming affinity groups of 10 to 20 individuals. These groups provide energy, organization, and even psychological support.
Most campaign groups have a single focus, but Transition has many (87 Ingredients and tools for starters) – food and economics, inner work and group dynamics. Instead of putting energy into confronting the business-as-usual mindset of the industrialised world, it puts it into building social and practical infrastructures for a future when that mindset begins to lose its grip on reality. Backed by a network of similar initiatives in cities and towns in the UK and elsewhere it can provide a secure base from which to proceed.
That’s what independents give you, they give you choice.
Sometimes it seems that not much has changed in Glasgow over the five years since the Transition energy first took hold yet I and many of my fellow Transition’ers do experience a difference in what’s happening around the city. So how much of this change is to do with Transitions presence and how do you evaluate its effect on a city or community over time?
