John Michael Greer wonders whether the Transition Town Movement is engaging in “premature triumphalism.” As a part of the initiating group in Transition Town Montpelier, which on Tuesday received official recognition from the international transition folks, I doubt it.
We’re happy if people even notice what we’re up to.
Luckily, there’s a chance Monday for everyone in the central Vermont area to find out more about Transition Towns and judge for themselves. Naresh Giangrande, co-founder of the first Transition Town, Totnes in the UK, will speak on “Transition Towns: From Oil Dependency to Resilient Communities.” The talk is Monday, November 24, 7 pm. Unitarian Church, Main Street, Montpelier. We’re being contacted by people as far away as Maine and Massachusetts who want to hear the talk, so come early!
Greer provides a nice summary of the Transition Town movement:
So far, at least, the Transition Town movement has done more and gotten further than most other responses to the crisis of the industrial age, and by any measure, some of its achievements are worth celebrating. The core idea of the movement is that a small geographical area – a town, a village, an urban neighborhood, or the like – can make the transition to a postpetroleum world by harnessing the ideas and efforts of local people. The plan, now available in book form, starts with a small steering group of activists who raise public awareness, forge alliances with local activists and governmental bodies, manage the process of putting together a consensus vision for a sustainable future, and finally midwife the birth of a plan, modeled on that vision, that can be adopted by the community and put to work.
Greer worries, however, about the hubris of planning for an uncertain future, and that representatives of Transition Towns are too quick to say that theirs is the only model to use.
I understand that people who see the Transition model and its results are enthusiastic about it. Count me among them. I’ve also heard people comment on how they’ve seen communities energized in a way that’s never happened before. Yet that’s a long way from saying that the model is sacred. In fact, the model has been evolving rapidly, as people learn what works and what doesn’t. It’s one founded in the humility of being part of a community that is much wiser than any of its individuals. Rob Hopkins, author of The Transition Handbook, says frequently that folks in the Transition Movement don’t claim to have all the answers, or any of the answers. They’re just helping to organize the community to provide those answers.
As for the hubris of planning for a future and making it happen…sure, things change. I get the “gang aft aglay” bit. I think that’s why the Transition model emphasizes resilience: strengthening a community so that it can more supplely respond to whatever unexpected comes down the pike. Part of the resilience comes from just getting people working together in the planning. They build networks of relationships that are in place to respond to whatever the future holds.
Part of the resilience comes from taking concrete steps that could mean the difference between survival and death in a short time and, at worst, re-direct energies to harmless pursuits. Resilience means, for example, investing in the local food system. Is continued industrial agriculture the wave of the future? Maybe. If so, then maybe I will have put more time into the pleasant hobby of gardening than I otherwise would have and lost some money in start-up companies. But if 1,000-acre farms start closing and food trucks stop rolling, I want a lot of small farms and gardens near me.
Greer comments:
Back in the heyday of the New Left, seasoned radicals used to warn their juniors of the dangers of “premature triumphalism” – the notion, as popular as it was mistaken, that revolution was right around the corner and we would all soon be eating strawberries and cream in the people’s paradise.
Looking at how vulnerable we are to any changes in oil supply or price, and how fast the climate is changing around us, no one I know anticipates a near-term paradise. What Transitions represents, though, is a vision of how we can roll up our sleeves and start building something much better and stronger than our present brittle systems. Reality will be grittier than the vision. That’s the way it always seems to work, with the new job, the move to the new area, the new relationship. But the vision inspires us to keep working.
Greer is not uniformly critical. He concludes:
People in that movement have put together a toolkit that may well have broad uses as we get ready for the end of the industrial age; they are conducting an intriguing experiment, and early results look promising; they are understandably enthusiastic about their project. All this is welcome, but I’m still reminded of the old shopman’s rule that you don’t actually know how to use a tool until you are ready to name at least three ways it can be abused and at least three situations where it’s the wrong tool for the job.
I concur. I don’t think anyone knows the Transition tool well enough yet to fully understand how it can be abused and where it’s the wrong tool for the job. Maybe Naresh Giangrande does; check in with him on that if you go to his talk at the Montpelier Unitarian Church on Monday at 7 pm.
Finally, I recommend Greer’s new book The Long Descent: A user’s guide to the end of the industrial age. Listeners to Equal Time last week may have heard his fascinating presentation of the book’s theses when I interviewed him.
