Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
What can we do!? We want to feel in control in an out of control time. We want to occupy our minds with something other than worry.
Iāve spent half my adult life, it seems, prepping for this moment by creating resilience tools for money, food and community. They are simple, though take intention to use.
This is the time for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work. It is time for us to rise beyond our fears and limitations and step into humble and collaborative community leadership. It is time for us to show the world our vision of a better future, and to share the tools we need to start building it.
But we arenāt hopeless bystanders in this fight; we canāt stick our heads in the sand like cartoon ostriches and pretend this isnāt happening. As luck would have it, there is a successful strategy we can use ā and we must ā to flatten the curve and slow the spread of coronavirus: altruism.
Essentially, coping requires that we attend to the things about being human that never change, and which we share with other people, even if they take different cultural expressions: temporality, death, sociality, language, pain, joy, suffering, doubt, anxiety, rejection, loss, uncertainty, sexuality, fun, creativity, imagination, curiosity, love, inventiveness, the capacity to express ourselves.
The key is to prepare not just for disease, but for a broad-scale societal disruption. Consider how youāll maintain access to food, water, and money during the next few months if things really start to come apart. Even if the best outcome ensues and COVID-19 is soon contained, this kind of preparation is vital given the suite of existential threats that industrial society faces.
Now is the time to think, talk, build trust, and take action.
Fire is an intrinsic part of the Australian landscape. It has become more destructive since European colonisation, and over recent decades, we have experienced even greater destruction due to accelerating climate change and changes in land use. Australia could, and should, be leading the world in transitioning to a renewable energy base to reduce the root cause of the crisis.
Now the title to this weekās reflection may sound a bit alarmist. Intentionally so. Itās right out of a thousand disaster movies where people scream this wildly as their ship is sinking, their plane is crashing, Ā or the tsunami is heading for them.
Take this leap. You are not alone. We are all in this together.Ā Garnish support from and hold space for others. Letās process, dream, and grow together. We need you now. There is no more time to waste.
While the common tendency with ecological grief, as with most forms of pain, is to turn away in an effort to protect ourselves, if we understand grief and love as interwoven, then to turn away from grief is to turn away from love, to close and harden our hearts.
In the face of the growing uncertainty about the extremities of disasters, resident-led initiatives to build resilience in their own communities are gaining momentumĀ in North America, and across the world.
So how do we aim for appropriate participation by designing for positive emergence? How do we design for human and planetary health? To do so in ways that are elegantly adapted to the bio-cultural uniqueness of place will require us to pay attention to the qualitative aspects of interactions, relationships.
Flood mitigation is what you see on the surface in Duck Hill, but the tides of change in the community began well before the physical work, and are continuing to swell.
