These are notes from Greg Branden's The Turning Point: Creating Resilience in a Time of Extremes (2014).
We solve our problems based upon the way we think of ourselves and the world. From peak energy and peak debt to failing economies and climate change, everyday life is showing us we've outgrown the thinking of the past. It's also showing us where big changes in the world mean big changes in our lives. Through dramatic shifts in our jobs, our relationship to money, and even our homes, it's clear that our lives are changing in ways we've never seen, to a degree that we're not prepared for, and at speeds that we've never experienced. A new, healthy, and sustainable world is emerging, and our ability to accept what it offers begins with our willingness for honestly acknowledging the facts of what we're up against, embracing the new discoveries that reveal the role of cooperation in nature and communities, creating resilience in our lives, families and communities through proven sustainability principles.
We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely. - E. O. Wilson.
Our journey is past the limits of what we thought was possible. Our Destination is a world where we've raised the standard of living for everyone, where war is obsolete, and where our love of cooperation is greater than the fear that drives violent competition. We're living in a time of extremes where we can expect big things to happen. Everyone is on the journey. It's a big journey and a short trip: the world we're traveling to is already here.
As a realist, one must have no illusions when it comes to the huge amount of work that it's taking to give birth to the new world that lies before us. Our ability to successfully meet the challenges that are converging in our lives begins by acknowledging what may be the most difficult questions. How can we deal with the issues if we're not honest about the issues.
Risks with the greatest likelihood and impact include: Interstate conflict, water crisis, unemployment, failure of climate change adaptation, fiscal crises, cyber attacts, asset bubbles, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, energy price shocks, spread of infectious diseases, critical information infrastructure breakdown, food crises, and profound social instability.
We already have solutions to big problems, such as food, energy, and a sustainable economy. Our problem is a crisis in thinking. The oil-based economy is giving way to a new economy based upon forms of energy that are cleaner and more sustainable. The centralized production of food is giving way to healthy and sustainable production from small farms that invigorate local economies. The practice of creating wealth from industry that destroys the planet is giving way to socially responsible investing.
The greatest crisis that we face in our times of extremes is a crisis in thinking. Our thinking is the very key to the way we deal with the needs of the emerging world. We already have the technology, the solutions, the healthy food, the necessities for a comfortable and meaningful life: it's the thinking that makes room in our lives for what already exists. Embrace the thinking that makes such possibilities a priority.
Worldwatch Institute's Plan B 4.0 includes solutions, such as:
- Designing cities that support people's lives rather than supporting industries.
- Implementing changes can immediately raise the energy efficiency of homes, offices, buildings, and public transportation.
- Establishing an economy based on a cyclic use of materials rather than the one-way, linear model that dominates today
- Making a shift in government spending: reallocating a portion of the massive military budget for the use of building sustainable infrastructure.
David Gershon's Social Change 2.0 recommends:
- Making changes in communities that are relevant to people's lives.
- Organizing citizens to take greater responsibility for issues like health, safety, and beautification.
- Empowering local civil servants to take greater responsibility and accept greater accountability for the changes that are affecting their neighbors and families.
- Designing and implementing a whole-systems approach to community change.
A turning point of hope can be created intentionally. Our turning point must fit into our own worldview of possibilities. Nature's simplicity promises that turning points are simple as well.
Sunrise and sunsets are the doorway to a mysterious period. It's not really daytime, yet it's not quite night. It's this space between day and night that was called the crack between the worlds. From the descriptions of ancient Egyptians and Peruvian shamans to those of healers from America's Desert Southwest, the theme of these turning points is the same. Twice each day, nature gives us a time when our prayers may be offered with the greatest potential to shift our lives. It's a turning point in nature that allows for change. The beauty in knowing that a turning point exists is that it holds the opportunity for us to change before we experience something that we don't want in our lives. We can create a turning point with a single choice.
Ask yourself what you can offer. How can your knowledge, skills and passions be used to fill the needs of today?
It's possible for individuals, families and communities to create turning points of resilience that minimize the impact of abrupt change and shorten the time it takes to recover when hardship does occur.
Resilience means different things to different people, varying by culture, age, and the way the word is used. Resilience is often used to describe someone's ability to recover from something like a devastating setback or traumatic loss. There's also resilience in attitude and physical fortitude of entire communities as they recover from the devastation of hurricanes or terrorist attacks. Complex ecosystems develop resilience in adapting to dynamic shifts in Earth's climate. Resilience is the process of adapting well int he face of adversity. It's the capacity of a system to continually change and adapt yet remain within critical thresholds. We're talking about a way of living and being that gives us the flexibility to change and adapt to new conditions, which is the key to transformation in our time of extremes. What does it take to create, develop, and sustain a resilient lifestyle, to live in a resilient way?
Personal resilience involves knowledge of ourselves, a personal sense of hope, the ability to cope in a healthy way, strong interpersonal relationships, and finding a personal meaning in life. Healthy coping strategies include making sure you're healthy, scaling back on commitments, exercising regularly, preparing for situations, setting goals, making sleep a priority, connecting with other people, relieving stress, and professional help.
The elements of resilience:
The language of the heart: the quality of our emotions determines the instructions our hearts send to our brains. The psycho-psysiological coherence between the heart and brain is important. The greater our level of coherence, the greater our resilience. Coherence is achieved through "attitude breathing." Recognize unwanted attitudes (anxiety, sadness, despair, depression, gilt, anger, or anything distress), and breathe in a replacement attitude (neutral, revitalize, calm, balance, ease, peace, appreication, compassion). The steps to coherence are as simple as focus, feel, and breathe.
Turning Points of Community Resilience
"For a community to be whole and healthy, it must be based on people's love and concern for each other." -Millard Fuller, founder, Habitat for Humanity
Community is about living, working, and sharing with other people in ways that make life, and bearing life's responsibilities, easier. There are many variations and expressions of community. The glue that holds them together is a common vision and a common bond. Regardless of a community's size or its reason for forming, the existence of a shared vision and a common bond are essential to success.
We've lost a big part of what made our communities so successful in the past: the personal connection of knowing our neighbors and being aware of their lives and their needs. This is precisely where our lives are about to change quickly and in a big way.
"We are one" means We Share Everything: The human family is one big, diverse family sharing one planet. Beyond the ideologies, politics, cultures, and religions that sometimes tear at our unity and make us feel separate from one another, the fact is, we're a single family. One of the consequences of globalization is that we share everything, including the hardships of an unsustainable community. Entire ecosystems can be destroyed when the needs of a globally connected market are filled from a limited source.
Five key elements or core principles of resilience are:
- Spare capacity. (Expect periodic and temporary disruptions in the serves that we've taken for granted, such as electricity, fuel, and food.)
- Flexibility - the ability to change, evolve, and adapt in the face of disaster.
- Limited or "safe" failure, which prevents failures from rippling across systems. (Build backups as safeguards, and redundant backup systems.)
- Rapid rebound - the capacity to reestablish function and avoid long-term disruptions.
- Constant learning, with robust feedback loops.
- Every community is filled with leaders.
- Whatever the problem, community itself has the answers.
- We have many resources with which to make things better now.
- We need a clear sense of direction, and we need to know the elegant, minimum next step.
- We proceed one step at a time, making the path by walking it.
- Local work evolves to create transformational social change when connected to similar work around the world.
A Template for Community Resilience
Our willingness to recognize the need, our choice to make a positive shift, our promise to commit to the work it takes to see it through, and the discipline that such a journey requires gives credence to the idea that every journey begins with a single step. The Berkana Institute has a template for beginning the journey (in their toolkit, which also includes a Women's Leadership Circle). The steps must work for everyone.
- Identify the needs of your community. Why have you chosen to come together? Identify the common needs that you hope to fulfill through your shared efforts.
- Identify the vision of your community. Identify the goals of your community, what success will look like, and how you will know when you get there. Are your goals specific for a one time need or designed to become a way of life? Are the goals sustainable, and can they be accepted by the greater community or society at large? Be specific about what you hope to accomplish and the milestones that tell you when you're successful ... This ignites the imagination with many possibilities and opens the floodgates of communication and deep sharing of people's thoughts, attitudes, experiences, loves, and desires for themselves and their families, particularly their children.
- Identify your plan. Identify the specific steps that lead to accomplishing your goals. Determine realistic timelines, and assume roles and responsibilities to accomplish each step of the plan. ... This involves pushing the edge of people's comfort zones, as people make commitments and accept responsibilities for the steps that would need to hapen to ensure the success of the plan.
- Communicate. Identify a way to share thoughts, ideas, feelings, and concerns that will inevitably arise with any community process. This can be as informal as an agreement to share such concerns when they come up or as formal as a specific time to meet for just such a purpose. In this way, the community is constantly informing itself of what works, what doesn't, and where there's need for a rethinking of the methods and processes. ... Staying in touch with members of a community while you're working toward a specific goal is the key to coordinating everyone's efforts. Maybe agree to meet on a weekly basis for a number of weeks. Maybe share phone numbers and physical addresses and e-mails. Maybe meet over tea, dinner, or potlucks. This develops a close-knit community involving lasting friendships.
The 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge:
100RC is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. 100RC supports the adoption and incorporation of a view of resilience that includes not just the shocks – earthquakes, fires, floods, etc. – but also the stresses that weaken the fabric of a city on a day to day or cyclical basis. Examples of these stresses include high unemployment; an overtaxed or inefficient public transportation system; endemic violence; or chronic food and water shortages. By addressing both the shocks and the stresses, a city becomes more able to respond to adverse events, and is overall better able to deliver basic functions in both good times and bad, to all populations. Cities in the 100RC network are provided with the resources necessary to develop a roadmap to resilience along four main pathways: (1) financial and logistical guidance, (2) support for a strategy, (3) access to solutions, service providers and partners, and (4) membership of a global network. (Job Positions for Strategic Director and Manager)
Additional projects to create resilience on the larger scale include Philadelphia's Reinventing Older Community's conferences, San Francisco's SPUR project The Resilient City, and New York's Resilience Agenda. Books include Voluntary Simplicity (Elgin, 1998) and Global Shift (Bourne, 2009).
"Transformation in the world happens when people are healed and start investing in other people." - Michael Smith, Musician.
One of the most remarkable consequences of various forms of transpersonal experience is the spontaneous emergence and development of genuine humanitarian and ecological interests, and the need to take part in activities aimed at peaceful coexistence and well-being of humanity. -Stanislav Grof.
The journey of humanity is leading to a transformational convergence point where the crisis in thinking, the extremes of the world, and the principles of resilience all come together as one big turning point on a global scale.
The Catastrophic Transformation is when the world as we know it abruptly comes to a halt due to global war, pandemic disease, or collapse of the world economy. Afterwards, the old system could be replaced with new, life-affirming and sustainable ones. It's the one that's most often talked about but it's unnecessary and would cause undue hardship on the most vulnerable and least prepared. These people rely each day upon the timely delivery system for food, fuel, and life necessities. We can transform the world without a catastrophe.
A Planned Reset is another possibiity for an abrupt shift on both a personal and global basis. The leaders of the world recognize that the very foundation of civilization is no longer sustainable. By agreement, the world's industries and businesses would temporarily stop and then rebuild for new, sustainable infrastructure.
An Evolutionary Transformation is the one most likely, as well as being the healthiest of the options. The unsustainable systems of the past buckle and break, replaced gradually with new systems that ultimately lead to the kind of future we all know is possible. (It's incremental and gradual.) Our communities recognize the need for change, rather than reacting to an abrupt shift.
The key is bringing a better quality of life to eight billion people without wrecking the environment. Information, ideas and policies flow in communities by a core value of quality of life and working together (not wealth/materialism) and decentralized organization (not centralized). Core values are a common vision, the shared idea that holds any community together. For organization, we need locally supplied food, locally based energy, people excited for civic participation (not powerless/apathetic), and a diversity of ideas and innovation.
National Intelligence Council's Global Trends Report:
- Megatrends: individual empowerment, diffusion of power (to networks and coalitions), demographic patterns (aging), and the food, water, energy nexus (substantial growing demand for resrouces).
- Game-Changers: crisis-prone global economy, governance gap, potential for increased conflict, wider scope of regional instability, impacts of new technologies, role of the U.S
United Nation's My World Report & Post-2015 Issues:
Categories include: a good education, action on climate change, reliable energy at home, support for people who can't work, protecting forests, rivers and oceans, affordable and nutritious food, an honest and responsive government, better job opportunities, better transport and roads, equality between men and women, phone and internet access, better healthcare, freedom from discrimination and persecution, political freedoms, protection from crime and violence, access to clean water and sanitation.
Advanced Technology & Sophisticated Wisdom
Indigenous people tell of time when people of the earth lived very differently from those of today. The people lived close to the land. They honored themselves and their relationships to one another and to the elements that gave them life. During this time, people were happy, healthy, ad lived to advanced ages of hundreds of years.
Then something happened. The people of the earth began to forget who they were. They began to forget the power they help within themselves to heal and work together. And they forgot their relationship to Mother Earth herself. They became lost, frightened, and lonely. They longed for a deeper connection with the world. They began to build machines outside of themselves hat could duplicate the powers they dreamed of. They build machines to enhance their senses of sight and sound and other machines that could send healing into their bodies just the way their bodies used to create healing from within.
We continue to be lost, frightened, and lonely. Until we remember who we are, we'll continue to clutter our lives with machines that mimic our greatest powers. The elders are describing our world today. Our civilization focuses more on the world around us and less on the world within us.
Once we remember who we are, we will no longer need the machines and our lives will become simple again. But here's the key: our lives will become simple because we've achieved the sophistication that frees us from the technology.
Resources
Berkana Institute: Berkana.org - community
Bioneers: Bioneers.org - holistic education
Institute of HeartMath - HeartMath.org - research
Post Carbon Institute - PostCarbon.org - local resources
Resilient Communities - ResilientCommunities.org
Transition Towns - TransitionUS.org
No comments:
Post a Comment