Mini-manifestos: Part 2

The collective spectrum of Doomer Optimism

We are back with Part 2 of our mini-manifesto series. Skip the introduction if you’ve read Part 1 already.

The umbrella of Doomer Optimism is not one vision for the future, it is an orientation that says: we see the world as it is, and we move forward with a practical, positive vision despite the challenges.

We defined Doomer Optimism as “a collective dedicated to discovering regenerative paths forward, highlighting the people working for a better world, and connecting seekers to doers.”

To demonstrate the variety and breadth of people engaging with such a perspective, I have asked for Doomer Optimists to write mini-manifestos clearly stating the vision for the future they are working toward.

I hope this exercise will make clear the very many thoughtful people working on practical initiatives to bring about a better future. I also want to make legible the specific philosophies and toolkits being used, so that others may find what resonates with them and thereby, find their community.

Doomer Optimists don’t all have to agree with one another. In fact, many virulently disagree. It is my goal to highlight the good work people are doing, and to lift them up. I also think of our collective as a place to interrogate each other’s perspectives. With public vetting and pushback, each of our individual visions can become stronger.

I will be releasing these mini-manifestos in parts. In Part 1 we heard from Aris Roussinos, Tara Ann Thieke and Empty America. In Part 2 we hear from Joe Norman and Chris Ellis.

In future manifestos we will hear from Jason Snyder, Tucker Max, Shaun Chamberlin, Julie Fredrickson, Chris Smaje, Anarcho-contrarian, Roxanne Ahern, Chris Dancy, Gregory Landua, Stone Age Herbalist, Mary Harrington, Matthew Pirkowski, Chelsey Norman, and Simone Cicero among others.

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Localism is Coming: whether we want it or not

Joe Norman @normonics

We don’t need “the global village”; we need a “globe of villages”.

And when I say need here I don’t mean it in an ethical, or moral, or aesthetic sense. I mean it in the most practical sense: in order to survive we must re-localize.

The global village idea is a non-starter. It misses that complex adaptive systems of a certain class typically have a characteristic scale. That is, a certain size at which they necessarily are realized.

In attempting to create a massive village, you destroy everything that makes something a “village” to begin with. But it’s not just the “global village” that won’t work. It’s all of the global designs that those with large-scale agendas are trying to shove us into. They won’t work because they can’t work.

The essence of life is patterns that persist in the face of fluctuations.

The demand for a global order is often framed in a way that acknowledges this simple truth: for instance, calls that we must act in unison at the global scale to combat climate change. The problem is that most of our problems are not global, but much more local. And the danger of committing to a global order to address the large problems, are the constraints that make it impossible to address the smaller-but-no-less-crucial ones. Locally, we must be free to address problems that arise, including those that that no one foresaw. If we are over-constrained by a large-scale design we will not be able to do that.

And this is why localism is coming, whether we want it or not. And we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.

Problems don’t come in a single size: some are very small, some are very large, and crucially, many are in-between. In technical terms what we need is multiscale variety. We need to be able to respond to the myriad challenges we face, and in order to do that we need a variety of possible responses, and we need their scale to match the scales of the problems themselves.

In political speak we often hear of the need for diversity. But this is typically framed as something that occurs only at the resolution of the individual. That is, “diversity” is meant to imply diverse individuals as part of some larger common aggregate. The ideological battle line becomes “diversity of background” vs. “diversity of thought”. But both of these notions, while perfectly valid to strive for in various setting, miss that in order to have “diversity” at any scale larger than the individual, we need patches of humans that are “less diverse” locally. Diversity at one scale only is an impoverished kind of diversity.

We don’t only want diverse individuals, we need diverse cultures, diverse ways of life, diverse villages.

We need local cultures that can solve the local problems that they uniquely face — there is no other way. And consistent with this, humans have a deep impulse to self-differentiate, at both individual and group scales.

So much of our societal tension stems from a denial of these basic facts, and an insistence that it ought to be otherwise. So much of that tension could be resolved with a release of this denial.

I said this need is practical, not necessarily ethical, moral, or aesthetic. But in solving for this practical issue we will regain these other dimensions. Beauty, hospitality, diversity. Just as we have individual character, we need character of location. Places will be different again. Peoples will be distinct again. We will be whole again

It is not in sameness that we find wholeness, but in difference and complement. We need a globe of villages.

Excerpt from:

https://appliedcomplexity.substack.com/p/localism-is-coming

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You cannot save someone who does not want to be saved

Chris Ellis @prep4disasters

I applaud homesteaders, do-it-yourselfers, preppers . . . whatever marker you use to describe your readiness lifestyle.  Anything that increases your resilience, especially if it bleeds over into the common good, is itself good.  The overwhelming majority of people who have the means to be more resilient decide not to be.  The preparedness crowd is small by choice.  For most of the unready, no amount of cajoling, facts, government action (or inaction), or disasters will convince them otherwise.  You cannot save these people.  Normalcy bias is a helluva drug, as is our herd instinct.  

But there is a parallel in the resilience crowd as well.  Sadly, far too many homesteaders or preppers have self-sufficiency myopia.  Stocking firewood, raising chickens, learning first aid, owning a 5+ acre plot, and managing it well are all good things.  Unfortunately, “self-sufficiency” is a misnomer, and a dangerous one.  The problem arises when you start to think you can do all – or most – of life on your own little slice of heaven.  You can’t.  You are not an island.  

What you truly need, in addition, is community involvement.  This is far harder as your (imperfect) self must engage with other (imperfect) people.  We need sheepdog trainers, dentists, blacksmiths, physical therapists, naturopaths, chemists, sewer engineers, and midwives.  Politically, we hate our rulers in far distant capitols but also don’t want to deal with Larry down the street who sits on the city council because Larry is a (insert whatever you hate about Larry here).  It’s far easier to enclave at our retreat and install a pond, a solar water heater, or a new paddock for the goats and then gripe on social media about how bad the state of the world is trending.  Regrettably, this transforms some of you into secret or not-so-secret wishers for the end of the world so that poor Larry gets his just desserts.  Congratulations, you’ll get your doom alright.  Dictators and even democracies take advantage of this fact, which is why governments trend towards tyranny; people rarely stop them.  The masses are too busy fighting amongst themselves.  

But here is where the optimism part kicks in: investments in community return more than what you put in.  Local power can be incredibly effective.  Plugging into and leading these local power centers will bring you far closer to the true resiliency you are seeking.  Run for offices such as the sheriff (often elected), the county commissioner, the school board, the Chamber of Commerce, the fire marshal, the city manager, the city planner, or the tax assessor.  Join the PTA, the Rotary Club, the Red Cross, the Boy/Girl Scouts, a church, or 4-H.  Coach a Little League team.  Make yourself better by making your community better.  Invite people over to your house constantly.  Fight local, win local.  Self-governance or self-sufficiency is a joke for preppers and homesteaders without strong local government and powerful community ties.  

None of this precludes you from your own property work or self-improvement.  For the secular crowd, grab a copy of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and try to live up to that ideal.  Good luck.  For those in search of God, try Christianity.  G.K. Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult and left untried.”  For some of you though, you don’t want to be saved; you just want to be left alone.