As a cohost of Design 4 Resilience, I've been thinking about the relationship of resilience and sharing recently. Shareable co-founder Will Watman sent me a link recently for World Wide Opportunities for Organic Farms, which offers volunteer opportunities on, you guessed it, organic farms. This raised the question in the title of this post. Healthy food is a core community service, so my quick answer to the question was the following:
- Water
- Food
- Shelter
- Energy
Then I thought about it, and applying what I'm learning about the commons, I realized that I was falling into the same trap that I see others in the sustainability field fall into. I prioritized the material order over the social order. Then I came up with the below list prioritizing our ability to solve problems together and relate well to each other. One of the lessons of Elinor Ostrom's work is that our ability to solve collective problems goes hand-in-hand with ensuring a sustainable resource base. Al Gore said something similar at the 2008 TED conference, that "in order to solve the climate crisis, we must solve the democracy crisis." Here's my revised list:
- Governance
- Spiritual practice
- Water
- Food
- Shelter
- Energy
- Health care
- Education
What would be on your list? How would you order yours?
Comments
Liz McLellan wrote on 03.25.10, 5:53pm:
My list would be:
- interior work to empower oneself to act and engage (you may call this 'spiritual' - I call it civic engagement
- addiction resources - consumption is addiction - shopaholics actually are self medicating
- tools helping people to work in groups and build capacity (I think the transition handbook is tops here)
- funds to get texts into libraries - we over emphasize the electronic at our peril. we still need analog materials - also DVDs
- hope
- work
- hope
- work
I think the main idea we need to get across is that there are good answers, business models and technologies here and on the way.
It is a crises but waves and waves of bright people continue to throw themselves into the work... jump in! You will feel much better!
It's difficult for me to make 'a priorities list' - I don't think anything will matter unless we do the interior work of coming to terms with the destructive nature of 'consumerism' as a way of life.
If we are able to show people that what they want are lives rather than lifestyles - there is hope for everything else. If not, there is not.
Liz McLellan wrote on 03.25.10, 5:56pm:
I misread the question.
My list of services mirrors yours!
I would say meaningful avenues of community involvement and engagement that are not totally stratified... a nodal flat system... large meetings can be so disengaging and disempowering.
Neal Gorenflo wrote on 03.25.10, 6:14pm:
A nodal flat system, yeah, that's resilient. Small groups well interconnected internally and loosely connected to other small groups in a larger network. That makes sense to me.
OK, over to campfire discussion.
Neal Gorenflo wrote on 03.25.10, 6:27pm:
And thanks Liz for sharing. We've obviously been traveling in a similar direction. Here's one way I think about the personal aspect that you speak about above, which I should write up as a Shareable story someday.
There's two types of behavior:
-Addictive behavior where over time you put in increasing amounts of energy but get less pleasure you get.
-Or developmental behavior where over time you can decrease the amount of energy put in but get more pleasure out. This includes skill building, relationships, learning, sharing, and public service.
With addictive behavior, you get immediate gratification but gratification declines over time.
With developmental behavior, you don't get immediate gratification. It's hard at first, but once you reach a threshold, you can get a self-sustaining stream of gratification.
It's easier to go down the addictive route but very hard to break out. It's harder to go down the developmental path and harder to stay on it, but once you've reached a threshold, there's little that can derail you.
Greg wrote on 03.31.10, 5:48pm:
probably want to add
Clothing
Transportation
Sanitation
Other Waste Disposal
Drainage
Neal Gorenflo wrote on 04.02.10, 8:23am:
Thanks Greg. Yeah, your ideas show what we take for granted, but shouldn't. There's a lot of things cities and towns do that we don't consider day to day.
Mitra Ardron wrote on 04.03.10, 2:46pm:
Good list, I would add ...
- high level of interconnectedness within the community, i.e. its not relevant if your neighbour has food (or tools or ...) unless you know about it, and they have a reason to share it with you.
- a means of exchange - anything from a culture of gifting, to a community currency, but something that doesn't depend on the stability of the national currency (until/unless currency gets decoupled from gambling (aka financial speculation))
Hey Neal - This is really what I am thinking a lot about lately. Not the academic but the personal, not the technical but the social... I have been talking with the Oil Drum community about this in a Campfire discussion over there. I would really love to see people here speaking with people there... The Shareable community has such a positive can do take on all of this... It strikes me that optimism is empowerment and sustenance to me more and more.
I wrote about "The Neighborhood" specifically and would really like to hear what this community can add to the discussion over there.
You know the feeling, your at a party talking to some smart people and you want to drag them over to introduce them to other smart people...
Also I feel a bit out numbered there... so I am sending up the Bat Signal
http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/6322