Claire

We live in a time of rapid change and uncertainty. The 50 year failure of the environmental movement has left us with a tangle of interconnected problems. Ecosystem destruction;  freakishly high levels of pollution of the land the water and the atmosphere; and resource depletion combine to create a looming crisis of epic proportions. We are faced with increasing political and economic instability and it’s clear that there will be no large scale co-ordinated efforts to address any of it.

This blog is about what we can do, as ordinary people in families and small groups, to create lives worth living; to build a future worth having; and to be a force for renewal and regeneration in our much depleted world. 

Natural systems are not static. They maintain an active balance as energy, materials, and information all flow through in their different patterns. Energy dissipates. Information can evaporate. Materials can be transformed, concentrated, or dispersed, but they cannot be eliminated.

None of these can be used without the others. You need materials, information, and energy to produce energy. You need energy, information, and matter (tools) to do anything with matter. You need energy and matter and information store and retrieve  information*. (Even if it’s just the food and memory triggers that support the grey matter in your head.)

A shortage of any of the key resources in a system is a Limiting Factor that will reduce the  productivity of the entire system. Waste, unused resources that accumulate within the system, will also limit productivity. Biological systems take advantage of the circular movement of matter. Waste  produced by one element is a resource for another.

Natural systems are complex not just complicated. This is an important distinction.**

A complicated system, like a car, may be intricate and confusing but it is understandable. There are a limited number of factors that contribute to making it work and direct chains of cause and effect if is it isn’t working. Someone with enough expertise can probably fix it.

In complex systems, there are too many variables, too many unknowns, too many links and connections. Even people with years of training and experience don’t fully understand them. Cause and effect are difficult to see and interventions can have surprising unintended impacts that reverberate throughout the system.

Natural systems are complex dynamic webs of interconnected relationships. Each element relies on the operations of the whole system to meet its needs. Each contributes to the function of the system in many ways. The system is resilient because every important function is supported by many elements.***

Industrial production is a complicated system embedded in the complex system of our political economy. It can be described in simple linear terms “Take - Make - Waste” but it’s a  tangled web. Energy and materials are extracted and shipped around the world many times as they are processed, made into components, and eventual arrive at factories for final assembly into consumer goods. 

Global systems of production and distribution have the complexity but lack the redundancy of natural systems. Complexity without redundancy makes a system fragile. 

Weak understanding of whole systems, over reliance on linear thinking, and ignoring the crucial difference between “complicated” and “complex” has created many vulnerabilities in the system. It is also responsible for the extreme dysfunctions like the massive accumulations of waste and contamination. 

We tend to use mechanical analogies to describe ecological, biological, and social systems. Mechanical metaphors are helpful for conveying information about complex systems but it’s mistake to think they are accurate picture of what’s really going on. Mechanical systems are simple and relatively easily understood but they are also inert, linear, and predictable. Natural systems  are not. 

Fully understanding everything going in a complex system is impossible. Our brains evolved to solve the simple problems of making yourself attractive to the opposite sex and getting lunch without becoming lunch not to understand the workings of the whole ecosystem. But recognizing patterns is one of our superpowers.

Practicing systems thinking and developing our natural abilities to recognize patterns is a necessity if we are going to have a positive impact on the larger world or even manage our own lives as unsustainable systems of production unravel around us.

Train yourself. Hone your observation skills. Look for patterns. Identify the flows energy matter, and information in your life. Look for blockages and stagnation. 

The slow the flows as much as you can. Catch and store energy. Value information. Use everything as many times as possible before it leaves your system. See if you can turn wastes into resources.

If we take becoming a keystone species  seriously training ourselves should be our highest priority. Our brains may be limited but for most of us in the west they are also completely untrained. Like flabby muscles they need exercise.

Lynne Kelly’s work on memory came about because she realized that not only did the elders of the community where she was studying birds have a wealth of detailed information about the birds in their heads, they had similarly encyclopedic knowledge about all the other animals and plants in their territory and about every other thing that touched their lives!!**** 

Clearly our brains are capable of much more.

Next: Get Outside

*Once again, those of you familiar with John Michael Greer will recognize the huge influence of his work on my understanding of these things.

**Thanks to Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying for driving this point home. The Darkhorse podcasts are a master class in systems thinking from two highly skilled evolutionary biologists who are also experienced teachers.

***These concepts as well as the definitions of “waste” and “limiting factors” come from permaculture and were first introduced to me in the the works of Bill Mollison: “Introduction to Permaculture” and “Permaculture: a designers manual.”

**** Australian kinship systems are infamous among anthropologists for being fiendishly complex. Yet everyone in the community knows who’s related to whom and to exactly what degree.

We live in a time of rapid change and uncertainty. The 50 year failure of the environmental movement has left us with a tangle of interconnected problems. Ecosystem destruction;  freakishly high levels of pollution of the land the water and the atmosphere; and resource depletion combine to create a looming crisis of epic proportions. We are faced with increasing political and economic instability and it’s clear that there will be no large scale co-ordinated efforts to address any of it.

This blog is about what we can do, as ordinary people in families and small groups, to create lives worth living; to build a future worth having; and to be a force for renewal and regeneration in our much depleted world. 

Each of the three types of resources Energy, Matter, Information has a distinctive pattern of movement within the system. Understanding the movement of matter is essential for understanding the twin predicaments that shape our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren: pollution and resource depletion.

Matter is messy and hard to control. It moves in circular patterns. The thing you tossed over your shoulder yesterday is likely to turn up on your path (or your dinner plate) tomorrow.  

Matter is solid, visible and touchable, in a way that energy and information are not. You can pick it up and examine it. You can see the wear and tear or dirt and grime. You can wash and repair and reuse but at a certain point you have to decide whether it’s useful life is over. 

Good care and moderate use can keep material possessions functional for a long time but most things have an end point when they are no longer useful in their current form.

The circular movement of matter continues long after it’s thrown away.

In the last 50 years massive amounts of biological and geological resources have been extracted and turned into consumer goods. Waste is produced at every phase of the process: extraction, transportation to production facilities, processing, packaging, transporting to market or consumers. The packaging is thrown in the garbage immediately and the product it contained may follow in as little as 6 months.

Waste plastic collects in giant gyres in the ocean where it is slowly beaten into tiny fragments by the waves. Or it degrades on land into microscopic particles. In either case these micro-plastics are taken up by plants and animals. They contaminate the food web and bio-accumulate in the larger creatures, including our food crops and animals, and inevitably in our bodies.

The secondary economy, the economy of human production, has always relied on the capacity of the primary economy, the larger ecosystem, to accept and neutralize the waste products of human manufacturing. As long as human production remained small scale; widely distributed; and relied on natural materials; waste management was rarely a problem.

Natural materials from biological sources degrade relatively quickly and easily into the soil or the water and the biosphere has evolved over millions of years into a complex interactive system where any form of waste is a resource for another part of the system.

As large scale industrial processes began to take over the secondary economy in the early 20th C, using chemicals previously unknown, or uncommon, to process petrochemicals into synthetics materials, the costs of dumping waste products in to the environment began to rise. By the mid-century they started to come to public attention in the form of ecological disasters with devastating human health consequences.

Between 1962 and 1970 Dryden Chemicals Limited dumped more than 9 tonnes of mercury waste from their paper mill into the English-Wabigoon River in Northwestern Ontario. In 1974 Japanese researchers confirmed the devastating effects of mercury poisoning on the communities of Grassy Narrows* and Whitedog. “Minimata Disease” was named after the Japanese village where the neurological damage caused by mercury poisoning was first discovered in 1956!

The Love Cannel, a neighbourhood in upstate New York infamously built on land saturated with 19,800 metric tonnes of chemical waste from the dyes, perfumes, and solvents used in the production rubber and plastics by the Hooker Chemical Company between 1940 and the mid 1950’s clearly demonstrated the devastating and deadly effects of “Better Living Through Chemistry”**

Despite this and other tragedies, the clear connection between industrial toxins, cancer, genetic abnormalities, and autism, which should have led to dramatic changes, has been largely ignored. Fundraising for “cancer research” continues while cancer rates rise and the highly paid researchers blithely ignore the obvious. 

Plastic production has increased dramatically since Dupont coined it’s slogan and the main effect of the limited environmental regulation enacted in North America was that manufacturing and manufacturing jobs were exported to poor countries without environmental and safety regulations. (The social cost of throwing the working class here into abject poverty in an attempt to move the toxic mess over there is another story.***)

The environmental movement has also ignored the obvious. Over the last 50 years it has consistently let industry off the hook. The main focus of action has been on personal responsibility and consumer focused recycling programs. Essentially, trying to mop up the flood while steadfastly ignoring the running tap in the bathtub.

The problem of plastics has continued unabated and pollution levels have risen to the point of very nearly overwhelming the capacity of the environment to contain it.

Unfortunately, the feed stock for plastic production, ethylene, is a waste product; a by-product in the production of valuable fuels: diesel for industrial use; gasoline for cars and trucks; and jet fuel for air travel. 

Ethylene cannot be used as fuel and getting rid of it is a problem. In many areas there are regulations restricting the amount that can be flared off, that is, burning it and dumping it into the atmosphere.

New plastic is cheaper than recycled plastic because the raw material is virtually free. The recycled product simply can’t compete. Collecting, transporting, cleaning, sorting, and reprocessing existing plastic of many different types and colours costs more than producing perfectly clean new plastic pure enough to be considered “food grade” in any colour you want.

Meanwhile the circular movement of matter continues, as it does. 

The reckless extraction of raw materials has ravaged enormous areas of land. Mine tailings leaking into river ecosystems have contaminated drinking water and annihilated fish stocks. Our “recyclable” plastic waste is dumped offshore onto poor countries. Industrial waste from manufacturing goods for the North American market in China, India, and elsewhere, contaminates the atmosphere we all share and poisons the water used to grow crops we all eat.

Matter moves in circles. Carefully guiding the cycles and transformations makes it useful and keeps it useful for longer. Reusing, repurposing and recycling materials is ideal but there is a limit to how many times most things can be reused or recycled. 

Everything eventually degrades into the land, the water, or the air and the cycle continues.

*More than 50 years later the fish in the river are still unsafe to eat; the people of Grassy Narrows are still suffering the effects of the persistent toxicity; corporate liability laws are unchanged; and the government has still not stepped up to do what is needed to clean it up.

**The slogan used by Dupont Chemicals from 1935 to 1982

*** Arguably a very important one since our current political instability can be traced directly back to the widespread immiseration that resulted.

We live in a time of rapid change and uncertainty. The 50 year failure of the environmental movement has left us with a tangle of interconnected problems. Ecosystem destruction;  freakishly high levels of pollution of the land the water and the atmosphere; and resource depletion combine to create a looming crisis of epic proportions. We are faced with increasing political and economic instability and it’s clear that there will be no large scale co-ordinated efforts to address any of it.

This blog is about what we can do, as ordinary people in families and small groups, to create lives worth living; to build a future worth having; and to be a force for renewal and regeneration in our much depleted world. I hope to provide some possibilities based on our universal human strengths and the strategies that have allowed us to thrive in the past. 

The change I’m advocating here is adjusting how we think about wealth. This is another area fraught with misconceptions and misunderstanding . Some time spent re-examining our ideas about money, economics, and the system that determines wealth and value is needed in order to get to a place of sound observations.

The first and most common misunderstandings are around money. Money is not wealth. It is a token system that measures value: the value of your labour and time; the value of the available goods and services. It’s not completely accurate to say that money has no intrinsic value. Its “value” is making transactions and exchanges of time and labour for goods and services more convenient. 

Money is not a resource. It can be exchanged for resources and that is the source of its perceived power. However if the resource you want or need doesn’t exist no amount of money can make it magically appear. At the very most high demand and high prices can provide the incentive to someone to try to produce or procure the resource in question.

Second money is a measure of value but not everything of value can be measured and not everything that can be measured by money has value. The value of a thing is a matter of need or desire. Goods and services are “valuable” only so far as they serve you and further your goals.

Which brings us to the primary importance of reflecting on and distinguishing between wants and needs. This isn’t to suggest that you need to strip away any convenience or comfort from your life, but accurate observation means knowing your indulgences and thinking about their value in your system.

The second great misunderstanding is about the economy, which we commonly talk about as if it was one great amorphous thing that only the experts can understand. (This is a fallacy because they clearly either don’t really understand it or they are massively incompetent*.) 

In his book The Wealth of Nature; economics as if survival mattered John Michael Greer distinguishes 3 distinct economic spheres. The primary economy is the economy of nature. It is made up of all the “goods and services” provided by a healthy intact ecosystem. All our natural resources, renewable and non-renewable, mineral and biological, including air, water, and soil. All the natural processes like purifying water, absorbing pollutants, neutralizing toxins, controlling pests and reducing contamination** are part of the primary economy.

The secondary economy is the economy of productive human activity. This is the area of real goods and essential services created using human time, labour, and skill. The food in the grocery store; the water from your tap; the tangible material goods that provide necessities, comforts, and conveniences.

And finally we come to the tertiary economy. The economic sector referred to as F.I.R.E. Finance, Insurance, Real Estate. This is where people buy and sell currency and flip condos and generally use money to make money. It includes the stock markets and the precious metals markets.*** This is the place where most of the economic manipulations take place. 

Growth of this sector over the last several decades has stood in for “economic recovery” and masked the steady contraction of the secondary economy. The economic manipulations of “the experts” and the metastatic expansion of the F.I.R.E. sector has created a widening gap between the very rich and most ordinary people.

The good news is that this third economic sector has become so divorced from the economy of real goods and services that it could probably disappear completely with no discernible negative impact. 

The point is that most of what going on doesn’t help us and insulating ourselves from the boom and bust cycle of the official economy as best we can is essential to our well being.  

Working with the resources we have, and investing our time and attention judiciously is the key to maximizing true value in our lives and communities. To do this we need to shake ourselves loose from our ideas about money and look at the other forms of capital available to us. 

We’ve already discussed Natural Capital: the capital of intact environments and the natural processes that provide the foundation for productive human economic activity. The second type of capital is Human Capital, the skills, knowledge, ingenuity, and abilities of individuals. Human capital is fragile. Knowledge and skill are both easily lost if not used and passed on.  

The final type of capital, Social Capital, is the social relationships of trust, reciprocity, and solidarity built up in a community over time. It is the shared knowledge, understandings, and patterns of interaction that a group of people bring to any productive activity. Social capital is extremely fragile. It takes time to develop. It’s non-transferable and easily eroded. 

I want to say that social capital is the one we have most ignored, disregarded, and diminished but in truth, all three types of capital have been badly eroded over many decades and all three are in desperate need of being restored and rebuilt. 

Which brings us back to the question of how best to invest our time energy and attention when so much needs to be done, and the scramble of day to day existence leaves us so little of any of these things to invest.

The permaculture guidelines “Get A Yield” and “Catch and store energy” tell us to prioritize investment in activities that produce or conserve tangible resources, energy, or useful skills. Yield is alway the total production and accumulation within the system. The build up of any of the three forms of capital within the system is part of the yield.

The primary principles “Observe and reflect” and “Make the least change for the greatest possible benefit” direct us to find and start with small easily accomplished projects and build incrementally. This may mean employing some kind of personal S.W.O.T. analysis**** and developing a strategic plan to  improve your existing skills. 

Building up your personal “human capital,” your practical skills, knowledge, ingenuity, is the best possible investment because a skill once acquired is yours for life. Investing in skills and tools is an expansion of your personal resources and your potential for future investment. 

The permaculture principle “Get a yield” reminds us to engage in both short term and long term planning. Your personal planning should encompass your long term goals and aspirations but start with building up your repertoire of immediately useful skills. Small projects that provide a short term yield allow energy and resources to accumulate in the system for larger future investment. Small experiments allow you to evaluate and reflect on the results so you can determine whether more investment is worthwhile or if you would be better off turning your attention to some other aspect of the project.   

Observe — reflect — act — repeat.

This is the end of the introductory sections outlining the overall focus of this project (start here,) and reviewing your situation (start here) and setting yourself up to ride out the waves of change as gracefully as possible (here). In the next several sections we will revisit many of these ideas in more depth and with a mind to the ultimate goals of this blog: creating lives worth living; building a future worth having; and becoming a force for renewal and regeneration.

*To be fair economics is a complex system and interventions in complex systems can have unintended consequences. This is why the permaculture principles emphasis observation and reflection and making and observing the effects of minimal incremental changes.

** Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying’s recent Darkhorse podcast provided a fascinating look at the role of vultures in reducing and removing the biological hazards of carrion. (link)  

*** With some exceptions gold and silver are only resources if you are a jeweller or metal worker. Otherwise they are not much different from any other medium of exchange. They are only valuable if the resource you need or want is available. 

****There are several other useful analytical tools to guide your observations and reflections. Try a few and see what insights they provide. https://www.competitiveintelligencealliance.io/alternatives-to-swot-analysis/

This blog is about what we can do, as ordinary people in families and small groups, to create lives worth living; to build a future worth having; and to be a force for renewal and regeneration in our much depleted world. I hope to provide some possibilities based on our universal human strengths and the strategies that have allowed us to thrive in the past. 

The fragmentation and deterioration of “community” and the resulting social ills have been a recurring topic among writers seeking to address the predicaments of modern society for decades. It’s a conundrum. We are a social species. The unit of human survival has always been the group. Yet somehow we have reached the point where for many people social interactions are fraught with conflicted emotions, discomfort and confusion. This state of affairs is completely at odds with our natural tendencies and abilities.

In her book Mothers and Others: the evolutionary origins of mutual understanding Sarah Blaffer Hrdy makes the case that the long period of helplessness and dependance of human babies made group co-operation, or “collective breeding,” essential to raising children. For early humans “It takes a village to raise a child” was a literal truth. The need for other care givers and the communal support of the family, clan, and tribe for successfully bringing children in to adulthood has been universal for most of human history. 

This, according to Hrdy, has led to an amazingly high capacity for empathy and collaboration. We are intensely social, incredibly empathetic,* and working together to achieve common goals is one of our superpowers. She asserts that collaboration is a stronger human trait than competition and it is now generally accepted that mutualism and co-operation are much more common (i.e. successful) in the natural world than we once believed.

Hrdy points out that the population of early humans was very low and there was a great deal of space available for expansion. Spreading out into new territory was much more likely than engaging in conflict where there was competition for resources. Certainly the spread of early human groups across Eurasia and into the Americas seems to support that idea.

Historically and cross-culturally mutual aid and interdependence has been the norm. This began to shift in the west when we broke into the geological cookie jar that was the concentrated energy of fossil fuels. The era of colonial expansion rewarded competition over collaboration. Breaking away from the families and households, previously a life threatening punishment, became not just possible but potentially lucrative. The cult of individualism captured our imaginations and freedom of movement overtook community ties in our cultural values.

In the last several generations it has been possible to rely on institutional social services provided by governments and corporations for the essential supports of the various stages of life. In the period of economic growth following WWII this worked fairly well. However, in last couple of generations, as the unravelling of our social networks has accelerated,  economic contraction has resulted in the slow but perceptible deterioration of institutional supports.

The costs of social fragmentation have increased dramatically while the benefits have very nearly evaporated. Undoubtably many of our social problems including the massive rise in mental health issues and addictions can be directly correlated to the unnatural ways we live and interact with others**. Worse, as the economic pie continues to shrink extreme competitiveness has reached a fever pitch. 

It may seem counterintuitive but the adaptive response is actually to seek collaboration. Periods of vulnerability remain an inevitable part of every human life. Building a future worth having means restoring the patterns of mutual aid and interdependence that have been the foundation of what it means to be human since the dawn of time. 

Your life is embedded in a specific social milieu with distinctive patterns of acceptable behaviour that facilitate either closer interactions or maintaining distance. More accurately, your life is embedded in a number of different social circles that may overlap but likely don’t form a coherent whole.

Some of these circles will be stronger than others. Some may be vestigial connections from long ago that have atrophied because of distance and infrequent contact. Some may exist only in potential. How well do you know your neighbours? How much contact do you have with coworkers outside the prescribed work hours?

Consider your role in these disparate communities. Are there ways you could up your game or contributions to these circles? Finding ways to be helpful to neighbours and coworkers or joining in to a collective project that takes your interest is the best way to strengthen tenuous community connections. Just as each species in an ecosystem has role within the community that impacts the whole, your participation or lack of it has an impact in the communities you inhabit.

Most people will naturally respond to helpful gestures by trying to reciprocate. No one wants to feel indebted. Keep the permaculture mantra “plant seeds where they will grow” in mind. Mutual aid is the goal after all. If people don’t respond or if they take advantage*** it’s not worth continuing along that path. 

Wrapping up this section: Your niche consist of the balance you find between being a generalist and a specialist; the main focus of your attention and your response to the outside influences that shape your possibilities, and finally your role in, and contributions to, the community around you.

Strengthening your community ties and finding ways to collaborate will be recurring themes in these posts. But the next few posts will be about applying the tools of systems thinking to your life and using permaculture guidelines for managing resources and energy investment to shape a viable response to our shifting political economy.

Next: Getting Ahead of the Curve: Managing Your Resources 

*This may seem like an outrageous statement in our current divisive political milieu but our tendency to demonize people we disagree with may a reaction against excessive empathy. As a thought experiment try spending 5 minutes imagining the difficult life history and daily challenges of someone you dislike. 

**A lecturer in a first year physical anthropology class decades ago pointed out that no zookeeper would ever create a habitat for humans like the one we have created for ourselves and expect us to thrive. They would in fact expect the very social dysfunction that we experience. I’ll get back to this is a future post.

***Reading up on game theory may be worthwhile. People don’t always respond rationally and their notions about win-lose or win-win will have an impact on your success. 

We live in a time of rapid change and uncertainty. The 50 year failure of the environmental movement has left us with a tangle of interconnected problems. Ecosystem destruction;  freakishly high levels of pollution of the land the water and the atmosphere; and resource depletion combine to create a looming crisis of epic proportions. We are faced with increasing political and economic instability and it’s clear that there will be no large scale co-ordinated efforts to address any of it.

This blog is about what we can do, as ordinary people in families and small groups, to create lives worth living; to build a future worth having; and to be a force for renewal and regeneration in our much depleted world. I hope to provide some possibilities based on our universal human strengths and the strategies that have allowed us to thrive in the past. 

The term “niche” is used culturally as well as biologically. It has a similar meaning but rather than referring to a whole species’ habitat and subsistence strategy, it refers to the individual and his or her spot in the human economic system. Humans as a species are generalist. There are many possible subsistence strategies for human groups just as there are a range of possibilities for individuals within the group.

The concept of an individual niche within the human social-economic system speaks to the value of specialization. Specialization and the division of labour within the group is an adaptation that has been so successful it is universal in human cultures and societies. The division of labour is often but not necessarily sex based.* The more important consideration, in small groups, is who has the skill or talent for the task.

In biological systems specialization works best in stable ecosystems. In periods of rapid change when the system is more chaotic being a generalists seems to be an advantage. This doesn’t mean rejecting specialization or the advantages of the division of labour. It does mean that being a specialist with a single income stream may not be the best strategy in these crazy times. Finding your niche may be about striking a balance.

At the very least you may want to think about how to diversify. This is an especially important consideration for those whose work is outside the economy of real goods and services. Those are the jobs that are most at risk of disappearing right now. Finding ways to branch out and expand your possibilities is a way of building personal resilience.

The world we in habit, the world that is coming, is very different from the world we were raised to expect. Being resilient means letting go of your expectations and accepting what is. Being resilient means having backup systems that can take at least some of the load if there is an abrupt shift.  Staying flexible, staying alert to other options, and paying attention to what is working for other people is vital. 

Since the 1980’s economic “growth” has been largely an illusion based on the expansion of the F.I.R.E. sector, that is Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. Ultimately what counts as “growth” has been rich people playing with money to enrich themselves at our expense. The economy of real goods and services has been contracting fairly steadily.

Economic contraction is an ecological necessity. Our current consumption of energy and material resources is cannot be sustained. Earth Overshoot Day in Canada is calculated to be March 8.  (You can find the EOD for your country here: Earth Overshoot Day https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/) 

March 8!! That means that achieving a truly sustainable steady state ecologically sound human society will involve reducing our use of material resources (which includes water and land**) to about 20% of what we are currently using. This sounds horrific but we aren’t talking about a sudden apocalyptic collapse. This is a long, slow, bumpy process and population is likely to decline as well.

Being supremely adaptable is a superpower that gives us lots of flexibility in how we approach work and livelihood. Using forethought and intention can make the difference between a constant bitter struggle and finding ways to thrive. It’s important to remember we are making a transition that will take several generations. 

We cannot know what specific strategies or practices will be successful in the long term. Only the broad outlines of the near future are visible. This means there is no single right way to live or make a living. It also means, it is crucial that everyone finds and follows their own path. The dissensus model put forth by John Michael Greer (https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/why-dissensus-matters.html) is critically important here.

Finding and following your own path is an ongoing process. Your talents and abilities will make your story unique. Your situation, skills, available resources, and the creative use you make of them will determine how it unfolds. Knowing yourself includes recognizing your limits too. You can’t do everything. 

In the essays that follow the broad outlines of how we can use our inherent human strengths to build lives for ourselves while rebuilding our world will include many suggestions for your consideration. Not everything will be possible for you. Pick the low hanging fruit but think deeply about each suggestion. What would your life would be like if you could do more of these things?

Next: Your Niche: Spheres of Influence

* In the first of Heather Heying’s excellent two part essay on competition (https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/competition1of2?r=83qgf) she reproduces a chart from Murdock & Provost’s 1973 paper “Factors in the division of labor by sex: A cross-cultural analysis.” It shows both the universal division of labour by sex across a wide range of human groups and the highly variable way specific tasks are assigned to either men or women.

**Currently industrial agriculture accounts for about 50% of habitable land use and 70% of water use globally. The efficient use of these critical resources one of the key features of biological systems of production.

This blog is about what we can do, as ordinary people in families and small groups, to create lives worth living; to build a future worth having; and to be a force for renewal and regeneration in our much depleted world. I hope to provide some possibilities based on our universal human strengths and the strategies that have allowed us to thrive in the past. 

If you care about this planet; the future; and your own ability to make your way in these crazy times this blog is for you. 

One of the premises of this blog is that upping our game as ecologically savvy systems thinkers is essential if we are to find ways to live that promote the renewal of the ecosystems we inhabit. This post is a very abbreviated rundown of some of the key concepts in ecology. If you are already familiar with basic ecological concepts this will be a review. If you are an expert please feel free to comment for added clarity or accuracy.

An ecosystem is the interrelationships of living and non-living factors that create identifiable systems. 

A system is a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole.

a set of things working together as an interconnecting network.

Ecology is the study of the relationships between organisms and to their physical surroundings.

Systems Thinking is developing an understanding of a system by examining the linkages and interactions between the components that comprise the entirety of the system and looking for the functions or roles of the components of the system.

A component could be a plant or animal species; it could be a land mass, a waterway, or a microorganism. Any of the “living or non living factors” that make up the system are components or elements in the system. 

In an ecosystem everything is connected to everything else. Each component or element exists in a relationship with all the other elements in the system. Every biological element uses resources and produces “waste”. Every biological element is a food source for another element. Animal wastes feed plants; plants feed animals; both feed micro-organisms. Microorganisms feed the soil; the soil feeds the plants. There is no discernible waste. The waste products of one species are resources for another.

The system as a whole functions to build soil, generate food resources, produce air, and purify water. All of these functions are supported by all of the elements in the system. Animals, plants, and fungi all contribute to building soil. The web of life in the soil and the plants that grow in it all contribute to purifying water. All contribute to the quality of the air.

Every species has a niche. A niche is not just where the species lives, its habitat, it’s also the role it has in the community. A species’ niche includes its physical surroundings, its behaviours, and the resources it needs to survive and reproduce. All species have behaviours or characteristics that impact the whole system.

Some species are specialists. They have a very specific niche and a defined way of making a living. Specialists are the most vulnerable to habitat degradation and increased competition. Others are more flexible and can either tolerate a wide range of conditions or have more than one strategy for making a living or reproducing. Plants in this category are usually called “weeds” but the technical term is generalists.

Some species, like fireweed, are opportunistic. Fireweed is a pioneer species. It thrives for a short period of time in the disturbed ground where there has been fire or clearcutting. It proliferates rapidly; fills all the available space; quickly uses up the available resources; then dies out leaving its seeds in the soil seed-bank to await the next disturbance. 

Fireweed is the first stage in the succession of changes that take place as the damaged area slowly regenerates. Its role is to protect the soil and create conditions suitable for the next group of species, usually grasses and annual herbs, that take over the space. Succession is the pattern of changes that take place in response to disturbances culminating with the mature or climax ecosystem. At that point the rate of grown and change slow down as a new state of balance is achieved. The mature system that develops after a disturbance may not look the same as the one that preceded it.

Succession is an important concept to keep in mind. Even when undisturbed by human incursions ecosystems are dynamic. Forests that have survived as stable systems for 100’s of years still go through cycles of destruction and renewal. Nothing is static and all systems change in response to external factors.

The final concept I want to introduce is keystone species. A keystone species modifies or stabilizes the environment so that biodiversity can thrive. Salmon are a keystone species and so are beavers. Sometimes a keystone species is a predator. The story of the wolves being reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park is a great example of the powerful effects of a keystone species [https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/role-keystone-species-ecosystem/] 

Humans have been keystone species many times and in many places in the past. We have many different way of making a living available to us. There are many proven ecologically sound methods of production that can support fulfilling lives us and a diversity of other species in healthy dynamic balanced ecosystems. Becoming valuable members of our ecological communities; supporting the stabilization of our ecosystems; and contributing to the regeneration of our air, water, and land is an ambitious multigenerational project but it is entirely doable. 

Next: Becoming a Keystone Species

The theme of this blog is that despite the 30-50 years of spinning our wheels waiting in vain for somebody big and powerful to do something about the multi-system crises, environmental, economic, and social, that are staring down at us, there are still things we can do as individuals, families and small groups to thrive while learning to live in ways that increase available resources and improve habitat for other species. There is an alternative to whatever flavour of dystopian future currently haunts your dreams. There are ways to become a regenerative presence in our own tiny spot on the earth and begin to co-create a future worth having. 

In my previous post I have suggested that misunderstandings about who we are as a species and our place in the world have led to confused thinking and frustrations especially but not only around the ecological crises that plague us. This series will outline our strengths as a biological species and the survival traits that have stood us well throughout history. These have let us become a beneficial presence in our shared ecosystem in many time and places throughout history and around the world. They can serve us well here and now too.

The foundations of our crises are ecological not technological. Our technological pursuits have been very successful especially in the last 2 or 3 hundred years since we tapped into the planetary reserves of hydrocarbon fuels. They been fun and useful and I am in not in any way suggesting we should reject technology. But, unfortunately, advances in technology have too often come at the expense of both the environment and our communities. Both are suffering now. The true costs have been externalized for far too long. Our economic system is also teetering because there is one thing guaranteed about an unsustainable system: It Will Collapse. 

So here we are.

We cannot stop the slow moving disaster the is the combined ecological crises of resource depletion and rising pollution levels. The challenge we face is not simply a problem, or even many problems, to be solved, but and complex emergent situation, an ongoing predicament that cannot be avoided or made to go away. Even if we were successful in resolving one or two or of the specific “problems” (choose your favourite) we still have a badly damaged planet with plenty of unsolvable “problems.”

We have survived 200,000 years as humans not because we had technology that gave us god-like powers to control or manage an entire planet but because we were able to adapt. We’ve been through numerous changes in climate; dramatic changes. It probably wasn’t pretty, but we survived because we adapted to what was. Spoiler: We still don’t have the technology to manage a planet. That’s pure hubris. 

All we can do is adapt. And we will. There is no question about that because adaptation is our superpower. A superpower is something a species does effortlessly, unthinkingly, and invariably. A superpower is something that would be difficult to prevent a creature from doing. Beavers build dams and restore wetlands. Pigs root around with their strong snouts digging up deep roots and opening the ground so that new seeds can take root. Humans adapt to changing circumstances. We have an innate knack for “gaming the system;” turning things to our advantage; seizing the main chance. 

We can use this power consciously to deliberately to create lives that allow us to thrive. We can use the traits that have allowed us to successfully inhabit every bioregion of the planet to become a force for good in the world. There are many proven biological “solutions” that benefit the whole ecosystem. Many ecologically sound restorative systems of production that could be pursued. Many ways to make a living while making a life. 

We need a better story, a more accurate and more useful way of understanding our place in the world. A better understanding of ourselves as a species; better information about of our powers and superpowers and of the strategies (also superpowers) we have used to successfully connect ourselves to our local ecosystems in past. These superpowers can be used now, in the present, wherever you find yourself, as a foundation for building a tailor made life for yourself using your own talents skills and resources.

Next: Making the Connection

We live in a time of rapid change and uncertainty. The 50 year failure of the environmental movement has left us with a tangle of interconnected problems. Ecosystem destruction;  freakishly high levels of pollution of the land the water and the atmosphere; and resource depletion combine to create a looming crisis of epic proportions. We are faced with increasing political and economic instability and it’s clear that there will be no large scale co-ordinated efforts to address any of it.

This blog is about what we can do, as ordinary people in families and small groups, to create lives worth living; to build a future worth having; and to be a force for renewal and regeneration in our much depleted world. I hope to provide some possibilities based on our universal human strengths and the strategies that have allowed us to thrive in the past. 

If you care about this planet; the future; and your own ability to make your way in these crazy times this blog is for you. 

Even though these essays are my own ideas those of you here on DreamWidth will easily see the influence JMG has had on my thinking and writing. I'm sure you understand that I am solely responsible for any errors or fuzzy thinking.  Also, I am, once again, taking a strictly materialist POV. I'm not qualified to address any of the spiritual aspects of the situation. 

On some occasions there are events and spectacles where the masks slip, or the scenery of the circle is shoddy, or the story that is told is such an outrageous mismatch of what we are actually experiencing that it’s shocking. But there are lots of rings and even if we see the scam and point to it we find that the rest of the audience is still mesmerized by some other spectacle in some other ring and can spare very little attention to the slippage. 

Sometimes if we are watching we can see the whole show in a circle being shut down and another show being hastily erected to take its place. We get a rare glimpse behind the scenes and we see that the circus masters are not monolithic. The conflicting views of world events are stories that are stirred up and supported by different factions. Now is one of those times. 

Look carefully and you can see the show called “Climate Change” being dismantled and moved out to be replaced by the one called “The AI Future.”

Climate Change, specifically anthropogenic climate change, has been consistently portrayed as an imminent danger that requires sacrifice by the masses and increased power and social control for the political classes. Climate change theatre has involved massive international conferences that accomplished nothing. The action has been largely performative and is typically aimed at amping up the fear factor, forcing restrictions on ordinary people, and leaving the wealthy to enjoy their private jets and luxury yachts. 

The climate change story passed its pull date as the hypocrisy of the ruling class became more and more apparent. Competing voices have questioned and reexamined everything from the foundational science to the proposed responses. Many people lost interest but more importantly there's another faction of the ruling classes taking over. 

Watch closely and you can see the globalists and the Professional Management Class (PMC) who used climate change as an opportunity to gallivant around the world and show off at international events for the last 30 years losing their grip on power. Between climate change hypocrisy and Covid19 the globalists fumbled their pitch for totalitarian control. They are on the defensive. The multi-billion dollar gaslighting campaign about mass migration, gender-bending, and yes, climate change, are all being rejected by the mass of ordinary people. 

A competing class of tech billionaires are using the rising tide of populism to gain control. The tech bros want AI and space travel and all the science fantasy things they were promised as geeky kids immersed in the space fiction worlds that have been the main themes of futurism for a few generations now. The idea that we should reduce fuel consumption in order to reduce atmospheric pollution is not compatible with their goals. The AI future, mining the astroid belt, and going to the Mars, requires massive amounts of power. Climate Change is out.

The left has been played. Some of the “true believers” will cling to their ideological articles of faith until their dying days. But  great mass of ordinary people are done, done, done. How badly the unholy manipulation of empathy will rebound on gays, black and brown people, and environmentalists remains to be seen. How many people are able to actually see what happened and what is happening is another open question. 

The spectre of global totalitarianism seems to have faded but has it? There’s a new show on. A new reason to take control. Are you ready for the next great con?

Book Review

Hunt, Gather, Parent is a parenting manual that is actually well worth the time it takes to read. Doucleff and her 3year old daughter take us on a intimate tour to places and people whose parenting strategies are very different than those of the West. She shares the personal challenges and parental failings that spurred her to travel, research, and learn. More importantly she has broken out the specific strategies and techniques and demonstrated how to use them in the context of modern parenting.

The stories generated by her quest are engaging. The peoples she visits, Mayan, Inuit, and Hadzabe, are not untouched by the modern world but, crucially, they have managed to retain parenting techniques that have stood the test of time. The real treasure of the book is a very specific set of  skills that can have an immediate positive impact on family life.

The book is divided into 5 sections. Section one is an introduction which examines the challenges of parenting in the W.E.I.R.D. world. The main bulk of the book contains one section for each of the cultures she visits including the important skills each has to offer. The final section is a summary of the paradigm shift involved in changing the way we interact with our children.

The skills Doucleff describes are specific, practical, easy to use techniques. “Try It” exercises that include “dip your toe in,” and “jump in,” are sprinkled liberally throughout the book. A handy list of “Practical Sections” is attached to the Table of Contents for quick reference. 

Doucleff emphasizes that these techniques can be used with children of any age and includes age specific approaches where applicable. She has used them successfully with her own daughter and with other children who have visited in her home. She has even used them when dealing with co-workers and other unrelated adults. 

The techniques in this book can’t solve the larger W.E.I.R.D. world problems of parent-child isolation or the lack of community support and shared assumptions about how to parent. No single book can. But they can help all of us discover or rediscover the joy of parenting and the ease of harmonious relationships with the tiny humans entrusted to our care.