claire_58 | Finding Your Niche: Staying flexible

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.

Most of what I have written and will write is about the general pattens of behaviour we can adopt to help us weather the storm of changes coming at us. However I’d like to take a moment (or two or three) to discuss how these strategies can be used by you the specific individual reading this.

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: Finding 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.