Do you get the sense that our political and financial leaders have no idea what’s going on? That they are completely underestimating the scale and implications of the ongoing collapse? Flipping through the new big-media blogs and what’s left of the online newspapers I get the sense they’re more concerned with depression-era fashion chic and not enough with how we’re going to feed ourselves or deal with an emergent refugee crisis.
The general Western response to the crisis of “print money, encourage borrowing, create more low-wage jobs” is reprehensible and destructive. In Canada and elsewhere, it needs be better recognized as such and rejected outright rather than and dissected and analyzed in its intricacies.
In a talk last week, given at The Long Now Foundation, Dmitri Orlov compares the collapse of the last great economic system, Soviet collectivism, and charts out Social Collapse Best Practices for the Western World. (Audio and video should be available and I’ll share it as it becomes available)
The talk brought some much needed hope and perspective, and I highly recommend reading through if you’re concerned at all with our society’s response to the current collapse.
According to Dmitri, it’s not surprising that media, big business, and politicians react as they are — it’s simply a rote reaction embedded in the declining social, economic and political arrangement. This is neither good nor bad, he writes, but simply is and must be acknowledged and accepted. As we enter the collapse more fully, he writes, “there are very few things that are positives or negatives per se, just about everything is a matter of context.”
The key insight, Dmitri Orlov offers, is this:
You might think that when collapse happens, nothing works. That’s just not the case. The old ways of doing things don’t work any more, the old assumptions are all invalidated, conventional goals and measures of success become irrelevant. But a different set of goals, techniques, and measures of success can be brought to bear immediately, and the sooner the better.
Well, what are these new goals, techniques, and measures of success? Dmitri offers a very worthwhile discussion about food, shelter, transportation, and security in the context of the collapse.
The challenge of the public sector ahead is to “find a way to provide all of these necessities on an emergency basis, in absence of a functioning economy, with commerce at a standstill, with little or no access to imports, and to make them available to a population that is largely penniless.”
Tough work. Here’s a summary of some of what we’re starting with:
…the agricultural system is heavily industrialized, and relies on inputs such as diesel, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and, perhaps most importantly, financing. In the current financial climate, the farmers’ access to financing is not at all assured. This agricultural system is efficient, but only if you regard fossil fuel energy as free. In fact, it is a way to transform fossil fuel energy into food with a bit of help from sunlight, to the tune of 10 calories of fossil fuel energy being embodied in each calorie that is consumed as food. The food distribution system makes heavy use of refrigerated diesel trucks, transforming food over hundreds of miles to resupply supermarkets. The food pipeline is long and thin, and it takes only a couple of days of interruptions for supermarket shelves to be stripped bare. Many people live in places that are not within walking distance of stores, not served by public transportation, and will be cut off from food sources once they are no longer able to drive.
Take a minute and think about where you get most of your food from. Now, try not to panic. Instead, think about changes you can make in your life to improve your food security — and live a more rich and fulfilling life in the process.
We’re providing and highlighting solutions for prosperous and resilient community building here and are excited that so many others are having the same conversations. And hopefully,Social Collapse Best Practices sparks more valuable conversation about the crisis.
