Reminds me of Tom Atlee’s dictum: Things are getting better and better and worse and worse faster and faster.

And in the meantime, the components of a successor society are being built severally, though the same kinds of stigmergic effort that Eric Raymond described as the basis for the open-source software community and Wikipedia in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.”

The technical prerequisites for decentralized micromanufacturing are developing according to something like Moore’s Law, in all sorts of independent efforts like the Open Source Ecology/Factor e Farm package of replicable village technologies, the 100kGarages project, etc. And as shipping prices go up, and corporate distribution chains become more and more undependable, the economic incentives will exist to buy an increasing share of industrial output from local micromanufacturers.

The one way to guarantee that things will NOT get done is the kind of “rational planning” Ted advocates. The transition is already underway thanks to all sorts of independent, stigmergic efforts in which self-organized individuals themselves coordinate their efforts with the larger movement as they understand it. The important thing is that the building blocks of decentralized manufacturing technology, permaculture and intensive horticulture, etc., be developed by the people who are interested in them as rapidly as possible, and that the market incentives of rising energy prices and growing underemployment make these building blocks necessary and attractive. If this is done, the organization and planning will follow on their own.

And yet without thinking about it, as Kevin is doing and others here, we’ll be caught in reaction to the disappearance of the old system. Angry and immobilized for a while at least. Planning is psychological, and logistical preparedness now, and has survival value on several fronts.

Things like the economic crisis of overaccumulation and surplus capacity, Peak Oil, the fiscal crisis of the state and its inability to keep subsidizing inputs, the unenforceability of “intellectual property,” etc., together constitute a “perfect storm” of crises that will destroy corporate capitalism.

In this environment, people will move toward relocalized economies and informal/household production as a common sense response to the situations facing them individually. As fuel rises to $15/gallon, airlines are grounded, container ships rot in the docks, and semi trucks are abandoned on the shoulder, food production will shift to local market gardeners and intensive home garden out of pure necessity. Industrial supply chains will shorten and networked local micromanufacturers will thrive out of necessity. Unemployed and underemployed people, out of necessity, will turn to low-overhead microenterprises using ordinary household capital goods (e.g. microbakeries using kitchen ovens to produce for barter networks at the neighborhood level) as a way of turning their skills to a source of subsistence when wage labor is insufficient.

No programmatic ideology required.

I’m going to playfully and seriously suggest that we need both TTs. Ted’s radical vision and Transition’s practicality.

They seem opposed because that is our world right now, split between impossible necessities. The transition we need is quite impossible and we get to make it anyway.

Or it could be that we get both at different times: Transition first as we look from afar, and Trainer second, as we get closer. The honeymoon and the marriage.

It dawned on me when I was listening to David Holmgren recently talk about the future scenarios – I’ve heard people lament that we are in the ‘green /techno’ fantasy mode and this is what I’ve found too – many people think that it is like the Y2K bug – we’ll just wake up one morning and the clockradios will be flashing and we’ll all have shifted over to wind or solar energy and life will continue pretty much as per normal with minimal changes, just more ‘eco-friendly’ products in the house and an electric car in the driveway.

The reason we are in the green tech scenario is because we are in the green tech scenario – people are buying up PV panels and hot water systems, buying green houses, green this, green that – with no real changes to reducing consumption, oil dependency or moving toward resilient living.

But when we have economic contractions – and peak oil will cause more of these in the future – many people immediately flick to the land stewardship / lifeboat building scenario – they want to grow their own vegies, they cut back on car use, they stay home not go out shopping so much.

I found this with the organic gardening and permaculture courses I run – there was a spike in interest when the purse string went tight.

Each community is also unique and we have to let them all grow as they need to. I’m a supporter of social entrepreunerism and I think that is a big part of TTs.

It’s slow, frustratingly so, but we are making inroads and I haven’t heard anyone yet put forward a convincing argument as to why TT won’t work – and we must keep our vision clear and consider the thoughtful and knowledgable comments of people like Ted Trainer.

TTs may not be perfect, but they do seem to be the best idea out there.

Cheers,
Sonya

Check out the Viable Systems Model Guide

Enjoy!

Building those links in a community takes time, it takes time for people to begin to rely on each other and that for me is what Transition is enabling.

As Brian said above, “you have to start small and build things up step by step”. Having the principles that are flexible enough to be adapted by communities of different sizes, cultural and economic mixes, without being prescriptive and run by a top down organisation is one the other really valuable gems that we have with the Transition model.

I used to think unemployment would not be quite as bad as described; but then the practical reality hit me – by lack of cashflow, all the money had gone, not a penny. I found myself living alone, scratching around in empty cupboards for the remaining pasta shells and out of date tins. Not a great experience. Thankfully a cheque cleared the following month. Big lesson! Naturally, for the jobless folk that you describe, food & water/ warmth & shelter is an immediate priority.

Transition related jobs; the Tim Smit ‘The Concept of Future Truth’ quote I mentioned highlights a catch22 situation where there are opportunities, but they are not immediately accessible via a simple job advert. A lot of ‘Low Carbon Economy’/ Green job opportunities currently need investment of unpaid time to set up projects. It’s early days for the shift in economy and things aren’t likely to change as quick as some would like.

I can’t be sure where it’s all heading, but in my humble opinion it seems that Transition Towns, Villages, Hamlets and people are a really great way forwards.

“Green Hobby for guilty yuppies, Prius”…eh, what’s that all about??!!…. seems to have shoved Transition into a pigeon hole! It’d be great to see Roslyn do something “better than Transition”, surely to be celebrated, perhaps…

Roslyn Transition+

Best wishes
Steve

Underneath the “anarchist” (really extreemly de-centralized and institution-fluid democracy) concepts, Ted Trainer’s Development Co-Op is merely one attempt to allow Transition (and other community projects) to provide a real living for those who work for it.

I live in a small mountain town. A town which has spent much of the last 50 years since the coal mines closed and much of the last 25 years since logging shifted elswhere in an economic Depression. A mini construction boom connected to a now struggling vacation-home and tourist industry kept folks at work over the last several years. Other than that, all that we have going is Interstate 90 and the annual camping and snow-mobiling season.

Unemployment is easily double the national average. But practical skill-sets such as carpentry, gardening, forestry, and machine operation amognst us are easily triple what you’d find in a urban neighborhood or a suburban community.

Folks here are near the end of their financial ropes. They need jobs just to keep their heads above water TODAY, then maybe they’ll have some time see to the future.

If we could find a way to pay them for Transition work, we’d have a flood of them join us. Even if we can’t give them real pay, if we could provide them with the real, immediate material benefits of food and goods (such as Trainer’s Co-Op intends to) in exchange for their labor, then maybe their Unemployment Insurance and State Assistance checks would actually be enough to keep them -and their kids- afloat for a little while.

I’m sorry if this post is excessively impassioned, and I apologize for any offense, but I was never privledged enough to be a Trotskyite, and I’ve just been laid-off from the last job I could find -washing dishes- so I get a little irked when I hear that Transition folks can’t “find the time” for meeting the needs of the working poor in the hear and now.

Especially when they seem to have plenty of time for skewing a proposal for how to do so (Trainer’s Development Co-Op) into some sort of “you lot aren’t radical enough for me” attack in order to shoot it down (or burn it as a Strawman) and thereby excuse themselves for choosing a path that fails to meet such needs.

Or maybe I’m not sorry. Maybe I agree with one of my neighbors who I spent weeks trying to convince to help me form a Transition group here in Roslyn. Maybe I agree with this good man, this ecological scientist, this community pillar, this strong and helpful friend. Maybe I agree with these words:

“Forget Transition Town. That’s just a Green Hobby for guilty yuppies. It’s maybe a step above a Prius. We can do better than Transition here. In fact we’ve GOT to!” *

*paraphrased.

-matt.

On the case of big scale community engagement
http://imaginechicago.org/
Using Appreciative Inquiry to fire up a community. Maybe Imagine Southend soon…

The concept of Future Truth… if you can get enough people to believe in your concept it will gather a momentum of its own and happen.