Transition Culture

Because it’s great to see people change, however tentatively, becoming more humble in their dealings with nature. After all it’s nature that sustains us. She rules over us.

Originally – out of a vague sense of unease and a desire to do more than what appeared fairly futile gestures like recycling and changing my lightbulbs. Several years on – because it has helped me understand the world and its current challenges far more completely and because it provides a positive, creative and challenging place to apply my energies to those challenges…. and it’s fun.

We believe that contributing towards the creation and development of sustainable local communities is a positive and proactive way to address the challenges we face in the pursuit of happiness, the redefinition of the concept of wealth – its creation and fairer distribution, the promotion of less energy-consuming lifestyles, the preservation of the Planet and the duty to leave it for future generations.

Initially because I was terrified. I had seen the light and I was plain scared. Now, its turned into an interesting focus for my life and while Im working on the projects I get to hang out with friends. My daughter chose to study horticulture and told me it was because I’m always wittering on about growing food being the most important thing anyone could learn to do. I was shocked I didn’t think anyone was actually listening to me!

because it’s worth it

Because if you care about planet earth ,your fellow human beings, your children and all the other creatures we share this amazing place with, doing nothing is not an option. And as an added bonus it makes you a happier person!

I was given a CD of the Soil Association AGM when Rob, Colin Cambell and Jeremy Leggat won Patrick Holden over completely. Having merely worried about the environment for years this CD got me off my chair and into action. And a new lease of life! Thanks, Rob.

If it wasn’t for transition I would probably still be trying to work out how me and my family could become self-sufficient in some remote ‘safe’ hideout. Transition has given my life a more positive purpose because I now know we are not alone.

Back in 2004 I discovered Peak Oil, just about at the same time as you, Rob. Once I understood it, I persuaded the whole family to sell up, move to Cornwall, get a farm to produce food and renewable energy and to become independent of utilities – a lifeboat.
The Transition concept, although often hopelessly over optimistic, does show the only way I know of that has a chance of maintaining some semblance of civilisation, at least away from major cities.
So now I try to work towards establishing and enlarging an island of resilience, which I hope will eventually cover the whole of Cornwall and perhaps more.
Paul, Cornwall, http://www.TransitionNC.org

How can I not, you know? Once you acknowledge something is wrong you must act. It’s what being alive and a part of community is all about

Because it makes perfect sense. For some reason, I bypassed denial and LOOKED at what was really happening in our world. I felt a moral responsibility to change my lifestyle, spread the word, and work with other like-minded people to create a new future.

Why do I do Transition?
Fabulous question…
…because it has given me a near total positive vision of how our futures will be. I am about to take this vision in to Primary Schools in Somerset as a Storyteller for Transition Tales.
What a wonderful purpose for the next chapter in life’s book.

It prevents me from topping myself! Being able to discuss the problems of climate change and peak everything with like-minded people is very uplifting but in addition the positive effect of building community resilience with the Transition approach is extremely rewarding. Transition provides me with the knowledge and contacts I need for the uncertain future ahead. I now live for Transition.

I do Transition because it’s what needs to be done, and because it’s the first positive, life-affirming process that I have found. I also do it because it focuses on making things fun, and integrating art/music/elders/youth/dance/spirit into activities as an important component.

Because Care and Share is how I want to live – even if there wasn’t peak oil or climate change.

Honestly, I don’t really see many other ways of ensuring a better world for our children…

Life support.

Because the work and play in Transition moves us out of apathetic paralysis into hope & action. The Transition movement invites us to re-imagine & bring to life, a new story about how we live as members of the earth family. Using less, respecting more.

Transition is the next phase of humanity’s evolution and I have no choice but to be in its groove of hope, inclusion, positive solutions, breakthrough initiatives, intelligent language and community fun Transition rocks!

I spent 20 years being a solitary food gardener. I had a family, friends and a lovely life but I yearned for friends who loved the smell of damp earth, who jumped for joy at the sign of seeds germinating, who were keen to grow anything and everything they could get their hands on, just for the joy it gives the soul. I wanted to meet people who loved making things from second hand stuff and who could re-use everything; people who loved simple things and who hated shopping!

“Transition” has brought us under one banner and allowed us to find each other. Similarly, it has brought others with other related passions together and now we can all begin to really live this thing, growing with experiences that are leading us in the same direction and for the good of everyone, even those who do not “belong” yet.

I have lived in Maine for 60 years because I love the eight towns of Oxford Hills. The natural beauty, including the human beauty, activate my “mother bear” feelings to do all I can to protect that beauty. As such,I founded our group which meets weekly to devise ways to involve and inspire others in the development of local resources. We have held a large energy fair, taught energy efficiency courses, started a neighborhood garden collaborative, networked with other groups, and read and discussed the Transition Handbook.

At first, by being scared witless about a possible awful future for my then new born baby daughter. Nothing like chemical changes in the brain, elation and sleepless nights to make you see things in a new way. Now, because it’s more important to think about ‘what could be’ than ‘why we can’t', and a recognition that those in power are so committed to growth that they genuinely can’t see another way.

Transition helps give a voice to the politically disenfranchised.

(Courtesy of Mario Petrucci: eco-poet, scientist, teacher, ecologist and all-round polymath)

‘To use the falsity of an imagined future as leverage for the less-false Now.’

Because it just makes sense.

As architects working with Bioclimatic Architecture – which is actually like a collection of technical solutions based on traditional, local knowledge – we discovered that Transition is the perfect ‘social innovation’ that we need as a background for our work. Add to that the fact that we’re mostly active in 3rd world countries, it is obvious that the transition vision is for us the most effective and obvious way to create a sustainable future for the communities we work with. And we practice what we preach…

I thought it could work, and now I know it will work.

Coz it’s a bubbly, fizzy, sparkling GLASS HALF FULL. Cheers!

Because a future for society driven purely by business, celebrities, fashion, techno-gadgets and financial profit will be our ultimate down fall. Transition is an excellent way of bringing people back into the process, and helping them to find their own paths forward as communities.

Because transition is willing to listen and adapt when it’s not quite right e.g. 12 steps vs ingredients.

Because it’s a fun, interesting, rewarding, and full of hope.
and lastly, because it’s inclusive and educational.

Imagination and intuition. Imagination in thinking, learning, exploring, bumbling and stumbling towards what could be, and intuition in that this stuff, these values, these patterns of being are already inherent in ourselves, if only because – by merit of being awake now – we are part of the most recent and ongoing expression of evolution in flow. That’s to say, there’s an unbroken line of expression, experiment and pattern from the big bang to this moment. If human beings are one attempt by the universe at self-reflection, maybe Transition is an attempt at remembering. So its important for me to see immanence in this: transcendence alone won’t cut it, I feel. And then connection, purpose, fun, insight, learning and all those things too…..

For me it’s about a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose and a sense of worth. For years I had worried about what was going to happen to the future if we, as a society, carried on the way we were. Through Transition I’ve found an organisation (call it a process) I feel part of and that aforementioned sense of purpose.

I always wanted to fight a battle against impossible odds.

Well, as Carl Sagan put it in 1995:

“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.”

If that wasn’t a warning shot, I don’t know what is!

As a geologist who has worked in mineral resources in the past, the notion of the finite nature of economically extractable fossil fuels has always been with me, though I wasn’t aware of when the decline would likely begin until about 6 years ago. Transition just made a whole lot of sense in this context.

Cheers – John

Despite a geography degree and first encountering Hubbert’s curve 30 years ago (- while working for National Geographic Magazine on a special edition about energy…), environmental degradation and resource depletion only became personal for me relatively recently. The Transition approach, systemic, ethical, intelligent, responsible, yet also with that “hey it may not work, but at least we’ll have tried and we’ll have had some fun doing so” attitude, is easily enough to capture my imagination. It has my time, my support and whatever I can do to grow and nourish it.

I was a member of Falmouth Green Centre for years snd then Transition Falmouth currently – seldom go to meetings but follow e-mails & newsletters. Also am tight with the local webmaster of TF & Falmusic.
Keep meaning to do more but at least I have contact.

Transition rocks!

tigertim

To stay sane.

… and to help me make meaning for my children and my community

November 2008, Transition Handbook, wow! Lots of questions; so much to learn; so much to do; so many people to talk to and work with. But always truly believing that together, we can…

The above comments on the reasons for TRANSITIONING, made verry interesting reading to one who is verry iterested in many of the aspects of TRANSITION. Unfortunately I haven’t managed to get to any of the meetings or events as yet but I must try harder from here on in !!!, best wishes to all TRANSITIONERS

I ‘transitioned’ about 30 years ago while most of my friends stuck to their ways. However, as the movement hadn’t yet been invented and few people thought like I did, I found myself relatively alone on a 5-acre piece of land in a hidden valley on a Mediterranean island. I bought the piece of land for because it cost almost nothing but also because of the 3 growing seasons, a relatively self-sufficient community where most people knew how to grow things, and the air smelled great. I started to work building a ruin into a house and raised my son there. He never had tv, we never had electricity, I pumped the water out of the well to do the wash. I loved it. I miss it! But finally I did miss a ‘network’ of like-minded people with a common goal. I began realizing this when I first heard a Transition Voice do an interview on CBC radio. I put my home up for sale, because much of what I loved on that island had disappeared: the donkey carts become BMW’s and huge tracts of coastal mountain range were covered in concrete. The population probably quadrupled, but they weren’t the networking kind.

It hast taken me a year to recover from the loss of my hidden home and I’ll never know for sure if I did the right thing but I am now looking for a new Transition Town and if I find a one that hasn’t committed yet, I hope to be at least one of the voices that gets it moving. Why? Because it makes even more sense to me now than it did when I was a child. It’s always made sense. It’s always amazed me how many people can be in denial of such obvious truths that many of us, including indigenous nations, have always known as we watched askance while the world seemed bent on destroying its self. So I’m ready, willing and able to start anew. “Transition Town”, wherever you are, come get me!

Jill, The Transition Network website http://www.transitionnetwork.org will enable you to find an initiative near to where you are. Don’t wait for them to find you, but give the experience, energy and insight you so evidently have. Just be patient with any human frailties you may find, even in the best of teams ! Good luck !

About two years ago I woke up, and I saw all those people around me working hard on earning money and promoting their careers, and I wondered, what are all these people doing with their lives, are they crazy? How can they thoughtlessly participate in propelling this huge machine that is devouring our planet? They may say, it is important to work hard, to contribute to growth, to generate profit, to be faster than the competitors; but I am now convinced that most of them are just playing around, wasting their time with at best meaningless, at worst harmful activities.
I have also spent the first 43 years of my life with mostly meaningless, albeit sometimes entertaining, activity; but I cannot play around all my life.
There are only two serious things I did so far in my life:
-Fathering a child (born in September)
-Joining a Transition Initiative

While I have heard about this topic since I was in school in the 70′s, I am intrigued that in all the comments spoken on this site, none of the dialogue is challenging. Why is it assumed that I should morally comply with the Transition thinking? What about the rest of the global community that won’t comply unless economically or militarily forced to participate? This is, in my opinion, and through alternative education, a movement to coerce members of a free society to feel guilty and bad about enjoying the fruits of their labor. I say FREEDOM not SOCIALISM. This is another attempt to keep people down and poor. The non freedom lovers claim, “Lif isn’t fair.”
Well, I do not want to be told HOW to live on this earth. This is nothing more than regurgitating the socialistic rhetoric from the 70′s. Sorry to be the only one on this entire blog that won’t drink the Kool-Aid.

Also, China for example, is not about to become Transitionists. They are the leading consumers of nonrenewable resources. The social engineers using climate change as a fear and mass hysteria tool will never create a global utopia. Read history. It is very obvious that not one person who is buying into this nonsense has ever read one thing about Mao or Stalin. Seriously folks, please educate yourselves about social engineering, it has been tried before!! Utopia will not happen with evil present in this world.

Transition is a movement that truly engages those envisioning a powered-down future, where the spirits of cooperation and collaboration are more important than Stuff. As I watched from the sidelines as our “leader” was “struck by lightening” and started the process of forming Transition in our community it was truly a pivotal moment for asking myself: “If not me, who? And if not NOW. when?”

I became disillusioned with the status quo very early on, and hearing about Peak Oil was a big thing for me.

However, I think that we have also become very disconnected from ourselves, our fellow human beings, and the Earth on which we live.

It’s time we thought outside the box on this one.

But! I still sincerely ask, it all sounds nice and good to live in harmony, but what about people groups who are not in any way, interested in caring about the earth? I do not worship the planet earth. It is a beautiful gift from God. However, one group of concerned humans, getting goofy light bulbs, etc. will not stop what has and is going on around the earth in dictatorships. Did you know that Obama won’t let Americans drill for oil off our shore lines, yet it is okay for Venezuela to drill in our water!!!! Check it out! Don’t take my word for it!

We started the transition movement on this small island because the community can take positive actions towards reiliency and will see the fruition of their achievements. We come together to work for a future where we can sustain a simpler lifestyle and leave a positive legacy for our grandchildren. What’s happening globally is feels out of our control so working at the local level seems the best way to effect change.

Because:
a) As an environmentalist I had been dismissed as a woolly weirdo for too long, while the problems just increased in urgency.
b) In one of the richest countries in the world I was isolated and lonely at home when my kids were born.
c) My Grandfather could graft pear branches onto a hawthorn hedge.