3. Rethink the idea of “Jobs”
Become a jack of all trades and a master of one. – David Holmgren, quoting a European Permaculturist Perhaps this segment, more than any other, calls upon that “raw courage” I mentioned in Part I. “Jobs” as we know them…
Resilient nonprofits
As we rethink society for a post-petroleum, economically-lean future, it’s opportunity to rethink nonprofit structures, too. As stated before, we need to set up environmental and social change organizations as entities that will endure, instead of going bankrupt. Rather than…
How do you do all this and still conduct a “normal” life?
That’s exactly the point: You don’t. At some time within the next few months or years, circumstances will be such that you will relinquish the feeble attempts to hang onto that gluttonous consumption, compete-with-the-Jones’s (or “keep the kids competitive” with…
2. Expect contraction
Think about a bathroom sink: water comes in through the faucet and leaves through the drain. If the water is flowing in faster than it is draining out, you’ll have an accumulation of water in the basin. If the level…
1. Do the Dance
A friend once showed me that everyone is doing a financial Dance. Some people are quite aware that they are doing it: they live rather “on the edge,” managing to pull in just enough to pay the bills, just in…
Part III: Local Resilience through Collapse
Economic resilience = creating highly resilient structures which will enable our local communities to survive, hopefully with a relative level of peace and security. Like anything in the work of trying to further this transition, we need to consider the…
Framework from the New Economics Foundation
The UK’s New Economics Foundation issued a publication called “The Great Transition” about the transformation of economics. While I’m not impressed with the detailed content, I do like the table of contents, which outlines a list of 7 or so…
Possible Scenarios for the Future: Charles Eisenstein
In Sacred Economy, Charles Eisenstein poses the seemingly outrageous idea that money should be sacred. In this he means that a good bit of the mess we’re currently in is because we have lost a sense of the sacred and…
Possible Scenarios for the Future: Helena Norberg-Hodge
Jerry Mander edited a book called The Case Against the Global Economy and For a Turn Toward the Local. To my surprise, most of the essays within this 1996 book are every bit as current and relevant today as they…
Possible Scenarios for the Future: James Gustave Speth
James Gustave Speth is the U.S. author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. His book is a wide-ranging academic survey of post-capitalism ideas (including, but not limited to,…