Certainly it’s not either/or. When we moved here from Vancouver, we were motivated also by a desire to get it together on the personal/household level and also try to work at the scale of the community.

I think that many of us who end up writing comments in blogs like this have spent considerable time thinking through our feelings about retreat and personal ‘salvation’ versus engagement and commitment to ‘world-saving’. Like most dichotomies, it’s artificial when pushed to the limit; but it’s a useful way to frame one’s thinking.

What I was trying to address in this post — and will likely return to in future posts — is that a lot of retreating or (less likely) engaging might start happening without so much forethought, as the crises accelerate. I hope that we can find ways to put the discussion out there more, so that people don’t feel as though they’re coming unglued just for thinking along these lines. I know that when I first started encountering peak oil and collapse websites back in 2005 I spent some time wigging out. No wonder there is such silence surrounding these questions: I don’t see how you can be exposed to peak oil etc. without realizing that (as the Firesign Theatre put it) Everything You Know Is Wrong. It’s tough spiritual and intellectual work to get through it without a social support network. And we do no one any favours by pretending otherwise or letting the silence continue.

The older I get, the more I find myself coming back (and in some case being dragged back!) to “both/and” rather than “either/or”. My own natural tendency is towards monkishness, and I came up here to PR partly to do my monkish thing in the way of growing and selling vegetables. Doing concrete practical stuff is very important to me.

But, coming to PR from North Van, I discovered that I enjoyed being connected up to people doing the same kinds of things, and that community was more than just a buzzword. So, I’ve ended up being actively involved in a variety of groups, and now in starting up the Transition group.

So yes, I want to be preparing for my family’s survival as well as building community resources. Doing only one or the other seems to me counterproductive. Likewise at a community level, there are enough people (in theory, at least) to be able to work on a lot of different projects and different levels at once.

About 2)… I don’t see TPR getting involved in specific issues like this just yet – we’re not yet solid enough to do so without the real danger of being sidetracked, as V8A perhaps was with the Sustainability charter.

That doesn’t mean individuals involved with TPR can’t get involved off their own bat though.

Kevin

1) I agree that there is no inherent conflict between these two approaches, in the same way that there is no conflict between classical mechanics and quantum physics. Two frameworks suitable for solving problems in two distinct domains. But, humans being the contentious creatures that we are, these discussions tend to become polarized. And the extreme ‘monk’ position is the survivalist one, which basically says that the community can go to hell, because efforts to bring everyone along will be futile. In its extreme version, this is fairly repugnant to most people. But I think that the last 50+ years have seen people in the industrialized countries become more monklike, as individualism has been trumpeted and people have become more independent of reliance on social networks. This worries me, because solutions are more likely to be individualized (e.g., change your lightbulbs), and the harder work of creating social networks gets left behind as something we don’t need or something we no longer understand how to do. The urge to monkishness can undermine missionaryness, whereas I don’t see the converse as being so true or so worrisome. Dmitry Orlov had some typically pungent things to say about social inertia in a recent post, and I’ll remember to haul those out when I continue this thread.

2) Agreed! In spades. But how, o how? Maybe this is a leverage point for the new Transition group, but it is still finding its feet and recruiting and maybe this is too much of a political ‘hot potato’ topic for an early campaign. If not the Transition group, then some kind of ad hoc group out of the community.

This is one of your best posts to date, and I hope you’ll return to this topic again from different angles as you find further insights.

Two thoughts:

1) I see no inherent conflict between monks and missionaries, thus peaceful co-existence between the two should be quite possible. A hybrid monk/missionary approach is also possible, whereby I make emergency preparations for my own household while also contributing to my community’s preparedness. Also, if I feel secure at home, perhaps I’ll be more effective in helping others throughout the community.

2) I believe that it’s time to start using Peak Oil, climate change and economic contraction as explicit filters for discussing current public policy in this region. It just makes sense to ask our local elected officials how, or whether, a proposed policy takes into account the global changes occurring in environment, energy and economy (what I’ve called “Triple-E” in a previous Slow Coast post).

Perhaps a good opportunity to start using these filters could come with the regional solid waste management plan still under contemplation at the Powell River Regional District. Release of a draft plan for public consultation is six months late at least in part because last fall’s collapse in recycling commodity prices made it obvious that “business as usual” lacked credibility. Seems like an opportunity to stop feeling like a ghost in the room and start asking pertinent questions.

–Tom

And maybe your final question is saying that we don’t need to settle this dilemma, but find a way to accommodate both/all positions: to take maximum advantage of the people who simply want to act, to do, to build; and to find a place for the people who are better suited to reflection. (And to do it without reinshrining peasants vs. royalty or proletariat vs. intelligentsia!)

At any rate, better to be having these conversations out in the open. That’ll be a big step forward!

At a meta-level, it is the permaculture principle of observing thoroughly before taking action, guided by deep principles that do not trump the reality before us.

I see the existing conversation as an emergent manifestation of that, which you (among others) are attempting to help us make conscious choices about.

How do we use our diversity creatively — in the “movement” and in our larger communities and societies?