Transition: Does it mean going backwards?

Do you think transition means reaching back nostalgically to the ways of old because they were always better than now?

If you do, you are not alone, nor are you the first to think this. Even during the days of the Roman Empire, there were folks that believed the same thing about the ancient Greek way of farming. Ironically, that way of farming was one that striped the hill sides of natural vegetation and helped dry out Athens!1,2

There is a problem with the illusion of nostalgia in our society where folks think that the good ol'days really existed. In truth, life has always been quite hard and things tended to get complicated when people reach back and chase rainbows.

When I catch myself pining for the return to local food production and food sovereignty, I am usually thinking about working outside in the garden on a sunny day. What my imagination tends to skip are those cold frosty days when I would be hungrily scrambling to recover as much of my food harvest because an early frost happened to come before the crops are fully ready, and the feeling of dread of the coming cold winter nights that will be spent trying to console hungry children. Yikes! That sounds like what my ancestor's lives may have been like some times! Scary stuff..... and it is NOT what I want to be transitioning back to.

What I like about transition towns is that they are inspiring folks to think about how we want to live, and it is focused more on finding creative solutions to the challenges that we face rather than the daunting and insurmountable problems that our species is faced with.

The other thing that I really like about transition towns is that the concept is routed in the Permaculture principles and those principles are based in three ethics:

1. People care
2. Earth care
3. Fair share

Okay, so nostalgia is not the way to vision our future, but rather we need to look with sober eyes through the scope of ethically based principles and determine what is good about our civilization (the keepers) and what is not the most desirable (the expendables) and then figure out how to allocate our energy and efforts towards the technologies that we want to pass on and preserve for our future generations (a.k.a our children and their children).

I think the best thing to do is start by thinking of the collectively built infrastructure that enhances our lives in positive ways.

One example is our transportation infrastructure and network. Transition will mean that some of our transportation system will be going back to the horse and buggy, but does that mean that there will be no cars fuelled by electricity, hydrogen, or biofuels? I don't think so and I really hope not.

When the automobile was first introduced to the urban centres, the selling point was that they were quieter than horses. When I imagine the sound of hundreds of hoofs-on-stone, my head hurts.

When applied at the societal level, the permaculture principle of "Value and Use Diversity" means that the strength in using different techniques to create energy and power our useful technologies will result in a mix of horse, electric, and biofueled transportation methods.

I wish that more people were concerning themselves with finding solutions to the problem of infrastructure maintenance energy inputs.

For examples to think about:

1. How much energy is required to maintain a centralized power grid?
2. How can we reduce the energy required to maintain a global transportation network?
3. How do folks living in the north eat where they cannot grow vegetables outside and traditional food sources, like seals and fish, are contaminated by the wastes of our heavy industries?
4. How can we maintain / improve the Internet, so it may serve the greater purpose of keeping people globally connected?

By no means do I think that I know how to answer those questions and the grim reality that is presented in a reduced energy world of tomorrow scenario is quite depressing if you think that you have to have the answers. Those answers will only come out of applied human ingenuity. Digression: Another book that comes to mind is Thomas Homer Dixon's "Ingenuity Gap"3. That was one of the first books that had me really thinking along the lines of what it will take for our civilization to evolve out of a single all-the-eggs-in-one-basket world we currently live in.

Okay, at the risk of taking on too much, I would like to list some of the top technologies that we need to try and maintain during the Great Turning, so that we don't lose some of the best parts of our civilization:

1. Printing Presses
2. Solar panels
3. Shortwave radio transceivers
4. Electronic controllers and computers
5. Glass making

... man... there is no way that I could finish this list!

I recently heard of a museum curator that tried to build a toaster from scratch, so he could see the processes involved in its manufacture. He started by going to an iron mine to get some ore and he ended up with a device that did not work and took 100's of hours to put together. I think that is the most convincing argument against "lone wolf" survivalist thinking because we need many, many hands to build and maintain the complex processes involved in building some of the "simpler" tools that some of us use on a regular basis without a second thought.

Top technologies that we would be better without:

1. Nuclear weapons
2. Stealth fighters and bombers
3. Cluster bombs and any other insane people killing technologies
4. Tar sands bitumen mining
5. Mountain top removal coal mining

For sure, any of the technologies that I listed as expendable are ones that I would want with me to repel an alien invasion, but the energy inputs to build and maintain them take away from our species' ability to take care of all of our children.

What I am really looking forward to is a change in priorities that our next way of life will have. I am looking forward to a time when people see something that is not working and actively work together with consciousness and compassion to develop real solutions that benefit the greater majority instead of the few. That is something that has been rare in our human history and something that even the most nostalgic will not be able to pine for.

References:

1. Check out Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization by David R. Montgomery

2. Here is an interesting review of Dirt

3. Ingenuity Gap: Can We Solve the Problems of the Future by Thomas Homer-Dixon

Image credits:   © Copyright Lairich Rig and
licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.