Seeing that healthcare system bulge that represents the reason we are doing social distancing and economic and social quarantine makes me reflect on the ecological principal of degree and duration. A population’s survival to shocks is related to its abilities to manage the degree of the shock and the duration. These can very and both can be deadly. What people do not realize as much is this condition, we are trying to avoid with the healthcare system becoming dysfunctional is also present at the greater level of the economy. There will be no getting out of jail free card this time. We are here in a free fall and now it should be reflected on where we will land. Life is not going to get back to normal even though people still walk around in a feeling of normality. How far down those steps lead until a floor is reached is unknown? This is unknown because we have built in so much complexity combined with population growth, we do not know how many and how active we as a people will be at this new level. This will be a time of destructive change with economic abandonment, dysfunctional networks, and irrational behavior. That is the other bulge not discussed when our brightest minds and leadership talk about what we face. I doubt we are going to see growth for a while. We are going to see salvage and triage at many levels. At some point the ways we lived will be pointless and we will by necessity move on. The dangerous period is the turbulence of the phase change of it and the immediate aftermath of being stripped of layers of support.
My REAL Green has preached green prepping for years now. This is about resilience and sustainability in what can be pictured as lifeboats. The other is a picture of a hospice. Yes, people are going to die but this hospice is also about the death of a way of life. It could be about rebirth too but not before we pay for the consequences of getting here. I might add this was self-emergent so finger pointing is pointless. Nature does not care about excuses so it will be forced upon the innocent and guilty alike. REAL Green then seeks acceptance of a decline into a collapse in a process and or event. It is getting to the level of acceptance that allows a REAL Green to go forth in action. This then becomes a journey that is actually a retreat into activities that are a decline in place. Localism is the result but one must remember this world has been delocalized by globalism. This then is a journey to get closer to a rebirth of localism within the destructive change of globalism. There are many very good products and excellent practices learned in our wild ride up. These need to be retained but also combine with a millennium of human activity that represented low carbon capture and a more harmonious adaptation to planetary cycles.
We humans are not going to get there right away and can’t if we want to survive. Globalism is the human ecosystem now so we have to have one foot in and one foot out of globalism if that is even possible. My REAL Green has done this for years but also with funds to do it. I have always realized this and reflected on it. I used a relativity to deal with it. A REAL Green adapts as best as can be achieved according to the nature of his global ecosystem but also the potential of his local. For some no action is possible because they are completely trapped or not awakened. Currently, my REAL Green is faced with the possible end of the income stream that allowed a hybrid life. I have prep assets to fall back on. I have skills. What is lacking is community that is needed for localism to survive and prosper. What is so insidious about this virus is its attack on localism of community. We are being told to quarantine and maintain social distancing. This is not conducive to people joining together and getting on with survival locally. Now we are thrust into localism and are naked and cold. This will of course have to end eventually. People will have to make and grow things or the REAL dying will begin.
The journey now is about navigating mentally and materially through a gauntlet of forced change. This is not the constructive change that was also disruptive that was driven by ever more complexity and efficiency of our techno optimistic world. We destroyed resilience doing this and now our world is unsustainable. How unsustainable now is a matter of how far we allow what we have to degrade. REAL Green is under no allusions that localism will save us. What will save us is embracing the journey. To make the journey there must be acceptance of a death of a way of life. This does not mean transcendence but instead transformation. I recommend in this time of turmoil to yield to higher powers and decline in place with as much dignity as you can find. A degree of dignity can be found in the meaning of this process that reflects reality. This is individual so don’t expect a movment.
The truth is ultimately what mature and honest humans seek. The problem is maturity has been bred out of our populations in the pursuit of affluence by whatever means. Real maturity comes from wisdom which is about making choices. These choices now in a world of decline are about choosing what knowledge and things to keep and what to dispose of. That is the triage of it. The hybridization is the return to low carbon capture but with best thing and practices our modern life developed. This means growing things, craft skills, and home economics. Yet, on the journey it is still about making a living in a global world that is the ecosystem we live in. So, this then is a surreal journey back to the past with modern things and knowledge. It is a very difficult journey because it is about navigating the traps of life and path dependencies that took us from the old ways that were more resilient and sustainable to a modern one of great affluence albeit unsustainable. All civilizations seem to succumb to this journey so we must acknowledge human ecosystems enter succession like earth ecosystem and the reality is they are one as our disrupted nature world is expressing. The acceptance is ultimately that there might not be a destination but only a journey. Yet, this is what life is about and that is our journey to death. Life just got very REAL.
REAL Green Adaptation 