Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [31]
After working with various communities around the world, I find that the issues of information, transportation, livelihood, food, and water are all identified as fundamental and key, and when solved are core to the function of strong and stable communities.
Not only can communities share common issues, they can also share common solution strategies. I am reminded that if we’ve been able to solve community survival issues in the remote and adverse conditions of wars and droughts, we can certainly solve them here in the U.S. where we have access to such a wide array of the comforts of information, technology, and the world of multiple choice.
Growing food is not the weak link in the food chain. In the eighteenth century, one or two farmer/horticulturists could provide food for fifty to a hundred hungry villagers—all without petroleum-powered machines or chemical fertilizer. With a swift learning curve, we can do the same.
It’s everything besides food production that will be much harder to get and/or get done, if and when there are fewer resources to get ’em done with.… And it will be even harder to get by and/or get it done in the “country.” Yup, contrary to popular belief, there are far more options for getting closer to sustainability in urban areas than back on the land.…
Most of our urban areas are in proximity to historical settlement sites—where we did live and flourish before the advent of cheap oil. The hidden depth of human ingenuity is almost impossible to comprehend. With today’s collection of information and access to historical review of successful land-management strategies, we can develop the practices and redevelop the requisite skill sets to solve core issues that will allow our communities to function again as ecosystems. We can learn to make our decisions not out of fear of the future, but because we love the things we love about the present.
Larry Santoyo is Vice President of the Permaculture Institute (USA), Co-director of The Terra Foundation, and Director of EarthFlow Design Works, online at www.earthflow.com.
Gandhi Then and Now
MICHAEL N. NAGLER
All crises are opportunities—if you know how to find them. The crisis we are facing now is huge, simply unprecedented in all of human history; and I believe, logically enough, that the opportunity hidden in its coils is just as great. While there is no guarantee that we’ll take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity, or even that we will make any changes at all in time to save ourselves, it is perfectly possible that in the face of such peril the world can come to its senses, become aware of itself in a much deeper way than ever before and set human progress on a new course.
We have gained some new understandings only recently of what is really causing this crisis, and why progressive forces have been so unable to affect it. First of all, it is fundamentally a spiritual crisis. All the misguided policy we’re seeing is embedded in a culture; and underlying that culture itself is a disastrously materialistic vision of the human being and reality in general, leading inevitably to emptiness, despair, greed, and violence. I will venture a word about how to address this at the end of this brief chapter, but first, just this year (2007) two aspects of the crisis have become clear that have a direct bearing on strategy:
Negative tactics are not working. “Scare” tactics don’t work because fear is part of the problem, not the solution. Appeals to “use less” because of the looming scarcities fall on deaf ears: Americans are simply in no mood to do without, no matter how clearly resources of whatever kind are dwindling. Whatever