Shaun Chamberlin writes:

I agree that Steve Schofield does not have an answer to building enough support for drastic changes, but that is no criticism of him.  None of us do.

Personally I’m not holding my breath for a mass awakening to ecological sanity.  As you say, the interests promoting the contrary are far too powerful (see recent film The Social Dilemma for powerfully-presented insight into how this influence is now funnelled through easily-manipulable social media).  Indeed, I would even say that seeking hope in such an awakening is somewhat dangerous, since it tempts us to disregard evidence to the contrary and so lose our vital connection with reality.

So, how will we get over the widespread public belief that the way we do economics now is the only way there is?  I am with David Fleming in believing that is achieved (sadly) only through the system disintegrating under the weight of its own unsustainability – with all the suffering attendant to that – and other forms of economics continuing to emerge and re-establish in the cracks.  It has, after all, taken immense amounts of energy for the dominant system to suppress more loving and natural ways of living, and that cannot be sustained.

Thus to my eyes the key work is helping people who are already going through that most painful form of transition – the collapse of the systems they depended on – and preparing people who are not yet doing so.

Happily, this also looks like promoting local resilience, defending wildness wherever it survives and encouraging humans to connect more with the nourishing good work of the heart.

Examples of what post-globalisation economies look like are invaluable, but I don’t personally prioritise ‘building support for drastic changes’.  Rather I see drastic changes as completely inevitable – either we radically change direction or we end up where we’re headed, and neither looks much like today – and so prioritise preparing people to respond appropriately to those changes.  In that way I find my audience growing increasingly rapidly, as more and more people find themselves falling outside of the shrinking circles of affluence.

This piece probably best outlines my big-picture vision.  And being grounded in that feels a more resilient and joyful motivation too than constantly trying to convince myself that we’re not collectively going to continue choosing the chaos and difficulties of collapse, as I wrote about here.  This is the root of my ‘dark optimism’.

 

 

 

 

o