Identifying the core ingredients of resilient communities

''This was a session at the August 2018 [[Resilient Communities Mini-Unconference]]. It was combined with [[Systems science]] and [[Can we make resilience look more smooth and avoid collapses?]] but [[Ben]] has made an effort to separate the subjects into their own pages.'' == Attendees == * Steve (convener) * [[Ben]] (note-taker) * [[Shawn]] * Judy == Draft list of ingredients == == Discussion == * Steve: Resilience is persistence over time ** Judy: Resilience is bouncing back * Steve: One ingredient of resilience in community is people having a shared approach to life and how the community ought to work ** It may be important to define the amount of required agreement, and it may be that there can be less of that in larger communities ** Example arising from the political argument*: Agreement around what counts as sexual misbehavior * Judy: Children can pull a community together ** We lived in a neighborhood with a babysitting co-op that pulled together the parents of young children, but no one else who lived there *** People gravitated to each other on political grounds, by contrast with the religious grounds that unite Hasidic communities e.g. in New York ** Children are also obstacles to community-building because they're so exigent, e.g. when they're tired you have to take time to put them to bed * Judy: Another ingredient is a place for elders ** Kibbutzim do this well ** Have a built-in way for young people, focused on themselves and their tasks, to tap the wisdom of elders *** Shawn: I've always thought a good model is for people who are retiring from work to participate in childcare (?) * Shawn: A key ingredient is trust in each other and the community as a whole ** Steve and Judy: How to balance this with diversity? How do we learn to trust the other? *** Shawn: Give opportunities to trust each other **** I'm working with Better Angels to bring Democrats and Republicans together to do a workshop; another similar group is having them share meals **** *Argument over The Righteous Mind and the morality of Republicans **** Judy: See also the Oregon Conversation Project ***** Unfortunately, not many conservatives show up ***** Shawn: This may be because conservatives are more likely to be low on the personality trait of openness to new experiences * Steve: Religion and science as ingredients ** Shawn: Shared source of truth ** Judy: We need wisdom, and there's some of that in religion, but often magical thinking leads to unwisdom *** E.g. Jehovah's Witnesses building Kingdom Halls as windowless fortresses against collapse *** Vs. Jewish principle of Tikkun Olam, taking personal responsibility for continuity and caring for the world *** Vs. Mormons, who have a wise practice of storing a year's worth of food that we would do well to learn *** It takes critical thinking to choose among these sources of “wisdom” * Judy: Another ingredient is respect ** Extending to the notion that the value of everyone's life is equal ** Meaning that everyone has a right to water, food, healthcare, education, etc *** Shawn: The ability to make that work depends on the size of the community *** Steve: And availability of outside resources * Shawn: Every dependency the community has on something outside itself is a strike against its resilience, e.g. if transportation breaks down * Steve: The community should have a way to respond to violations of core rules such as respect for everyone * Shawn: Is property a necessary ingredient? ** Steve: I need some control over my physical situation, e.g. having access to pants when I need them, but collective ownership can work, so I'm nervous about elevating property too high in a pantheon of values * Judy: Transition Town neighborhood map: People and their skills, available tools and other assets ** If we made maps of mile-square areas and handed them out to every household (and kept them up to date), it would be highly valuable for resilience in emergencies *** And also help people feel needed and therefore good about ourselves ** Shawn: We do a similar thing with Portland's Neighborhood Emergency Teams, mapping who's in it and who has caches of basics, whether there's a school, etc ** Judy: Map available land to use for farming * Steve: Preservation of knowledge as an ingredient ** ''A Canticle for Liebowitz'' is a post-nuclear-apocalypse novel where a priesthood is protecting knowledge in a time where knowledge is viewed with suspicion because “it's what blew up the world,” e.g. storing books in buried barrels ** Max Headroom includes a character living in dystopian urban area who points out that books are a more resilient, “nonvolatile” storage medium *** Electronic media are definitely less resilient *** Storing info in our heads isn't very resilient either ** Judy: The idea that there is objective truth has been lost *** I agree that truth is subjective in some ways, but if an event happens and you say “that didn't just happen...” ** Shawn: My philosophy is that life is an embodiment of cosmic knowledge (see [[Philosophy of life as knowledge, panspermia, and the simulation hypothesis|later session]]) *** Steve: I'm skeptical about “the plant knows how to grow” being the same kind of thing as “I know how to sew a button” ** Judy: Knowledge we need to preserve: numeracy, literacy, encouragement of critical thinking and imagination, while also teaching the distinction between those two *** Related to separation of church and state? *** Shawn: Emotional intelligence is also important *** So are ethics! **** Religious people don't feel they can trust atheists because they don't think people can be moral/ethical without a god **** Judy: We went to services by the Washington Ethical Society, a church without a god **** Steve: I think ethics are mostly shared across religions, while stories are not ***** Judy: Counterexample: abortion ***** Steve: Another one: jihadis who claim to love death rather than life ** Steve: One “source of knowledge” is the wise leader, e.g. Chairman Mao, but I'd prefer to organize a resilient community that's not based on a cult of personality *** Corporate organizations are resilient because everyone can be replaced **** Ben: But some of them might be lost without their current leaders **** Shawn: The Pope is another good example of a replaceable leader, while the leader of the Rajneeshis was not * Judy: How do we replicate the resilience of America to the Depression and World War II? The ability to pull together and rise above this? ** Is it associated with a leader like FDR? A philosohpy or religion? ** Shawn: I think people were more self-reliant back then * Steve: Nondependence on nonrenewable resources as an ingredient * Judy: A clinic, a library, and a <s>grocery store</s> storehouse as ingredients * Is a market needed? ** Judy: But not implying a money economy as necessary? ** Shawn: Adam Smith says what's needed for an economy is information flow about supply and demand * Air, water, food, clothing, shelter ** Ben: In some places, clothing isn't necessary