Tag Archives: adapt

Oak seedlings growing in arboreal adaptation research by Michigan Technology University (https://www.superiorideas.org/projects/adopt-a-tree)

The Adapters Movement, in summary

Adapt in place, live in the here and now, and truly make the world a better place whether times are good or . . .

This post summarizes the defining features of ‘The Adapters Movement’. I hope this post fills a gap, offering a healthy framework to respond to the critical time we are living in. As it becomes clearer that many systems we rely on will not suffice or survive in the future, I hope this and similar movements will serve as popular and robust alternatives to inaction or to isolationist (and sometimes extremist) forms of preparedness and survivalism. Let us lessen, not worsen, inevitable harm.

This movement was first introduced to me in the form of a long, winding post by a widely appreciated blogger Ross Raven aka Category5 on Permies.com: C5 Defines The Adapters Movement – Acceptance and Triage. Permies is the world’s largest permaculture forum (or so I’ve heard from them), and this Permies post was being discussed in an online community of the Deep Adaptation movement (which I introduce below).

I read the long thread introducing The Adapters Movement over a few days, and I found a lot of gems in it, representing the best of the ‘prepper’ and ‘survivalist’ movements, while explicitly revising many of those movements’ most off-putting and self-destructive problems. To help make the Adapters movement more accessible, I am sharing this relatively-short write-up introducing it and outlining its key themes. A heads up about what’s ahead: This post prints as four pages, which is much shorter than the many essay-length posts in the original Permies.com thread that this intends to summarize.

A little more context. This ‘Adapters Movement’ fits the wisdom of Deep Adaptation well. Here is Deep Adaptation in a nut shell: Many systems we rely on (e.g. food, housing, medicine, water, wood, ‘waste’, wildlife, social systems) are in the process of collapsing and some will fail. Human extinction is possible but not probable, and so we need to adapt to minimize harm. The way to adapt, according to the Deep Adaptation movement, can be summarized with the “Four R’s framework for inquiry“:

  • Relinquish what we need to stop to avoid more harm
  • Resilience is a priority for what we have that we need to preserve
  • Restore what we need from the past to live in ways that remedy and reduce harm
  • Reconcile relationships to remedy and reduce harm

With that introduction, here is a summary of key points I took from that long Adapters movement post linked to above. I hope this helps inspire and clarify paths forward that are well adapted to grow bright, solarpunk futures out of collapse and change.

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O Sol, InsPHIre I

Sunday: It is all about our unique individuality and what we do with it.

“All that survives of these solar hymns are an altered version of Proclus’ Hymn to the Sun, and the 9th hymn in the Nomoi … the Sun is ruler of the other planets, and with them governs all terrestrial things. …The theory of prayer with which Pletho introduces his hymn is remarkably like the theory of magic behind Ficino’s astrological music; Pletho addresses the gods thus:

‘May we carry out these rites in your honor in the most fitting manner, knowing that you have no need of anything whatever from us. But we are molding and stamping our own imagination and that part of us which is more akin to the divine, allowing it both to enjoy the godly and the beautiful and making our imagination tractable and obedient to that which is divine in us.’

Pletho’s hymns and rites, like Ficino’s do not aim at any objective effect on the deity addressed, but only at a subjective transformation of the worshiper, particularly his imagination.” -(p.61)

Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella by D.P. Walker

via Mark Stavish of the Institute for Hermetic Studies

Visiting a neighbor’s fire

Though the work is easier together, we spread out in the darkest time of year to cozier burrows, diffusing the weight of winter, lighter on the land.
Though it is dark, we are warmed to know there are familiar others nearby. Our struggles are tied up together, and while one faces scarcity, someone else has more than enough to share, so that we may survive together and work together in brighter times.

So it has been through the ages. So it is still in little ways in overdeveloped places where big systems eclipse mutual aid: we turn to neighbors for power during long outages, for tool shares, for relationship. So it is still in big ways in underdeveloped places where small systems are made sufficient by human relationships: cooperating to cultivate land, to maintain infrastructure for basic needs, for relationship.

The lessons of the seasons proceed before us, though we may be distracted by a house on fire, our own or our neighbors.

May we be there for each other, so that we may all meet our needs, in mutual benefit with the sources of that sustenance and satisfaction. May peace be upon you.

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Deep Ecology Links

A running tab of some beautiful deep ecology links:

Breathing with trees http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/breathing.htm

Where does gold come from http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/gold/havellan.htm

Council of All Beings http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/coab.htm
Briefer description: http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/council.htm

Think Like A Mountain text: http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/TLAM%20text.htm

Hazelnut Happiness: Prose Proposing Corylus Seedlings as a Close Ally in Love and Life

The amazing abundance of trees from seed. Reforestation happens through a range of approaches, and from seed is one of the simplest, cheapest, and most time-tested of ways. It comes with pros and cons, the bad including relatively high loss and diversity of traits (such as shell thickness or fruiting time, which industrial operations seek consistency in). In such chaotic times diversity is good. This low-tech approach embraces loss en route to life. Life of the critters enjoying these trees & their seeds along the way, life that comes with the space and legacy of endings, life from letting life be as it will. Seed is a powerful source of sustenance, survival, and succession toward better local adaptation for chaotic futures.

Hazelnut seedlings growing in air-prune box nursery

Like the idea of trees and long-term improvement, enjoyment, environmental restoration, and if needed, sustenance? Hazelnuts are a tree you can trust to thrive easily and be enjoyable company. Measuring  in at 18ft high and 15ft across, these beautiful bushes have been at the heart of our ancestors’ lives for many, many millennia. Food; some of the healthiest fats available to us. Fiber for homes and many essential crafts. Fuel as both coppice1 firewood and as-energy-dense-as-coal residues (shells and husks) for burning (is that true? nearly2).

Hazel is a gift in social resilience as well. A folk hero. How do all the gifts hazel offers sound as renewables, compared with other strategies for food, fiber, fuel, health and wellness? Fossil fuels and  ‘renewable’ energy that depends on mining and toxic processing at industrial scales is degrading the foundations of life: water, soil, air, weather, ecosystems. How about a hedge of hazels instead?

How about a biocultural renewal? A deep adaptation? A relational agriculture that reciprocates and enhances nature’s gifts rather than degrading them.

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A Vision of Renewal Amid Ignorance of Collapse

Societal collapse is underway in the U.S. yet ignored by many. Fossil fuels enable this ignorance while exacerbating the problems: propping up leaders en route to authoritarianism, oppressing far-away people, catalyzing capitalism’s promise of seamless resets with no reckoning of past costs while facing a future of unceasing growth.

Is America really collapsing? How would Americans know? Scientists might, as in Deep Adaptation. Survivors of past societal collapse might, as in the following two articles.
– https://gen.medium.com/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-there-ba1e4b54c5fc
– https://www.newsweek.com/im-holocaust-survivor-trumps-america-feels-germany-nazis-took-over-876965

What is a vision of renewal? The Leap, a progressive campaign promoting the Green New Deal as a needed-transformative step that avoids eco-fascism or worse, offers this:
https://theintercept.com/2020/10/01/naomi-klein-message-from-future-covid/

There is no future emergency for which we must prepare.

We are already here—with every dystopian element, every means of revolution. The horrific consequences of our time and its beautiful potential are unfolding everywhere. We are resisting the end of the world by proliferating new worlds. We are becoming ungovernable—unbeholden to their merciless law, their crumbling infrastructure, their vile economy, and their spiritually broken culture.

We violently stake a claim in happiness—that life resides in our material power, in our refusal to be managed, in our ability to inhabit the earth, in our care for each other, and in our encounters with all forms of life that share these ethical truths.

https://inhabit.global/

Starchy Perennial Plant Ally: Sunchoke

A long term steward of the northeast, Sunchoke aka Earth Apple aka Jerusalem Artichoke aka Helianthus tuberosus. This plant is a sunflower species with a starchy, potato-like root that propagates itself (usually easily) from year to year.

In the video below, Ben Falk harvests and discusses a 400sq.ft. area that grows sunchokes year after year, with minimal maintenance, while building soil. This year’s harvest offers 90lbs of starchy “J-choke” tubers, leaving some in soil to regrow the patch for next year’s harvest. He notes using them as pureed soup after some slow cooking, as well as pickling and lactofermenting them. I have only had them a few times. When I cooked them I cut them thin and stir fried them, cooking them for a while and adding other veggies and seasoning into the mix. They are dense plants and feel like a good staple, able to significantly help mitigate ‘the hunger gap’ as Ben says regarding strains on food supplies and ecology. I look forward to growing, harvesting, and cooking more of this perennial plant ally.

I give thanks.

Not Simple Reforestation, Complex Wild and Mutualistic Reforestation

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/planting-trees-is-no-substitute-for-natural-forests?fbclid=IwAR1yjtx79ZqllP1dtExIC2ld5ghQYHCvo2WG0h8vvpi7-17rVLW9Cjj0vPA

Plantation vs. primary succession. Complex wilderness versus monoculture crop.

Natural reforestation is important. Necessary both for implementation to be possible and for it to be useful. Imagine managing 10 acres of meadow, how would you reforest it? The less fossil fuel involved, the cheaper and more localized and more resilient the solutions will inherently be though they may take more time, be less certain, and be more complex. The art of steering natural succession is the most great aspect of agroforestry I ever met, from the jungles of southern Mexico to the forest gardens in the Finger Lakes. Natural succession, the momentum of nature, and the management in the moment that makes it happen in mutualism with All.