Tag Archives: deep-adaptation

Halloween pollenticks – sticky seeds of futures

(A short essay – tl;dr vote harris walz, minimize harm, which ‘worst’ you want to be making the best of with our precious time?)

Happy Halloween. I’ve come out of months long social media posting break to offer something scary for you. Trigger warning: political opinions, environmental catastrophes, collapse of safety critical systems.

Dear many friends who see that things cannot go on as they are,
The supply chains too brittle,
The relationships too strained,
Many of you plan a 3rd party vote in this most polarized presidential election of “the most powerful nation in the world”, or you might even be following RFK’s lead, or you might skip it altogether for any number of defensible reasons.
Many of you, dear friends, I see sympathize with a kind of accelerationist approach
Accepting how bad things are and responding with willingness for it to get worse, just to break out of terrible trajectories – is that minimizing harm? WIth all the harm caused by the hour in the over-developed world…
The sooner this self destruction grinds to a halt, the safer, some say
That’s the gist of conclusions I’ve heard from more than one thoughtful, experienced and educated person – active environmental stewards, tactful business people, balanced martial artists, all kinds of folks
I write this mainly to you, accelerationists and “never status quo”ers, especially those in swing states

This perspective is understandable. The status quo is very bad, and it is adapting very poorly overall to immediate catastrophes hammering away at itself and then some
Habitat loss, resource depletion, biodiversity catastrophe…the heavy grief of wars, of power abuses, I cannot even speak it, and yet overshadowing it all is -an extinction crisis-
The disregard for life
My heart is heavy. The world is heavy. And the systems that sustain us are, … It is hard to fathom or accept
Most of you reading this live better than most animals *ever* in terms of basic needs and safety and freedom and potential and
Yet we are struggling, in astonishing debt despite ¿ever?-growing profits, in chronic illness, in an alarming fertility crisis!, inoculated ¡¿forever?! with microplastics and >forever< chemicals
Depressed, anxious, angry, outraged at the systems that
…
What sustains us?

What sustains us?

This question has burned before me for a long time
What sustains us,
And how can we reciprocate?

OK
Let me get to the point, to why I do this emotional labor to try to establish some same pageness, for you to at least entertain if not accept

I will vote for Harris Walz, not because I want them as president, or want to validate and further a severely broken 2-party system, the DNC, etc etc
But because I do not have a workable alternative to this democracy-esque experiment
And not because I can accept the horrors of investment in the military-industrial complex,
Or petrochemicals,
Or over-development,
Or disrespectfully degrading rather than lovingly regenerating that which sustains us
I cannot accept that
But if I must face that
If we face these realities, and if we have a finite amount of time before safety critical systems fail under their many strains
Then what is in my power to really refuse is doing anything that could hasten or exacerbate harm
Using what little time we have, struggling under a politic that is actively agitating, suppressing environmental regulation and investment, violating women’s rights, taking an isolationist nationalist and what else *ist path to destroying the world that sustains us
A world that begets many worlds, vs. a world that devours and homogenizes
I cannot vote in any way that risks obstructing deep adaptation
And the only choice this election season that puts my puny power against 4?+ years of Trump, is the democratic ticket
I’ll do what I can to keep a chaos agent from making it harder to deeply adapt and build alternative safety-critical systems, /while we still can/
The more time we buy, the more harm we can minimize, before the next storm, the next fire, the next pandemic and supply chain collapse and
What is it that sustains us, and how do we relate to it?
We have so much important work to do
I cannot waste time and attention on a power hungry pedo friend of Jeffrey E and corporate cosmophagia
I cannot accept wasting the time we have with this historic level of capacity, of ways and means as a whole, historic
When we need more than ever to build capacity
Forestablishingaliveablefuturity

Continue reading →
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.

Continue reading →

Growing love of hazels

Diverse hazel coppice example in bloom, with flowery understory. From https://midwestpermaculture.com/2012/11/coppicingpollarding/
Diverse hazel coppice example in bloom, with flowery understory

These relatives of birch, ancient and awesomely rugged, adding golden bark and kindling salvation to tree lines around the world
These shrubs with long flexible bows
These fruits from charming hot pink flowers that greet the spring and stay

These nuts that come in energy-dense compostable packaging, shelf-stable for years, made by arboreal solar panels
These nuts that are easy to eat raw and one of the healthiest snacks I have
These nuts that are even tastier roasted; simply apply fire and enjoy a sweet, earthy, ancient gastronomic ally

These branches, that have been warmth in peaceful and desperate times
These branches, that have been homes in peaceful and desperate times
These branches, that have been the crux of countless wooden items

These gifts, that have come from ancient hedges, woven into the fabric of lives over time
These gifts, that host the humans and other kin, who enjoy them and who need them
These gifts, that can make the giver better as they enrich the recipient, when given and received in good relations

Ancient hazels, though we face harshly changing times,
Your past and present company comforts me, knowing you have helped my ancestors through ice ages and then some
And so, knowing we work together even where we are not in touch,
I wish peace upon you, and I love that in that, peace may be upon me too.

Tree crop doodlings to support KTCC tree nut gathering, processing, distribution, and enjoyment

Here are a couple of drawings from this past winter, inspired by cooperative and integrative tree crop happenings throughout the Mid-Atlantic. I would like to draw a series in honor of the ‘five branch’ vertically-integrated nut supply chain pursued by Keystone Tree Crops Cooperative. For now, I am sharing two early drafts in honor of that same cooperative effort kicking off its first fundraiser (for gatherer payments and some basic equipment).

Doodle about production and gathering of tree crops
Doodle about enjoyment of tree crops

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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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/