Personal Thoughts from Kay and Bob

Kay and I have spent the last 40 years looking at issues around organic growing, health, home schooling, peace, communities, permaculture etc etc. And being actively involved in bringing forward ‘alternatives’.

In the past this has often felt like a philosophical stance that we believed in and we enjoyed being involved in. Of late it has become clear to us and many others that it is a lot more of a challenge than this. On a global scale we are faced with an entrenched cultural paradigm, and its resulting physical manifestations, that is grossly exploitive of people and their environment, and there is serious evidence that we face major economic, environmental and social disasters if substantial change doesnt occur rapidly.

It is also an exciting time because all the spiritual knowledge, visions, strategies, techniques and technology we could wish for are available to enact this change. Not withstanding this, our observations are that for the vast majority of people in our society, there is not a serious will to both understand the cause of the problems or to change. Most of the changes being promoted are veneer thin, and being done with the intention that we can ‘prop-up’ our ways without having to change. It would appear that as a society we are most likely going to wait until there are major collapses before we decide to genuinely address the causes . At this point we will be in a position of being least able to address the situation.

As ‘activists’ we are faced with a dilemma, best explained by Richard Heinberg’s analogy of the car journey down a hill where we find we have no brakes and we are slowly picking up speed. Do we steer our way to safety (or ruin), or do we jump out before we are going too fast to do this safely. (and find our own path for the balance of the journey). There is no simple answer, but you do need to make a decision.

Those who decide to steer their way down would fit with Richard’s ‘powerdown’ scenario. Those who decide to jump,  fit the ‘lifeboat’ scenario. Our understanding is that if the ‘powerdown’ scenario is successful, then the ‘lifeboaters’ will have a useful role in transmitting useful skills to new developments as they happen, and - if things ‘turn to custard’ - well, the lifeboaters have nothing to lose really.

We have been involved in many actions and ‘movements’ working at ‘change’ in mainstream society. We increasingly believe that our present ‘civilisation’ is inherently unworkable and unsustainable, and that we need to consider radical alternatives. We have reached a point where we believe that staying with the ‘car’ is noble but not a good choice. We are attracted to voluntary simplicity, to “primitivism’ rather than ‘civilisation’. We have decided to get out of the car now.

We believe the future of our societies could be many decentralised communities, spread evenly across the land, with small centres of bioregional specialisation and limited external trading.

We are happy, gardening, farming, fishing, hunting, playing music, and learning how we can best be in a relationship with nature that serves us all best. We are interested in finding and learning how to make and use most of our own technology. Technology that can produce most of our needs from within a community within walking distance. We dont disdain all technology, but neither do we want to be undiscerning in choosing to use it. From our experience the most powerful determinant of the need for most technology comes from our emotional needs, and that as we learn to live simply, much of our ‘need’ for ‘technology’ becomes irrelevant. This is our journey, and having friends and a community around us is important. Other things that are important are good soils, good water, wilderness, good fishing, lack of ‘pressure’ from ‘civilisation’, lack of debt and an ability to invest in a different future that makes sense to us.

Check out our progress on developing a community land trust