What's cool in the GTIA Portfolio...
- MIMIC THIS! When you get invited to events 3000 miles away (or 20 of them just across town), use COPY & PASTE with the really interesting events to seed your own community's plans for similar events. Why start from scratch.... Beg, borrow and mimic! More....
- Welcome recently added members. Check periodically to see if friends you have invited have joined.
- Find others members in your hometown, region, state, country. (E.g., Country=Austria or City, State = Vashon, WA)
- Produce a list of members who use keywords similar to your inerests when describing theirs (E.g.,Permaculture, intentional community).
- See LATEST ACTIVITY on GTIA for results of comprehensive scans of Transition activities around the globe.
- New links to Twitter via GTIA -- Twitter via #TransitionTowns. Twitter now displayed on GTIA Latest Activity.
- Experiment by clicking on TOP NEWS vs ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO SHARE in the center column -- two types of Latest Activity.
Transition Initiatives in hard times
With the recent cracks in the US economic structure, the prospect of Great Depression-like hard times seems more imminent than it has in a while. It has me wondering, what will become of our Transition Initiative in the case of a major depression?
On the one hand, a depression could make the transition work seem more relevant, as many more people will see the immediate need for self-reliance.
On the other hand, the approach of Transition Initiatives, which is designed to bring people along gently, with the prospect of a better situation than what we have now, may no longer seem real to people who are trying to figure out how to hold onto their homes and feed their families. People may not have the slack in their lives to start model projects that don't make a big difference in their lives immediately. (Here in Santa Cruz, with a significant poor immigrant population, we are actually trying to think about reaching such people now.)
As far as I can figure out, the aspect of a Transition Initiative that will be most durable under unpredictable conditions is the building of connections between people. The conversations may change, but many of the relationships that we help build will continue to be important.
What are your thoughts on the future of your Transition Initiative if times get really tough?
On the one hand, a depression could make the transition work seem more relevant, as many more people will see the immediate need for self-reliance.
On the other hand, the approach of Transition Initiatives, which is designed to bring people along gently, with the prospect of a better situation than what we have now, may no longer seem real to people who are trying to figure out how to hold onto their homes and feed their families. People may not have the slack in their lives to start model projects that don't make a big difference in their lives immediately. (Here in Santa Cruz, with a significant poor immigrant population, we are actually trying to think about reaching such people now.)
As far as I can figure out, the aspect of a Transition Initiative that will be most durable under unpredictable conditions is the building of connections between people. The conversations may change, but many of the relationships that we help build will continue to be important.
What are your thoughts on the future of your Transition Initiative if times get really tough?
Tags: depression, hard times
Views: 0
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Judith Newton on -
Hi Michael -
Good topic!
I think Transition Initiatives can become much more deeply relevant in hard times, in many ways, as you say. However, I think we won't be calling on Peak Oil so heavily in our discussions.
That is, relocalizing more of our food supplies and our production of local goods and energy, as well as creating alternative currencies and means of exchange, will probably make sense to a broader demographic range when it's based on in-your-face economic considerations rather than something "debatable" like Peak Oil.
My bigger concern at present is that the current economic "situation" might be used as a lever to create an overt and fundamentally different basis for US society. I'm thinking along the lines of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine and Naomi Wolf's The End of America and Give Me Liberty. Watch this (28min) video!!
We're on the path of a more and more closed society -- one has to wonder how viable Transition Initiatives would be if this continues.
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