[tt] [x-risk] Collaborative civilizational resilience activism

Sun Jul 13 18:34:02 UTC 2008

----- Forwarded message from "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu> -----

From: "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu>
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:15:13 -0400
To: News and views from the IEET <ieet-news at ieet.org>,
	existential at transhumanism.org
Subject: [x-risk] Collaborative civilizational resilience activism
Reply-To: For discussion of existential risks <existential at transhumanism.org>

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008208.html

The Outquisition

   [1]Alex Steffen
   July 12, 2008 11:49 AM

   The other night Cory Doctorow and I were talking over coffee, and we
   got going on an idea that's been rattling around in my head ever
   since.

   We were talking about the slow-motion collapse here in America, the
   looming climate crisis,[2]the futility of survivalism; and we began to
   play with the thought, what kinds of heroes would actually do some
   good for the communities that get hit hard?

   Because if [3]the ruins of the unsustainable are the new frontier, and
   if, as is already happening, the various economic and environmental
   transitions we face will leave many people unmoored from their
   familiar assumptions at the very least and, at the worst, cut loose
   from their jobs or driven from their homes, a huge number of people
   are going to need help forging new ways of life.

   Even if we do a pretty decent job of hugging the curve, and bright
   green innovation brings prosperity and security to a lot of people in
   many regions, some others will still suffer from ecological shifts,
   political abandonment, economic collapse or some combination of all
   three. Unless things change dramatically, we have not seen our last
   Dust Bowl, our last [4]New Orleans, our last Detroit. What do the
   people who are left trapped in degrading places, who don't get the
   green collar jobs, do?

   And we got on this riff about heroes who got the paradox of the
   moment: that abandoned people and places are sometimes the ones who
   most need radical innovation; that, these days, new tools and models
   are practically scattered all over the ground, just waiting for people
   to pick them up; but that those who most need them are those who least
   know how to find them.

   What would it be like, we wondered, if folks who knew tools and
   innovation left the comfy bright green cities and traveled to the
   [5]dead mall suburban slums, [6]rustbelt browntowns and
   climate-smacked farm communities and started helping the locals get
   the tools they needed. We imagined that it would need an almost
   missionary fervor, something like the Inquisition (which largely
   destroyed knowledge) in reverse, a crusade of open sharing, or as Cory
   promptly dubbed it, the Outquisition.

   Imagine these folks like this passing out [7]free textbooks, running
   [8]holistic programs for kids, creating [9]local knowledge management
   systems, launching [10]microfinance projects, [11]mobilebanking and
   [12]complementary currencies. Helping rural landowners apply
   [13]climate foresight and [14]farm biodiversity. Building cheap,
   smart, quality housing for displaced people (not to mention [15]better
   refugee camps), or an [16]Open Architecture Network for cheap informal
   rehabs of run-down suburban housing. Hacking together [17]DIY
   windmills and [18]ad hoc smart grids, communication systems, water
   treatment systems -- and getting really good at[19]adaptive reuses of
   outdated infrastructure. In other words, these folks would be
   [20]redistributing the future at a furious clip.

   This would not be lone stragglers wandering through a post-apocalyptic
   landscape (ala A Canticle for Liebowitz). As we've said again and
   again, worldending is a fool's game, and what comes after will not be
   an adventure. Nor would it be the fantasy of [21]a localist retreat to
   19th Century farming communities that folks like Jim Kunstler hold so
   dear (I mean, for Christsakes, no one really wants that life -- our
   ancestors all had that life and they fled it as soon as they could in
   great teeming masses)

   Rather, it'd be a network of places where people were engaged in
   ingenious development of elegant solutions to the problems of life
   where living is hard and money is short might well be a vital
   necessity for a certain portion of the population. It's really not
   hard for me to imagine a certain kind of person eagerly embracing the
   role of being facilitators of that network, sort of like [22]barefoot
   solar engineers for the forgotten parts of the developed world.

   It sounds implausibly weird, but then much of the world we're moving
   into is likely to sound that way at first. Our ideas of what's normal,
   or even what's possible, [23]will not outlast the next decade, and
   it'll be the people who think in (what are by today's standards)
   abnormal, impossible ways who may just do the most good.

   So, what do you think? What innovative tools or models could you see
   helping in hard-hit communities? And can you think of a better name
   that the Outquisition?

References

   1. http://www.worldchanging.com/alex_bio.html
   2. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001413.html
   3. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007801.html
   4. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003436.html
   5. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007882.html
   6. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001376.html
   7. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006131.html
   8. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006623.html
   9. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004461.html
  10. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007448.html
  11. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006381.html
  12. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003575.html
  13. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007795.html
  14. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002536.html
  15. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001817.html
  16. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005970.html
  17. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004320.html
  18. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008178.html
  19. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007838.html
  20. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000189.html
  21. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006355.html
  22. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000954.html
  23. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008064.html

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