09231 Unplugging as a resilience strategy

So we Unpluggers found a new way to unplug: an independent life-support infrastructure and financial architecture — a society within society — which allowed anybody who wanted to "buy out" to "buy out at the bottom" rather than "buying out at the top." If you are willing to live as an Unplugger does, your cost to buy out is only around three months of wages for a factory worker, the price of a used car. You never need to "work" again, although there are plenty of life support activities to keep you busy, and a lot of basic research and science to do. Unplugging is not an off-the-shelf solution, it's a research career! — Vinay Gupta, The Unplugged

The first principle here is simple: There is safety in numbers.

It's not for nothing that our economic and political aristocrats are such masters at the divide and conquer game. They keep power by keeping us divided.

If you are one family in your entire neighborhood exploring permaculture and sustainability, you are constantly at risk. Your own government makes it as hard as possible for you to live more sustainably.

If you are one of one hundred families in your neighborhood exploring permaculture and sustainability, you are in a much safer situation.

There is safety in numbers. There is security in community. The future of sustainability is community.

In that regard, Unplugging, as a community-building movement, is a great strategy to promote resilience. Communities of mutual aid, alternative economics, energy storages, all the aspects of Unplugging work well to increase resilience. The best thing about it is that it can start with individual households and grow outwards from those very small, tiny even, seeds.

As the movement develops, we will need ways to share experiences. Every small group of Unpluggers just getting started should not have to reinvent the process on its own. I don’t actually know all the details of how an apartment building-scale system of biogas digesters providing cooking and heating fuel would work. Once that has been developed, however, that information has to be shared. There’s no point in people reinventing the wheel or the flat tire. Fortunately, thanks to the internet, it is easy to share information worldwide anonymously and in many countries, constitutional law protects the right to share such information.

While the principle is certainly true that we should “obey the law,” that generalized principle of obedience doesn’t apply when the law is unjust. All laws that forbid the activities of sustainable living are unjust to people and unjust to the planet and its eco-systems. As Gandhi said many years ago —

As long as the superstition that unjust laws must be obeyed exists, slavery will exist.

All unjust laws need replacement with rational legislation. That depends on achieving a critical mass in the permacultured population so that we cross over a tipping point.

Until that happens, discretion will sometimes be the better part of our ecological valor. We will need to be wise as serpents yet harmless as doves.

Unplugging is a serious, not a cosmetic, break with the present state of reality. The existing system has many defenses and does not hesitate to bring them to bear on those who do not conform. I have learned this the hard way, as Oklahoma City code enforcement has hammered away against my attempts to use edible landscaping and organic, sustainable garden methods.

Imagine the scene in the permit department of the City of Normality, U.S. of A. if a group of Unpluggers wandered in to seek a permit to route their humanure into biogas digesters in the basement of an apartment building they recently bought as a housing cooperative, for the purpose of making methane which will provide cooking and heating fuel for the building.

Just mentioning the word “biogas digester” could easily cause a city inspector’s head to explode.

The first thing they’re going to say, after they recover from the shock of hearing the words “biogas digesters in the basement of our apartment building” is that there is a city ordinance requiring that all toilets be connected to the city’s sewer system.

Then they will reject the plans. So long, see you later, don’t come back soon.

In an era where we Facebook and tweet even the most trivial happening, you can’t update your status to say “INSTALLED BIOGAS DIGESTER IN THE BASEMENT” or tweet that without running the risk of state suppression of your sustainable lifestyle issues. You probably shouldn’t even tweet that you shower in a tote so you can pour the water on your garden.

So some things have to be kept quiet until such time as critical mass occurs and we can change the foolish local, state, and federal laws that mandate unsustainably brittle structures at constant risk of failure for the most basic activities of life in the city.

Part of the observation phase is to gain an understanding of what can be done legally and can be tweeted/Facebooked, and what should be done quietly and without asking permission of authorities. It is nearly always easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Anything the authorities don’t know about your activities can’t hurt you or the planet. They’re busy. They operate with restricted budgets. If you keep quiet, you will be able to get away with an amazing amount of sustainable activity right under the noses of your local authorities. In this matter, the largeness of a city is your friend.