Section 9: Constancy, Persistence, Resilience
Socialism failed because it couldn't tell the economic truth; capitalism may fail because it can't tell the ecological truth. — Lester Brown
Someone was hurt before you, wronged before you, hungry before you, frightened before you, beaten before you, humiliated before you, raped before you…yet, someone survived…You can do anything you choose to do. — Maya Angelou
Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good. — Elizabeth Edwards (UK)
Section 9 Table of Contents
09011 Resilience, Persistence, Constancy — Big questions. Hard questions. Challenging questions. Natural principles to replicate in human systems. Winning by creating a new game and abandoning the old game that is rigged against us.
09021 Psychological Issues in Resilience — We swim in a sea of media that conditions us to act against our own interests. Murder, death, and violence are everywhere. So are beauty, wisdom, truth, and goodness.
09031 Six ways to die: heat, cold, illness, injury, hunger, thirst — Looking for patterns of safety, supply, and shelter.
09041 Services that protect us — Shelter, Safety and Supply stand between us and the six ways to die.
09051 Six Primary Threats to Infrastructure — Neglect, wear and tear, operators and their errors.
09061 Three effects of infrastructure failure — Quality. Supply. Price.
09071 Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps — Mapping your strengths and vulnerabilities.
09081 Climate Instability — Mitigating your risks of climate problems.
09091 Economic Irrationality — Protecting yourself and all you love from the economic craziness of these times.
09101 Political Criminality — Protecting yourself and all you love from the political criminality endemic to our times.
09111 Peak energy — Developing a personal energy plan to carry you into the future.
09121 Punctuated Equilibrium — When things change suddenly and not for the good.
09131 Die-off — The ultimate of environmental boogermen.
09141 Old Ways — New Ways — A work of fiction examining how a house full of young wage slaves make it through a hypothetical crash of civilization and help build something new.
09151 Printable Flyers — Copy and hold for distribution when needed.
09161 Water Resilience — Next to air, water is the most critical resource for life. Take care of it and it takes care of you. On being inhabited in your watershed.
09171 Air pollution — Indoor and outdoor pollution considerations.
09181 Assessing and mitigating hazards specific to a situation — Making a list and checking it three dozen times to make sure your plan is complete.
09191 Mutual Aid — By mimicking natures forms, we build persistence and resistance into our lifestyles.
09201 Mitigating deterioration in a community — Intervene early and often.
09211 Evacuation and shelter in place — Should you stay or should you go? And what to do if you stay and if you go.
09221 Essential equipment for resilience — Not a minimum or a maximum list, just some suggestions.
09231 Unplugging as a resilience strategy — Community is your ultimate protection. There is, as they say, safety in numbers.
09241 Resilience Inventory — What do you know about your risks? For that matter, do you know your risks?
09251 Resilience Design Opportunities — Small jobs to get you going.