This is a letter to the Resilient Community forum for broadcast Fri. 1/22

LETS STEP TOGETHER, LIKE THIS. . . .

I would like to suggest a way, and see what you all think. I think we need to prioritize creating self-sustainability for everyone, home-owners, apartment dwellers, homeless and poor, neighborhoods, with low-tech, home-made style self-sustainability ideas. If we can come up with this list, by bringing this idea to the attention of everyone we can, mine the ingeniousness of humanity thru the web, to have this list in place, within 3 months, so that when the general public is aware of the possibility of infrastructure breakdown for an indefinite period there will be a place for them to direct their energy and implement to make the self-sustainable neighborhoods, globally.

Otherwise they won't know what to do, just like right now, other than the idea of stockpiling, they will have something to do: implementing these ideas as fast as they can.

The challenge to the y2k conscious is to get this type of substantive contingency in place before 2000. Then no one need die or suffer unnecessarily, nor do we need the imposition of martial law, no need for global panic, as the shit approaches the fan, and we lay the groundwork for what people (mostly) seem to be craving in their hearts: a new better way of living on this planet. That is, self-sustainable, ecological, no waste, mutually co-operative, web of autonomous communities to which we are all members, fluid, consensual, interconneted through the web, various, multidimensional, unique, non- sovereign. Only the individual is sovereign. This would lead to the end of violence dominated, waste/suicide culture that exists today.

First, the funky self-sustainable part before 2000. Create the safety net, the organic structure from the grass roots.

Not everyone needs to be working on this right now. There are many other issues that need to be addressed. Like nuclear missiles. While governments still exist they have the premise of being responsible, and they need to be made to dissemble every nuclear missile that exists before 2000. They have no right to jeopardize the planet by keeping these intact when y2k threatens, by creating the possibility of them accidentally going off. A huge list of people, and organizations, created thru the web is one way of exerting pressure on the powers to be is one idea.

Another priority is gaining help from those gov't. orgs that are there to help, and don't quite know what to do. There is many instances where the government have indicated their willingness to enter into a mutually co-operative mode with citizen action groups and volunteers. The Redcross, Fema, DOE, Gov't emerg. groups and orgs like NERT(neighborhood emergency relief team). They need to be directed towards publicizing the call for lo-tech sustainable ideas, stockpiling for endangered or challenged communities like homeless, disabled, drug dependent, poor people in projects, hospitals, pharmacies, locating and coordinating parts for maintenance of all mechanical devices, organizing collectives and whereabouts of resources and skills are a few things these orgs. can help address and sponsor, citizens providing the manpower along with skills and ideas. And many other areas that people can add to the list of what needs to be addressed.

Committees or task forces can be created over the web or elsewise to co-ordinate all the activity that is going on everywhere, to make sure that the best of the best is easily available, and that it is consistently improving. A lot like what the Cassandra project is doing already. All these activities to be carried out by volunteers, those who hear the call.

Simplicity is key to everything, faith in the process, try to be a model. Community building is the antidote to alienation, one of the things that have unhinged so many people. It is healing. Only need to control your need to control. These ideas have come to me from the Universe, they don't belong to me or anyone, do they make sense, could you show me the flaws, so we can improve them. I'm tired of so much talk, leading nowhere.

Let each of us be guided by our hearts, not our fears, not outside experts. The meaningfulness of life is directly related to how much you allow yourself to care, in my opinion. Lets stop having the blind lead the blind. Group mind is thru the internet, I realize most of the world isn't connected to the Internet, but we are not forgetting about these people. They can be communicated with appropriately thru media and hard copy. But they will learn anyway, soon enough, and we don't need to necessarily "educate" them. We just need to provide for them, thru organizing over the web, creating the appropriate lists and making them available, and addressing what must be addressed now. We can do it ourselves. The internet makes it possible.

Freedom is directly related to responsibility. The more free you are, the more willing and able you are to shoulder the responsibility. The ability to respond to what's happening right now. We all need to be free, you can't be free if you are addicted, attached/dogmatic. I realize that we are all capable of the entire range of human behaviour, human nature is fluid, adaptable. We need to be flexperts, drop all our sticky attachments, notice our deep interdependence and change it to interdependance.

All of us can be self-deluded at any moment, this obvious realization, should keep our minds open. Each one of us has the ability to discern to determine what is really real, so that our response is appropriate. Fear and greed have alot to do with obfuscating the reality and causing distorted and inappropriate reactions.

When people, put aside the tendency to compete thru egos, and pull together in our big moment of truth, and we can feel at last, at home, with all of humanity, take a deep breath and breathe a deep sigh of relief, accepting our differences and individuality, but acknowledging our equality, in our insignificance, in the fact that we all share the same dilemma and ultimate destiny, in that we are all more or less, relatively speaking, the same distance from the source, or whatever unifies the Universe, that our only hope is to drop the shit and pull together. . .

We can begin to joyfully acknowledge the hope and possibility that exists in times of chaos and crisis that is in each of our hearts, right this moment by some sign or action that any one can initiate and people can stop and discuss at each of the interactive sites and report back if your group has any ideas to take this further. In other words is there a consensus or are there concerns or objections. That is what needs to be shown now, I should think.

In Unity,

TomO (bagelhole1)

-- Tom Osher (bagelhole1@aol.com), January 21, 1999

Answers

Except for sounding kind of "preachy" your basic idea seems sound. I don't think having the network rely on the Internet is a great idea. If we did that it might disappear overnight come new year's eve.

The most difficult part of the challenge is providing enough food for everyone. We have about 6 billion people on the earth now whom we feed by means of very high-tech farming. Y2K will probably eliminate high-tech farming for a long time to come. Low-tech farming on available land can only support about 1 billion people. Five out of six world-wide will probably die before a new equilibrium is reached.

Selection of those who live will be by a form of natural selection. Those who prepare in advance and are ready by new years's eve will live. Most of the others won't. Thirst, hunger,cold,disease, and violence will pare our numbers down to what the planet can truly support on a sustainable basis.

The trick to not repeating the mistakes of our forebears will be to learn to form ethical relationships within diverse organizations; i.e. government, business, education, etc. In ethical organizations in which ethical decision-making happens corrective feedback is sought and honored; so the organizations don't try harder and harder to reach ethical ends by unethical means that cannot possibly work.

For more on this topic see THE BILL OF ETHICS at www.gaiafriends.com/ethics.

I agree that Y2K is a great opportunity to change the way we do human life on "Spaceship Earth"; but I don't see it happening without enormous painful cataclysmic disruption.

I'd love to be proven wrong.

-- Bob Podolsky (podolsky@clipper.net), January 28, 1999.