Living on the edge of the Age of Limits

http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2015/08/the-boundaries-and-future-of-solution-space-part-5/

My acquaintance with Nicole Foss started on the internet and became a personal one through several phonecalls and two visits for public lectures here in Copetown.

Her blog is mostly written by a colleague, as she travels, an itinerant freethinking social visionary and prophetic voice, in my personal view. Her recent speaking tours have been in Australia and Europe so when a new essay by Nicole appeared on “The Automatic Earth” I jumped to catch up on her thinking.

Here are a couple of long quotes from part five of the essay, which is linked at the top of this post.

“We are heading for a profoundly humbling experience, to put it mildly. Technological man is not the demigod he supposed himself to be, but merely the beneficiary of a fortuitous energy bonanza which temporarily allowed him to turn dreams into reality. We would do well, if we could summon up sufficient humility in advance, to learn from the simple and elegant technologies of the distant past, which we have largely discarded or forgotten.”

and,

“Cohesive communities will act together in times of crisis, and will be able to offer significant support to each other. The path dependency aspect is important – the state we find ourselves in when crisis hits will be an major determinant of how it plays out in a given area. Anything people come together to do will build social capital and relationships of trust, which are the foundation of society. Community gardens, perma-blitzes (permaculture garden make-overs), maker-spaces, time-banks, savings pools, local currency initiatives, community hub developments, skills training programmes, asset mapping and contingency planning are but a few of the possibilities for bringing people together.”

If this has caught your attention, perhaps you will snuggle up to the internet screen and have a read.

May we all live well within the earth’s means.

Ian