An outline proposal for a movement ecology, in the time of collapse and rising fascism
1. Context
It’s a long list. Those things to be deeply concerned about, that which to grieve, those who are suffering now. I question the burden of laying it all out again, when energy may best serve elsewhere, though naming and bearing witness is also a necessary labour. And actually how to feel it? Because it is at times overwhelming, when we let it in.
I have lamented for Ice. How are we to grieve the loss of our worlds of ice? Who knows how to live with such a bereavement? And how to really hear the story of a young one in suicide ideation, self hating and harming, living in despair? How do you let that in?
Choosing to turn away for self care, if a person is indeed able to, is understandable. It’s also a feature of the entitlement to comfort, that many of us are schooled in. Numb people shop. Numb people don’t figure out what they can do, or how to be responsible. Looking at the context we are in requires staring into a horrifying abyss. Graphs of accelerating changes, exponential curves turning their hockey stick corner, exponential suffering already here and yet to come.
I was in a ceremony, feeling overwhelming grief. “Give it to the earth, so she can compost it for you” I was advised. So I planted my face into the bare soil, sobbing and keening. And after a while “Don’t get stuck there” and “Remember to connect to beauty, there’s always something beautiful to remember and be with, it will sustain you.”[1] When I’ve lost my sense of humour I know it's time to take medicine, whether a walk in the hills, a breath practice, or gin! These and others all have their time and place. I hope you know your own medicines.
Perhaps, like me, you have been through rounds of this. You have acted, sacrificed, endured consequences. Maybe you felt alienated from loved ones, in the dissonance of conversations that don’t appear to recognise this same context[2], which is screaming at you.
And now this phase, with the rise of authoritarianism, the depths of the racism, the casual erosion of women's rights, the inhumanity towards those seeking refuge, the shoring up of oligarch power; the spectre of fascism. Are you reeling as well? The body shock, the gasp; then the normalising, the shifting baseline. For some of us this is a time of reveal, where the underlying logic of an anti-life system is shown in all its horror. Domination and control; scarcity, separation, powerlessness and soullessness; together in concert forcing and allowing extraction, consumption, accumulation, excretion, pollution, exploitation, colonisation.
Fallacies and delusions are being revealed: the narrative that we have a functioning democracy, the reassurance that, despite its faults, the economic system is the best one we could have, so we benefit if we work hard, the idea that our institutions are there to keep us safe and support our children to grow and thrive, the comfort in modernity's story of progress. Of course for our Global Majority family there was never such a consistent obfuscation; they’ve experienced their bodies, communities, and lands being taken as the resources with which to build the layers of our delusions.
I appreciate the willingness to act. There are direct actions of resistance, repair and solidarity that make a difference at the point of doing them. Joanna Macey talked about the need for actions that hold back the systems of destruction in defence of life, those that build the new, needed structures and those that help shift perception and values[3]. Within this framework there really is something for anyone with the capacity to offer service to love and to life. And for those of us with responsibility and influence within specific movements, networks and organisations, I feel we have an obligation to look beyond what my friend calls “everything, everywhere all at once” as much as I resonate with a longing for all hands to be set to the pump. Looking beyond frenetic action, which often targets, ineffectively, a multitude of symptoms, towards the possibility of enough collaboration and enough shared direction, focussed on addressing causes. In that way we might sow seeds to support a profound transformation, over time.
We will mostly now witness the breaking down, the drowning, the burning; with our energies increasingly fixed on the challenges of survival. Nevertheless, how we approach and rise to those challenges might also contain possibilities for becoming more humane and more alive together, for a new paradigm to emerge - phoenix-like from ashes - if we focus on building cultures of repair, resistance and regeneration together. There may be young ones alive today who will experience the transformation, if we can grasp the work for the rest of our lives.
2. How has this happened?
It’s been a lifetime's autistic special interest for me: asking “Why is it like this and how might it change?”[4]. Seeking a response that feels sufficient, it has taken me a few years to explore the question “Why would our species create and allow processes that destroy the life support systems of Earth?”.
I wonder how much providing a quick reply here will serve. Complex adaptive systems are a key feature and they operate at many scales, including within the human nervous system. Your nervous system may be in a rest and digest state, willing to read this with some curiosity, or it may be in a fight / flight mode (“Can she get to the point; I’m shitting myself about climate change /fascism / etc, I need to act!”). So breathe… If we don’t take the time to understand the predicament we are in, our “solutions” will carry on not working. There’s a summary here and the short hand is something like this:
Human beings have lived in many different ways during our 200,000 year long history. Perhaps around 5-10,000 years ago some of us lost our trust in life, possibly due to difficult climatic changes that had calamitous impacts. We sought to control and dominate - a feature of behaviour of our left hemisphere when stressed.[5]
Control and domination, through war, rape, theft and colonisation are dehumanising to all involved, but are successful in providing the resources needed to continue and expand such behaviours. They leave communities traumatised and struggling to resist.
Governance and economic systems emerge from this paradigm of domination that contain the logic of expansion at all costs - like cancer. They are underpinned by media and miseducation systems and structural oppressions that justify and spread deep inequality.
We can feel exasperated and defeated by how the “right wing” seems to “win” over and over, but they are playing out their strategies within a system that they largely “agree” with, that works to their advantage. Oligarch power and the destruction of life is baked into the system. Ours is a much harder task. We are contending with the systems of control and domination which determine whether we have a roof over our heads and food to eat. We may not feel well enough to act or be skilled enough to act well enough, with others. Yet we are desperately needing to simultaneously hold back the destruction whilst breathing life into life-affirming values, processes and structures. Phew… no wonder we can feel exhausted and confused. No wonder we are failing; there’s not only so much to do, but how we do it and how it creates a coherent whole, able to make profound and lasting change, really matters. There is a way forwards…
3. So Now What?
We are entering the breakdown of complex adaptive systems- climate breakdown, the collapse of food systems and the subsequent third and fourth order effects leading to civilisational collapse. There are exceptionally difficult times ahead, but, at the risk of being trite, these are times of both great peril and opportunity. The historian Walter Scheidel[6] observed that rampant inequality is only ever destroyed by one of four forces: total war, violent revolution, massive plague and state collapse. And the social philosopher and polymath Daniel Schmachtenberger[7] describes how civilizational collapse could take us either into a worse state (e.g. fascistic, AI enabled, surveillance driven, tech-feudalism), or into chaos, or towards what is called a third attractor, a different and better way of being together.
Schamchtenberger gives the criteria for a third attractor. It needs to effect:
Infrastructure- water, food, energy, transportation, tech, etc
Social Structure- institutions, decision making bodies, coordination protocols
Super Structure- shared values, culture, spirituality
And it must:
Mitigate inevitable human catastrophe, whilst preventing more from being created
Be coherent: decentralised choice making that quickly harnesses mass intelligence
Enable us to act as individuals but in service to collective well being
The work of our times then is to find this third attractor together. Firstly in ourselves - how do we do the work and find the practices that bring us back in alignment with our own life energies?[8] then in the groups, neighbourhoods and communities we participate in, we too must (re)build the necessary infrastructure, social tools, culture and values. No easy task, but actually this defines the collaboration needed by all the many groups of the green / progressive networks. This, I believe, is the work we now have to do. The issues you most care about are likely woven into the fabric of this proposal.
Lifehouse - Collapse Preparing Communities (L-CPC) and movement ecology strategy
The above “third attractor” criteria, centre on mutual aid[9], and will, out of necessity, be met by communities that find ways together to respond to the “Long emergency” of climate, financial and food system breakdown, pandemics, and the general collapse of what we consider to be civilization. Collapse Preparing Communities are collectives of people, within a growing network, doing the emotional and practical work to build infrastructure and create plans that prepare for civilisational collapse, including the development of Lifehouses (physical institutions at the heart of each neighbourhood that host meetings and house useful equipment and information - see the book Lifehouse by Adam Greenfield).
In effect, each community will collectively be making a choice between chaos and depravity (fascism), whilst working together for more chances of survival. Grim and practical as this sounds, because it is, it will also require some of us to be able to stand tall; the momentum of change not hitting us in quite the same shocking way, because we knew it was coming and have found our medicines and practices that help us to show up and uphold a spirit of care, collaboration and freedom.
Essential tools for Collapse Preparing Communities will be nonviolent civil resistance. We need to develop this muscle of solidarity in order to protect life. We may need to resist evictions, fascism or conscription; occupy land to grow food, stop the pollution of our water bodies, and prevent further destruction, including by joining forces across the world with other communities of resistance[10] where anti-life, cancerous forces are trying to take hold. (I think of this as the global human family evolving an ability to act like a collective immune response).
An essential part of the social infrastructure we’ll need are people's assemblies (neighbourhood level) and (district level+) citizens’ assemblies, to collectivise and legitimize community decision making. Assemblies will not take hold unless they have real power. How do we encourage people to come to assemblies, how do they have agency to implement decisions? They have to have a STRONG footprint in the local community. Building that is a task in itself, but building that is the task that we have to do…to prepare for collapse. Thus the place where we have collective agency is through asking how we as a community plan to respond to civilisational collapse. (I understand that different wording may be chosen to be less stark and off-putting)[11].
By definition, a community focussed on collapse preparing (no one is going to save us - we need to prepare together) has an inherent agency. It also has an inherent rationale for involving wider audiences, organisations and intergenerational work across communities:
To deepen relationships and trust.
To engage across active groups and organisations (including ‘anchor organisations’ and mutual aid networks).
To do skills & equipment audits (where are our local electricians, 4x4 drivers, etc?).
To take an asset-based approach to developing community plans that focus on core infrastructure and collective safety (including anti-fascism).
To figure out what buildings could be repurposed as Lifehouses.
To include those community and culture makers, who can hold space, help with healing and building relationships across divides, bring ritual for both grieving and joy.
Fundamentally, to build power.
Work on assemblies then, should focus on collapse, mutual aid and local resistance. Work on national networks needs to focus on purposeful collaboration, ready to make change together when sufficient power is built from neighbourhood level upwards.
As Lifehouses and community assemblies come online, there will be a necessity to connect up and federate, to build decentralised networks of networks, to share tools, equipment and surplus, in wider structures of mutual aid.
As emergencies hit, the far right have been spreading disinformation and division. Whilst we may struggle to fight the billionaire print / online media and the polarising algorithms of social media, we can have agency in sharing information and ideas within our own communities- this is where our battles with these giants also needs to take place. The battle for truths and togetherness might be won by those who can support a community to feed, power and heal itself. And out of this confidence, out of necessity and out of the federated networks of assemblies, bigger shifts can be made. When the communities forming a bioregion[12] know they depend on the health of the water to be well themselves, then the rights of River may be collectively decided through the assemblies and enacted through the community networks of resistance and repair. Networks of bioregions will come to know the need to access land to contribute to the collective food supply. Who then would be willing to tolerate the madness of drastically unequal land ownership in the UK, going back to the thefts by Norman dukes and the class war of the enclosures? The recent story of a UK community, who pulled together during a horrendous flood then decided to breach Sunday trading hours out of necessity, gives us just a glimpse of what is possible (it's a small but meaningful opening example. People will ignore the problematic laws and regulations of the State when the State lets them down).
The commons will be decided and enacted out of necessity. What will happen first though is the stripping away of the systems that apparently care for us and feed us now. It is already happening and will speed up. Who will name this and begin the work to prepare?
Look again above at the criteria for a third attractor. Whatever you are working on is probably contained within those action areas. The emphasis shifts though, to emphasize building real power and connectivity at neighbourhood levels, in support of what could then emerge at regional, national and international levels. This implies the necessity of meta-strategy and a coordinated collaborative approach that builds towards collective change across many networks and organisations. There are layers (hyper-local, local, regional, national, international) needed for the infrastructure and social structure. The superstructure will emerge from the simple principles that we organise around, the spirit of how we collectivise and the regenerative cultures we practice together.
There’s a lot to do, but surely we want to try? At the very least to reduce the depravity on the way down and potentially to seed the transformation for subsequent generations. This isn’t simply a practical project though. After thousands of years of an anti-life system, I feel this as the systems of life coming through us; I sense emergence in fractal layers that can happen if we choose to collaborate (as life does); I feel the shared purpose, the repair, the recovery, especially the rebuilding of healthy cultures. Beyond a story of victimhood and loss, this is a co creation, life affirming and directed, a spirit of collective evolution.
A summary of what needs figuring out together
Preparing for collapse through assemblies and work in communities is a political project needing a lot of energy - dedicated, motivated “activist” type energy, working alongside community organisers to bring in local people.
Providing some guiding principles for those of us working towards both survival and renewal, developing a sense of shared endeavour, with the intention to serve and, with humility, sow seeds of transformation.
Within a “sustainable” funding model - a mixture of care / housing commons, business tithes, community unions and crowdfunding(?)
Ensuring that those who have long worked in community settings are cherished, supported and treated with respect. Co-create training, materials, and peer support amongst local “pilots” who are trialling community preparing.
Neighbourhood organising and peoples’ assemblies focus on hyper-local physical and social infrastructure and networks. Micro design for organising, mapping and audits of skills. Specific assemblies on food, water, tech repair and generating energy… logistics in floods, etc.. (this implies talking to and connecting with sports clubs, Rotary Clubs, parish councils, faith groups, etc). Developing “Lifehouse capabilities” in community buildings.
Build towards community wide standing citizens’ assemblies, with tongue in cheek, locally flavoured (at times eccentric) branding that imbues a sense of self-determination, self-rule, humour and togetherness.
Support regional and national collaborations, e.g. can local issues be tackled by practices developed elsewhere (eg how Acorn the Union resists housing evictions)?
People's assemblies learn alternative histories and other ways of knowing and being as part of deliberation on specific issues. At district, regional and national levels, radical proposals can be brought that can be enacted when enough power has been built together and the necessity is seen. For example, a local assembly wrestling with food supply declares that land not occupied, or owned through classist inheritances, is taken back into the commons (a calling in for landowners to work with us rather than build higher walls). Similarly a declaration of the rights of nature and a closing down of those violating good practice (e.g. chicken farms in the Wye Valley bioregion) .
Local assemblies send representatives to regional assemblies, generating a true democratic mandate for new systems and institutions being built regionally and nationally, which run alongside and / or replace failing institutions of the current system, renewing democracy, economics, health, law, media.
Internationalist links overtime lead to the emergence of the collective immune response. As we survive what capitalist, colonialist modernity did to us, we prevent the re-emergence of patterns of domination and extraction, through our strength together.
How to connect
Our convening group has created a L-CPC Lifehouses Community’ whatsapp chat, feel free to post there to introduce yourself to the wider group and connect. The chat is for all those interested in L-CPC work, including organisations that are part of the wider movement ecology. Please keep the posts relevant to the subject, remain kind and respectful in communications and mindful of the volume.
Let us know if you are already part of relevant work we might call a “pilot”. If you have already started to research possibilities in the community, finding partners and starting to meet, the pilots channel is for you. If you have not reached that point there may be a different way we can support you.
If you’re interested in the movement ecology work, message me through this site
Footnotes
[1] I encourage you to find a community to grieve within. There are many modalities. Joanna Macey’s Work that Reconnects is well known.
[2] Sometimes I simply name my feeling of alienation as a way to actually stay connected. A next stage can be to do “The Week” with friends, family, colleagues etc - check it out: theweek.ooo
[3] https://workthatreconnects.org/dimensions-of-the-great-turning/
[4] After 3 years of studies, courses, books, videos I made for people, who might also have been feeling similarly bewildered a summary video on economics (a significant but not complete part of the picture)
[5] For sources and other summaries see Kashtan, McGilchrist
[6] See Monbiot https://youtu.be/4iqiz0KHuJo?si=AroBhFGRcsd7rfV9 2.15 in
[7] Schmachtemberger postulates we need to find a “third attractor” to pull ourselves towards a different state (summary video here)
[8] Recommended reading- Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliviera
[9] “Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world” Dean Spade
[10] We can learn from these communities through practicing internationalist solidarity, supporting and celebrating the few places in the world that are not yet in resignation to a stranglehold by neoliberalism
[11] Civic Square have been in a version of this work for some years now and are clear that they are radicals using appropriate language when needed
[12] a geographical area, on land or at sea, defined not by administrative boundaries but by distinct communities of plant and animal species, ecological systems, topographic features, and human cultures