Humanity’s Crisis
a dialogue with Timothy Wilken, MD and Arthur Noll
Our challenge at Sustainable CommUnity is to have an answer ready. If we can invent sustainable community, then we will have the answer. That is certainly my purpose in being here.
The degree of re-education needed is very great, and the precedent for this in the needed time frame is totally lacking. Even in larger time frames, the needed education has never happened for crucial matters like accepting evolution, understanding basic science, with regard to the masses. And we need a scientific basis for how we act, getting everyone to accept evolution would be part of the needed reeducation. It isn’t going to happen. Most people’s brains are not adapted to learn such things, and we cannot change the basic general structure of brains.
Humans are the most adaptability of all species. They are the only species to survive well in all climates and locations on the earth. They had accomplished this before the discovery of fossil fuels. To change you have to have a strong reason to change. Learning something new requires three things 1) Motivation, 2) Method, and 3) Organization. In the case of teaching Sustainable Community to our fellow humans, they will become highly motivated by the effects of the fossil fuel crisis on their daily lives. It is our job at SusCom to prepare the Method and Organization.
I don’t see how to design a community more than we already have, without having actual places to work with. We have all the general principles we need. The rest grows out of those principles, and the environmental conditions available. I feel we are spinning our wheels to try design more without more specific information.
I think there is much more we can do globally to support those locally. I think we need to create detailed sustainable commUnity manuals. So that those remote from us can download these manuals and use the directions to create there own sustainable commUnities. Now this should not stop any of us from beginning to work locally. I than we each should begin to recruit a small team to work with us on the local level. Certainly, one can argue that survival in the North differs from survival in the South, but there are many common solutions for both locations. I feel we need to work out the general application, and allow the specific application to be designed in the various “localities”.
When things fail, millions of people will be looking for alternatives, but I don’t see being able to take care of millions of people with our ideas.
I don’t see that our role will be to take care of millions of people. I see our role of providing a common database containing, principles, procedures, techniques, processes to allow millions of people to take care of themselves.
