As a purely internal US argument I get it. However, taking the whole picture into account, all the life and wealth within the US relies on the empire, extracting wealth from its periphery and siphoning it to the center. What motivation should such an empire have to give up its centralized power? The centralization within the US is just a mirror of the centralization of the US within the world.
So, if you want to put forward your decentralized vision, it needs a parallel vision of decentralization on a global level. And that would mean self-sufficiency of these cities or US states vis-à-vis the world. How could you live in the US in a way that feels wealthy and healthy and is not dependent on permanently extracting work, energy, raw materials, and ecological absorption capacities from the rest of the world?
That is exactly the problem Williams sought to deal with when he posed a confederation of regional commonwealths as an alternative to our “empire as a way of life.” He saw the need to develop a different economic system. Williams was a socialist and envisioned his regional commonwealths as basically ecological socialist systems. In a broad sense, as I write, we need to build social economies. How we do this in the midst of our extractive capitalist system, eventually replacing it, is the challenge. I take a swipe at that in my next post.
Ok, I think I better get your starting poin, nowt: **"It’s broken. We need to replace it."** That’s where we begin—by addressing the systems that are most broken, the ones that no longer function at all. Democracy in the U.S. is one of those systems. Another is holistic health, at least from my experience.
Anyone who has ever been diagnosed with what modern medicine calls a "chronic disease" knows this: The way modern medicine approaches systemic dysregulations—whether of the psyche, the intestinal system, the immune system, or all of these combined—is fundamentally broken. Those who manage to heal or find some kind of sane equilibrium have often turned to more ecological and sustainable approaches to their health. These approaches rely on simple, accessible practices—things like wisely choosing the food you eat, breathing mindfully, meditating, maintaining healthy movement in the body, and all those basic, cost-free actions. Even companionship—cuddling, spending time with animals—plays a role. *[I’m not saying techno-scientific medicine is useless. I’m just saying that it _alone_ rarely suffices]
Then there’s loneliness, another area where our society is fundamentally broken. The ways we try to combat loneliness—methods that make us even more dependent on technology, AI agents, and the like—are extractive in nature. Meanwhile, the solutions might be far simpler: people coming together, setting up tables on the street on a Sunday, and just eating together. Thereby creating a convivial practice.
A third starting point might unfortunately emerge sooner than we think: **surviving in large cities**. This won’t likely become an immediate issue in the industrialized North, but rather in developing countries and their megacities. As climatic conditions worsen, the surrounding areas that supply cities with energy, water, food, and even breathable air will become depleted. If these ecosystems are no longer sustainable, survival within the city itself will become a pressing challenge.
This means, the regions you envision should not be designed from a purely ecological perspective, but from a **techno-ecological** one. For example, we need to ask: *What areas does New York—or, more urgently, Mexico City, Mumbay, Jakarta—require to sustain all its citizens?* To supply them with drinking water, to feed them all year round. *That* area could be a region. And then the goal should be to move away from a model where the city operates as a small empire, extracting resources from its surroundings.
I believe there are already small seeds of change taking root. In many cities, it’s often the wealthy middle class—conscious of their ecological footprint—who are leading initiatives like food cooperatives in the surrounding areas. These cooperatives supply ecologically grown food, creating a network that sustains the "outside" from the "inside" and vice versa. In the event of catastrophic situations in the city, these networks could provide the first line of support for survival and potentially expand from there. It makes sense to build and strengthen them now.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. They drive to one point. We are not just politically broken. We are socially broken. Indeed we need to rediscover conviviality and alternative systems, as Ivan Illich long ago pointed out. Getting together with our neighbors.
It strikes me that in days people will be receiving their premium notices under Obamacare, expected to be far higher as a result of Trump policies. The health care system in general is becoming impossible for people. $27,000 for an average family coverage.
Personally, I just had a doctor’s appointment for an allergic reaction to a blood pressure medication that has been prescribed. The billed cost was nearly $500! Fortunately Medicare and supplemental paid all but $20. But what happens when people have high deductibles, as I used to under Obamacare? I avoided going to the doctor, is the answer.
So yes holistic health needs to be more emphasized.
Meanwhile, a proxy for food system collapse is upon us, with 40 million people losing SNAP benefits. 1 in 8 US people. Who knows what this will cause? Looting of grocery stores? Things are deeply broken.
I have written scenarios about future life in cities, how we could build the future in place, the basic theme of The Raven. A 2-part series begins here. https://open.substack.com/pub/theraven/p/imagining-the-future-how-to-build-e1e?r=36q38&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false It includes local food systems. Having long been engaged with the climate crisis, I believe one of the greatest mass impacts on human populations will be food scarcity. And this will be felt acutely in larger cities. This tool showing where food comes from in the US illustrates the challenge. I worry about supply chains breaking down under civil disorder. It seems clear cities should create food reserves.
All I can say is that the more obviously things are broken, the more it drives us to seek alternatives. When the comfortable status quo is gone, we might create something better.
"The United States is broken, and it’s time to think about what comes next." Now? What about in 1968 (probably before you were born). As I said in 1980, "If YOU would have listened to US ten years ago, WE wouldn't be in trouble NOW." I have been updating this every five years so the maxim now is, "If YOU would have listened to US fifty-five years ago, WE wouldn't be in trouble NOW."
There are all kinds of alternatives that we started in the 1960s-1970s that are still around, but nowadays people think they have stumbled on a new concept and have to re-invent the wheel. The key to getting your head straight is to shift your paradigms and build your own solutions. These are often just adaptations, but that is okay too. The dichotomy of problem/solution vs. predicament/adaptation is a false dichotomy.
I was born in 1952 and am informed by the alternatives that emerged in the 60s-70s. As you well know, the reactionary counter-strike began in the 70s and emerged in full in the 80s with the Reagan administration. What makes this moment different is that the contradictions of that counter strike have fully emerged. The systemic breakdowns we predicted have emerged, and this opens the door to revive alternatives. The re-emergence of the bioregional movement is part of this. But there was a weakness in the 60s-70s alternatives, and it is embodied in your phrase, “build your own solutions.” Too much of the 60s-70s alternative culture thought it could build its own solutions without reference to the larger systems, and thus failed to cohere into a broad social-political movement for systemic change. That left it vulnerable to being swamped by systemic realities that overcome adaptive capacities. As we are today. We need to find ways to cohere. Plus many alternatives developed in those days were co-opted, like the major food coop in my city that operates like a corporation, discourages union organizing, and pays its CEO $500,000/yr. We can draw much from the 60s-70s, but we need to move beyond that into a broader, unifying movement.
Glad you are an old-timer. AND that you have correctly categorized the "Reagan revolution." However, the "build your own solutions" concept is not correctly categorized as a disengagement from the mainstream System. It is a strategy that is broad in scope. The whole point is that you the individual know your own situation better than anyone else. Off-the-shelf solutions cannot compete. The way you formulate your unique solutions is to shift your paradigms. Since you are already in Washington state, you should be able to get a copy of Paradigms for Adaptation from the King County Library System. If not, I will send you a copy, since you are already doing "the good work." If you want to read a review by Frank Kaminski on Resilience, here is the link.
I read the review. Okay, let’s parse this out. You are a sustainable farmer. Hugely important. I was exposed to some of the early examples coming out of the 60s-70s when I was a young reporter in Okanogan County from 79-81. You know where that is, but for those who don’t, it’s the county immediately east of the Cascades in northeast Washington. That included one of the earliest community supported agriculture models, the Libby Creek Farm in the Methow Valley. These areas are now smothered by some of the worst wildfire smoke with air quality indexes reaching into the high hundreds, even above 1,000. So a systemic issue caused by climate heating is making survival more difficult. You probably experienced the same in Whatcom County. Where is adaptation here? Wearing high-quality masks. Eastern Washington has also been suffering through extreme drought conditions, another adaptive challenge, especially for farming. Meanwhile, Southern France is projected to increase in temperature 2-4 degrees C. I suppose adaptation here is growing different crops, and using techniques which retain water in the soil. I’m sure you do the latter. But the overarching challenge of climate disruption requires action on a systemic scale, and that will only take place, if at all, by mass political action. Of course, sustainable farming can sequester carbon in the soil and reduce emissions. We need it, and on a mass scale. Attaining that scale is going to require public policies that support transition. I’ve studied this pretty deeply. So it’s a both-and mesh that is required. Unfortunately, it seems the world is being pushed to adaptation under crisis mode because of the resistance of mass institutions to mitigative change and the relative weakness of opposing forces. We need the political. I have seen a certain apolitical tendency in alternative cultures, and I think that gets us to a dead end. If we go up 3-4 degrees C and trigger multiple tipping points, I question whether we can adapt short of mass population dieback. Maybe that’s in the cards, but I’m going to fight it the best I can. Send me your email and I will give you my address. Can’t guarantee I’ll get to your book quickly. I have a huge stack to read.
See my comment above. You can get my books on solutions/adaptations from your local county library lending service if you live in the US. They are housed in the Whatcom County Library System in Washington state. Or you can buy them on Amazon if you like. (Use the Look Inside feature to see if they are your cup of tea.)
I’m digging into this in my next post.
As a purely internal US argument I get it. However, taking the whole picture into account, all the life and wealth within the US relies on the empire, extracting wealth from its periphery and siphoning it to the center. What motivation should such an empire have to give up its centralized power? The centralization within the US is just a mirror of the centralization of the US within the world.
So, if you want to put forward your decentralized vision, it needs a parallel vision of decentralization on a global level. And that would mean self-sufficiency of these cities or US states vis-à-vis the world. How could you live in the US in a way that feels wealthy and healthy and is not dependent on permanently extracting work, energy, raw materials, and ecological absorption capacities from the rest of the world?
That is exactly the problem Williams sought to deal with when he posed a confederation of regional commonwealths as an alternative to our “empire as a way of life.” He saw the need to develop a different economic system. Williams was a socialist and envisioned his regional commonwealths as basically ecological socialist systems. In a broad sense, as I write, we need to build social economies. How we do this in the midst of our extractive capitalist system, eventually replacing it, is the challenge. I take a swipe at that in my next post.
Ok, I think I better get your starting poin, nowt: **"It’s broken. We need to replace it."** That’s where we begin—by addressing the systems that are most broken, the ones that no longer function at all. Democracy in the U.S. is one of those systems. Another is holistic health, at least from my experience.
Anyone who has ever been diagnosed with what modern medicine calls a "chronic disease" knows this: The way modern medicine approaches systemic dysregulations—whether of the psyche, the intestinal system, the immune system, or all of these combined—is fundamentally broken. Those who manage to heal or find some kind of sane equilibrium have often turned to more ecological and sustainable approaches to their health. These approaches rely on simple, accessible practices—things like wisely choosing the food you eat, breathing mindfully, meditating, maintaining healthy movement in the body, and all those basic, cost-free actions. Even companionship—cuddling, spending time with animals—plays a role. *[I’m not saying techno-scientific medicine is useless. I’m just saying that it _alone_ rarely suffices]
Then there’s loneliness, another area where our society is fundamentally broken. The ways we try to combat loneliness—methods that make us even more dependent on technology, AI agents, and the like—are extractive in nature. Meanwhile, the solutions might be far simpler: people coming together, setting up tables on the street on a Sunday, and just eating together. Thereby creating a convivial practice.
A third starting point might unfortunately emerge sooner than we think: **surviving in large cities**. This won’t likely become an immediate issue in the industrialized North, but rather in developing countries and their megacities. As climatic conditions worsen, the surrounding areas that supply cities with energy, water, food, and even breathable air will become depleted. If these ecosystems are no longer sustainable, survival within the city itself will become a pressing challenge.
This means, the regions you envision should not be designed from a purely ecological perspective, but from a **techno-ecological** one. For example, we need to ask: *What areas does New York—or, more urgently, Mexico City, Mumbay, Jakarta—require to sustain all its citizens?* To supply them with drinking water, to feed them all year round. *That* area could be a region. And then the goal should be to move away from a model where the city operates as a small empire, extracting resources from its surroundings.
I believe there are already small seeds of change taking root. In many cities, it’s often the wealthy middle class—conscious of their ecological footprint—who are leading initiatives like food cooperatives in the surrounding areas. These cooperatives supply ecologically grown food, creating a network that sustains the "outside" from the "inside" and vice versa. In the event of catastrophic situations in the city, these networks could provide the first line of support for survival and potentially expand from there. It makes sense to build and strengthen them now.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. They drive to one point. We are not just politically broken. We are socially broken. Indeed we need to rediscover conviviality and alternative systems, as Ivan Illich long ago pointed out. Getting together with our neighbors.
It strikes me that in days people will be receiving their premium notices under Obamacare, expected to be far higher as a result of Trump policies. The health care system in general is becoming impossible for people. $27,000 for an average family coverage.
Personally, I just had a doctor’s appointment for an allergic reaction to a blood pressure medication that has been prescribed. The billed cost was nearly $500! Fortunately Medicare and supplemental paid all but $20. But what happens when people have high deductibles, as I used to under Obamacare? I avoided going to the doctor, is the answer.
So yes holistic health needs to be more emphasized.
Meanwhile, a proxy for food system collapse is upon us, with 40 million people losing SNAP benefits. 1 in 8 US people. Who knows what this will cause? Looting of grocery stores? Things are deeply broken.
I have written scenarios about future life in cities, how we could build the future in place, the basic theme of The Raven. A 2-part series begins here. https://open.substack.com/pub/theraven/p/imagining-the-future-how-to-build-e1e?r=36q38&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false It includes local food systems. Having long been engaged with the climate crisis, I believe one of the greatest mass impacts on human populations will be food scarcity. And this will be felt acutely in larger cities. This tool showing where food comes from in the US illustrates the challenge. I worry about supply chains breaking down under civil disorder. It seems clear cities should create food reserves.
All I can say is that the more obviously things are broken, the more it drives us to seek alternatives. When the comfortable status quo is gone, we might create something better.
"The United States is broken, and it’s time to think about what comes next." Now? What about in 1968 (probably before you were born). As I said in 1980, "If YOU would have listened to US ten years ago, WE wouldn't be in trouble NOW." I have been updating this every five years so the maxim now is, "If YOU would have listened to US fifty-five years ago, WE wouldn't be in trouble NOW."
There are all kinds of alternatives that we started in the 1960s-1970s that are still around, but nowadays people think they have stumbled on a new concept and have to re-invent the wheel. The key to getting your head straight is to shift your paradigms and build your own solutions. These are often just adaptations, but that is okay too. The dichotomy of problem/solution vs. predicament/adaptation is a false dichotomy.
I was born in 1952 and am informed by the alternatives that emerged in the 60s-70s. As you well know, the reactionary counter-strike began in the 70s and emerged in full in the 80s with the Reagan administration. What makes this moment different is that the contradictions of that counter strike have fully emerged. The systemic breakdowns we predicted have emerged, and this opens the door to revive alternatives. The re-emergence of the bioregional movement is part of this. But there was a weakness in the 60s-70s alternatives, and it is embodied in your phrase, “build your own solutions.” Too much of the 60s-70s alternative culture thought it could build its own solutions without reference to the larger systems, and thus failed to cohere into a broad social-political movement for systemic change. That left it vulnerable to being swamped by systemic realities that overcome adaptive capacities. As we are today. We need to find ways to cohere. Plus many alternatives developed in those days were co-opted, like the major food coop in my city that operates like a corporation, discourages union organizing, and pays its CEO $500,000/yr. We can draw much from the 60s-70s, but we need to move beyond that into a broader, unifying movement.
Glad you are an old-timer. AND that you have correctly categorized the "Reagan revolution." However, the "build your own solutions" concept is not correctly categorized as a disengagement from the mainstream System. It is a strategy that is broad in scope. The whole point is that you the individual know your own situation better than anyone else. Off-the-shelf solutions cannot compete. The way you formulate your unique solutions is to shift your paradigms. Since you are already in Washington state, you should be able to get a copy of Paradigms for Adaptation from the King County Library System. If not, I will send you a copy, since you are already doing "the good work." If you want to read a review by Frank Kaminski on Resilience, here is the link.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-11-11/review-paradigms-for-adaptation-by-walter-haugen/
I read the review. Okay, let’s parse this out. You are a sustainable farmer. Hugely important. I was exposed to some of the early examples coming out of the 60s-70s when I was a young reporter in Okanogan County from 79-81. You know where that is, but for those who don’t, it’s the county immediately east of the Cascades in northeast Washington. That included one of the earliest community supported agriculture models, the Libby Creek Farm in the Methow Valley. These areas are now smothered by some of the worst wildfire smoke with air quality indexes reaching into the high hundreds, even above 1,000. So a systemic issue caused by climate heating is making survival more difficult. You probably experienced the same in Whatcom County. Where is adaptation here? Wearing high-quality masks. Eastern Washington has also been suffering through extreme drought conditions, another adaptive challenge, especially for farming. Meanwhile, Southern France is projected to increase in temperature 2-4 degrees C. I suppose adaptation here is growing different crops, and using techniques which retain water in the soil. I’m sure you do the latter. But the overarching challenge of climate disruption requires action on a systemic scale, and that will only take place, if at all, by mass political action. Of course, sustainable farming can sequester carbon in the soil and reduce emissions. We need it, and on a mass scale. Attaining that scale is going to require public policies that support transition. I’ve studied this pretty deeply. So it’s a both-and mesh that is required. Unfortunately, it seems the world is being pushed to adaptation under crisis mode because of the resistance of mass institutions to mitigative change and the relative weakness of opposing forces. We need the political. I have seen a certain apolitical tendency in alternative cultures, and I think that gets us to a dead end. If we go up 3-4 degrees C and trigger multiple tipping points, I question whether we can adapt short of mass population dieback. Maybe that’s in the cards, but I’m going to fight it the best I can. Send me your email and I will give you my address. Can’t guarantee I’ll get to your book quickly. I have a huge stack to read.
My email is cascadia2012@gmail.com
Yes, but how do we get there from here? Seriously, the deck is stacked against us.
I’ll dig into this next post.
See my comment above. You can get my books on solutions/adaptations from your local county library lending service if you live in the US. They are housed in the Whatcom County Library System in Washington state. Or you can buy them on Amazon if you like. (Use the Look Inside feature to see if they are your cup of tea.)
The Laws of Physics Are On My Side (2013)
Hints for Managing Collapse (2014)
Paradigms for Adaptation (2024)