Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
"It's going to be a blast... and scary as hell." Dave Pollard on Collapse
871 Plays11 days ago
You want it, you got it: an open discussion about the cracks in our civilisation, and how to catch each other when it all falls apart.
Dave Pollard has been writing about culture, complexity, deep ecology and collapse for longer than some of us have been alive. While he continues to cheer on radical ‘deep green’ activists, he no longer believes that that we can change or reform The System. This convo is about what to do instead.
[first aired in 2023]
🧙♀️ LINKY POOS 🧙♀️
Dave’s recommended reading list ~ The Books That Have Influenced Me Most
Dave’s article ~ How Do We Teach the Critical Skills Needed to Face Collapse?
Molly Housch Gordon's piece ~ How to Survive the End of The World
[watch] The New Peasants by Happen Films
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Riskillians Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
race scal end Hey, this is Katie and you're tuned into Riskillians, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't.
00:00:19
Speaker
I am gratefully recording in Jyra country, central Victoria, where we've had more than our fair share of spring rain, which has turned the hills granny smith green and has turned us into very complacent gardeners We've done that naive thing of planting millions of veggies and flowers and shrubs and seeds without any irrigation.
00:00:42
Speaker
So if the podcast dies over summer, it's because I'm out there watering by hand for hours. Speaking of water, here's a question for you.
Living Simply: Camping Without Running Water
00:00:52
Speaker
Could you live without running water?
00:00:55
Speaker
We're giving it a crack at the moment because we're currently camping in the shell of our tiny home and building it beneath ourselves. To make it a little bit more livable, George knocked together a temporary kitchen from a trestle table and an outdoor sink and a bucket to catch the grey water.
00:01:14
Speaker
Once every couple of days, we traipse to the well, which is what we're calling our garden tap, and fill up 20 litre jerry can that we then carry back inside and put under the sink.
00:01:25
Speaker
And into the jerry can goes a little hose that connects to a hand pump that you have to push up and down with a fair bit of force until the tap spits and sputters cold water.
00:01:36
Speaker
It is completely electricity free, uncomplicated and powered by human energy. Doing the dishes is interesting and washing your hands, given that one hand is always pumping so that the water comes out, is definitely not going to meet hospital standards anytime soon. There's no hot water. So if I have the opportunity to do the washing up at a friend's place, it feels so hedonistic, like taking my fingers to the day spa or sitting them in a jacuzzi.
00:02:06
Speaker
That's the power of subtraction. You really freaking appreciate the stuff that you take for granted. So Jordan and I were talking about the design of our future kitchen, our proper kitchen the other day and the plumbing that we'll have to do and how the greywater system is going to work, yaday yada yada.
00:02:21
Speaker
And then we both looked at each other and asked, could we just keep it this way? Can we roll with the hand pumped tap and the bucket system forever? It's just so simple and so easy. it saves a ton of water and would probably serve as a great conversation starter when people come around and experience the inconvenience for themselves.
00:02:40
Speaker
Who set our standards of living anyway? Where is the line between hygiene and responsible management of water and the unexamined assumptions about what we're all entitled to and the luxuries that we see as our God-given rights?
00:02:56
Speaker
Who still lives without running water?
Global Water Access and Environmental Impact
00:02:58
Speaker
Who doesn't even have access to fresh water? And how much more connected to and conscious of our local waterways would we be if we didn't just have to walk to the garden tap, but down the hill to the creek to fill our jerrycans?
00:03:11
Speaker
How shocking would it be to see the algal blooms and oil slicks and poisoned weeds along the water's edge knowing that we had to drink from it? How motivated would we be to protect it, to clean it up?
00:03:23
Speaker
And I'm going to keep asking these questions as we try our best to create a home that gives us shelter without severing us from reality.
Discussion with Dave Pollard: Collapse and Community
00:03:33
Speaker
So because my days are currently fuller than grey water bucket that nobody wants to empty, I've dredged up an amazing conversation from the Riskilliance archives for you to enjoy again, because I always enjoy soaking up these interviews for a second or a third or a fourth time. They are truly bottomless wells of inspiration.
00:03:52
Speaker
So this is the first interview i ever released with a guy named Dave Pollard. Maybe you remember it, or maybe you've never listened to it before. Honestly, I think I had beginner's luck in that someone like Dave agreed to come on a completely unknown podcast and that the interview was such a corker. It's still one of my favourites.
00:04:11
Speaker
Dave and I discuss what collapse means and where we're actually at, skills that'll help us cope and adapt, why community is our best safety net, and how to catch each other when shit hits the fan.
00:04:24
Speaker
Just before we get into it, a quick community service announcement that you can now watch the new presents online. which is the award-winning documentary about artists as family by Happen Films that Jord and I were touring over winter.
00:04:36
Speaker
I know a lot of you who couldn't make a screening have been hanging out to stream it, so I'll link it in the show notes. Well, here's Dave Pollard, and have yourselves a wonderful week, and think of me when you do the dishes.
00:04:52
Speaker
What happened was that um at one stage I had a pretty idealistic view that what we needed to do was to have a scenario because I used to be involved in scenario planning exercises in business. So we needed to have future state scenarios that would help us to understand exactly how collapse would unfold. And therefore, we'd know what skills we need and in what quantity. And we could kind of assign people to to say, OK, you're going to need to learn this and you're going to need to learn that. And it didn't take long for me to realize that was pretty naive.
00:05:28
Speaker
um It's one thing to say that collapse, if you study the history books, is inevitable. It's another thing to say it's predictable, how and when it's going to unfold. And so since it's not predictable, you can't really prepare for it.
00:05:46
Speaker
So my philosophy is has evolved from the early days when I believed that you know you need to you needed to identify what the critical skills were learn a bunch of those skills and then find other people to create a sense of community. So you'd be all ready.
00:06:05
Speaker
And now I've taken several steps back from that. And I believe that it's really largely about adaptation, ah that we're going to have to be ready to face whatever may come that we can't predict.
00:06:19
Speaker
um And that adaptation means that basically we have to start with our own readiness. So work on ourselves internally, first of all. And when I did the the list of skills, I basically started um on that basis that, you know, we need to learn.
00:06:44
Speaker
We need to bone up on our critical thinking skills. um are We need to relearn how to do our own learning because most of us have been brought up in a schooling system.
00:06:56
Speaker
um where we don't need to know how to learn. We're told everything that we need to know. In a world of collapse, we're going to have to return to self-directed learning and learn spontaneously and and learn the skills to do that. And that's going to require us to regenerate a sense of curiosity, which I think a lot of us have lost, and repractice how to imagine things Um, because we haven't, most of us had practice imagining.
00:07:28
Speaker
So those are kind of the, those internal skills, first of all. um but it's not only the the skills, it's also a question of self-awareness and self-knowledge.
00:07:40
Speaker
Um, when we're dealing with the problems of collapse and we're finding ourselves in a community where we may not like a lot of the people that we get stuck with in community,
00:07:52
Speaker
um We're going to have to learn to understand our reactivity, um understand where other people are coming from. So be able to put ourselves in their shoes.
00:08:06
Speaker
um and And so that's going to take a lot of practice and a lot of work to learn how to build community with the people we find ourselves with at the various stages of collapse.
00:08:20
Speaker
And i can I can talk about how I think that will unfold, if that would be useful. Well, yes, indeed. Before we get too far into those skills and the adaptation over preparedness, which I'd love to dig into with you, and also the communitarian approach that you have and experience in intentional communities and that kind of thing, um I don't want to take for granted the the definition of collapse or the the way that you see collapse unfolding. So if you could give us a bit of a dust jacket summary of what you mean by collapse, that would be really excellent to frame the conversation.
00:08:54
Speaker
Right. Well, there's there's four books that are really good for people to read up on if they want. And they're the four, I've read a lot of books on this subject, but the four that have been most valuable to me in learning is, first of all, the books by Jared Diamond, of course, like Guns, Germs and Steel.
00:09:12
Speaker
um And secondly, a book by a Canadian who lives not far from me, actually, by the name of Ronald Wright called A Short History of Progress, which basically attempted to It basically covers the same material Jared Diamond's books, but does it in about a quarter of the volume.
00:09:33
Speaker
So it's a good way to kind of understand why societies inevitably, civilizations inevitably collapse and how they collapse. um And the third book, which is fascinating to me, was also by Ronald Wright, and it's a novel that he wrote afterwards. to try to envision what life would be like after collapse.
00:09:56
Speaker
And this is where this whole idea of imagination comes. I think there's a tendency for a lot of us to think that once things collapse, everything will be like today, except going backwards.
00:10:08
Speaker
So it'll be like the old wild west or like a Mad Max film or something like that. Um, and what is, what it's likely to be is something we can't even begin to imagine. It's going to be completely unlike anything We have had before in history.
00:10:25
Speaker
We've never had a global civilizational collapse before.
Self-Sufficient Communities and Scavenger Economy
00:10:29
Speaker
So the book, A Scientific Romance, the novel that he, that Ronald Wright wrote, is a wonderful exercise in imagining how that might unfold.
00:10:41
Speaker
And the other book that also imagines that and also draws on currently collapsing societies, which I found even more valuable is a book by a woman by the name of Anna Lowenhaupt Singh called The Mushroom at the End of the World.
00:10:58
Speaker
I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's a i'm not difficult book to read. It's a complex a study of societies. But basically its argument is that the next economy after our current industrial growth economy won't be a renewable energy economy.
00:11:18
Speaker
It will be a scavenger economy. And she describes the way scavenger economies work by drawing on the way in which people from Southeast Asia who came to the Pacific West Coast of the United States after the war in Vietnam And they couldn't make a living doing anything.
00:11:39
Speaker
They had no skills. They didn't have the language. You know, they were in the streets. So they created new subsistence economy around valuable mushrooms that are highly marketable in countries like Japan.
00:12:03
Speaker
And... and And what she shows is how these people actually created in the forests of Oregon, primarily, forests which had been basically clear-cut and then abandoned because their economic value had been lost. But they were the perfect growing area for some of these incredibly valuable mushrooms.
00:12:27
Speaker
So these Southeast Asians, organized around their tribal communities, created entirely independent, self-sufficient economies in Oregon state that tied into the existing economy through the export of mushrooms to Asia.
00:12:46
Speaker
Uh, and it's just a fascinating study. And then she uses that as a basis to explain how a scavenger economy actually works. And it's not as terrible as you might think.
00:12:58
Speaker
It's actually pretty cool. And if you're a good innovator, we run something, I'm still involved a little with Bowen Island. We run something on Bowen called the Fix-It Fair.
00:13:09
Speaker
You probably have some of those there too. um And people absolutely love these things. You know, they're all of these people who know how to fix just about anything from bicycles to 100-year-old waffle irons.
00:13:26
Speaker
They're able to fix these things. And that's the kind of skill um that we're going to need to be able to build. to survive going forward. So those those were the kind of books that inspired me to envision how collapse will and unfold.
00:13:42
Speaker
The reading that I've done of previous civilizations suggests that this isn't going to be a quick ma Mad Max collapse and then we start building again thing. This is going to happen over, the actual collapse is going to happen over decades, probably in multiple stages where, you know, the expression is slowly and then all at once.
00:14:04
Speaker
um So we'll have periods at which you know there'll be precipitous declines, stock market collapses and things like that. And then there'll be periods of relative stability where people will try to rebuild what was there before and it won't work.
00:14:21
Speaker
This is a ah lesson from past collapses. People will try to rebuild what was broken because it's the only way they know. um And eventually after three or four cycles of this,
00:14:33
Speaker
that where the rebuilding doesn't work, we'll start to learn how to rebuild something new, which requires us to, to kind of reimagine it. So I, I think it's possible if you look at the history of, uh, past civilizations that it could take millennia, like thousands of years before we reach a state. Uh, there's something called, um,
00:15:01
Speaker
in mathematics, the long tail of the power law. And what it suggests is that both technological events, all the stuff that we've got, the hockey stick things of the growth and then collapse, they're all going to have a long tail, which means after the more precipitous collapse, there's going to be this long period of slow decline.
00:15:23
Speaker
And that will probably end one of two ways. Either we will find new viable subsistence ways to live, which are joyful and sustainable and so on, or will go extinct.
00:15:38
Speaker
And I don't think that's a choice. We're just going to see. And I say, it could take centuries or even millennia before we arrive at that end state. But i most people are horrified when I start talking about this. But i find it absolutely amazing, exciting. I mean, we live in a world where we're dependent.
00:15:59
Speaker
We don't know how to do things for ourselves anymore. And once collapse happens, we're going to have to learn to do things for ourselves. And as I found out from the Fix-It Fair, it's really fun to learn these self-sufficiency skills. So I think it's going to be a blast, even though it's going to be scary as hell as it happens.
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for bringing um some synonyms for fun into this conversation because this is this is the the conversation I'd like to release first on the Reskillience podcast. But I know that um you've described yourself as a joyful pessimist. I'm an optimistic, um ah oriented towards you know the sunnier side of life kind of person. The reason that I am fascinated with um I guess I'm not fascinated with with collapse um and the kind of details of that. I'm actually fascinated by the the questions of how to live, how to enrich my own existence, how to eke the meaning out of this life that I've been given. And it just so happens that talking about collapse and what's what's going on in our civilization, um how to how to tend my own life support systems, that happens to be um a really good proxy for the questions I've always had and probably the question at the heart of human existence, which is what does it mean to be here? What really matters? And how do i find the joy and pleasure in this life that also contains a lot of horror and violence and despair and dread?
00:17:29
Speaker
And I'm wondering if that's the kind of um foundation of your own curiosity on this subject as well. Yeah, I think it's evolved over time. Initially, i mean, i I called this blog when it started, it's hard to believe, 21 years ago. The blog is called How to Save the World.
00:17:49
Speaker
And I was only half kidding i yeah when I titled it that. I titled it that because I knew it would attract a lot of Google attention. And you wouldn't believe the emails that I get because I've got pretty close to top Google rank on the expression save the world now.
00:18:07
Speaker
after all these years. um Yeah, but it it it's it's interesting how that how my thinking has evolved from being, um how are we going to turn things around to this approach of how are we going to adapt ourselves?
00:18:26
Speaker
And part of that evolution came by um reading a book on dog behavior, called The Secret Kindness of Animals by Melissa Holbrook Pearson.
00:18:42
Speaker
um And I read it because somebody said said to me, this is not a book about dog behavior. Read it, you're going to love it. And it's actually a complete history of behavioralism, the the philosophy of behavioralism, the psychological field of behavioralism. And I hated B.F. Skinner when I was younger.
00:19:05
Speaker
It was just like, this was, ah I couldn't believe that we didn't have complete control over everything that we were doing. But reading um Melissa's book made me realize just to what extent we are conditioned in in our behavior.
00:19:25
Speaker
um So ah on that basis, um I started to think, okay, we're not going to be able to turn things around, how can we adapt ourselves if we if if if all we're doing is conditioning um each other?
00:19:44
Speaker
And the realization of this, which came to some extent, it was reinforced by another book that I recently read, which is just a wonderful book um by the neuroscientist um Robert Sapolsky.
00:20:03
Speaker
who's worked with baboons and I love studying wild, I love learning about wild animals because I think they have an enormous amount to teach us about how to live in community and how to live in society.
00:20:16
Speaker
um So I had spent a fair bit of time ah working with intentional communities because at one stage I figured, okay,
00:20:27
Speaker
these are people who understand the importance of building community. They'll have a lot of the answers that we need on how to build them a community. And what I discovered was they really didn't have the clue about how to build community. They had great ideas. Um, the practice was itself really valuable, but most intentional communities only last about five years and then they collapse.
Community Building Through Necessity and Simplicity
00:20:55
Speaker
And, um, I had a friend that I corresponded with by the name of Joe Bagent who died a few years ago.
00:21:02
Speaker
but his argument was the reason why you can't learn to build community is because community is born of necessity. And he reinforced that by inviting me down to stay with him in a little village in Belize in Central America. Um, And I was between jobs, so I said, well this sounds like but and I'll get lots of blog posts out of this one.
00:21:32
Speaker
So I went down and visited with him. and ah And he told me the story of this village, which is that 300 or so years ago, a bunch of slave ships went aground in the Caribbean.
00:21:46
Speaker
ah A lot of the slaves managed to escape. And they They didn't know what to do. They didn't know where they were. So they made their way up the coast and they found this little village, which was right on the the Gulf of Mexico and seemed to be a good climate. They could grow things there.
00:22:05
Speaker
And basically for 300 years, they lived their own lives. They made their own rules. They did everything themselves. They were a completely self-sufficient community. And when I visited it, um I discovered it still is.
00:22:21
Speaker
Um, all of the people, the kids at a very yeah young age, uh, they learn how to hook up, uh, water supply and power supply, how to fix it when it goes down.
00:22:35
Speaker
Um, all of these skills they learn because they have to, because there's no central authority taking responsibility for this. They've developed a remarkable medical system, um,
00:22:49
Speaker
that you know it doesn't do complicated surgery, but it works really well for the people, and they have an incredibly long and healthy life as a result of this.
00:23:02
Speaker
They have their own police system, um which doesn't involve anybody in uniform. When somebody has been robbed or something like that happens, the people in the community know who did it.
00:23:16
Speaker
Because they know each other so well. They know the history. They know the stories of each other. So when somebody gets robbed, they go around to the house of the person they know who did it, and they retrieve it, and they bring that person back, and that person apologizes for having done it. And then they say, okay, well, we understand you did this because you need you have a drug habit and you need to feed it, so let's deal it with that, and so on. That's how you build community.
00:23:44
Speaker
And that's what we're all going to have to learn how to do when things fall apart. And we're not going to be able to learn it from textbooks. yeah We're going to learn it when we have to with the people who we happen to find ourselves with yeah when everything falls apart. So I think it's going to be great fun and it's going to be fascinating learning experience. We're going to have to unlearn a lot of the things and a lot of the beliefs that we think You know, that certain things have to be done by centralized authority.
00:24:16
Speaker
They don't. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a much um more promising prospect for people who are going about their daily lives um and not necessarily engaging much with their neighbour sphere. I was listening to Jem Bendel speak to Douglas Rushkoff on Team Human recently, and Jem was talking about the billionaires in their bunkers now progressing to the idea that actually we'll need a community and so potentially we'll make you know, mini little nations and defend those nations and people have skin in the game. But that's obviously still really misguided and fraught because they're talking about growing, you know, tomatoes in tubes and all of this kind of technological hoo-ha. But what I hear you saying is that actually beyond that is the rooting in place, adapting where you are and bonding with people around you due to, know,
00:25:10
Speaker
yeah, out of out of necessity, not necessity yeah not this intentional retreat to a perfect utopian kind of community. So are you you kind of saying that don't worry about it too much now because when it happens, it happens and we do adapt because that's the nature of being a human? Or are there things people can do if they're listening in an urban space or, you know, um feeling the pull to try and build some community where they are where they are? Are there things that you'd suggest as being useful as a precursor?
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's always it's always useful to be ready for whatever comes along. And the problem for most of us is is our lives are so busy, we don't have any time to learn new things.
00:25:53
Speaker
um but you know So I call them my reminder list. I used to call it my action list of things that I wanted to learn how to do, new skills to learn. But now it's a reminder list, which is these would be things that would be useful to know how to do to be more adaptable when things start to get more difficult. And that's where that ah original list came from. um you know And it's they're not complex technical things. They're things like learning how to need less.
00:26:27
Speaker
and want less. Oh, that's a huge one. I'd love to start the do less movement. I'm sure that that many people are already championing the do less, lie flat kind of approach to things. But can you talk a little bit more about the sexiness of having less? Because I feel it's just not part of the conversation. It's how do we continue the consumption, you know, continue to fund the consumption that we're used to, but actually we're going to need to really power down in so many respects. Absolutely. And I think Part of the problem is that a lot of our current society, because we are so dependent on others, we're driven to some extent by fear.
00:27:07
Speaker
And the only way we can overcome that fear is having more than we need. So we've got some fallback. So you know the stock market goes down, we've still got this little buffer and so on.
00:27:18
Speaker
um I think the only way you can learn to need and want less is by practicing it. ah The ah astonishing exercise that taught me about this was when i retired um because i was earning a large amount of money as a senior partner with a major international consulting or organization.
00:27:43
Speaker
And they said, well, you're going to get the pension, the partner's pension, and it's going to give you 40% your current income for the rest of your life.
00:27:57
Speaker
And I said, oh, so that means I don't get to retire because I got to you know, I got to make up the other 60% somehow. And it was an older retired partner who just laughed and he said, just try it.
00:28:13
Speaker
And to my astonishment, I actually lived a more comfortable life on 40% of the income when i retired. than I had when I had 100%. For a start, when you stop working, you find that your clothes budget goes way down.
00:28:31
Speaker
Your car, yeah the the repairs and maintenance and the gasoline for your automobile goes way down. um And life becomes far more enjoyable because the more stuff you've got, the more stuff you have to worry about breaking down and falling apart.
00:28:49
Speaker
So the key to practice um in terms of needing and wanting less, is try it. Set yourself a budget. yeah Set yourself a budget and and and show we prove to yourself that you can do with much less than what you have now.
00:29:12
Speaker
Yeah, and that definitely calls on the imagination and human ingenuity that you spoke about earlier. I think having those challenges and games can really inspire positive behavioural change.
00:29:24
Speaker
um And also too, I wonder if you've noticed this, but role modelling is such a powerful force in um a life of simplicity and voluntary frugality. Like the people that i i share ah um a property, I'm here living in exchange, and the woman the the elder of our property, Sue, um you know, i've cooked I've catered courses and things with her and watching her cook and, um you know, if we're roasting potatoes, if there's any, first of all, she measures out the oil absolutely to the and most infinitesimal kind of millimeter of quantity required to coat those potatoes and crisp them. But after they've been taken out of the baking dish, if there's any glisten, like a slick of oil in the bottom, it's, you know, mopping that up with something, using it again. She's so reverential, you know, every single...
00:30:14
Speaker
thing whether it's food or um you know clothing or shelter, everything in her life is an act of great devotion to the things that she does have. And for that reason, you know the folks that I live with, they're pretty well known, you know the the co-originators of permaculture. But they live below the poverty line. You know, we're all but living below the poverty line, not really, um you know, we're paying our taxes in service to the commons and service to community and that kind of thing. We just don't earn a lot of money. And yet I think, gosh, this is absolute luxury. You know, I'm living in luxury. We're eating the most gorgeous food that we've grown. And I think, yeah, Sue Dennett especially, her her role modelship and the the culture that she's created in this environment of hey, this is how we do things. you know it's There is zero waste. Everything's a loop. And um it's just not cool to be you know a wasteful hedonist. So that I feel that benefit too is couched in a culture of of frugality and and care for resources. So I'm wondering if you have that around you or if you've seen people you know positively respond to that that culture. i think I think we've got that in spades. There's another great book called The Logic of Sufficiency,
00:31:25
Speaker
I can't remember the name of the author offhand, but, um, if, if you're interested in learning more about how living at a level of sufficiency rather than a level of abundance and surplus is a better life.
00:31:41
Speaker
Uh, it makes more sense then ah in a lot of different ways. That's a great book to read.
Sharing Resources: Potlucks and Gift Circles
00:31:45
Speaker
One of the things that really hit home to me, cause I lived on Bowen Island, this little Island for a long period of time.
00:31:53
Speaker
And, uh, I discovered at one stage that I didn't know my neighbors. So what we did is we, we said, we're going to have a potluck. Do you have potlucks in Australia?
00:32:05
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, great. we're going to have a potluck and we're going to invite all of the neighbors, everybody who lives within, i guess there was about 30 houses that were within a reasonable walking distance from our, uh, from our place.
00:32:22
Speaker
And ah most of them showed up with this potluck. And what we talked about was, you know, you start with the formalities, what do you do?
00:32:33
Speaker
But what we really got into is what do you care about? What do you do with your leisure time? What do you need that you can't get on this island? Because you get a little bit isolated when you're living on an island off the coast.
00:32:47
Speaker
And it was astonishing to discover that I bought probably 20 or 30% less stuff um in the years after that meeting because I said, I don't need to buy this tool because I know that this guy has one.
00:33:05
Speaker
um I don't need to you know ah learn how to do this particular thing because I can just invite this neighbor who knows how to do it better than anybody and in return,
00:33:19
Speaker
i'll I'll offer them something. We did something called a gift circle, which is a wonderful exercise as well, where we actually invite people to come and tell us what you need and tell us what you have a surplus of, which could be time, it could be space, it could be tools and things that you have. It could be food that you've got a surplus of, you've got trees,
00:33:48
Speaker
bursting with fruits and so on. um And it was a fascinating exercise. It was terrifying for most people to go through that, not because they weren't willing to talk about what they had a surplus of. Everyone's willing to talk about that.
00:34:05
Speaker
But when they acknowledged what they needed. um And so first of all, you had to listen to find out what people had in surplus. And then all of a sudden you realize, wow, I could really use that. So then you have these like quiet one-on-one conversations with people.
00:34:27
Speaker
And when you start to do that, this is the essence of community is when you know who has what skills, what stuff, what space, what extra time, all of a sudden your needs are way, way less than they were before.
00:34:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Gift circles are an amazing technology of of meeting each other's needs and community building building. And I love the idea of gathering without any kind of overlay of, you know, an agenda, simply to share a meal with your neighbours and get to know each other. And then naturally those conversations emerge.
00:35:07
Speaker
um And also too, you touched on that relearning process of how to receive information and how to be in that awkward space of um you know asking, asking for something that you require, and then also um breaking through the formalities or the etiquette of the the kind of dominant system where we we're in our little homes, don't you dare knock on the door unless we have ah a pre-organised appointment, um let alone turn up at someone's house and ask, oh, can I please put some washing in your machine or borrow your drill? Like I i think that there's a huge piece around being comfortable to be in a position of asking and also getting over our our shyness and preciousness around interrupting or breaking into those four walls that people have kind of set around themselves. Yeah.
00:35:58
Speaker
That's a huge piece of it for me too, like how to um how do I extend out into that community even though I do know all those those amazing resources and gifts are there. It's then coming around to that and possibly too hang-ups about, um gosh, it's a bit um it's it's a bit um filthy or feral not to be able to do my own laundry or not to have such and such a thing, you know. So there's a lot in there psychologically.
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah. um Yeah, I think when when when I was involved in the transition movement, I initially put together with a group of friends this list of about 100 skills that we thought people needed.
Essential Skills for Community Resilience
00:36:39
Speaker
You know, and this is like overwhelming. And we actually made a game out of this where you had to, it's basically a balancing act. All games are dealing with, you know, issues of limited resources and scarcity and decisions between them.
00:36:54
Speaker
So it was like, which skills are you going to develop and which ones are you going to pass on? um And it was kind of scary and a little overwhelming until we realized not everybody needs to know everything.
00:37:07
Speaker
Yeah. The most important thing is knowing who in your community has these skills. Yeah. And who can decommission the nuclear power reactor. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah. And i did I did derail your reminder list, Dave. I'd love to hear more about what's on that list, what you're reminding yourself that um you may want to cultivate or cultivate in the time that you have.
00:37:33
Speaker
um Yeah, I guess – what What struck me is that most of the survivalists, of course, are focused on the the hard skills, the technical skills.
00:37:44
Speaker
And it was interesting when I published that list of skills that a permaculturalist who's from Australia by the name of Peter Webb, um and he's now living in the jungles of Brazil,
00:38:00
Speaker
And he's introduced permaculture culture permaculture activities back into the indigenous peoples in that jungle. they and They initially used them, but they forgot because you know they got taken over by colonized like the rest of us.
00:38:18
Speaker
um And he talked, he he added to the list. He basically said in terms of the tech the the the hard skills, one of the hard skills is how to maintain a fire.
00:38:30
Speaker
Oh yeah. It's not until you've tried to start a fire. Yeah. Even, even that, I'm just, where do you find dry materials? What are the kind of the fineness, the middle, the, the medium kindling, what are you using as a spindle and a board? You know, there's an, even if, if you're one person, how almost impossible it is to start a fire by friction so with the hand drill. And how long do you season different kinds of woods? I mean,
00:38:57
Speaker
It doesn't take a huge amount of skill to learn these, but they're absolutely essential skill. He also talks about the the fact that one of the skills that we've lost is the ability to identify and forage edibles because we consider it to be, except for mushroom fans. Mushroom fans get this completely, but other people don't. There's there's a ah woman on Bowen Island who studied this extensively,
00:39:26
Speaker
And Bone Island, it it's a volcanic island, and it's got a lot of forested area. But at one stage or other, it was all forested, so it's it's not old-growth forest.
00:39:37
Speaker
And she actually did an experiment where she lived in the forest for a week, eating nothing but local plants.
00:39:49
Speaker
that she found in the forest. And she did her research, of course, in advance. And everybody was just, like, they couldn't believe it, you know, because it's it's like just all weeds. What in the world did you eat? You know, are you feeling okay? Do we need to take you to the hospital?
00:40:04
Speaker
um That's pretty impressive. It's very impressive to be able to sustain yourself like that because, again, it's like the fire thing. um i I don't think people quite realize how many calories we require. And also that you know if you're just subsisting on vegetable matter, it's pretty you're going to be very, very hungry.
00:40:23
Speaker
um Yeah, I think that's true, although you're talking to a vegan, so... Oh, okay. No, I understand. I, you know, I'm an ex-given. I'm not offended. I'm former vegan, so I will definitely empathize and and relate with you. But I mean, I feel like growing a lot of vegetables and I grow a lot of vegetables here, it is quite energy intensive for what I get back calorifically. Right.
00:40:46
Speaker
yeah But I understand the nutrient density and the diversity that we need in our diets and how to how to cleverly kind of procure starches and carbs and things that are more filling. But, yeah, I i don't know. I sometimes think, gosh, it's it's really, really tough as a single person, you know, alone style going out into the wilderness and and your friend going out onto the into the wilderness.
00:41:06
Speaker
land, um that's a tall order and it's not it's not as simple as, you know, ah just you know felling felling an animal and eating some mushrooms. Like it takes a whole village, it takes a whole region feed. It does. And again, it's it's a question of not trying to do it all yourself.
00:41:23
Speaker
You work with other people. So somebody goes out and forages for the whole group. Somebody else goes and starts the fire for the whole group. You know, this is how community works is when you do that. But it's interesting. There's there's several farms on Bowen Island where they wouldn't pretend that they grow all of their own food.
00:41:45
Speaker
Because basically they say it would be boring. I don't get enough variety, interesting variety in in my food. But what they do is that they have determined that on a calorie basis, the amount of food that they produce is more than the amount of ah ah caloric energy that they actually consume. So they are a net exporter.
00:42:10
Speaker
of food So they sell more into the local community, the local community markets and so on. Then they bring back in terms of other foods from other places. So they know they could survive by themselves on foods. but um That's quite amazing.
00:42:28
Speaker
Yeah. So I think those, those technical skills are really important and growing and harvesting food are, are an important part of that. you know, I live on the coast and complicating that is the whole issue of seafood.
00:42:45
Speaker
Um, And what one of the things this woman said is, if I was, instead of being on the forest, if I sat on the seashore, I could survive for a week on various seaweeds and other ah foods that I could harvest quite easily in the water as well. So yeah her argument it is that I'm not entirely convinced, but her argument is that it's not as difficult as you would think.
00:43:12
Speaker
When I go to the Fix-It fairs, for example, and I watch one of the the women and in our Fix-It fair is actually a former Supreme Court judge, ah and she used to do knitting under her her bonk under the the judges when she was making decisions and listening, she would be knitting at the same time.
00:43:38
Speaker
um And what she is able to repair in terms of mending clothing, darning socks and so on. Like we have this fix it fair for roughly, it goes for roughly three hours.
00:43:51
Speaker
And people go home with like arm loads of stuff that she's fixed in that short period of time. yeah So if a Supreme Court judge can learn to do this, there's no reason why the the rest of us can't. But again, it's not that everybody needs to know how to repair their own clothes.
00:44:09
Speaker
You just need to know some people in your community do it and who know who those people are and what you can offer to them in return. Yes. So how have you gone about focusing your attention um
Facilitation and Community Self-Organization
00:44:24
Speaker
skills-wise? How have you selected skills to to hone?
00:44:29
Speaker
Because you have mentioned when we were emailing that you've been on a bit of a journey with facilitation and that has been a struggle for you potentially. So, i'm yeah, I'm keen to hear how, um you know, if you've if you've oriented yourself towards things that have come a little more naturally or if you've gone through and pushed your edge in certain respects as well?
00:44:51
Speaker
A little bit of both. It took me a long time to figure out what my distinctive competency in life was. And that turned out to be through imagination. i was i was I wasn't a lonely kid, but I was a solitary kid growing up.
00:45:09
Speaker
I was scared of other kids. So um I learned to entertain myself. I invented my own games and so on. So I had a very rich imagination. I had lots of practice imagining when I was young.
00:45:23
Speaker
And it took me a long time in the business world to realize that what my business clients valued more than anything else was the fact that I could say, you know, I read about this in a science book today, and I wonder whether or not this thing that butterflies do, like one example is is butterflies have, um their their wings are too light to be able to to to support pigment.
00:45:55
Speaker
So the way in which color is seen in a butterfly's wing is through refraction. of the cells so it can be incredibly lightweight without a needing and still very bright and beautiful.
00:46:09
Speaker
um And I sat down with a a guy who was in the thin film coatings business and he said you know what you just talked about we could apply to anti ah counterfeiting of currencies.
00:46:27
Speaker
So instead of worrying about how we color the the currency, maybe we maybe we you change the way which you in which we use the paper.
00:46:39
Speaker
So the paper actually has, then you can't counterfeit it unless you've actually got the paper. It doesn't matter whether you got the the ink or not. um um So those are the kinds of things.
00:46:52
Speaker
and And so I think the key is to learn what are what are your distinctive competencies. and then determine how they they could be or will be valuable in the community in which in which you're located.
00:47:07
Speaker
um And so my distinctive companies, I think, i have a a big chart up on my wall of the Wikipedia and Cognitive Bias Codex.
00:47:20
Speaker
which is absolutely fascinating. It's 260 different cognitive biases, all categorized, that people have. um And I discovered when I was younger that um you know, my critical skills really were fairly intellectual. as it was imagination, was curiosity, it's critical thinking, um, and so on. And so I've learned how to apply those.
00:47:48
Speaker
Um, but what I have also learned is what I'm no good at. And one of the things that I got involved with a number of years ago was, uh, the business of facilitation.
00:48:02
Speaker
Um, And I was intrigued by it because my experience in business with facilitation was absolutely awful. We had facilitators who basically thought their job was to convince the employees what the boss had already decided to do.
00:48:22
Speaker
They were not the least bit interested in hearing the ideas of the employees. that wasn't That wasn't the purpose of the exercise. So that was my experience with facilitation.
00:48:35
Speaker
I had a negative view of it. And then I got involved with this whole group of facilitators up and down the West Coast. And we ended up, actually, we were going to write a book about facilitation.
00:48:49
Speaker
um, it it ended up being a card deck because it was more fun again. And more people have learned, we've sold thousands of copies of this facilitation card deck.
00:49:00
Speaker
Um, but, Because my experience was so awful, the group did not use my stories to help identify the important patterns in good facilitation. They used my war stories of how not to facilitate. I told them all these terrible stories and they basically said, okay, flip it around How can we convert that terrible example of how not to facilitate into an example of of how to do it well?
00:49:35
Speaker
So that was how I learned. m Okay. Yeah, I mean, facilitation, it is on your list of of soft skills, and I believe it's italicized. Maybe one of the ones you've yeah picked out as...
00:49:48
Speaker
really quite important. um it It feels a little slippery to me and I know a lot of people, it's only in recent years that I've understood um somewhat the role of a facilitator and how um how kind of alchemical a group or a gathering or a well-facilitated space can can be and what can arise from that. But are you able to describe why facilitation is an important skill, especially in this time should we find ourselves in? Sure.
00:50:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. You're not the only one that has trouble identifying why it's so important or what it is. even Every time I cross the border when I have gone to events that are facilitation related and the the people say, well, what event are you going to? it I would say, I'm going to a facilitation conference.
00:50:34
Speaker
It's very meta. What's that? What are you going to do exactly? um So eventually we learn to say, we're we're going to a ah learning session on how to conduct better meetings that, that they can kind of relate to.
00:50:53
Speaker
Um, Yeah, I think it's important primarily because communities are going to have to relearn how to self-organize. um We're going to have to take a lot of these self-identified leaders in our communities down a notch or two because they may be perfectly competent at leading in ah in a hierarchical system that has a huge amount of Available resources to deal with so so they you can pretty well automate the process in ah In a highly, you know oil dependent um Complex environment, but when you're starting to rebuild things from scratch you have to learn how to self-organize the self-manage
00:51:40
Speaker
um and so That's why I think it's so important. And a key part of it of the reason why I think so much so many of us are poor at facilitating is because we're no good at listening.
00:51:57
Speaker
My experience has been that almost all the best facilitators that I have met have been women. um And I don't know whether why that seems to be the the case, that they're better listeners.
00:52:13
Speaker
than men are as a rule. um But facilitation basically is the skill of helping a group to achieve a common objective where everybody in the room brings something different to the solution of that problem.
00:52:35
Speaker
So the job of the facilitator is to say, okay, this person is going to be at add value in this area. This person is going to add value in this area and to bring out the best in everybody in the room.
00:52:49
Speaker
And that starts with listening. And I think that's why it's so important because the community is going to have to self-organize in such a way that it knows who has what skills and who has what needs and weaknesses.
00:53:04
Speaker
And how do you match those up in a way that involves everybody and doesn't require somebody who knows everything and and has to take charge of the process?
00:53:16
Speaker
So that's why facilitation makes the list. Yeah. And of course, um not everyone is able to articulate themselves or express themselves or advocate for their ideas and skills and gifts themselves. in the same way.
00:53:31
Speaker
And I'm guessing that as a facilitator, you're picking up those imbalances in groups as well and trying to maintain some kind of, um you know, equilibrium in a group of people or, as you say, draw out draw out people who really do deserve to be heard and have wonderful things that are being harboured that are often overshadowed and dominated by louder voices in the group who are much better at simply selling themselves.
00:54:00
Speaker
Yeah, and they're they're definitely a challenge to deal with that. um I find one of the challenges is when you're dealing with groups with different demographics as well, and that applies in a number of different ways, but one of them is cultural differences.
00:54:18
Speaker
um i i'm I'm living now in a community that is incredibly multicultural, and I i remember walking into our local bistro the other day, and I have finally learned that there was a couple talking. One was English and the other was a woman who was apparently Japanese and the English speaking guy, I don't know what language they were speaking. The English speaking guy was going on and on and and on.
00:54:45
Speaker
And the Japanese woman was nodding and nodding and nodding, and nodding waiting for the, the, uh, English speaking guy to shut up.
00:54:57
Speaker
Um, And, you know, there was there was two things going on there. The the first was that the English-speaking guy figured that a nod meant, I agree with you.
00:55:11
Speaker
When what it actually means in the Japanese culture is, I hear you. It doesn't necessarily mean I agree with you whatsoever. And the other thing about the Japanese culture that I learned from sitting in the bistro doing a little bit of cultural anthropology ah was that in the Japanese culture, after a conversation, you always leave a gap.
00:55:38
Speaker
um Whereas in English cultures, that gap is kind of an embarrassment. You've got to fill it somehow. You've got to fill in that space. Whereas in Japanese culture, after somebody says something, you can have an unawkward pause of 30 seconds or a minute where nobody says anything, and nobody has a problem with it.
00:55:59
Speaker
I don't think we're quite the same way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. We so do not like the cultural differences are can be a challenge and we're going to, we're going to deal with that. Um, not only in, um, different cultures, if if ethnically different cultures, but also generationally different cultures.
00:56:26
Speaker
Um, when we find ourselves in community, we're going to, We're going to discover that old people and middle-aged people and young people, their style of communication, their style of learning is inevitably going to be different. So one size does not fit all when when it comes to the give and take of building community.
Integrating Generations and Cultures
00:56:48
Speaker
I'm wondering um if you have elders in your community you look to and they're playing or they're inhabiting that space of really holding something for the greater community and also too if you are undergoing or have undergone any initiation or rites of passage that is helping you move towards a position of eldership in your community. Yeah.
00:57:13
Speaker
I think diseases are enough of a rite of passage of getting old. I know a number of people who have been involved in those kinds of rites, particularly because of the fact that we're trying to reconnect here in British Columbia with our First Nations heritage and understanding. So there is elder program involved.
00:57:35
Speaker
there is ah an elder program that enables some of the older people on on Bowen Island in particular to learn more about the ways and practices of First Nations people and to be able to represent them.
00:57:54
Speaker
So I think that's going on to a considerable extent in um among the the older ah communities i think it's less its it's less it's had less of an impact when it comes to younger people and i don't know how you deal with that i don't know how you um get them i don't know how you even get them into the same room to talk about things because they're we live in a in a atomized kind of a culture now.
00:58:27
Speaker
And in many cases, stratified based on either and ethnic or demographic um stratifications.
00:58:40
Speaker
And so if if all you're ever talking to is other people your own age, how do you get the kind of perspectives and the depth of skills that you're going to need to create a community that has to be open and inclusive for everybody.
00:58:56
Speaker
Yeah. I wonder if it's um what I see as a magnetism, like a draw that people have ultimately to certain aspects that may be undernourished at the moment, you know, the way that um when I go camping,
00:59:12
Speaker
I know that oftentimes there'll be groups of young people out there in the bush too because they are yearning to be in wilder spaces. But, of course, they take their footy and their boombox and they make a a ruckus and it's really unpleasant for everyone else at the campsite. But I see that as this this latent desire, like something tugging at them, calling them back to the land in some way, even though that may seem um a little fraught when it's so noisy. But in this in the same way, I wonder if we...
00:59:40
Speaker
have an understanding or an inner knowing that we do need to connect with our elders or we do need to, i don't know, be in community. And that's expressed differently and could be more sophisticated, but it might, it might, we might just be drawn inevitably, especially if things become more challenging.
00:59:58
Speaker
Well, yeah, this is the problem. As I say, community is born of necessity um when you don't have to live in community with other people, when you can survive just fine, you know, all by yourself year after year.
01:00:12
Speaker
You don't learn the skills. You don't discover the things that you need to know about yourself and about your neighbors in order to be able to do that.
01:00:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of nature and nature connection, I'm interested to know, Dave, if you have a practice or a connection practice with the more than human world in the place where you're living, what are some of the ways that you enjoy and the world around you and some of the the pleasures and wonders of your place? Yeah.
01:00:48
Speaker
ah My favorite one, I live up on the 42nd floor of an apartment building. This is not a good place to be when collapse happens. but i'm I'm here for a short time as a renter.
01:01:04
Speaker
for complicated reasons. So please don't suggest to anybody that living on the 42nd floor is an example of sustainable living.
01:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, I guess. But so this is the circumstances I find myself in. And one of the joys of that is not only the incredible view that I have um out the window, but it's a fascinating place to watch birds.
01:01:32
Speaker
um and particularly bird behaviors in groups, and how much I learn from comparing how birds in groups and studying how birds in groups behave Compared to how humans live. So that's a key part of it.
01:01:51
Speaker
I also do, um and I generally will summarize this once a month on the blog. It's part of the the ritual that I've learned as a blogger now. is My last post of every month is the result of what I call my mindful wandering.
01:02:09
Speaker
And that is almost always in natural places.
Mindful Wandering and Nature Learning
01:02:12
Speaker
So walk around live river banks, I'll walk up into the mountains, um down to the lake or down to the ocean.
01:02:22
Speaker
um And I'll just write about my experiences, what I've run into. And so having that imperative forces me not only to get out into nature, but it forces me to pay attention because I'm looking for anecdotes, stories, narratives that are going to be interesting to the reader.
01:02:48
Speaker
So that focuses me to pay attention. That's another skill. I mean, we live in such an attention deficit society that for me to learn to pay attention, it's almost as hard as learning to listen well.
01:03:03
Speaker
And these were skills that were never rewarded in all of my years in business. I didn't have to listen. I, you know, I was high up in the organization. I got to tell people what to do. I didn't have to listen to them.
01:03:17
Speaker
um And I didn't have to pay attention because everything was kind of, if you learned how things work, you did things the way you'd been taught to do them. um But the sheer joy of paying attention, it's not only an essential skill to learn ah when you're going to have to relearn the context. You know, it's ah it's also a ah joyful skill as well.
01:03:47
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, it is extremely pleasurable. But the implication is that when you're wandering and there's ah some kind of need there to be foraging or understanding what's happening seasonally and what's changing in your environments, The impetus is taking those stories back to the village or understanding deeply how to interact then with the systems around us. It's it's a joy but also a necessity um to be place-based humans, creaturely humans who really know you know what's what's flowering, what's fruiting, what's predating. So there are reasons for having good attention and noticing skills.
01:04:25
Speaker
Right. When I was, ah one of the jobs that I had with this large consulting organization was as their chief knowledge officer. What a title. that Yeah.
01:04:37
Speaker
I think I was the first and last chief knowledge officer of the organization, but there was a time in which intellectual property was a big deal in business. It was kind of a hot subject for the for the year.
01:04:51
Speaker
um And one of the things that we developed with these models of what knowledge is. And of course, organizational learning ties into all of that.
01:05:04
Speaker
ah But one of the things that I got out of that, which was really valuable is understanding that there's three kinds of knowledge. There is know what knowledge. um you know, facts, history, ah processes, and so on.
01:05:21
Speaker
There is no how knowledge, how to do things. And there's no who knowledge, which is that who knows how to do this?
01:05:31
Speaker
Who else is good at doing this? And to me, the key to um to being successful in in community when things will require us to do that is a good mix of those three.
01:05:49
Speaker
You're going to need to have some know what knowledge, some know how, and a lot of know who. The know who, the ability to create, sustain, and reciprocally draw on and use relationships um is going to be absolutely critical.
01:06:09
Speaker
The three no theory. I really love it. Now, i believe that you wanted to share something from Molly Hausch-Gordon and I think it is a really beautiful way to wrap up a conversation like this and what she writes is just a riot and wonderful, so I'd recommend people check out her writings on Substack.
Surviving with Community and Compassion
01:06:33
Speaker
um But I'd love to ask you, Dave, if there's anything else you wanted to touch on or speak to before we end on Molly's 12 Steps.
01:06:45
Speaker
um I guess one of the things that i wrote about in the article was what I'd learned from reading Terry LePage's a book, Eye of the Storm, which I didn't love as a book, but I found it challenging and interesting.
01:07:01
Speaker
And it identified some additional things that we need, that we can do in order to be able to adapt as collapse happens. And a couple of them I thought were were really useful.
01:07:17
Speaker
um The first one is the importance of finding out where you really belong. um And that's, I don't know that there's a process for that.
01:07:30
Speaker
um It's largely an intuitive thing. I have been in in places in my life where I just said, I could live here. and other places where I've said, Oh my God, how does anybody like live here?
01:07:44
Speaker
Um, so the the beginning, I think it's important to begin to understand now where you really belong and having those conversations with, with the people that you care about as well, because right now we rely, I've got kids on the other half of the, the other half of the country. They're all grown up, but, um, um,
01:08:08
Speaker
We're going to reach a stage fairly early in collapse where air travel is going to be out of the question. um So one of the first things we're going to need to adapt to is the fact you're going to be stuck with the people who are close at hand.
01:08:24
Speaker
And if the people you really care about are thousands of miles away, it's not too early to start thinking about whether or not you want to move closer to them or move them closer to you.
01:08:35
Speaker
yeah I thought that was... ah really valuable. And the other thing that I'm finding out, you know, i'm we're reading about this in the news now every day, is developing our capacity to offer people refuge.
01:08:53
Speaker
We are likely to have, by the time collapse gets into full gear, we're likely to have as many, according to the latest latest reports I just read, of 2 billion refugees.
01:09:06
Speaker
People who will have to move, not for economic reasons, but because the places they're living are just not inhabitable anymore. And as climate change worsens, we might find that we're part of that as well. We'll be okay for the first part, but you know as things continue to get worse, we may all be on the move.
01:09:29
Speaker
um So learning how to offer people refuge, especially when we've got such a fearful anti-immigrant mentality. um And again, i understand that. People are driven by fear.
01:09:43
Speaker
They're terrified about how millions of people moving into their neighborhood are going to negatively affect them. And so a part of learning how to offer people refuge is learning how to understand that these people are just like us.
01:10:01
Speaker
And, you know, so I thought those were really useful. But yeah other than that, I'm ready to jump into concluding with the the little excerpt from Molly Hoosh Gordon's sermon, if that's okay for a wrap-up. That would be great. Thank you.
01:10:20
Speaker
All right. The sermon was called, How to Survive the End of the World.
01:10:26
Speaker
um And it's in second person conditional, which i is ah is a tense that I try not to use because the more I study collapse, the the the more I realize I don't know.
01:10:37
Speaker
So I usually put it, put these things out in the, in the, yeah you know, these are possibilities there. And so, so I think it's very smart and pretty funny.
01:10:51
Speaker
And so here's what she says. This is how she concluded her sermon about how to survive the end of the world. Get to know your neighbors. Feed them. Let them feed you.
01:11:03
Speaker
Watch each other's kids, grandkids, and pets. Develop the muscle of generosity like you're training for a giving ultramarathon. Share everything you can with anyone who asks and ask for what you need.
01:11:20
Speaker
Get in touch with your body. You will need it, and it knows things. Pay attention to what is happening below your neck.
01:11:31
Speaker
Tell the truth, and tell it to yourself first. Sit at the feet of your most vulnerable neighbors, and in your most vulnerable places, they have the most to teach you about survival. Listen. Listen.
01:11:49
Speaker
Remember your ancestors and the things they survived. Find the resilience that is your birthright and the courage that made way for your life.
01:12:01
Speaker
Practice taking risks. Show up in every struggle where someone is fighting for their dignity because that is how we will all survive. Learn about reparations and native sovereignty.
01:12:16
Speaker
Double down on exorcising supremacy systems from your soul. Learn to be tender. Refuse to be hardened.
01:12:28
Speaker
Let your heart be moved every damn time. Root in the place you are. Learn its history. Learn its geography.
01:12:40
Speaker
Learn its seasons. Sing a lot and dance, make art, make love, rest luxuriously, eat pie.
01:12:55
Speaker
The world is ending and beginning now. Let us love, connect, and fight like hell for the dignity of each and all. Isn't that gorgeous?
01:13:10
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it is glorious. I wish I could write sermons like that.
01:13:17
Speaker
Well, I for one love the ripples that you cast into the world and I've been so enjoying your your offerings and your articles and and extremely gratified and appreciative that you agreed to come on the podcast and I think this is the perfect way to start Riskiliance and I've really enjoyed speaking to you today, Dave. Thank you so much.
01:13:40
Speaker
Thank you very much. It's been great and I look forward to hearing from all of the subsequent speakers on the podcast and seeing how I can contribute. That was Dave Pollard, and you can find links to his writings in the show notes.
01:13:56
Speaker
And thanks to everyone who hits pause on the spin cycle of modern life to leave the podcast a review on Apple or stars on Spotify. This really lifts my spirits and definitely helps woo potential guests who need some kind of reassurance that this goat-loving weirdo who wants two hours of their time is legit.
01:14:15
Speaker
They're really beautiful reviews. Thank you so much, and catch you all in a couple of weeks.