A Community-Based Resilience Framework

When I am asked by people “What can we do now?” to prepare for economic, energy or ecological collapse, I have of late been suggesting doing the things shown in boxes 2, 3, 4 and 7 in the graphic above — healing (and self-healing), learning new skills to liberate yourself (and others) from dependence on large centralized systems (these systems will be the first to collapse), modelling resilience (exemplifying sustainable, joyful, present living so that others can see what that looks like), and building community.

I’ve started to realize that this is an incomplete list, and that it is too early to make any real progress on some of the things on this list. So I’ve created the 7-facet resilience framework shown above, and am beginning to identify three phases in implementing it: I. First Steps (things we can each do right now, mostly to “take stock” of our current situation and how we are likely to be affected by collapse); II. Immediate Practices (things we can quite easily start making part of our daily or monthly routine, that will increase our resilience); and III. Intentional Practices (things we can start thinking about moving towards, but which are likely not practical to start doing yet).

Here are the things I think we can do in each of these three Phases, in each of the 7 Facets of Resilience. Although we can begin the community-oriented actions now, it is almost inevitable that our definition of community is likely to change dramatically as collapse forces a drastic relocalization of social, political and economic activity, as cities and suburbs and places far from healthy sustainable food are hollowed out, and as billions become economic or ecological refugees and undertake long and repeated migrations to find sustainable places to live. For that reason, many of the Phase III Intentional Practices listed below are longer-term activities that won’t make sense for us to do until we know where and with whom we’ll be living as civilization’s collapse reaches its latter stages, and have a better sense of how that collapse is unfolding and how it is affecting our communities.

1. Self-Knowledge and Self-Awareness:
   1. First Steps: Take stock of what we know about ourselves. What are our gifts, the things we are uniquely good at doing? What are our passions, the things we love doing and want to do? What is our purpose, the thing that gives our life meaning and drives us? What is in the Sweet Spot at the intersection of our gifts, passions and purpose, the things we are ‘meant to do’ in this life? What are our capacities, the qualities that make us most useful to and helpful to our loved ones and community? What are our vulnerabilities, our ‘incapacities’, the areas where we of necessity need and want to lean on others? What are our fears, the things that prevent us, trigger us, make us at times dysfunctional? What grief, sorrow and anger do we hold that defines us, shapes our worldview, haunts and inhibits us? The reason for knowing these things is not to change or ‘improve’ ourselves but just to know and recognize ourselves for who we really are, and hence where we ‘fit’ in a sustainable community.
   2. Immediate Practices: How can we expand our self-knowledge to unearth our undiscovered gifts and passions? How can we practice being and becoming more self-aware in the moment, catching ourselves being triggered, angered, distressed by events or situations we cannot control, things that are really happening only inside our heads and which do not help us cope with fast-changing reality? Self-awareness is a key element of presence, a quality that we will need in spades to deal with collapse.
2. Self-Healing and Healing Each Other:
   1. First Steps: Take stock of our personal physical, emotional and psychological health. What do we do now, habitually, that may make our health worse (stressful work, substance use, poor diet etc.)? Identify these things without self-judgement — things are the way they are for a reason, and we all understandably have our coping mechanisms, unavoidable stresses and ‘guilty pleasures’. What do we do now, habitually, that may make our health better (diet, exercise, meditation, yoga, breathing, relationships with community and support, herbs and alternative medications and therapies)? Also, take stock of the skills and capacities we have that can enable us to help heal others.
   2. Immediate Practices: What processes can we put in place to prevent accidents, illnesses, and the stresses and other triggers that lead to them? What processes can we put in place to monitor our health, and to self-diagnose and self-treat illnesses before they become acute or chronic? How can we gently and sustainably shift the habitual practices we identified in (I.) above to improve our health? How might we develop practices to make us more forgiving, more empathetic, more connected to those with whom we live and work, and more connected with all-life-on-Earth? And how might we strengthen and practice our capacities to help heal others?
   3. Intentional Practices: What can we begin to learn to do that will better equip us to stay healthy, and help others stay healthy, when centralized health care systems (the hospital system, the pharmaceutical system, emergency services, specialized medicine) collapse? What can we begin to learn to do that will make us more ready to deal with health crises caused by natural disasters and pandemics? How can we, working together in community, begin to create a no-charge mutual health-care network that will get us all healthy and keep us all healthy?
3. Self-Liberation and Liberating Each Other:
   1. First Steps: Take stock of our personal dependence on large centralized systems (political, legal, financial, economic, technological, educational, police/fire). How much do we depend on the growth economy for our job, our pensions, credit, cheap imported clothing, the value of our home, insurance and investments, and income to repay our debts? How much do we depend on centralized transportation systems (roads, airplanes etc.)? How much do we depend on cheap fuel and the power grid? How much do we depend on the industrial agriculture system for cheap, plentiful food? How much do we depend on the construction industry for cheap housing and repairs to our shoddily-made homes? How much do we depend on the Internet and the entertainment ‘industry’ for our information, connection and recreation? Also, take stock of the skills and capacities we have that might enable us to help liberate others from their dependence on these centralized systems.
   2. Immediate Practices: Looking at the current dependencies identified in (I.) above, what are 2-3 things we could easily and joyfully do to reduce our dependence? How might we learn to identify and gracefully ask for what we need from those within our communities? How might we learn to need less (e.g. finding work closer to home)? How might we learn to live a wilder (healthier) and less ‘settled’ life, so that when circumstances or opportunities require us to move, that move is less ‘unsettling’? And how might we strengthen and practice our capacities to help others in our community reduce their dependencies?
   3. Intentional Practices: Once we have a good sense of what community we intend to live in for the longer term (i.e. where we plan to move before the industrial growth economy completely collapses), and who else lives (or will live) in that community, we can start to identify the people and collaboratives in that community that can provide all the essential goods and services that we now depend on large centralized systems to provide, and start to relocalize to reduce our personal and collective dependence, through a community-based egalitarian gift economy.
4. Modelling Resilience:
   1. First Steps: Assess our value to others as a model. To what extent do we exemplify elements of resilience such as self-knowledge and self-awareness, authenticity, generosity, agility, non-attachment, transparency, honesty, humility, candour, vulnerability, empathy, articulateness, creativity, critical thinking, openness, compassion, facilitation, mentoring, contemplative gratitude, and presence? To what extent are we of use to those we love and those in our community, in a way that enables them to follow our example rather than making them dependent on us?
   2. Immediate Practices: What are 2-3 things we could do, easily and joyfully, that might make us more useful and more exemplary to others?
5. Finding and Helping Life Partners:
   1. First Steps: Take stock of our relationships. Are they healthy, joyful, sufficient, complementary?
   2. Immediate Practices: How can we find ways to love better, and let ourselves be loved better? How can we learn to love more people, and all life on Earth (including ourselves), more courageously and unreservedly? How can we learn an attitude of abundance and compersion in love, rather than one of scarcity, fear and jealousy?
6. Finding and Helping Work Partners and Serving Community:
   1. First Steps: Assess whether the work we are doing is in our Sweet Spot. Take stock of our relationships with work partners. Are they healthy, joyful, sufficient and complementary?
   2. Immediate Practices: If our present work is not in our Sweet Spot, how can we begin to find or create work that is? To do that, how might we find work partners who share our passions and purpose, and whose gifts and capacities complement our own? And then, working in collaboratives with those partners, how might we begin to research and identify unmet local needs through iterative conversations with people in our community, and fill those needs? (One process for this is outlined in my book Finding the Sweet Spot.)
   3. Intentional Practices: The collaboratives we identify in phase (II.) above will gradually become more and more viable and the work they do will become more essential as the economy crumbles and relocalizes and as large corporate enterprises disappear in the post-industrial world. How can we get the timing right to shift from reliance on our current industrial-economy jobs, to making a sustainable, responsible and joyful living in local, co-operative, natural collaboratives? How do we sustain our connection to our community to serve it and continue to meet its evolving needs? How do we help bring about the larger shift from a non-egalitarian industrial scarcity economy to a true gift economy?
7. Building Community:
   1. First Steps: Take stock of your own community’s (or, if you’re planning to move, your intended community’s) self-sufficiency, dynamics, connection and resilience. Assess your knowledge of the essential elements of a healthy community.
   2. Immediate Practices: How might we learn more about the vulnerabilities of our community and current culture, and the strengths and talents we have collectively in our community that can help us cope effectively and autonomously with crises and collapse? (One way is through doing table-top simulations with others in our community, such as Collapse: The Resilient Communities Game*.) What are 2-3 things we could do in our community to easily and joyful create a stronger sense of community and know each other better (e.g. inviting all of our neighbours — even those we don’t particularly like — to a potluck supper, or holding a Gift Circle).
   3. Intentional Practices: As centralized systems collapse and more and more aspects of our lives are relocalized, how can we help our chosen communities achieve the three essential qualities of sustainability that Dmitri Orlov outlines in his book Communities That Abide: Self-sufficiency, the ability to self-organize and recover in the face of crisis, and mobility (not being tied to any one place)? How can we learn to live with, and even love, people we don’t really like? How can we transform the isolated, disconnected communities of the industrial economy into cohesive, self-sufficient “tribes” — people whose members know and love each other intimately and look after each other the way healthy families do?

This is just a first pass at trying to articulate this framework. I welcome comments on its organization, content and value. I can see it evolving into some sort of workbook over time, something that can be used, by individuals and later by collaborative partnerships and communities, to self-assess resilience and start to build practices that will ready us for whatever is to come.

I’d love to know what you think.

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*The latest (and much simplified) version of Collapse: The Resilience Game (v.5) can be downloaded here: 

• Game rules and scenarios (PDF) (9 pages) — print one copy for the game leader
• Game playing board and tokens (PPTX) — print on card stock;  tape the first two pages together lengthwise; cut out the 11 tokens from the third page (3 pages)
• Game playing cards (DOCX) — print on 10-cards-per-page standard perforated business card stock (9 pages)