… wannabe farmer who has reached the decision (one that might change yet again as I continue gathering information) that smallish cities and urban areas are more likely than rural areas to survive the coming ___________ , I urge you to read this:
If managing in a catastrophe were just about growing your own food, many (but not all) rural people would probably be just fine. If it were about repairing your machines, maintaining your roof, keeping the well running, a good many rural people would be okay.
But there’s a lot more than that involved in running the kind of society we all demand, things like public health systems, communications systems, transportation infrastructure, energy supplies, banking and finance, good governance innovations, an effective legal system, etc. Places with these systems do a heck of a lot better than places without them, and these are systems many communities are in a poor position to provide for themselves. In much of rural America, those systems aren’t even working very well today.
That’s the reality.
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That is the reality.
What I posted over there:
I read the whole thing and all the comments, and I’m puzzled. It seems that the thesis of the post was that post-collapse, the wise urban people should go to the naive rural people and teach them The Ways of Sustainability, and that a number of the commenters were rather insulted by that.
I’m honestly not sure that we will need a lot of the larger systems that are now in place. I may not be looking far enough ahead — I have probably a quarter-century left to me under the most positive circumstances, and that’s as far out as I am thinking — but transportation infrastructure? Banking and finance? And the biggest “Huh?” of all: good governance innovations?? Will we need any of these things post-peak? Will we actually need missionaries to go to other areas and carry some kind of Holy Word to them?
I read it more as the formation of networks, and as an acknowledgement that towns and cities provide greater opportunities for cooperative behavior, not to mention, opportunity, than rural areas. This seems to hold true through time, as well. People have long had a tendency to settle in towns and cities because they provide greater prosperity and, yes, protection, while many of the problems we see now in rural areas aren’t unique to us — they’re problems that arise in rural areas because of isolation.
But I agree with you that some of the infrastructure stuff seems pretty superfluous.
That said, much of it is superfluous only to the extent *we* understand it. Transportation, for example — people have *always* traveled. There are well traveled migration routes into North America from Central and South America, for example, that predate the Europeans by centuries. There is historical documentation of southeastern tribes deciding to take off for what we now call Mexico long before the steam engine and even without horses. There is even evience of travel across the ocean into South America.
We just can’t think of it in the terms we now do except insofar as we can adapt it to a post-peak world.
Oh, and banking? Writing appears to have evolved as a result of accountants and early “bankers”
So, yea – banking. Just maybe not with the green stuff.
Formation of networks, yes yes yes. We also need to establish universities (in the Socratic sense of a teacher on one end of a log and a student on the other) to make sure that knowledge doesn’t get lost when public libraries are no longer reachable due to distance. But that should be more along the lines of sharing/exchanging knowledge rather than one who knows it all imparting it to one who knows nothing.
There’s much I know and much I can teach, but there’s far too much that I don’t know and will need to learn.
Okay, I’m with you on the banking and transportation now. I was thinking that the writer was advocating holding together rail lines and highways and Wachovia and Lehman Brothers.
He might be. I’m not certain of his underlying perspective but, in terms of what we know about humans over a very long period of time, he’s right.
Argh. Not clear. Let me restate that — he might be advocating holding things together a la Wachovia, etc.
But in terms of what we know about people over a very long period of time, he’s right.
If he’s advocating on the basis of the last, say, 75 years, he’s dead wrong. In fact, if he’s advocating on the basis of the steam engine, he’s dead wrong.
But if he’s advocating on the basis of what we know and how we can adapt newer technologies to implement that knowledge in terms of networks and cooperative behaviors and etc., he’s absolutely right.
Anybody who knows mariachi mama at DailyKos needs to send her some love. She’s in a bad situation. Please!
Oh no. I’ll go see what’s going on.
I’ll revisit your post, Kate. It fits right in with what happened to us yesterday. Awful stuff at the county. A double dipping man both State Senator and County Commissioner and owns LOTS of timber to harvest here took us down.
Oh, no. Is there anything we can do to help?
Thanks, Kate, I don’t know but I am really sad. This “person” just used his powers to take down a festival in Western Washington that had been ongoing for 9 years. He had been overheard saying, “it just a party for a bunch of drunks”. He is known for $$$ he likes. His body language was awful, he had already made up his mind and influenced another state entity to “revisit” their favorable ruling and change it. He hated the pro-festival people. He also offered another venue that was already booked for the weekends that this would take place!!!
Politicians are EVIL!!!! I had alot invested in this. It will cost the festival owner megabucks to get back to where he was and all the vendors and entertainers that were counting on the income.
All this at a time that the county has the highest unemployment (7.5%) of the region. A $5 million influx into the county would have been helpful. All this and he is running for office this year! Stupid!
I’m so sorry, Scotia.
They are evil, aren’t they? It’s so frustrating when they come in and pull the rug out from under events and opportunities that are nothing but good for the people.
Thanks, Kate. I feel a little better today. It’s been dreadful and I just found out that a mega faire has been putting out feelers for a site around Portland to set up for next year. Maybe they had something to do with it, too, the “Perfect Storm” as it were.
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