Post by Roy Smith on Aug 28, 2016 19:30:45 GMT
The first get-together of The Cascadia Guild happened on the evening of July 12th. There were nine of us in attendance. I took some notes, but nothing resembling meeting minutes, so this post and several to follow will mostly be summaries and ideas that were triggered by the discussions. Also, since this group doesn't have any formal existence to speak of, everything I write here can only be characterized as my impressions, and not as a coherent group policy or position.
That all being said, here are what seemed to be the most important things to come out of the meeting.
1) An awful lot of the Archdruid's readership does not often get a chance to meet with others who are interested in or engaged with the subjects that ADR likes to tackle, so just having a group to discuss these ideas seemed important to many of the attendees.
2) The majority of the attendees are already making concrete efforts to actually do things in response to the dilemmas posed by peak oil, resource depletion, and the long descent, and everybody that was there seems genuinely to want to do concrete things in response to these issues. In particular, the idea of "collapsing now and avoiding the rush" is something that many seem to be taking to heart. This is very heartening for me.
3) I composed a list of things that people who attended seemed to want to develop, and which a group or network of like minded people could help with. These are, in no particular order:
I intend to write more future posts that expand on some of these ideas. In the meantime, feel free to add your thoughts in the forum, and if you were unable to attend the inaugural meeting, please feel free to instigate your own meeting in your own town or city, and I will definitely help advertise it for you.
That all being said, here are what seemed to be the most important things to come out of the meeting.
1) An awful lot of the Archdruid's readership does not often get a chance to meet with others who are interested in or engaged with the subjects that ADR likes to tackle, so just having a group to discuss these ideas seemed important to many of the attendees.
2) The majority of the attendees are already making concrete efforts to actually do things in response to the dilemmas posed by peak oil, resource depletion, and the long descent, and everybody that was there seems genuinely to want to do concrete things in response to these issues. In particular, the idea of "collapsing now and avoiding the rush" is something that many seem to be taking to heart. This is very heartening for me.
3) I composed a list of things that people who attended seemed to want to develop, and which a group or network of like minded people could help with. These are, in no particular order:
- Developing skills appropriate for a collapsing world, and even more importantly, finding students who would like to learn the skills and teach them what we have learned.
- Developing trade/barter/gift economy relationships and generally exploring how to demonetize to the maximum extent possible.
- Creating demonstration projects that will help us identify areas in which we still have more dependence on the industrial economy and/or current economic arrangements.
- From this, we can identify and fix (or at least plan for workarounds of) vulnerabilities that we as individuals and as communities. Vulnerabilities, in this instance, are defined as things that are dependent on large, complex, and/or energy intensive economic or social systems and which are therefore more vulnerable to collapse or disruption.
- Have a place where we can discuss with others who are interested any of these sorts of issues.
I intend to write more future posts that expand on some of these ideas. In the meantime, feel free to add your thoughts in the forum, and if you were unable to attend the inaugural meeting, please feel free to instigate your own meeting in your own town or city, and I will definitely help advertise it for you.