Recently I viewed a TV program called Prophets of Doom. The format was an informal gathering of individuals in a studio set, five or six leaders in their various fields, who via discussion format were challenged to predict the one disaster among the many currently looming which they believed would most likely be the one to spell the downfall of the United States. The participants demonstrated great intensity in the expression of their individual views on this subject and shared a sincere, albeit alarming consensus that the United States is indeed on the brink of downfall, if not from those specific individual causes that each championed, then most certainly from a combination of several of them. Our demise was projected to come from economic collapse, water loss, an accelerated disfunction resulting from the downslope of peak oil, nuclear terrorism, and/or the dominance of machines. No, this was not a movie, but a serious discussion among knowledgeable, highly trained professionals with the facts at their disposal. The time frame for this demise was determined to be within the next two decades. The elephant not in the room, surprisingly, was climate change. It was never mentioned, not once. But the scenarios presented during the two hour presentation were dramatic, catastrophic, frightening. A term, cognitive dissonance, was introduced to describe what we humans do in the face of possibilities on a scale beyond our emotional capacity to deal with them: which is to pretend that they do not exist. This tactic seems to have been employed by the these very prophets in terms of global warming. I would put that concern before the worry of my robot dismissing me as non-essential function (if I had a robot!). Regardless, the program re-introduced the dark underside of our lives, the realities which in our 'cognitive dissonance' we ignore, fail to see, or chose not to believe. It showed the Rome that is burning as we fiddle. But unlike many such documentaries, actual solutions were introduced. And these solutions make sense.
Centralized government with its centralized programs was a clumsy proposition at the best of times. But even as we watched the waste grow and the inefficiencies mount and the inequalities increase over the centuries we continued to support it because, well hey! it was ours and it worked after a fashion and we enjoyed propping it up against those other governments out there…good old America, the land of the free! Along with cognitive dissonance, Americans also suffer from 'momentum sickness', the effect of the Newton law that says its better not to change those things that seem to be working. It is momentum sickness that allows us to continue to support the oil industry, to continue to pay taxes to a central government for services many of us will never receive, to allow politics to trump the needs of the people in the halls of congress. But the problem with momentum sickness is that this malady makes it difficult to tell when things have actually stopped working. Because of momentum sickness leading to cognitive dissonance Americans are allowing a failed debt-ridden unresponsive central government to soothe us with the false reassurance that because it has always been there for us after a fashion, it always will. Remember New Orleans and FEMA? What about public education? Where once a central government actually worked, in the face of the growing needs of an ever increasing population it no longer can. Which is why the solutions offered by the Prophets of Doom make sense.
Localize! That's it, in a nutshell. That was the consensus of the group. Bring everything down to a scale that will work. Allow individual localities to determine and respond to their own needs, in the way best suited to their local environment. Institute local water plans that will work for that neighborhood, that town, that population. Reverse outsourcing to insourcing. Buy local. Grow local. Establish a local economy that is not reliant upon remote conditions. Establish a local currency for that economy. Get off the grid. Find ways to produce electric locally, individually. What about a local health plan? Or a local retirement plan? Its time to go back to the future.
Localizing does not require a major government overhaul. It will never be accomplished through endless debate among congressmen attended by influential lobbyists and concerned corporations. It can only be done from the bottom up. The very bottom up: you, and I. A small group of neighbors with a proposal, a plan. A Saturday activity, a project.
