Written by Resilient Investor.
The Stanford Social Impact Review published this article, in fall 2014, titled “Essential Mindset Shifts for Collective Impact.” It begins where an earlier 2011 article left off, looking into five conditions necessary for collective impact to work. Read article.
Tags: collaboration, evolutionary strategy, learning, personal assets, personal growth
Written by Resilient Investor.
This edition of the venerable Green Money Journal looks at the ways that faith-based principles have informed the life work of many socially responsible investors and advisors. Read articles.
Tags: financial assets, personal assets, spritual practice, SRI, sustainable global economy strategy
Written by Resilient Investor.
For decades, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has championed just that. It focuses on local control and reliance particularly in the areas of broadband, energy, independent businesses, banking, waste (to wealth), and the public good. Each of these areas contains a deep database of articles, relevant rules and resources. Its website has numerous audio, video and written resources. Noteworthy is a searchable database of local, state and federal laws in areas of interest to local self reliance, such as composting, anti-privitization, beverage containers, etc. Visit website.
Tags: close to home strategy, financial assets, local banking, local investing, personal assets, renewable energy, resilience, tangible assets
Written by Resilient Investor.
It’s always a dicey proposition to tuck any of our key “thought leaders” into any one D-Type cubbyhole, perhaps none more so than Richard Heinberg. We’ve included him among the Doomers thanks to his longtime leadership on the issue of Peak Oil, and more recently, the “peak everything” challenges that face an economy predicated on constant growth within an inherently limited biosphere. So, we suggest reading and listening to Heinberg as a clear voice that sees our current system being likely to hit some extremely rough patches; but bear in mind that in his role as a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, he is also hard at work charting the path toward a viable, if much less energy-intensive, global future; in this, he could easily be considered a Dealer or Driver.
Good quick bio of Heinberg, along with links to his most recent writings on Resilience.org
Richard Heinberg’s websiteVideo: The Party’s Over
In this 5-part presentation, Heinberg addresses how peak oil, and thus required shift away from fossil fuels, is impacting our economy and our life.
Video: Peak Everything
In this 5-part video, Heinberg looks ahead at this century of declining resources.
Essay: Two Realities.
In this essay from his newsletter, Heinberg looks at the conflict between the physical and political realities of our planet, on which infinite growth is not possible, and our political and economic systems, which require endless growth. He warns that our only hope to minimize future human suffering and ecosystem collapse is to come to terms with the physical limits that political realities attempt to deny, ignore, or hide.
Tags: close to home strategy, CO2, personal assets, tangible assets
Written by Resilient Investor.
John Wesley, Rawles is a well-known survivalist. A former Army intelligence officer, his website is a go-to source for all manner of preparation for survival in a post-breakdown world. While he is firmly in the “guns and groceries” camp, his perspective is notable for its emphasis, based on notions of Christian charity, that one’s personal preparation must also include a readiness to be of service to others who may be less prepared for major change.
Interview, late 2014: This interview offers a good introduction to Rawles’ perspective (as well as an explanation for the unusual punctuation of his name).
Wiki bio of Rawles
Rawles’ website, which bills itself as “the daily website for prepared individuals living in uncertain times.” It contains a wealth of practical and philosophical information on preparing for societal breakdown, as well as any other natural or manmade emergency. Readers often submit their own prepping and survival techniques, often gained through practical experience, sometime through learning the hard way.
Book: How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It.
A collection of topical resources on everything from food and water to medical supplies and communication.
Tags: close to home strategy, personal assets, prepping, tangible assets
Written by Resilient Investor.
This helpful resource provides numerous links on starting up almost any local sharing endeavor that can be imagined, from the family level to the neighborhood and community. It includes tons of great ideas that touch every aspect of life. See master list of sharing ideas.
Tags: close to home strategy, collaboration, community groups, personal assets, sharing economy, tangible assets, urban
Written by Resilient Investor.
In recent years, the shortcomings of the commonly-cited GDP (gross domestic product) have become more widely recognized, spreading even to some governments and mainstream organizations such as the UN. Many alternative metrics have been proposed, each of which aims to capture aspects of societal well-being that are omitted by GDP, and/or to minimize the values-neutral elements of GDP (which considers money spent on, say, cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon spill as a positive contribution to GDP). Economist Hazel Henderson is a long-time champion of such alternative measures; Ethical Markets, where she is a principle, tracks news from around the world on such matters, and in an early-2015 essay, she highlights several current initiatives:
Genuine Progress Indicator. This website includes numerous articles and scholarly papers about GDP, several alternative measures, and the GPI, which estimates “economic welfare,” which appears to have peaked in 1978, while GDPs have generally continued rising.
Beyond GDP: The Need for New Measures of Progress (pdf). A report published by Boston University in 2009, by the team that developed the GPI.
Living Planet Index. Developed by the World Wildlife Fund, the focus here is on species and habitats.
Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators. A twelve-topic assessment of quality of life trends in the United States.
Sustainable Society Index. A recently-developed metric that tracks twenty societal measures of sustainability (including sanitation, gender equality, income distribution, governance, and ecological factors) for individual countries around the world.
Gross National Happiness. A national initiative in Bhutan that has spurred interest from countries and cities around the world.
Happy Planet Index. An initiative that builds on Bhutan’s lead.
Canadian Index of Wellbeing. Since 2011, this initiative has looked at country-wide wellbeing, and recently Ontario became the first province to use the methodology.
Tags: evolutionary strategy, financial assets, global, justice, personal assets, ratings, tangible assets
Written by Resilient Investor.
Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, & deep ecology. She has long been a powerful voice for reconnection with the earth and a reorientation of our society in ways that acknowledge both the losses we have caused (and the pain we feel at that) and the ways that the natural world continues to nourish us. In recent years, she has highlighted the heroic challenge now before us, and encourages us to forge ahead, despite uncertainty about whether we shall succeed in averting global breakdowns.
About Joanna Macy
Video: The Great Turning and uncertainty
A good short introduction to her current themes
Book: Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone
Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone authored Active Hope with the intention of supporting readers in finding ways to respond to the mess in which our world finds itself. The book provides tools and guides the reader through a transformational process, integrating mythology, psychology, spirituality and a holistic approach to science.
Video: Active Hope
This 51 minute video contains footage from a talk by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, discussing their book “Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy.” In this 2013 talk, the authors share their thoughts on how and why hope arises through action.
Interview: It Looks Bleak; Big Deal, It Looks Bleak
In this interview, Joanna Macy addresses head-on the reality of being alive during the Sixth Great Extinction, and how she continues to live a life of joy while embracing the reality of the crises of our times.
Tags: close to home strategy, dualist, evolutionary strategy, future, personal assets, spiritual practice
Written by Resilient Investor.
Resilience helps us to thrive by:
anticipating and preparing for disturbance,
improving the capacity to withstand shocks,
rebuilding as necessary, and
adapting and evolving when possible.
Resilience is a powerful remedy for our uncertain times, allowing us to learn to live with the fundamental complexity of modern life. These are our favorite resources for getting up to speed on the ideas behind “resilience” and the ways that they are being implemented in communities around the world.
The Stockholm Resilience Center has produced some of the best educational materials for introducing the concept of resilience, including videos and brochures. Explore their rich site, which also includes research papers and arts projects.
Transition is a global network of local/regional groups working to build resiliency. While Transition began from the framework of preparing for a post-peak-oil world, the evolution of the movement has led to a wide range of local initiatives that foster local economies, social justice, increased renewable energy, and other projects that, like much in the Close to Home strategy, offer powerful contributions to any possible future scenario.
Transition United States compiles news and resources; also includes a map of the over 150 active Transition Town initiatives in the US.
Transition Network is the global Transition resource center.
Other great resources
Resilient Communities is a project from the UK that shares some roots with the Transition Network. In the words of founder John Robb, a resilient community produces the food, energy, water, things, and incomes it needs locally.
PostCarbon Institute’s Resilience.org
An information clearinghouse and a network of action-oriented groups; features a lively exchange of ideas.
Resilience Alliance
A research organization comprised of scientists and practitioners from many disciplines who collaborate to explore the dynamics of social-ecological systems. Here you’ll find more of the academic soil from which creative community-building solutions are growing.
YES Magazine special issue on community resilience
Includes a range of articles, most relatively brief, highlighting specific resiliency-building initiatives.
Tags: close to home strategy, collaboration, community groups, future, personal assets, resilience, tangible assets
Written by Resilient Investor.
Gar Alperovitz has had a distinguished career as a historian, political economist, activist, writer, and government official. He is president of the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives, and a founding principal of the Democracy Collaborative. His widely-praised book, What Then Must We Do?, looks at how our economic system got to where it is, and why the time is ripe for a new-economy movement to coalesce; it’s already becoming visible, and Alperovitz outlines how we can move it forward.
Gar Alperovitz website. Features current blog and articles, as well as information on his books.
Article: What Then, Can I Do? This article is a precursor to his book of a similar name, and features ten types of activism you can engage in to help the new economy to grow.
Democracy Collaborative. A research and consulting firm developing practical, policy-focused, and systematic paths towards ecologically sustainable, community-oriented change and the democratization of wealth.
Book: What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution. Alperovitz calls for an evolution, not a revolution, out of the old system and into the new. That new system would democratize the ownership of wealth, strengthen communities in diverse ways, and be governed by policies and institutions sophisticated enough to manage a large-scale, powerful economy. This next system is not corporate capitalism, not state socialism, but something else entirely—and something entirely American.
Video: What Then Must We Do? A forty-minute talk that introduces the key themes of Alperovitz’s book of the same name.
Tags: close to home strategy, community groups, dreamer, evolutionary strategy, local investments, personal assets
Written by Resilient Investor.
Jeremy Rifkin has long tracked our society’s leading edges, and in recent years has written on the rise of empathy, and on the disruptions being caused by technologally-mediated new business structures. He runs the Foundation for Economic Trends.
Jeremy Rifkin’s website for the Foundation of Economic Trends
Book: The Zero Marginal Cost Society. In Rikin’s newest book (2014), he looks ahead to a world in which the lightning-fast rise of a global “Collaborative Commons” leads toward a “zero marginal cost” economic system. He looks ahead and back, at 500 years of history spiraling from an economy based on the Commons, to capitalism, and in his view, an oncoming return to this technology-mediated collaborative commons as the foundation of a new economic system that could solve some of our sustainability challenges.
This article digs into Rifikin’s newest book’s themes of technological advances disrupting entire industries, allowing small producers and players to compete with established players thanks to a trend toward zero marginal costs.
Video: The Empathic Civilization. In this Ted talk based on another relatively recent book, Rifkin delves into how empathy has evolved, profoundly shaping the shape of human development and society. He also looks ahead, asking, “Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert planetary collapse?”
Tags: dreamer, evolutionary strategy, personal assets
Written by Resilient Investor.
Benefit Corporations are a new legal class of corporate structure, now available in over half the states in the US; Benefit Corporations are charged with not only serving the interests of their owners, but also creating a material positive impact on society and the environment. Learn more and find Benefit Corporations here.
An related initiative is the B Corp network, which while not a legal structure, is open to companies large and small in the US and overseas. To be certified as a B Corp, companies must meet higher standards of accountability, transparency, community service, and environmental sustainability. Learn more about the 1200+ B Corps.
Tags: ESG, evolutionary strategy, personal assets, sustainable global economy strategy, workplace