The Mess In This Country Needs Coordination, Strategy, & Huge Big Coalitions... We Could Decide To Do It
It's Time To Build A Movement But We Have To Want To
I've been quiet out here on the interwebs with missing political analysis & personal reflections... because behind-the-scenes I've been coming to terms with how to talk about some hard truths.
In case you don't get to the end of this post, I'll put the take-away right up front:
We need to be acting much more strategically, and coordinating more together as a society. And saying that we need to do that.
The problems are huge. It's not working to just hope someone else handles it. They're not. The big problems are not getting handled coherently and strategically by our society overall.
We could do more than what we're doing now by driving a loosely coordinated political movement that brings together coalitions of work that's already being done... and building on that existing work to do bigger things to shift the country's conscience + zeitgeist + moral compass. To reach more people. To get more attention. To drive more of the narrative.
We could actually do that. First we need to decide to.
We need to get strategic. We need to use our brains. We need to build bigger coalitions. Way bigger. We need to build bigger momentum.
And we need different approaches to get thereā¦ because what we've done so far has not created a big national movement that's fired up Americans to get out of their comfort zones and do different stuff.
We need to get there. We can.
Our nonprofit has a big picture 5 Thing approach that every group or any person could use nationally to help us get to bigger momentum and a national movement.
It's achievable. We need to do it. And we need to decide to.
Okay so that's the takeaway. I've essentially disappeared for weeks trying to get to the point where I could say this stuff out loud (plus doing other stuff) because we don't seem collectively ready to say it. I haven't been ready. Why is that so damn difficult?
The last few weeks I've disappeared almost completely from everyone's life that I know in the real world (more so than normal) as I've been working to put out a couple of helpful tools that can help us with the next steps for this work we are serious about growing. These are cominng out here on our Substack this week:
One is a how-to guide... of how to actually do all the shift we keep talking about. It's done but not posted.
One is a giant list of ideas for people to get started with. Once I finish typing it, anyway, because right now the list is partly still a bunch of handwritten notes.
Anyway. I had a point. My point is something has shifted for me the last few weeks.
I keep yapping on and on about how things are getting more intense and we need to do things differently.
But we actually need to do things. Differently.
There's this denial between the life we were used to in the before-times (whenever that was) and where we're at now. The cognitive dissonance is real.
This planet is in deep trouble. I don't know if you've noticed. But it's not going particularly well.
What we're seeing are the beginning of the effects of feedback loops of planetary systems starting to go wonky. Some of them have been going wonky for quite a while... and it's starting to get really weird.
There's going to be a lot more of that. A LOT. I'm not writing that to be alarmist. Or even scary.
I'm writing it because it's freaking true and we should start acting like it. This is just where we are.
Some of the scenarios are beyond alarming. End times stuff.
But some of the scenarios are not quite so terrifying. Some are survivable.
If we're bothering to adapt & actually survive, that is, which is an important decision we should actually make - as a society.
We haven't decided to. Yet.
Nobody really knows what's actually going to happen either way, and that's the truth.
Except that it's not going to stay the same as it is now. And it's going to keep getting dicier.
Not deciding to act differently is a decision.
But we can start making different decisions.
Any day now. Any day.
Systems science is too damn complicated to know for sure what will unfold.
What that really means is we don't know enough about how all of the systems on the planet work and how every single thing interacts with every single other thing - and it's just too hard to predict what's going to occur.
But we know enough about the systems to know that they are off kilter and they are going more off-kilter.
That's not going to go very well for the humans.
We're very fragile. So are all of the creatures that we share this planet with.
It's been a pretty fine-tuned operation for an extended era, with some balance and whatnot.
When you lose the balance, stuff starts to die. Disasters happen. Systems go completely out of whack. Ecosystems change. Food sources change. Water availability changes. Species migrate... humans included... diseases too.
We already have an increasing world population of humans living increasingly in high-hazard zones. In a time of increasingly intense disasters. Plus all this systems science stuff.
Plus political instability... which is totally predictable given the other instability because people who have wealth and power will use racism and hate to steal more wealth and power because a crisis is unfolding and they don't want to go down with the ship. They predictably use their wealth and power to scapegoat people and divide populations while they make off with all the good resources and the (illusory) safety and security.
That's pretty much where we're at.
How are we fighting it?
Well, we're sort of... watching. That's what we're doing.
"Oh that's really bad!" we exclaim. "Oh my goodness what are we going to do?"
Well I'll tell you something.
What we need to do is get extremely serious about building connection and growing community in the places where we are... and taking all of the existing groups that are out there and doing a whole lot more with them to help us get ready for this time; to fight the challenges we face.
We need some serious resilience. We need work on our infrastructure. We need sustainability. We need shorter supply chains. We need actual food security.
We need to get serious about problem-solving. Where we live. At the state level. Nationally. Worldwide. But we've got a country that's busy banning books and hiding history and policing nicknames.
How are we going to solve these big wicked problems when as a society we can't even understand the science that face masks prevent disease spread?
Plus we need some freaking humanity up in this country like stat.
Like we need to try and take care of each other instead of all of this hateful BS. Increasing disasters and planetary instability are going to go a whole lot better if we're trying to take care of each other.
Having a movement of moral courage will go a whole lot better if we center the whole darn thing on humanity.
Okay so how do we get this thing going?
The lesson I've gotten this summer is we have to start right at square 1 where everyone else needs to start... with building connection and community ourselves. To anchor this initiative.
We have to build an actual cohesive & coherent group of volunteers for the nonprofit itself, and have some coordinated direction together. Essentially, we need a Team. We're close. We have the pieces in place to get there soon. That's the next move. Then we work together on outreach & coalition-building & we'll be off and running.
Anyhoo. We don't need all the details on that today. It's not the main point.
For now, I just wanted to do an update. I was hoping to have the guide + the big idea list done today but some intriguing life stuff is going on so I'll be back ASAP.
My main point is... we need to be serious about strategic ways to behave differently in politics and in everyday life. We're not there... it's confusing, and it's not helping us find our way through.
Again... we need to get strategic. We need to use our brains. We need to build bigger coalitions.
We need to do bigger things to shift the country's conscience and zeitgeist and moral compass.
We need to build bigger momentum. Or: momentum of any size to start.
And we need to actively decide to go after all those things. We need to choose to.
It's going to be awkward & uncomfortable... but so is fascism, and so are unmitigated climate disasters.
We have options.
This non-profit was created for this moment; for this era. Because of systems science, politics, history, and sociology.
Now we just need to build the the work, bring in actual volunteers, bring in cash to do the things, and grow enough momentum + coordination to grow the movement.
Just that stuff. Details.
Finally I would add that I'm understating how much we need the cash to grow the work. Here we are with this highly unique thing... and it's operating on fumes + sheer dogged persistence.
If you're in a position to help, we could use it.
If you're one of the people who has helped us get us this far, thank you thank you thank you thank you. Every day every single donation we get in is noticed and used for things that help keep this going.
We're a few thousand short of where we need to be so I will be doing a big fundraising push over the next weeks to get this thing better anchored.
Appreciate your help getting this going. Someday perhaps we will find the big political money everyone's always going on about. For now it's individual donations from our small but growing crowd.
Be safe out there. Take care of yourself and your people.
Shift is coming. How much of it we drive will depend partly on the decisions we make in the next few months.
I'm pretty sure we want to. Just today I asked on my FB if anyone still talks to people on the phone for pleasure and about 54 people said yes. Or that they wanted to. I have copied and pasted their names into a Google doc so I can put them in my getdex so it can help me remember that I am not alllll alonnnnee howling into the wilderness. Because relationships are where community starts. Relationships and front porches, but I'm shy, so porches are hard.