5.2.8 Relocalization Thesis

We are in an era of unparalleled growth which clearly creates both opportunity and challenges.  The focus of this essay is to inspire more awareness around relocalizing our ever more globalized lives by building relationship to our local space and community.  

Mankind has accelerated rapidly since the Industrial Revolution.  Centuries went by with fewer changes than happen in a single year in the 21st century.  We have improved infrastructure and done amazing things through industrialization, technological advances and globalization.  This thesis is about the other side of that same coin.  We must consider some of the challenges arising with modern day globalization and industrialization -- especially regarding our own personal and our planetary health.  The solution to many of the problems that we as individuals, societies and a global family can all be solved by the simple weaving of the web of Relocalization.  

I propose that the Industrial Revolution both in technological advancement and in philosophical thinking paved the way for modern era globalization.  Some of the key themes of the rapid growth include a need for efficiency, an obsessive belief that growth is good, and an irrational desire to exploit all resources that we find.  

Sadly, I find that these values embedded into our modern era corporations and even forming our laws and trade agreements (TTP).   Corporations are granted the status of citizens yet they have no moral compass.  Indeed, they legally are bound to maximize profits.  This means that our governmental policies lag behind corporations amoral raping of the Earth.   The fact that the economic engine driving our society is obsessed with efficiency and bottom line as opposed to health and happiness of our citizens and mother Gaia shows a fundamentally exploitative problem of our modern culture.  This is a movement that can only be reversed by a grassroots collective of global citizens choosing the creation of local relationships: buying goods, teaching children, stewarding the land, and creating trust.  

Sir Albert Howard, a modern pioneer of the Organic movement suggests that we must see
'the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal, and man as one great subject.'  Many within the corporate machine can't even see outside of their own cubicles imprisoning their health and lives in concrete prisons built for efficiency.   Howard's systemic awareness is aligned with the philosophy of my Master's thesis in Integrative EcoSocial Design.  I contend that we need to see the challenges of globalization through many lenses:  Economic, Ecological, Political, Social.  Consequently, we need to capitalize on the  interconnectedness of these many systems.  

The mechanistic reductionism of the Industrial Revolution has mistakenly valued solely economic profit at the expense of the subtler biological systems of life.   Biology and ecology have been cast aside as man falsely assumes his dominion as master over nature.   Reductionistic Materialism works well in chemistry and physics and it is getting us into trouble by being applied callously to biological systems including people and mother Gaia.  In effect, we have allowed the industrial Revolution -- great with chemistry and machines to rule our biological systems from our forests and farms to even our own health.   This Cartesian reductionism defaces the glory of biology by dismissing any aspect that it doesn't yet know how to measure or how many variables are involved.  Many industrialized assumptions miss the value of life.  As Wendell Berry prophetically asks  "Suppose you farm, not for wealth, but to maintain the integrity of the practical supports of your family and community."   Efficiency and the all-mighty dollar have blinded all other aspects of industry (and life) including having healthy lives, kids and community, and purposeful work for all the citizens of our community (including elderly and kids.)
 

Corporations today are beginning to value the triple bottom line.  There is growing awareness of the problem of outsourcing economic profit to nature (degradation), or slavery, or fossil fuels or topsoil erosion.   However, even that "triple" is quite limited in accurately quantifying the complexity of the biological system called mother Gaia.  My degree in Integrative EcoSocial Design attempts to integrate Ecology & Economy with Social awareness regarding communities and Politics to create win win designs that are great for humans and the earth and our progeny.  

Relocalization is a concept that regards how we can mitigate some of the challenges of globalization by creating community in our own lives and meet our own needs.  To be sure, no man is an island, and simultaneously, at this point, most of us are drastically virtualized in many arenas of our lives.  Indeed, many of us live a virtual life: with virtual friends on facebook (or "Friends" on TV), eating pre-made food, working in fabric covered boxes.  We need a system shift in our macro-globalized system to numerous grassroots systems that support and create localized communities.   We must make this change on both a macro system level and within our own lives.

I bring the theme of Relocalization to light largely because the health of our global population and of mother Gaia is deteriorating.  Two of the beautifully simple ethics of Permaculture are challenged (Earth Care and People Care) and we as a society have come so very far from our center, that we need to bring ourselves back into our bodies and bring our bodies back into our communities.  

Permaculture Design offers us many lenses through which we can and indeed must relocalize our lives for the sake of our own health and the health of our planet: alternative energy, natural building, localized economies, nature stewardship.

Opportunities for application of Relocalization is embodied easily within the 7 petals of the permaculture flower.   Mollison and Holmgren wisely articulated many areas in which we can apply a  conscious awareness around the interconnection of the health of all systems:
    •    Health & Spiritual Well Being
    •    Education & Culture
    •    Tools & Technology
    •    Building
    •    Land & Nature Stewardship
    •    Land Tenure & Community Governance
    •    Finance & Economics.
Permaculture doesn't explicitly insist on always using local, especially in Tools & Technology and Education; however, the basic ethics of each of these petals applaud conscious awareness in the health of ourselves and the earth and being in Right Relationship with all parties involved in the relationship.   Granted, with our globalized world, it is difficult at times to know who is my local community.  This yields an opportunity for awareness of maintaining a conscious relationship with these elements in your life.

There are many indictments of the modern industrialized world deteriorating the health of our planet and our bodies primarily for profit:
    ▪    Stephen Buehner promotes natural healing while showcasing many of the environmental and health risks associated with the pharmaceutical industry in  The Lost Language of Plants.
    ▪    Overdiagnosed reports the many challenges of Allopathic Medicine in general and the problems that this specialized reductionistic approach creates for itself.  
    ▪    The Story of Stuff and The Commercialization of Childhood offer a scathing look at modern consumptive materialistic economies and how our consumeristic world is devouring itself.
    ▪    Wendell Berry offers insightful perspective on the complicated nature of the integration of food systems, communities, health care and much more in many of his essays.  
    ⁃    "The farm-to-city migration has obviously produced advantages to the corporate economy.  The absent farmers have had to be replaced by machinery, petroleum, chemicals, credit and other expensive goods and services from the agribusiness economy, which ought not to be confused with the economy of what used to be called farming."
    ⁃    Efficiency has created unemployment of both useful people and of children and elderly who do work in communities but needn't in our modern society.  This calls seriously into question "What is man for?" What is our purpose?
    ⁃    Loss of the general practitioner in communities in favor of specialists out of fear for malpractice (loss of trust) and increase the anonymity and facelessness of health care and an increase in the anonymous insurance sector rather than insurance of a strong local network.

Credit and technology took over what used to be the work of hundreds of thousands of citizens.  Indeed whole families and communities farmed and stewarded the land together.   We have removed labor in the name of efficiency yielding fewer jobs for farmers and more profit for banks and tractor builders. We have willingly created massive unemployment for the sake of more money going to the corporate elite.   This plays back into the question of whether we value employing our citizens or artificially create efficiency by doing "more" for less cost even though we radically subsidize fossil fuels which displace human work.  Indeed, the country has become the colony of the city in all the worst meanings of that term.  Colonies are often stripped of their resources and values and then discarded as unnecessary.   We are losing local people caring for the earth, caring for the seeds of local spaces.  
When we speak of alternative energy, many people only consider Solar, Wind and Micro-hydro.  I propose that human labor be valued as a wonderful source of alternative energy that gives purpose to the unemployed and brings cohesion to community and hope to kids and inclusion to the elderly.  It is hard to quantify this movement because it operates on every level of our society and speaks directly to our nature as human beings living in community and with mother Gaia.
Wendell Berry writes of our farms and I think it is metaphorically true of our own health and happiness:  "But as scale increases, diversity declines; as diversity declines, so does health; as health declines, the dependence on drugs and chemicals necessarily increases.  As capital replaces labor, it does so by substituting machinery, drugs, and chemicals for human workers and for the natural health and fertility of the soil."

MY Output Packets viewed through the lens of RELOCALIZATION:
PreCapstone
OP2  Rethinking Energy is about my education, design and installation of a 1 kWatt solar system at my homestead in Baja, Mexico.  It shows some of the realities regarding our highly industrialized fossil fuel burning power plants and encourages Solar wind and micro-hydro. Our system creates approximately 5 kWatt-hours per day here in Baja that suits all of our electrical needs; whereas, the typical American household uses 20+ kWatt-hours per day.  Reducing consumption and using renewable sources of energy are both extremely important.
OP3  The Land of Milk & Honey powerfully demonstrates the need to move away from the industrialized food world where we refuel our bodies and cars at fossil fuel gas stations.  The Land of Milk & Honey is a workshop I teach at Esalen institute every spring for the past 6 years.  We discuss and practice reclaiming traditional farmstead arts through many lenses: food preservation, beekeeping, and herbalism.  We seize the opportunity to practice traditional food preservation techniques ranging from fermentation, culturing, and cheesemaking to dehydration and infusion.    In the ongoing battle against industrialization, I challenge everybody to eliminate all soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup from their diet, basically eliminating most highly processed foods on the market.   In addition, we examine personal health and dive into herbalism and the garden to look at our relationship to the natural world and communities (of microbes, bees and plants) all around us.  
OP4 Designing to Design:  This project was a design for sustainably feeding 200+ people for a 10 day gathering around the summer soulstice in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.  Highlighting the value of good community governance both on social and professional levels (work and play).   Highlighting a 200 person gathering, we envision community building from both the perspective of feeding each other (catering) and building community.  Fun, peace and love.  

CAPSTONE
OP2 Health & Happiness: This vast OP discusses broad ranging patterns of health in our personal ecosystem ranging from nutrition and exercise to attitude, purpose and our relationship to nature and community.  I discuss strategies for moving our personal health care away from pharmaceutical allopathic disenfranchisement to the joys of personally empowered health.  This OP inspires awareness of our relationships to our bodies, our communities and the greater ecosystem, we can personally take control of our Zone 0 health and happiness.
OP3 Chocolates & Cordials:  In this OP, I wanted to view ways in which I could view relocalizing our economies.  I create structures for learning and product development for two of my passions: chocolates and cordials.  This OP explores creating sustainable business practices and practices that feed a small scale entrepreneur.  Fair trade practices and natural herbs are incorporated into both of these sustainable business developments.
OP4  Land Stewardship: Relocalizing our care of the earth comes through information and hands-in-the-dirt awarenesses of rebuilding our soil and food supply.   This human awareness and care for our local spaces and homes is a critical piece of relocalizing now for the health of mother Gaia.    In addition, this OP documents several bourgeoning localized business opportunities for myself and growth as a landscape designer and steward of mother Gaia.

These past 5 years have brought incredible awareness to the general population (at least in USA) of the economic inequalities in our modern democracy.  And this election cycle has peeled the curtain away from a highly rigged process in which those with power are leveraging their power to gain more power at the expense of the 99% and with potentially catastrophic effects for mother Gaia such as high levels of toxicity, mass extinction, and climate change.  

I appeal to the entire Gaia family that Health & Happiness in our selves and our communities is a much better measure for success as a species than showing that we have the biggest numbers of growth ever.    Community, relationship and purpose for the people are more important than "artificial technological efficiency" making extra money for the corporate elite who both charge the "farmers" for the fossil fuels and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in addition for the seeds and the machinery which we need to grow for our human community.  

Obviously, this "efficiency" that increases economics for the global elite is not accurate accounting.  There is more money funneled into the banking industry and specialists than would be necessary with stable local communities.  Wendell Berry writes regarding the growing need for many types of insurance in small rural communities "all of this money is lost to us by the failure of community.   A good community as we know, insures itself by trust, by good faith and good will, by mutual help.  A good community, in other words, is a good local economy.  It depends on itself for many of its essential needs and is thus shaped, so to speak, from the inside--unlike most modern populations that depend on distant purchases for almost everything and are thus shaped from the outside by the purposes and the influence of salesmen."

As the populist Berner movement gains awareness that a grass roots campaign utilizing the interconnectedness of social media is much more powerful than oppression under the corporate owned media broadcasting to humanity an artifically limited illusion of choice.   Globalization is a double edged sword, a tool that could herald the downfall of humanity or our current socio-political-ecological structure or a new system that allows for interconnectedness between regionally localized communities.   Globalization certainly has created new vast opportunities for the mixing of information and resources.  There are many opportunities for even greater levels of community and education.  Today, more than ever, there is an opportunity for people to connect with others with similar interests in a virtual setting.  This inclusion in community should not stop living breathing relationships; however, ideally, can foster a sense of fitting in for otherwise marginalized members of our global community.   Information has become more available today than at any point in history and although much may be misinformation, there is global access to huge amounts of information.  

We must also look to the future and recognize the interconnectedness of social, ecological and economic policies.   A horse drawn miller who does all of his work with horses rather than bulldozers thereby tending this ecological niche for both his own gratification (joy of forests) and the economics of his son who is following in his business states "I hope maybe there'll be trees here for my son to cut in ten or twenty years."   The ecology and the economy are immanently linked to our choices of community and relationship.