The time has come...

This morning, my wife told me that J.C. Penney's--a renowned, century-old chain of department stores--has declared bankruptcy. And unfortunately, many other large, corporate retail outlets will soon follow in its wake--simply because the still-accelerating Coronavirus pandemic, and the social distancing it requires for our survival, has paralyzed commerce all over the world--and commerce--the buying and selling of commodities--is the lifeblood of what I call "Glomart"--the global market economy--upon which our national economy and our consumer-capitalist culture depends. So, as this grim article portends, the American economy is already into free-fall, self-accelerating collapse, and following shortly thereafter will be the corresponding collapse of democracy, any sense of the public good, and the social contracts that make affluence possible for all but the super-rich.

But despite the pronounced contempt that this European writer has for American culture, our collapse into poverty, tyranny, and chaos will likely be followed by the break-up and collapse of every other industrialized nation on the planet, starting with Britain (because of its foolhardy "Brexit" move).  In a pandemic and global depression, there are no "winners." Even the most intelligent and adaptive nations, such as South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Canada, will face a rapidly shrinking GNP once global commerce has broken down.  And because the flow of capital always gravitates toward the top, these countries will likewise face systemic unemployment, increased poverty and homelessness, and the breakdown of public support for the social safety nets like universal health care and free education, once people are too poor to pay the taxes that it requires. Tyranny--driven by nationalism and xenophobia--will likely follow in these countries as well...

And yet, as Bill Mollison famously quipped, "We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities."
A crisis--even a terrifying existential crisis like this one--becomes an opportunity when we look at it through new eyes.  Here is one attempt to do so, by mapping the three core ethics of Permaculture--Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share--onto my own homespun slogan, a generic recipe for these challenging times:  "Grow Gardens, Grow Community, Grow Awareness."

Earth Care - Grow Gardens:  In these (or any) times of growing scarcity, the first thing we all need to do is to start growing our own food, as much as possible. This, of course, is easier said than done!  Gardening is difficult, and requires an array of skills and experiential knowledge that few of us suburbanites have any more. And in our affluent Glomart culture, whose major premises are alienation from nature and consumerism, our default sense of "gardening" involves monocultural lawns, attractive but inedible hybrid flowers (that are useless for pollinating insects), and neat, monocultural rows of vegetables, all nourished by external inputs of bagged topsoil (gleaned from the surface of new suburban developments), chemical fertilizer, designer mulch (often dyed for attractiveness), and of course, herbicides and pesticides galore. But if we combine the injunction to "grow gardens" with the ethic of "Earth Care" we get...Permaculture, which includes saving our "yard waste" rather than having it taken away, composting and nurturing our own topsoil rather than buying new soil, and cultivating biological controls for pests by lots of pollinating plants and shrubs that are attractive to insect predators, rather than spraying toxic herbicides and pesticides.  And this is only a start, for permaculture gardening involves lifelong learning, teaching, healing, and creating.  And this, in turn, leads to...

People Care - Growing Community.  In our Glomart consumer culture, we have all grown accustomed to simply buying what we need and hiring contractors to do what we were unable or unwilling to do--whether they were (ruthlessly exploited) housemaids to clean our houses; groundskeepers to mow our lawns or weed our gardens; plumbers, electricians, and other contractors to do what we lack the specialized skills to do around the house.  But in a contracting economy, such services will be harder to come by, and more expensive as well. There are two ways of coping with this increasing scarcity of commodities and of skilled labor on command.  The first, of course, is to make do with less.  But the second is to reach out to our neighbors--to grow community, whether by direct hire or barter (exchanging services, commodities, or skills) when cash gets short.  And then we may well find that our neighbors are willing to teach us skills we need to know, in return, perhaps, for services offered. Unlike the cash economy, which tends (especially in big box stores) to alienate buyer and seller, an informal barter economy tends to build community and solidarity. But we can take this further, of course, by creating organizations to learn, teach, and propagate knowledge and skills. And in this way, we take a giant step toward...

Growing Awareness - Fair Share Once people in neighborhoods and communities get to know one another and work together, and once they learn mutual respect in the process, it becomes far easier to grow awareness of what is happening in the larger world, and how that affects the local community. And by propagating permaculture, we also grow awareness of the social and ecological consequences of everything we do, so that sharing our surplus with the hungry and needy in turn becomes the first step in teaching them, in turn, how to grow gardens, grow community, and grow awareness. By such small steps, a new, localized, regenerative Gaian civilization can evolve, predicated on a culture of learning, teaching, healing, and creating.

Finally, awareness begins with self-awareness. None of the above can happen without a reservoir of good will; otherwise, in hard times, fear and hostility can all-too-easily take hold, and lead to truly ugly outcomes. As President Roosevelt aptly warned us, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  And the first place to master that gnawing fear is within ourselves--by learning and teaching the time-honored skills of breathing, observing, and letting go. A good, simple "starter" mantra for this skill was recently given to us by the Dalai Lama:  "Breathing in, I cherish myself; Breathing out, I cherish all living beings."  So knowing that "we are tied in an inescapable network of mutuality"(the living Earth) let us all renew our Bodhisattva vow to "take care of everyone, and abandon no one" and to condition our minds to do so by breathing, observing, and letting go of whatever thoughts, feelings, or sensations arise in our minds--and then, being well, doing good work, and keeping in touch.