Duty, Honor, Country — motto of the US Military Academy
Those of you who have had to listen to my [often] interminable war stories know that I was an – indifferent – soldier. In spite of that, I have always had the utmost respect for those who have made the military their career. That is especially true for those who accept and try to live up to Duty, Honor, Country.
Duty bespeaks their commitment to service, and their acceptance of the responsibility for that service. Honor means that they carry out their duty to their Country with integrity and faithfulness. It also signifies that they have a code of living, a set of standards that that they try to live up to. Simply put, they try to do the right thing even when no one is looking.
Sadly, it often seems that Honor is no longer valued in our world. Many who try to live up to a set of standards see those standards – indeed, any and all standards – demeaned as old-fashioned and of no use in the modern world. The honorable are seen – even derided – as anachronisms; curiosities from a bygone age.
And yet, at this time of year we see the volunteers loading boxes with toys for children who otherwise wouldn’t have any. We see ordinary people serving meals to those without family in soup kitchens and church basements across the country. We see the Salvation Army’s bell ringers collecting money for the Army’s shelters and other services.
We see these ordinary people, and we recognize that they, too, are abiding by a code. They, too, are serving, with fidelity. And if they, too, had a motto, it might be:
The essence of Yin and Yang centers on the tension between two halves of a whole that are both divided and connected. – Angellia Moore
A few thoughts on “opposites” …
• This Chinese ideogram represents crisis. It is often misrepresented as a compound of “danger” and “opportunity,” but, in fact, that is the nature of a crisis. Crises are tipping points – the danger is that we fall into the muck. But they also provide us with an opportunity to become stronger.
We have seen examples of this in communities. Charleston and the SC Low Country was devastated by Hurricane Hugo. But out of Hugo’s damage rose a revitalized downtown with new amenities – the Aquarium, parks – and a new spirit.
• Scott Manning – one of the sharpest people I’ve ever encountered – recently reposted a note about the limitations of most studies of disasters. The note pointed out that too often they focus on the successes and failures of standalone events. His point is that we need a more integrative approach.
And he’s right. But I would also go a step further. Currently, we treat community development and community resilience (writ large) as two separate entities. Yet both are focused on strengthening the community. Both require investment and community attention. If successful, both increase a community’s adaptive capacity. But in practice, they seem to be at odds. To me, the synthesis of these not only makes sense but ultimately is essential if our communities are to Win Tomorrow.
• Charlie Kirk’s murder has brought out the best and the worst from both Left and Right. Kirk was a smiling Socrates, puncturing ideology-inflated beliefs. He was sometimes smug, sometimes condescending (and often annoying!) but – I believe – sincere in his beliefs, especially his faith.
On the Left, Bernie Sanders made an excellent video deploring political violence. But the celebrations of Kirk’s killing in the social media feeds from so many on the Left were disgusting. Similarly, the calls by some on the Right to doxx some of the worst offenders on the Left were equally disgusting. We can’t fix intolerance with more intolerance.
• One essential difference between “liberalism” as she is today and “conservatism” is their differing views of mankind. Most liberals (at least the ones I know!) have this view of mankind as a sort of tabula rasa, waiting only to be filled with good and right opinions leading to good and right actions. “Good and right” is determined by reason, and there is this optimistic belief of a sort of spiralling up as we gain more knowledge, ever redefining “good and right.” This leads to naive constructions such as native Americans as Noble Savages, and “mostly peaceful demonstrations,” and our rights are given to us by the law.
Conservatism, however, views humans as inherently flawed. We humans seldom behave rationally (although we rationalize a lot!). Though each of us may rue the fact, emotion and our subjective values drive most of our actions. I think there is also an echo of “history rhyming” that runs through conservative thought – that we can use our history as a guide for future action. I believe it is in this way we should understand the wisdom of Edmund Burke: society as “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
• A personal problem. I am as close to a First Amendment absolutist as you’re likely to find. Although I’m not religious (I don’t believe in Church-ianity) I respect those who are. That means that I’m against any repression or persecution of those of faith. Catholic organizations should not be forced to pay for abortions or birth control, IMO. Sincere evangelicals should not be forced to support gay marriage, IMO. Sincere people of faith should not be forced to do anything that violates their faith – full stop.
But here’s my dilemma. If we can “make no law prohibiting the free exercise” of religion, how can we stop the barbarism of genital mutilation by Muslims? How do we stop the abomination of Sharia Law being imposed in any community where Muslims are a majority?
Of course, our Founding Fathers never conceived of an America that was anything but Christian. The virtues inculcated by their Protestant forebears were embedded in the social contract that is our Constitution (Of course, many of those virtues are now under attack under the anathema of “White Privilege”). But Muslims come from very different cultures. While Christian faith communities are no longer trying to eradicate each other (at least in the West), Shia and Sunni are still at war with each other in many places, as well as killing Christians.
The only way I can resolve my dilemma is through visualizing a Yin and Yang. Yin is moral law, establishing what we must be and do as a good person, i.e., inner-directed. Yang is Man’s law regulating our dealings with each other – protecting the weak, establishing equality under the law, i.e., outer-directed. As Moore’s quote indicates, there is a natural tension at the boundary between Yin and Yang. It’s where my dilemma resides.
More importantly, however, the whole – Yin and Yang together – is greater than either by itself. Their tension forges a society of good people doing the right things by each other. Without Yang, we get the barbarism I abhor. Without the Yin, we get ever-changing laws without a firm basis, reflecting the whims of whoever is law-giver that day.
This is a little philosophical for a Friday afternoon, but I’m afraid it is an uncomfortable reflection of what we are becoming in the Western world. Our moral compass is becoming more and more demagnetized – many of us are having trouble finding the “True North” to guide our conduct. Without that compass, then our rights will be guaranteed to us only by the Law (h/t to Senator Kaine), changing whenever the law changes.
We see this already in the British laws censoring free speech, and allowing Muslim “grooming gangs” to harass (and much worse) young British women. We see a manifestation of this in the US, where a judge gives an attempted-assassin a slap on the wrist because he/she is gender-confused.
Without the union of Yin and Yang, there can be no real basis for a community. Instead, you have groups of individuals with no purpose greater than competing for power. What one builds, the other tears down. As difficult as it is, we must restore the creative tension of Yin and Yang to save our communities.
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but Tomorrow is ours to win. — Lyndon Baines Johnson
As many of you know, I have spent much of my later-career years focused on communities, especially community resilience. The “resilience” that I and my colleagues have talked about goes beyond the conventional “bouncing back” from adversity – survival – to include seizing the opportunities inherent in any “change” whether adverse or not, i.e., thriving.
But this put us in a somewhat awkward position: virtually all of our funding was coming from sources most interested in “surviving” crises. If you think of the Chinese ideogram for crisis, it is made up of the symbols for “danger” and “opportunity.” Our funding tended to focus us on mitigating “dangers” and on recovery when they overwhelmed communities, with much less attention to seizing opportunities.
Now that I’m self-funded (ahem), I’m trying to bring balance back into my own thinking and writing. As a part of this, I’ve struggled to find something that better captures our conception of “resilience.” If the purpose of a community is to provide the quality of life that its members want, then a community should be continually striving to meet or exceed that goal. I was searching for a way to express that idea when I stumbled across the quote for President Johnson.
Winning Tomorrow – the American Dream for communities! The American Dream is the essence of what makes America exceptional. It is inherently aspirational. It is built on a belief that anyone – even the poorest among us – can rise above even the humblest of beginnings to achieve a better life with hard work and persistence. Just as we as individuals work to make the American Dream a reality for ourselves and our families, our communities should work to make themselves better, more livable, places to work, play, and raise a family – they should aim to Win Tomorrow.
Certainly, achieving that purpose is complicated by the sea of changes in which our communities are immersed. Winning Tomorrow means that the community will continue to move forward no matter what challenges they face in the future. Communities are open systems. People are moving in and out of them continually. Today’s acceptable quality of life may not satisfy the community’s residents 10 years from now. Neighboring communities will also change. The community may be struck by a Wild Thing, resulting in loss of life, in damage to infrastructure, or to businesses closing. The state or federal government may enact new regulations altering community processes. And, of course, the community’s infrastructures and dispatchable capital will degrade over time if not maintained.
A community Wins Tomorrow if the community’s quality of life steadily improves over the long term. The community successfully adapts to its stressors before failure occurs. If the community fails (e.g., if it is devastated by a Wild Thing), it rapidly recovers, and regains its upward momentum.
It takes self-investment to Win Tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean mountains of money. It does mean institutional capital to make decisions and to implement them; human capital to take action; and social and cultural capital to sustain the effort.
Some of you cynics may scoff at this: “Mine is a poor community with few resources.” The American Dream doesn’t care where you start, or how poor you are. If you work hard and smart over the long haul, you can create a better life. In the same way, even the poorest of communities can Win Tomorrow, using what they have to take small steps that become bigger steps that ultimately become transformative.
In that sense, Winning Tomorrow is a journey, not a destination. It is not a one-time exercise but rather a continuing effort to make Tomorrow better than Today for the entire community. Efforts to Win Tomorrow should last for decades – ideally never ending. Winning Tomorrow mostly consists of incremental changes to individual community systems.
I know this may seem like what my good friend Warren Edwards calls the “Square Root of Ether” – an intellectual exercise with little practical merit. In my next post – It Began with a Bull – I’ll tell the story of a dirt-poor community who started its journey with nothing but a leader who cared about his community and the community is still working to Win Tomorrow.
One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are. ~ Cal Thomas
The ongoing wildfires in California have shone a light on one of the too-seldom recognized flaws of Democracy. The only real form of accountability for poor performance by elected officials is to vote them out. But what if there isn’t a viable opposition? What if the Public is not well-informed?
There should be no question in anyone’s mind that poor governance and incompetence are the root causes of the human tragedies in LA. The first duty of any government is to assure its citizens’ quality of life. At the community level, that means law enforcement, fire protection and support of a viable economic life. It doesn’t mean towing away anyone’s vehicle without appropriate notice for possible violations unrelated to the car (as is being done in Chicago, New York and other big cities). It doesn’t mean ignoring the deaths and destruction caused by black-on-black crime. It doesn’t mean accepting petty crime (so corrosive to community). It doesn’t mean cutting millions from the fire department’s budget while funding less fundamental functions.
There is a sad litany of poor performance by the politicians that led to this. A few examples:
Having ~100 emergency vehicles out of commission because they need maintenance – but not having the mechanics to work on them.
The Mayor of LA going to Ghana on a boondoggle – in spite of extraordinary warnings from the National Weather Service that a fire disaster was looming – before the fire.
Empty reservoirs and not a single new dam – even though the state’s voters had approved a $7.5B ballot initiative for more water storage – in 2014!
There is evidence that arson was the cause of at least one fire – caused by a homeless person. In spite of spending billions, the number of homeless continues to rise.
Water not being pumped because there was too little pressure – but that’s OK because at least 300 water hydrants had been stolen and not replaced.
Not having a scheduled controlled burn – because it might make somebody look bad if it went wrong.
Sending supposedly “excess” equipment to Ukraine – and then not replacing it.
There are many, especially on the Right, who blame the “progressive” policies pursued by the Democratic leadership, both locally and at the state level. It is easy – now – to recognize the folly of effectively incentivizing petty crime, for example. But the failure of governance in California ultimately is really not a Red vs Blue issue. It is a corruption issue. Most simply, when one party has been in power for a long time (whether GOP or Dem) and has no real opposition, corruption is the result. As Lord Acton said, Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is not that Democratic politicians can’t govern, it’s that they have been in power in California so long that governing is immaterial to many of them.
Their dysfunction is an extreme example of Pournelle’s Iron Law. Idealists start movements to right wrongs, to make life better in their communities. Over time the idealists get pushed aside; their places are taken by the bureaucrats and hacks. These may pay lip service to the founders’ visions and ideals but their real aim is to perpetuate their power and the perks that come with it.
In a sense, most of us are a little complicit in their sham. Too many of us accept the hacks’ lip service for intention; or vote for them because, well, we always have. We don’t go beyond the honeyed words to see the toxic acid corroding our communities. We are too caught up in our own day-to-day struggles to actually understand why things seem to be going so wrong. We believe the media’s half truths (“mostly peaceable demonstrations”) because to doubt is to risk being cancelled. Or maybe we take the coward’s way out, soothing ourselves with the “certainty” that we can’t make a difference anyway, can we? Whatever the reason, the corrupt incompetents remain in power, almost certain to be overwhelmed by the next crisis.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Poor opponent or not, vote the jackals out; don’t reward incompetence! If what you see doesn’t match what you’re being told – by either the politicians or the media – then suspect you’re being lied to. Dig at it until you get at the truth – and then act on it. Most importantly, don’t vote based on loyalty, or to just go along – vote for who is going to do the best job. If they don’t live up to your expectations, vote them out. And if none of that works, then vote with your feet – leave.
It might seem that I’m playing the Blame Game, but actually I’m not. I’m looking forward to how we can best help the devastated rebuild their shattered lives. Those of us thankfully muttering to ourselves “There but for the Grace of God…” are faced with a moral dilemma: how can we best help our friends in California recover?
Do we trust the recovery to the incompetents who contributed to this horrendous human tragedy? Do we find another way to get the funds needed for rebuilding and recovery into the hands that need them? Do we deny the funds so badly needed (no one seriously believes we’ll actually do this) to those who need housing, jobs; because we fear that the incompetents will fritter those funds away? I offer no answers but the questions demand them.
“I don’t set trends. I just find out what they are and exploit them.” ~ Dick Clark
In previous posts, I’ve highlighted trends that will likely impact our communities. Dick Clark’s quote is particularly relevant to communities. A community needs to be ready for the trends that are impacting them, or may impact them. If the trend is negative, a community should take action either to minimize the impacts or to be able to rapidly recover. If the trend is positive, the community should be ready to exploit and accentuate it, if possible.
The fly in this ointment is that we sometimes think we see a trend when there may not be one at all. We humans are pattern-seeking animals. We owe our survival as a species to our ability to recognize slight changes in familiar scenes; our ability to recognize strange whispers intruding on the rhythms of our lives.
In this post, I’m going to look at two different potential trends. One of them already seems to be impacting our communities. The second may be real or not. Only time will tell.
Peak Population
According to the United Nations, the rate of growth of the global population peaked at 2.3% in 1963. Since then it has decreased to today’s 0.84%. The UN projects that the global population will peak before the end of the century (~2080) with a very high probability. Recent model developments are indicating that the UN model is very conservative; peak population may well occur decades sooner. The Eurozone, China, Japan and Russia have all already peaked. The African population is set to continue to expand throughout the rest of this century, but not enough to overcome the declining populations elsewhere.
Peak population appears to be driven by two entangled factors. Compared to 1990, women globally are having one less child. In countries with declining populations, the birth rate is simply too small – below the 2.1 births per woman – to maintain the population. In large part this seems to be a consequence of greater prosperity. In richer countries families don’t need childrens’ work to sustain themselves. In richer countries women are more likely to be working. Life expectancies are greater in richer countries.
In fact, life expectancy is increasing globally – the UN predicts that about 1/4 of the world’s population will be 65 or older in 2080. By 2070, people’s longer life spans will result in over hslf of the world’s deaths occurring after the departed has reached age 80 (compared to only 17% in 1990). In the US by 2035, the number of people 65 or older will exceed those 18 and younger.
As the UN points out, the only reason the US has not peaked (and probably won’t) is immigration. Without immigration, the UN projects that the US population would slowly decrease from today’s 340+M to 245M by the end of this century.
An important global consequence of this trend is what it implies about climate change. All of the scenarios built into our climate models assume that global popuation will not peak (at around 10.5 B people) until early in the 22d Century. Fewer people mean fewer emissions. Thus, adjusting these models to account for fewer people may drastically alter the expected climate impacts.
In the US, the consequences of this trend will vary greatly depending on the community. Communities that rely on exports to Eurpoe for their economic vitality may find that their markets are shrinking due to the decreasing population. Competition for these markets is already intensifying. However, the growth that will occur in the developing world, particularly Africa, in the next decades means that there may be new markets to exploit.
Communities that do not have a significant immmigrant population may stop growing or even contract. Longer life spans are already increasing the demand for elder services (pet care is an interesting example); these communities may not have enough people with appropriate skills to satisfy that demand. These communities may also start to hemorrhage higher paying jobs. Companies requiring a technologically adept workforce may leave because of a lack of skilled workers.
In fact, the Peak Population implies that human capital will be at a premium. We are already seeing this in a decline in the ratio of those employed to job openings – now less than 1. A part of this is the Baby Boomer generation leaving the workforce. This increased demand for workers implies that wage-induced inflation is likely to persist.
However, this does not necessarily mean that our economy will decline. Gross Domestic Product is the working population multiplied by their productivity. If AI is able to increase productivity enough, our economy may even thrive.
As we’re already seeing in our stores, immigrants bring with them a demand for products we have seldom encountered before – food, fashion, and entertainment. They also potentially bring with them severe demands for community services – schools, medical facilities, transportation and welfare. While our new President may be able to stem the flow of immigrants, he won’t be able to stop it.
Peak Population will likely have a significant impact on Higher Education. The declining number of students will place great pressure on colleges and universities to survive. This will place a premium on their reputations and “branding.” Institutions of Higher Education likely will begin to react more forcefully to acts of student hooliganism.
Other possible consequences:
Greater demand for workers may well mean greater career volatility as workers go after a wider universe of opportunity.
As the well-to-do elderly die or dowsize, there is likely to be a glut of McMansions in some communities. This should drive prices down so that middle class families can afford them, but this will have impacts on the tax base of local governments and schools.
Immigration into the US, is already impacting the country culturally and socially. Peak Population is likely to accentuate these impacts, both positive or negative.
The 2024 election and political realignment
We’ve had entirely too much theorizing over what our election meant or didn’t mean. Four things stick out to me:
Trump got slightly more votes than in 2020, meaning he got about the same proportion of the electorate in 2024 as in 2020 .
Much of the theorizing (scapegoating?) revolves around percentages, not the absolute number of votes. Since the total number of votes cast in 2024 was well below that of 2020, Trump’s percentage of the total vote was bound to be higher.
Trump’s coalition (his mix of the voters) changed. He picked up more votes from blacks, hispanics, and blue collar workers than before. Conversely, his proportion of white votes went down slightly, continuing a larger trend.
Harris got 10 M less votes than Biden. She ran an abysmal campaign, and was a worse campaigner. A lot of Dems just stayed home on election day. The telling stat – to me – is that Harris was unable to get out as much of the urban Dem vote as Biden did. She reached only 80% of Biden’s total in Chicago (Cook County) and Philadelphia, and 75% in New York (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens).
All of this suggests that the demise of the Dem Party has been greatly exaggerated. Ultimately you have to give people “a reason to believe.” The Veep never did. Had Biden withdrawn sooner so that the Dems could have had a more “primary-hardened” candidate, they might have won.
Is there a trend toward political realignment of our country? A certain – “maybe.” Definitive conclusions about party realignment will have to wait for more detailed analysis of the absolute vote totals. I suspect that it will be a definite “Yes” in only a few states. Ideally this election might mark the beginning of the end of “identity” as an important factor in our elections. We can only hope.
The goal of resilience is to thrive. – Jamais Cascio
Both Claire Rubin and James Brooke were kind enough to forward to me a short piece from The Conversation, by Prof A A Batabyal of RIT (nice that someone is looking out for me!). Although the short essay started by looking at “sustainability,” it was really focused on “resilience.” In particular, Batabyal contrasts “ecological” resilience against “engineering” resilience.
He uses a lake and a bridge as exemplars: the former for ecological resilience (as defined by Hollings) and the latter for engineering resilience (as defined by Pimm). The bridge has only one stable state; the lake has more than one stable states. As the Prof points out, Hollings’ definition boils down to how much stress an ecosystem can withstand before it restructures. Pimms’ definition of resilience relates to how fast a system can return to equilibrium.
The Prof then points out that most socioeconomic systems – such as communities – “exist” in multiple states. Thus, Hollings’ definition should be favored. I disagree, for several reasons.
First and foremost, Hollings’ definition and the panarchic framework it leads to is not very useful for a community trying to become more resilient. The definition requires us to observe a system under stress and then watch it change. The amount of stress needed to force the system to change is its “resilience.” If I’m a community professional, in essence this implies I have to let the community fail before I can gauge its resilience! Of course this is nonsense – but it does point to the difficulty of predicting a community’s resilience using this approach.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks is knowing whether a community has restructured. Take New Orleans after Katrina as an example. There were several differences in the Before and After:
The city’s population dropped by a third.
Several new civic organizations were put in place.
There were measureable changes in the performance of important community systems (e.g., student performance improved).
Much of the sleaze in the French Quarter disappeared.
Did these indicate a change in structure?
Then there’s the “resilience-to” problem.In practical terms, we know that a community generally doesn’t have a single “resilience.” Rather a community’s resilience depends on
The stressor. A community may be able to deal with a great deal of economic stress, but fold like a house of cards in the face of a pandemic.
The speed of stress. A community may be able to adapt to a high level of stress spread over time but unable to tolerate the same stress experienced as a rapid shock.
The amount and type of damage, and the resources available for recovery.
Pimm’s concept of “engineering resilience” has the advantage of seeming more like what people think of as resilience. As the result of a Wild Thing – some sort of extreme event – a community loses capacity or functionality. Over time, the community recovers from the Wild Thing and regains its capacity. The time required to regain its functionality is the community’s resilience. Bruneau et al’s concept of resilience is very consistent with this idea.
From a community’s standpoint, community systems are either functional or failed – they either do or don’t meet the community’s demand for their function. After the damage wrought by a Wild Thing, the community at large doesn’t really care whether the health care system, or the system providing electricity are structured the same as before. They only care whether they can obtain the same (or better) health care as before the Wild Thing. They only care whether they can get light when they flip the switch, or air conditioning when it’s hot outside. Community professionals are most concerned with determining how soon after a Wild Thing the health care system is functional; how soon the lights can come back on after power is lost.
The stress testing approach* that Jennifer Adams and I have developed provides community professionals with a way to gauge this type of resilience. To summarize, community professionals postulate a particular Wild Thing – type, intensity, timing. This leads to a prediction of the damage the Wild Thing will cause. This in turn leads to a prediction of which community systems will fail. The resilience of each system is then determined by the use of dispatchable capital over time. The resilience of the community is inferred to be the resilience (time to recovery) of the last system to recover.
Community professionals and communities themselves want to know how resilient they will be to Wild Things before they occur. Simply put, Hollings’ approach to resilience may be useful in explaing what happened to a community as a result of a Wild Thing after the fact. It’s not very useful to community professionals trying to determine their community’s “recoverability” before a Wild Thing strikes. There is a certain inevitability to the “ecological” resilience approach when applied to communities. If sufficiently stressed, they will fail and restructure. When and how and to what is unanswered. Measuring the “engineering” resilience of communities using stress testing methodology gives community professionals answers they can work with, and is more intuitive. The approach can indicate paths to reduce damage and community system failures. It can also point to which additional resources could speed the community’s recovery from a Wild Thing. Ultimately, it can make recovery surer and more rapid – and communities more resilient.
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* M. J. Plodinec, “Stress Testing of Community Resilience to Extreme Events,” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 18(2), 151-176 (2021).
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Almost a quarter of a millennium ago today, 52 brave men ratified what has become perhaps the most important document in the English language. Largely written by a shy, red-headed Virginian, with a few significant changes by Ben Franklin, it was at first merely a justification of our breakaway from Great Britain. As memories of the Revolution have dimmed, this sentence has come to be seen as one of the foremost statements of the rights of Man.
The key phrase “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” harkens back to John Locke’s political philosophy of Life, Liberty and Property. By changing “Property” to the “Pursuit of Happiness,” Jefferson lifted the document from the humdrum to the profound. This phrase signaled that, at its best, our nation would be aspirational, reaching to be more than it was before.
We are told that the ratification itself was somewhat somber. And yet there were lighter moments as well: Hancock’s bravado in signing so boldly so that King George could read his signature without specs; Franklin’s half-playful admonishment that the signatories should all hang together or they would certainly all hang separately.
But afterwards there was a giddiness, a sort of Divine Madness, that gripped almost all of the signatories. John Adams wrote to Abigail that the signing would be cause for celebrations of that day for all time and everywhere. Some freed their slaves – their major source of wealth – because they could not fight for liberty while denying others freedom. It was almost Shakespearean. In fact, in some ways the Bard presaged this. Read Henry V’s speech to his “band of brothers” before Agincourt, to see how great words can inspire great deeds.
And in signing the Declaration, the signatories did, in fact, become a band of brothers, a sort of community –a group of individuals and organizations bound together by geography and self-interest.
As in any community, there were disagreements, sharp words, and views that sometimes could not be reconciled. Some members, at some times, pursued their own self-interest to the exclusion of the community’s. Some forgot that the pursuit of happiness was for all men; one’s rights ending when they impinge on those of others.
But above all else, this community, this band of brothers bequeathed to us something profoundly important – the purpose of a community. Above all else, a community’s purpose is to facilitate the pursuit of happiness of all its members.
At their best, this is what communities do – provide a quality of life so that their members can pursue their dreams. At their worst, communities allow their quality of life to diminish, or sometimes degrade it themselves. We see this in so many cities blindly “defunding the police,” empowering the criminals and preventing the innocent from pursuing their happiness. Most severely impacted are those who most badly need help. We see this in district attorneys and other law enforcement agencies in some cities selectively enforcing the laws, in effect denying the rights of some to pursue happiness. We see this in our partisan politics in some communities, where each side denies the humanity of the other’s adherents, to deny them their right to pursue their dreams.
But lest we lose hope, let us remember that our Revolution did succeed. The promise of the Declaration is embedded in our Constitution. Our Civil War, our support of Freedom in Europe during and after the World Wars, and the gradual clearing away of the dross of governance and government that has empowered the disenfranchised to pursue their dreams are all evidence that those glorious words of the Declaration still echo in our hearts and minds and communities.
We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice. ~ Stephen Covey
Last month, Claire Rubin – knowing my obsession with great interest in all things Resilience – sent me a link to a blog by Professor David Alexander – Resilience is an Illusion. After reading it the first time, I promptly went on vacation for two weeks, still pondering Alexander’s provocative post.
Surprisingly, I agree with much of what Alexander wrote, while disagreeing with his conclusion (obviously!). His view of Resilience is that of Hollings – a sort of Nietzschean eternal recurrence. This was originally focused on ecological systems returning to a stable state after a disturbance. Alexander quite properly points out that Change has become inherent in our lives. Instabilities of many types abound, often coupling with strong underlying trends. He concludes that Resilience “can only be attained by constant adaptation, which is a case of pursuing an ever-receding goal.” Thus, for him, the illusory nature of Resilience. He closes by advocating that we focus instead on vulnerabilities – identifying and reducing them.
Personally, I’m really uncomfortable with the Hollings view of Resilience (and his and Lance Gunderson’s overlying Panarchy concept), especially when applied to communities. I have two fundamental problems with the concepts: time and agency.
Even if this eco-construct is completely accurate over the long-term (e.g., it has been applied to the Roman Empire’s rise and fall), it is descriptive rather than predictive. If I’m a community leader worried about my community’s future, it adds nothing to my understanding of what’s happening next week, next month, next year or even next decade.
Similarly, while the concept is useful in describing the evolution of ecological systems, it seems to assume that over the long-term communities are essentially passive. Awash in a sea of influences, a community thus resembles a ball in a multi-dimensional game of ping-pong, unable to dodge any of the paddles aimed at it.
This ecosystem conception of Resilience when applied to communities (or any type of human society) ignores the fact that they are made up of humans. As implied by the Covey quote above, we think, we dream, we aspire, we create. While we cannot completely control our Future, we can envision what we want it to be and steer our lives toward it.
To put this in terms of the Law of Community Momentum, this ecosystem concept changes the Law from “A community’s trajectory will not change unless some force changes its path” (i.e., trajectory is destiny only if you take no action) to “A community’s trajectory will not change.” Alexander ultimately seems to accept this while calling Resilience illusory.
In fact, I strongly agree with Alexander that community resilience requires – demands – that communities adapt to their changing contexts. Alexander seems to despair of their ability to do so. I don’t. I believe that if a community’s leadership can stare into the abyss of the present clear-eyed and without ideological blinders, they can find a path to a better future. And if they are committed to their communities, they will take it. We have examples of this – Charleston, SC, taking advantage of Hurricane Hugo’s havoc to build a stronger, more livable city. We have Pittsburgh and Charlotte – each reinventing and reinvigorating itself – in the face of crumbling economic foundations. In each of these, we have leaders who cared about their communities enough to step up and act. Each of these a case study for the reality of Resilience. Resilience illusory? Absolutely not!
Life was a damned muddle – a football game with everyone offside and the referee gotten rid of – everyone claiming the referee would have been on his side. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
In this series, I am presenting scenarios that represent possible Futures. In the last – The Empire Strikes Back – I laid out a “low resilience” scenario. In that scenario, the Democrats triumph in the 2024 election, and essentially take control of the government. Freedom’s light dims, and communities have little say in their own Futures. I personally don’t expect either of these to be the path we follow. Instead I expect us to “muddle through;” to use John Mauldin’s apt phrase, our country will be a bug looking for a windshield.
This scenario starts with a bang – neither Trump nor Biden win the election in the Electoral College. Kennedy wins enough states so that neither Trump nor Biden have the requisite 270 electoral votes. The election is thrown to the House of Representatives. The incoming House has a slightly larger Republican majority, but it is still close – 27 states for Trump, 23 for Biden.
The new Congress starts similarly as in 2016, rescinding many of the regulations put in place by the previous administration. However, with only a slim majority little else is accomplished. The Sestercentenial in 2026 is rather muted; lost in the uproar over Trump’s decision to forcibly expel illegal aliens from the country. Although the vast majority of the country is initially in favor of the policy, the videos of the use of force and the heart-rending separation of families turns the tide of opinion against it.
In 2028, Governor Newsom narrowly defeats Governor DeSantis after DeSantis pauses his campaign due to the recurrence of his wife’s cancer. In 2032, DeSantis wins a large personal victory, but, again, the GOP has only a slight majority in Congress. As a result, compromises that “save” Medicare and Social Security are little more than kicking the can down the road. While there is much furor over individual initiatives each side takes, our policies lurch from Left to Right and back again, with no net accomplishments by either side.
In foreign policy, China’s threat to take Taiwan by force slowly recedes as China’s leaders try to stop “peak people.” Its population (already less than that of India in 2024) may decrease by as much as 1% per year. This same niggling problem impacts the entire developed world over the next two decades.
For communities, it is “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” To the good, communities are able to plot their own course; ever-changing policies mean that local politicians are only responsible to their voters for what they do. The Bad – polarization leading to migration. Communities in Blue states such as California and New York struggle to deal with a shrinking tax base and blight. They face the same problems unsuccessfully faced by the Rust Belt decades before. Red state communities must strain to provide services to a welter of new arrivals. And the Ugly confrontations between angry populists and arrogant technocrats proceed apace.
Under these conditions, communities that forge lasting coalitions between local government, local business, NGOs and higher education are likely to be the most resilient. Because of their extensive connections outside the community, they are most likely to take advantage of any opportunities and be able to leverage state resources. These coalitions are also likely to be flexible – they can “stop on a dime and give you nine cents change.” They are likely to recognize that positive change is incremental, and have the patience to accept incremental progress.
* This roughly mirrors the current makeup of the House. However, the outcome could easily be different depending on the votes for House members. The Republican will probably firmly control the delegations of 26 states; they currently have control of the North Carolina delegation by only one vote. I’ve assumed that the GOP will gain hold serve there to nail this down. Conversely, the Dems firmly control the delegations of 20 states, with very slim control (one vote) of Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
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Some of you may be interested in a new paper I have written that is now available online (abstract below). Published in the Journal of Critical Infrastructure Policy, it’s entitled “Making Policy for Complex Adaptive Systems.” Liesel Ritchie made the connection between myself and the journal’s editor, Rich Little; I’m most grateful to her!
Abstract:
We have come to rely on a variety of systems – social, economic, environmental – in our modern world. All of these systems are made up of people, working together, to carry out an important function. All of these systems are complex and adaptive. In the face of change, they each may react in different ways, often unpredictably. If they are unable to react to the stress caused by change rapidly enough, they may fail – no longer providing the product or service we’ve come to rely on.
Unfortunately, many policies are being enacted that do not recognize the nature of these systems. Though often well-intended, policies made that do not consider the systems that they impact can lead to failure of those systems. We use the rolling blackouts that began to afflict California’s electricity consumers in 2020 as an example of this type of failure. We conclude with lessons learned to help policy makers “embrace the complexity” of these systems.
This country is never going to move forward unless we end Republican rule in the House and Senate. ~ Bernie Sanders
In this series, I am presenting scenarios that represent possible Futures. In the last post of this series – the Triumph of the Trads – I laid out a “high resilience” scenario. This scenario was based on a resurgence of more traditional American values, and the muting of “woke-ness.” This post is thus the inverse of the previous ones.
In this scenario, President Biden and Vice President Harris are re-elected in 2024. Shortly after the election, a highly embarrassing on-screen moment leads the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. President Biden then resigns, admitting that his downward spiral is irreversible; within months he dies.
Harris becomes President at a difficult time. While the Democrats have won the White House and the House of Representatives, the Republicans have won the Senate, making it difficult to ram through legislation. The Russian-Ukraine war is dragging on. China has stepped up its provocations against Taiwan. While Hamas has been destroyed, Iran has found other ways to ratchet up its proxy war against Israel. And the border crisis rolls on.
The Sestercentennial celebrations in 2026 are marred by protests (many violent) and a variety of demands that all have some form of “social justice” in common. More disturbingly, in 2027, the BRIC counties band together to knock the US dollar off its perch as the global reserve currency. As a result, the cost of imports skyrockets, resulting in stagflation – high inflation and a jump in unemployment – in 2029.
The President counters all of this by
Colluding with the media to hide or obfuscate all of the potential bad news;
By Executive Order, directing federal departments to establish Offices of Information Management to “counter the flow of mis- or disinformation;”
Setting up a new office in the Department of Justice to aggressively pursue those who “knowingly spread mis- or disinformation.”
As a result, American free speech becomes something like that in Scotland under its Hate Crime Act. You can say anything you want, but it is likely that you’ll be prosecuted if someone is offended, especially if that someone is a federal bureaucrat.
In 2028, things take a turn for the worse – in a lightning raid, China seizes Taiwan before we can even mobilize our naval forces. This is barely mentioned by the mainstream media, but it is a rude awakening for our allies. NATO effectively splinters; Ukraine falls; in spite of US opposition, Israel bombs the Iranian nuclear sites touching off a major war in the Mid-east.
The 2028 Presidential election finds Governor Newsom of California against Governor DeSantis of Florida. In October, DeSantis suddenly withdraws because his wife’s cancer recurs. This means that the Republicans are not on the ballot in several states and Newsom wins. As a result, he begins to implement what had been done in California in the rest of the country.
Ballot harvesting becomes the Law of the Land. Illegal immigrants are given the right to vote in federal elections. In the 2030 elections, the Democrats win control of both houses of Congress. In 2032, Newsom is reelected, and the Democrats win supermajorities in both the Senate and the House, realizing Bernie Sanders’ Dream. As in California, only “woke” opinions are allowed – Congress passes and Newsom signs a law that makes it illegal to say anything that offends anyone of any protected class.
After being reelected, Newsom is faced with the potential insolvency of Medicare and Social Security. He solves the former by replacing Medicare with a new National Health System. He replaces Social Security with a Universal Guaranteed Income. He pays for the latter by seizing the bank accounts of everyone worth $400,000 or more.
This scenario is perhaps the worst for communities. They are under extreme stress. Those economies that have relied on exports find that their products are no longer cost-competitive. Under this scenario, any brakes on the federal bureaucracies are effectively eliminated. The federal government effectively decides what communities can and cannot do in the face of Wild Things. Instead of a Culture of Accomplishment, communities take on a Zero Sum mentality (like the South after the Civil War) – no one can gain anything unless everyone does. The quality of life in our communities tanks!
This is the “Low Resilience” scenario. Communities have few resources, much less say in how they can be used, and a polity best characterized as cynical and full of resentment.
My personal view? Our country now stands at a crossroads looking at signposts toward the Future. One signpost points to the Triumph of the Trads: a reaffirmation of the American Dream – a government and a society that functions as if people – you, I, our kids, all of us – matter. It points to a country that provides plenty of opportunities to achieve our dreams, and in return asks only that we respect each other’s aspirations.
Another signpost is toward a land of supposed equity – the Revenge of the Woke. No one can advance unless all do. A country willing to be mired in mediocrity that not only disrespects our aspirations but actually seems to fear those who dare to Dream.
There is another road leading off from the crossroads into a dark forest that has no signpost, one that finds us muddling through without a coherent direction. In the next in this series, we’ll look at a “Muddling Through” scenario.
Community Resilience 