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How To Make Your Community Resilient

The collapsitarian theorist Dmitri Orlov has a fascinating list of characteristics of resilient communities — that is, communities that are likely to survive hard times. The whole thing is worth reading. Thanks to the reader who sent it in. Excerpts: III. You Probably Shouldn’t carry on as if the community doesn’t matter. The community should see itself as separate and […]

The collapsitarian theorist Dmitri Orlov has a fascinating list of characteristics of resilient communities — that is, communities that are likely to survive hard times. The whole thing is worth reading. Thanks to the reader who sent it in. Excerpts:

III. You Probably Shouldn’t carry on as if the community doesn’t matter. The community should see itself as separate and distinct from the surrounding society. Its separatism should manifest itself in the way its members relate to members of the surrounding society: as external representatives of the community rather than as individual members. All dealings with the outside world, other than exchanging pleasantries and making conversation, should be on behalf of the community. It must not be possible for outsiders to exploit individual weaknesses or differences between members. To realize certain advantages, especially if the community is clandestine in nature, members can maintain the illusion that they are acting as individuals, but in reality they should act on behalf of the community at all times.

VIII. You Probably Shouldn’t question the wonderful goodness of your community. Your community should have moral authority and meaning to those within it. It can’t be a mere instrumentality or a living arrangement with no higher purpose than keeping you fed, clothed, sheltered and entertained. It shouldn’t be treated in a utilitarian fashion. There should be an ideology, which is unquestioned, but which is interpreted to set specific goals and norms of behavior. The community shouldn’t contradict these goals and norms in practice. It should also be able to fulfill these goals and comply with these norms, and to track and measure its success in doing so. The best ideologies are circularly defined systems where it is a good system because it is used by good people, and these people are good specifically because they use the good system. Since the ideology is never questioned, it need not be particularly logical and can be based on a mystical understanding, faith or revelation. But it can’t be completely silly, or nobody will take it seriously.

IX. You Probably Shouldn’t pretend that your life is more important than the life of your children and grandchildren (or other members’ children and grandchildren if you don’t have any of your own). If you are old and younger replacements for whatever it is you do are available, your job is primarily to help them take over and then to keep out of their way. Try to think of death as a sort of bowel movement—most days you move your bowels (if you are regular); one day your bowels move you. As a member of the community, you do not live for yourself; you live for the community—specifically, for its future generations. The main purpose of your community is to transcend the lifespans of the individual members by perpetuating its biological and cultural DNA. To this end, you probably should avoid sending your children through public education, treating it as mental poison. It has very little to do with educating, and everything to do with institutionalization. Also, if a child is forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in class, that creates a split allegiance, which you should probably regard as unacceptable. If this means that your community has to expend a great deal of its resources on child care and home schooling, so be it; after providing food, shelter and clothing, it’s the most important job there is.

Read the whole list.  Orlov says further:

This list of… um… commandments was been put together by looking at lots of different communities that abide. It is not dependent on what exact kind of community it is: whether it’s patriarchal or grants equal rights to women, whether it’s religious or atheist, whether it’s settled, migratory or nomadic, whether it consists of farmers or carnival performers, law-abiding or outlaw, highly educated or illiterate, whether it’s homophobic or LGBT-friendly, vegan or paleo… The only commonality is that they all have children, bring them up, and accept them into the community as adult members. These are biologicalcommunities that function as tiny sovereign nations, not one-way socialinstitutions where people join up and die, such as monasteries, retirement homes, hospices and suicide cults.

It occurs to me, reading the list, how difficult it would be for most of us to live in such a community, given the extraordinary degree of personal freedom we’ve all come to take for granted. How radically different these characteristics of communities that abide are from the way we live today! The list ought to make us all reflect on how much that liberty depends on the kind of prosperity generated by an advanced economy … and how an economic and/or technological collapse would occasion a swift and dramatic loss of the kinds of liberties we cannot imagine living without.

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