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Marcus Petz

My personal vision of ecological living can be found outlined in my PhD thesis.

This informs my current interests. I summarised these as rural development, resilience, and a commons approach. Below I will give some expansion on these aspects as they relate to ecological living. This is a freeform text so I won't be giving references, just my Weltanschauung.

Rural development is not regional development. Instead it is the development of human society in concert with the natural world. It is done within a nested hierarchy from the global to the bioregional to the local to the hyperlocal. We can see this analogously if we think of the biome, to the ecosystem, to the ecotone where we transition between communities and scales to the local scales. Here we can think of alpha, beta and gamma diversity. Such diversities are reflected in an interconnected web of connections and flows. These must act in dynamic balance over time. Likewise over time (both deep time and the human lifetime) there will be flux and change. A village may disappear or it may move about. What a moving village!! Yes if we look at transhumanance and shifting cultivation then we can see moving is quite normal. I would go further and look to how the Natufians lived and even the Kebaran culture before them. To my perspective we should develop rural areas in the direction of local sustainability as was found prior to the Neolithic Revolution of settled agriculture. The pre-Neolithic times of humans exemplify a more ecological way of living, one that is in tune with the natural ecology we find on this world. Developments as such, away from concentrations in the cities, which are unsustainable and very recent, can only be desirable.

Resilience is the ability to withstand shocks. In the case of civilisational resilience, we should move to a system that is able to withstand shocks and is not shock generating. Due to evolving processes of evolution, culture, over deep time we cannot just restore or do a simple regeneration of what was here before. There is no reset button on nature. A nostalgic myth around recovery tries to recreate medieaval times, or go back to the land in a retropian spirit. Rather resilience has to be transformative resilience that seeks to build a new possible future, nevertheless embedded in the natural world we are living in. It does not mean creating colonies on Mars, under the sea or even on land with new cities or constructed living environments which are not organic and enthused with life. So resilience for me has different elements or flows. These flows of value have been described as capitals. While not wrong, this use of the word capital gives a misleading picture to many. Think of your arm capital or your stomach capital and your brain capital - could you imagine growing any one of them without the others? Or existing on only one of these capitals? Similarly, to me resilience has to include many aspects. One of those aspects is community. What is the community and what is included in it? The non-human community is a part of the community. Thus community is an ecology in concert with the abiotic and biotic.

A commons approach. The concept of the commons has been destroyed in many people's minds by a thought experiment done by Harding where he wrote of the Tragedy of the Commons. It is now like saying don't think of an elephant - and then asking people to name a large gray animal. Most will say an elephant, not a megatherium or rhinoceros. So I want you reader to think not of the tragedy, but the Boon of the Commons. The commons approach is not the dominant view within the West, where individualism has crowded out communal or rather collectivist perspectives. The closest many come to thinking collectively in the West is of the family, but even that is often turned patriarchal and individualistic. The commons instead means that we think of what in common we can benefit from. It is a mutualism of give - and take in moderation, lest the resource be destroyed. The most familiar example is a public library. That public library (as they do in Finland) provides, books, tools, musical instruments, game CDs, board games. It has communal spaces that can be used for performances, meetings, quiet study and training. Yoga, game nights, talks, computer mediated experiences, video editing, listening to music on the free CDs can all be accomplished in the library. The costs of power, microwaves, computers, seating, tables, and kitchen ware, and all the items such as drills, sanders, game consuls etc. are covered by the taxes collected by the state. While some individuals may abuse or break things, there are systems in place to ensure that this does not happen most of the time. Many users does not mean all the books are broken and stolen. Rather the commons is cared for by most users. This is a commons approach, collectivized via the state. This is the boon of the commons - I do not have to buy a converter to turn old VHS tapes into digital media, I do not have to buy every book I might want to read, I do not have to arrange for the place to be clean and accessible. I just have to contribute a little.

So where might we find an ecological society that works on this basis of ecological living. One that is resilient, hold to a commons approach and is focused on rural development rather than urban with its problems. We might find remnants, these elements in many places. We do find others with this vision. For example the concept of Mercia, which came into being in the Midlands of England contains much of this perspective. I am a member of the Acting Witan of the group Independent Mercia which campaigns to bring this vision into reality. We find other elements of my ecological vision in different movements I am part of such as Ecohana. Nomadology and the NomadTown in Finland has looked at different aspects of the ecological way over its existence too.

Areas worked on

Metadata

Econaut: Marcus Petz

AlphabeticalOrder: Petz, Marcus

DeepestValue: Meaningful inclusion

RelationshipWithTruth: Truth as experiencing diversely

InvestigatoryQuestion: Is community economics a school in itself? What is syntropic finance, can it exist and does it work?

Commitment: 1W + ?