Part 1. What do I mean by “civilian”?
(and pardon the grammar and sentence sloppiness, I am writing this on the fly. You know how I am, if you’ve been following this blog for longer than five minutes ha ha. And even if you’ve only been following this blog for five seconds, you are warmly welcome here and I deeply appreciate your presence thank you.)
This is for any of you, whatever you call yourselves be it collapse professional, climate activist, whatever. When I say “civilian,” I’m talking about anyone who’s not a “professional” (however you yourself would define professional, whether you are a paid consultant, speaker, writer, yadda yadda, or a grassroots volunteer activist, or both, or something in between, in any of the terrain related to climate awareness, climate collapse, societal collapse, permaculture activism, or however you would word it in that whole ball of yarn.
If you are in someway dedicated full-time, fully committed, whatever you want to call yourself, then my current label would be something like collapse professional. Or maybe eco soldier, earth guardian, or something like that.
All of us who devote most or all of our working hours (or maybe even most or all of our waking hours, some of us) to work centered on any of the following movements, I would consider us as a kind of eco-soldier / professional.
Those movements are: Riot for Austerity (AKA 90% Reduction Challenge), Degrowth, Deep Adaptation.
And Permaculture design movement. Regarding that last one, a big caveat: I’m not just talking about homesteaders who are growing food for themselves I am talking about people who are full-on involved in the design and education movement. That includes all aspects of permaculture awareness such as energy descent; building community.
And people who do not place themselves in that category — those folks, I would label “civilians” for purposes of this blog.
Now, civilians can care very much about the environment, and be collapse-aware, so it’s not a term that connotes any particular lack of knowledge or awareness. Rather, I use the word civilian in the same context that military people use the word civilian. And, a civilian is somebody that we have responsibility to protect and watch over.
As for what I mean by “The Talk,” that is, in a nutshell, asking people where they want to be, and who they want to be with, as things start going downhill.
You can word it however you want. Some civilians might resonate with the phrase “financial collapse” or “currency collapse” or something, for example. Even if they cannot at all relate to the concept of biospheric collapse, climate crisis, etc. Receptivity will also depend on how serious the conditions have become in your local area.
Or you can just refer to upcoming political unrest. A lot of people in the USA are expecting some pretty serious stuff to hit the fan this fall, leading up to the elections in November.
You can also just refer to “things going downhill”; TSHTF.
We can’t force people to make plans, but we can encourage them in that direction. In Part 2 of this post, I will talk about potential ideas that you might want to include in “The Talk.”
This post was motivated by my walk home the other night in the rain, which started out as happy happy joy joy singing in the rain, posting a gleeful Live video from under my umbrella as I splashed through the puddles.
But then as I got closer to my house, I ended up walking through 18 inches of water in the streets. (The water was only barely lapping at the curb, no water in our houses.)
It came to me then that I needed to have “The Talk” with my housemates.
We can also have some version of this talk with other people who live near us, as well as with people who don’t live near us but are in our sphere of caring.
Part 2. Questions/topics to bring up
“The <flooding, drought, fires, political unrest, etc.> seems to be getting more intense. Last night’s flooding was a wakeup call. Have you thought about where you’d like to be, and the people you want to be around, as things get worse/if things really start to go downhill?”
That question and approach worked well for my household. I also let them know that, as a research station and lifestyle lab, I myself am not likely to be going anywhere unless physically compelled to move.
If you would like to add any thoughts, drop me a line. Let me know how your discussions go.