Do All in Fun, "Comrade!"

The idea of the end of growth changes everything about our world. None of us wants to hear that – none of us want to know that – but for me it's become a reality. For you too? I'm not going to make the case here. Richard Heinberg's book The End of Growth does that powerfully but doubtless you've been following growth's progress and have made up your own mind. I'm assuming the end of growth to be true in this post. This means that our economy is never going to get back to material growth; there can be great advances in life and culture but we'll have much less energy to do it with. That fact changes everything.

If that's true, how do we come to grips with a phenomenon like this? With a lot of hard work, thought, grieving, caring and building perhaps. But at the risk of being glib, I'll outline a quick and dirty path for responding to the challenge of “the end of growth”, roughly the one I'm following myself. There can be many formulations but these are mine today.

My mini-map consists of three steps: deep agreement that the end of growth is indeed true, imagining a future we want that takes this into account, and taking steps to create it. Deep Agreement, Imagine Future, Create. First letters come down to DAIFC . . . “Do all in fun, comrade”. 

Here's what that looks like!

Deep agreement

We don't really believe that the end of growth is coming, even if we do. That's because this notion goes up against some very strong conditioning that we all have. I mean, everyone and everything around us shouts that the institutions and dynamics around us are going to continue on their present path. So we see one thing, and the world reflects back another, or at least has a story about another, called Business as Usual.

This dissonance between the two sets up a lot of conflict within us that requires considerable personal skills and smarts of a kind that aren't taught in schools and that are not usually talked about in fact To really believe in something different from consensus reality is stressful for everyone – it's no failing to fall into it. It's natural because the skill of thinking differently from the tribe isn't part of our evolutionary heritage. That's because most of that has been lived in tribal situations in which conformity to the group's trumped individualization. That was appropriate then. Unfortunately, the end of growth, material growth, means that we've got to grow ourselves and make room for what we know to be true. Deep agreement, in other words, of the broad notion that smaller and more local is coming and coming to us. I don't believe it's possible or necessary to know the details of when specific changes are going to happen. The essential point is that we ignore the end of growth at our peril.

Imagine a Future you want

Deep Agreement is the least risky of the three steps in my map. The next, and the next riskiest is to Imagine a Future we want., Really, how would you like it to be? Not what do you fear (there's a place for that but it's not here), but what do you want? It's an act of courage to imagine what we want, to imagine it in color and drama, with all the excitement that we save for our vacation. To allow ourselves to invest in that future imaginatively is to take a powerful step toward its accomplishment. That's part of what makes it risky.

The method that works for me, is really no method. I get out paper and coloured pens and start to draw and create a map with words and arrows and super-rough sketches. I just put in all the parts I want, things that actually please me that reflect a down-sized life, things that have some juice for me, not just things that I think would be good for me. As someone with a strong altruistic streak I have to watch my tendency to do “good” rather than what actually turns my crank.

Whether it's just with pencil or pen, with colourjled markers, with big scrapbook paper or printer paper, I get something down that's got some juice for me. Some people have never given themselves the gift of allowing the dream to get out there in front of them, on a piece of paper. It's not hard and it's fun.

Create

The third component is Creation, to actually start doing something toward accomplishing some part of the picture. I take something small or big and get on it. I don't worry about whether what I want is realistic at this stage, because I know I often sell reality short on this one. This is a time of change and things that might have been impossible no longer are. In a time of endings there's extra room for new beginnings. Creating something just because you like it is a radical act that, in my experience, has unpredicable consequences. It creates more stuff.

In some way or another it helps to keep track of the progress I'm making. For example, if it's write 1000 words every day for a month, then I might make a little pie chart up with the days of the month on it, and color them in each day. Noticing change creates more change..

Are my three steps too simple? Probably, but they are a start, they will get things moving in the direction that supports your thriving at the end of growth. Other skills will become evident too, just one of which I'll mention now.

It's a big help to have local support, a person or persons who share the view that change is coming and will hear your progress or at least be in tune with it, witnesses to it. You can give them the same “love”. A small group would be the best thing because it effectively becomes a mini-culture for the change you want.

There are other skills and vast learnings along the way, for sure. But the important thing is to make some movement. It's not easy but actually easier than doing nothing. And fun!

Do all in fun, comrade!