Comments on: Time for Slow Leadership?

By: David Braden

David Braden — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:53:49 +0000

I am very much interested in a larger conversation – preferably including people with different interests and expertise – about changing the way we go about providing those basics humans need to thrive. I think it is about finding new ways to include more people, plants and creatures in the production process . . .

Let me know how I can participate

By: Don Hall

Don Hall — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:47:22 +0000

Don and David,

Thank you both for your insightful comments. This article, and this site in general, is merely intended as the starting point for a larger conversation. Thanks for kicking it off!

By: David Braden

David Braden — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:35:51 +0000

I think we retain a top down understanding of leadership embedded in our culture from the time of kings. That, however, is not the way the ‘system’ works. The flow of goods, and services, and ideas, and everything else, through the system, is determined by the groups to which we belong – and groups only exist because individual people choose to participate in them.

True, you can’t just go out and create the kind of group in which you want to participate. It takes more than one, or a few, to make a group. But, if there was a new group that could supply what you need better than the group that does that now, you could change your mind in an instant – creating the new group and killing the old group.

We can’t be a leader unless there are followers. If we, as the transition movement, want to lead the way to a future without fossil fuels we will have to make an offer to people that works better for them than what they have now. We need new groups employing systems of production that heal nature and produce abundance.

Permaculture provides us a method for developing those systems – observing and honoring the role that all the different elements play. An alarmist organization cannot heal nature and produce abundance. Developing new ways to provide the food, shelter, clothing, education and health care that members of our community need to thrive – making a better offer to individual members of our community – and creating the groups that heal nature and produce abundance – is an exciting, long term, bottom up, ‘slow leadership’ effort.

By: dons

dons — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:04:34 +0000

I began my journey of coping with the overwhelming issues of peak oil, climate change and economic crisis mid 2008. My immediate response to my “Oh, my God” moment was, as I am sure it is for most people, to raise the distress flag and try to inform as many of my friends and family as I could. This, of course was met with responses as widely varied as the personalities behind them. To most, I’m an alarmist. To some I’m a leader. To others, I’m something between.
This experience has given me some insight into what may someday become known as “slow leadership.”
The changes we seek to our communities, our nations and our planet can only happen, ironically, through individual actions on a daily basis. Those of us on the leading edge of this “long emergency” must indeed prepare for a marathon, not a sprint. Yes, the issues are of an urgent nature. However approaching each day as an emergency is neither sustainable nor resilient. I see my volunteers come and go. I see the excitement flash in the pan, but it’s inevitably followed by the unending drum of our consumerism main-stream-media message and another day of life as we know it ticks by. The next thing you know people are back to doing what they have always done and they drift away. My challenge is to provide a continued stream of exciting events that capture people’s imagination and energy. But the reality of building a garden is not always exciting. It’s full of digging a trench for the water system and spreading out manure and wood chips. The reality of canning vegetables is not always exciting. It’s full of waiting for water to boil and cutting up squash into little pieces. This doesn’t meet the excitement-level expectations of today’s populace. But that fact doesn’t change the reality that our future is made up of things like building gardens and canning vegetables.
My response, as a leader, has to be patience and persistence. Slow leadership may require a lot of low expectations or it may be vulnerable to burn out. Slow leadership certainly requires a willingness to trust that everything is happening exactly as it is intended to happen (insert your favorite flavor of spiritual nourishment here).
For example, I am eternally grateful that I have had more than a year to work on my own preparedness. I’ve got one year of gardening under my belt. I figure I’ve got one, maybe two, more growing seasons before we experience serious disruption in our food distribution system. The irony of having this time is that it’s that same time that causes people to ignore these urgent issues. Another day goes by and the supermarket chain store has not closed its doors. Everything must be okay.
The truth is that everything is not okay. An abundant number of scientifically authoritative sources are telling me so. Still, another day ticks by.
So, in any case, it’s my job, as a slow leader, to be an alarmist and to provide exciting opportunities for community participation, while, at the same time, patiently plodding onward without huge expectations of revolutionary change.