Protest then … ?
The Canadian truck convoy protests are historic. They are having an immediate impact upon both Canadian citizens and their government. Citizens are finding a voice that they didn’t know they had. The government is faced with a populace that is telling them to stop making our lives harder.
While the protest is a fascinating example of political theatre, I am more interested in what happens in the interaction between the participants. All sorts of new relationships are formed. Common ground based on shared experiences results in trust and a willingness to take their cause further. Watch carefully, and we can see that the strategic decisions the leaders have made are effective in eliciting responses that place the federal and provincial governments in a bad light. Networks of relationships are forming that will impact the future.
The System is Broken
During the summer of 2020, I wrote a short book called All Crises are Local. It was an early critique from a systems perspective of the coronavirus response from the government. Then I said,
“The COVID-19 pandemic is a case study in a global systems breakdown.”
Two years later we can see a death toll that continues to grow, a growing global financial crisis, and a burgeoning global famine. The global system is breaking down. It is a systems failure of the first order.
The complex nature of these global systems means that most of us never really see how they function. We only see the effect. Even then because these crises are not just about public health, or the economy or about supply chains, but about politics, we never really know what the whole story is. The impact of the management of these global crises points to a level of incompetency or intention on an unprecedented scale.
Where I live the grocery store shelves are full. Gas prices at my service station are fluctuating every week. Schools open. The city ended the mask mandates.
This is not true everywhere. I have seen empty shelves in shops. I have watched gas prices swing by as much as a dollar. I talked with a young policeman from another community. They aren’t defunding the police. They are hiring them. His daily shift requires nine officers. There are only three. He did say the County Sheriff’s department and State Patrol help out when needed.
The global system of organization is broken. It is being felt at home, in our local communities and cities. All global crises are local. A global crises becomes a simulated crisis when it is separated from the direct and real effects on local communities.
Two Global Forces
The Canadian truck convoy protest is much more than just a protest. It is the outcome of many networks of relationships that truckers have. This protest across all of Canada began in many places, through many conversations by groups of local citizens who gathered together to make each local convoy protest work. The picture above is in Ottawa at Parliament Hill. The one below is the Couts border crossing from Alberta into Montana. It is a nationwide protest organized at the local level.
We are used to thinking … no, let me correct that. We have been programmed to think that centralized leadership is how the world operates and this is where we solve our problems. Not true. They have their place, but it is a narrow picture of what actually takes place in the world.
These networks operate within a framework that I call the Two Global Forces. There is …
the global force of centralized institutions of governance and finance and the global force of networks of relationships.
The leaders of the centralized institutions allowed the coronavirus to become a worldwide public health crisis. Yes, they are responsible, regardless of the virus’ source. They are responsible for how poorly they have handled the crisis. There is a banking crisis and a food crisis coming that are also examples of “a global systems breakdown.” These crises are worse than the pandemic because they will impoverish and starve the world. I say that they are responsible because they have made it clear that they are in charge. We are not, as we are to follow their mandates. We must do what they tell us. The Canadian truckers are holding them responsible.
The leadership of the decentralized networks of relationships takes responsibility for gathering people to support their communities. They see the crisis as local. A network of relationships is just a group of people who find that they share common values and perspectives of what is affecting their local community. They join together to support one another and address their common problems.
The Heart of Local Networks
Local networks have always existed. I moved to a small town in North Carolina in the fall of 2020 and immediately identified these networks. I have joined a few. I go to these folks when I need information. I have learned a lot about the history of the community. Every community is a product of its past grounded in its hope for the future.
These shared relationships represent what I call …
“a persistent, residual culture of relationships.”
The networks persist because it resides in a culture of shared values. You can see it in the interaction of the people supporting the truckers near Parliament Hill in Ottawa. This is not a 1960s style movement that focused on political spectacles. They march in protest and then go home. Instead, they remain so that order, prosperity, and hope for communities is restored. In other words, protest without sacrifice is without effect.
In a comment the other day to my The Future is More Complex post, Mik pointed me to a professor in Wales that he thought I’d like. He is Fabio Vighi. In his piece, Red Pill or Blue Pill?: Variants, Inflation, and The Controlled Demolition of Society, he writes,
After the failures of neo-Keynesian (public spending) and neo-liberal (austerity and market deregulation) policies, we have now reached the phase of ‘pandemic capitalism,’ soon to be followed by other tyrannical attempts to manage the unmanageable. …
We should therefore prepare ourselves. For instance, by building autonomous networks and communities that are not dependent on a disintegrating – and for this reason increasingly violent – model of social reproduction. …
If we want to protect what remains of our critical independence and human dignity, and especially the hope in a better future for our children, we must free ourselves, at least mentally, from this shackling subjection …
(Emphasis mine.)
While it is difficult to see the big picture of what is taking place, a dramatic change is happening that is not controlled by one person or a small group of elites. Instead, the natural order of the world is unfolding as the centralized systems fail. The response is to create decentralized networks of relationships focused on local needs.
What can you do? Help people to start growing vegetable gardens. Help children to gain skills in woodworking, metal fabrication, engine mechanics, and horticulture. In our community, we have a Facebook group, just for the people within our county, to ask questions about the goings-on in the community.
Turn around and look
The first step is to stop immersing yourself in the spectacle of global crisis. Invest your time, your mind, your emotions, your resources, your money, and your talent to contribute to your local community. In order to contribute, you must participate in creating strong networks of relationships. Begin now so that when harder times come, and they will be here shortly, your community is ready.
This means knowing what is happening elsewhere and then trying to see whether it is happening where you live. This is what I mean by being a person of impact. Watch what is happening across Canada, and then turn around and take “personal initiative to create impact” in your own community.
If all crises are local, then the solutions to the big issues will be discovered at the local level. One of the Circle of Impact principles says, “Start Small. Act Locally. Share Globally. Take the Long View” And let me add, “Begin Today.”
Update:
This is what taking care of your local community looks like. A community is made up of people in a place. And that place could be anywhere. Check out this video of the trucker community in Ottawa.