Everyone is a member of some “family.” Some of them are blood-based, some of them are spiritually-based, and some of them are built simply on deeply committed friendships. If you don’t know where “home” is, try and find it soon. We believe “family” and “community” are going to become increasingly essential as we all go through the “white-water” of the social and economic change facing us.
This economic crisis will begin to be over when the global debt crisis is resolved and the nations have decided what we can pay for, and what we can’t. The current crisis is all about finding the sustainable balance between people’s personal responsibility and their governmental support systems.
So what can we do as families, especially our traditional blood-line natural families? How can parents, children, and extended family effectively contribute to society and maximize their own security in these challenging times? Let’s talk about practical “to-do’s”:
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Recognize that historically, when centralized government services break down, everything comes back on the local communities, private families, and relational networks in terms of responsibilities and provision. Neighborhood and local community networking is the final safety-net humanly speaking. Churches and social groups will continue to be the most reliable larger safety nets.
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Get to know your neighbors and discuss with them how you can strengthen your preparation for natural disasters and mutual support systems. This kind of preparation is an important step in strategic planning even if you never have to use it.
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As family members choose several public policy issues and projects about which to become knowledgeable. This preparation will make you all better equipped to educate and influence other people, as well as create teamwork both within your family, and with other like-minded people in your neighborhood and community.
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Commit yourselves to getting out of debt, learning to live on less and even consider how you could consolidate your living situation with others if you had to. Again, preparing for natural disasters in terms of food and water supplies and sheer survival is an incredibly effective exercise for the kind of thinking that helps maximize strategic planning and minimize fear and a sense of helplessness.
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Inventory social skill-sets within your family and social net-works. Who knows how to do what? Prepare to barter and trade skill-sets instead of money. As government services continue to shrink due to financial pressures, team-work becomes increasingly important in every area. This may seem “extreme” now, but we do not know how deep this crisis will go when we hit the next big wave of social services failures.
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Work on making your current jobs “fire proof” so that in terms of job layoffs, you would be one of the last people who were let go because you are so valuable to the organization.
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Again, both individually and as families and social networks, find out how your local community works; who are the leaders, how those leaders can be influenced, and think and pray into how to maximize your influence and service possibilities on a local level. Whoever serves most effectively, leads.
We are not preparing for the “end of the world,” or World War Three. However, we are strongly advocating reasonable preparation for the level of change our culture will go through as we walk through “the tunnel” leading to the global re-financing of our debt-driven system. Preparation is the best form of controlling the future. This is TheTransforum; let’s engage.
Related Resources:
For more information on the author, Dennis Peacocke, go to: http://www.gostrategic.org/
