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A new model for transition - implications?
I haven't had chance to read Rob's primer yet, so I posted to flag up the possible shift in case other people weren't aware of it, recognising that you probably all know about this already! I don't know how it will be modified or understood in a Transition context, so this is a very personal response, based on having read and worked with A Pattern Language over the last 10+ years.
In terms of the implications that I feel it throws up for this discussion:
- that we need to be having our discussion based on the present 'moment' and that needs to include what we are asking people to sign up to - if that's not the 12 steps (or not wholly the 12 steps) then we need to know that. I personally felt (and still feel) some resistance to the 12 steps as did others in our group - and wonder if other groups did/do too.
- that Pattern Language (used well) is about tradition, beauty, grace, a feeling of coming home, comfort, 'being native' - it's the image of a Greek kid spitting out an olive pit into the street; of balconies and cubbyholes shading gossiping women from the midday heat as they watch and know everything that's going on; it's about the REAL marketplace before it was regulated into extinction. It's about a structural awareness as much as it is about rushing off and 'doing'. The 12 steps approach feels very much like a community development construct applied to Peakism. Following Pattern Language with integrity takes us to a slightly different place, and it's one that I personally find exciting.
- that we (TSS/TS) need to engage actively with this discussion and the concept as Transition reconstructs it and that conversation is in many ways equally as important as the discussion about the administrative process and the implications about self determination for Scotland. It is potentially a Quo Vadis? moment for Transition and it feels important because used well it moves us beyond the 'usual suspects' trap (what was it Ed said about it being nice to talk to people other than hippies and pagans?) and it offers us a new form of nationalism which celebrates and encourages difference without xenophobia or the need to 'brand'.
- that we're missing a trick by not involving Graham Bell in this in some way - he'd made the connection between A Pattern Language (and a Timeless Way of Building) and Permaculture decades ago and I think he would have much to offer now.
I'm sure I've failed to communicate that clearly! Please do fire back questions.
Jane