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resilience
Resilience within any system demands there be multiple elements serving every critical function within that system. Each element must also perform multiple functions (some of which support other elements and their functions). In this way a web of mutually supporting connections between elements and functions is created and the larger system (ecosystem, business, village etc.) grows more resilient.
Amidst uncertainty and disruption, a resilient system will continue to perform its essential functions – indeed it may even grow stronger, moving into the realm of anti-fragile. Resilient systems enable the weathering of storms (literal and metaphorical, natural and man-made) without suffering tremendous setbacks (decreased standard of living, ecological destruction, emotional and psychological breakdown etc).
This article examines resilience as it pertains to the creation, preservation and application of wealth for the purposes of living a high quality of life aligned with the permaculture ethics of 1) care for the Earth, 2) care for people, and 3) reinvestment of surplus back towards ethics #1 and #2.
For the purposes of this article, we define wealth as having access to required forms of capital when needed on the path to realizing oneโs purpose. Wealth, and what we call Wealth Freedom, is an essential leg on the stool of a regenerative life well-lived. For more on this, read The 4 Freedoms: Principles Of Regenerative Lifestyle Design.
The concept of resilient wealth is best illustrated and understood using the 8 Forms Of Capital, a model originally developed by Ethan Roland of Appleseed Permaculture, as the foundation for creating, preserving and applying wealth in ways that enhance resilience. The 8 Forms in their original concept are illustrated below, followed by Toby Hemenwayโs summarized descriptions of each from The Permaculture City.
At 7th Gen, we organize the 8 Forms Of Capital into a Resilient Wealth Embryo (looks very much like a โnest-eggโ interestingly enough), with Cultural Capital as a โsuper-petalโ that contains Social, Spiritual, and Natural Capital, and Wisdom as a super-petal that contains Intellectual and Experiential Capital. We also keep a Time circle at the center of all forms of capital. These modifications are illustrated in the image below, and the explanations of these super-petals and our reasoning for adding them follow.
Note that the three primary forms of capital to coalesce to create cultural capital are very much aligned with the permaculture ethics:
A culture that is strong in cultural capital is one that successfully transmits its values intact across generations. Those values remain intact because they have been demonstrated to work. Strong cultures are 7th generation systems that create socially and economically fulfilling lives for their inhabitants, whose daily activity patterns regenerate natural ecosystems and increase living capital year over year, such that the economic and social value of natural ecosystems is always increasing, and the value-ing of those systems is transmitted intact across generations.
For more on designing 7th Generation systems, read the 7th Generation Design Principle – Designing Systems For Continuity Through Time.
Others have proposed Wisdom Capital as an amalgamation of Intellectual and Experiential Capital – we appreciate this and also feel it is helpful to maintain the distinctions between Intellectual and Experiential Capital as they are each quite unique. Wisdom is that โotherโ intangible thing that can only come from the development of both Intellectual and Experiential Capital over time – each tempered by the other. For this reason we simply call it Wisdom and leave the capital out of it.
At the center of the various forms of capital is the one unifying non-renewable resource that we all draw from constantly – time. Time is spent no matter what one does or doesnโt do. The creation, preservation and application of all the various forms of capital all take time. Time, therefore, acts as a very useful, some might say unyielding, metric for gauging the effectiveness of oneโs efforts in creating, preserving and applying wealth to realizing oneโs purpose.
Wealth, and especially resilient wealth, is created by the transmuting and combining the various forms of capital. Simply having a large stock of any particular type of capital matters for nothing if it cannot be transmuted or combined into or with other forms of capital.
Resilient wealth is created when multiple forms of capital are amalgamated in ways that take care of the Earth, take care of people, and provide a surplus to reinvest. This is flow between forms, and the concept is well illustrated with a sourdough bread analogy.
A Pile Of Flour Does Not A Loaf Of Bread Make
Any form of capital by itself is a raw form of energy, like a single ingredient in a bread recipe.
Resilient wealth is created by combining different forms of capital in the right ratios at the right time in the right order so that they are mutually supportive and create a yield aligned with service to Earth, people and future life on this planet.
Let us take a loaf of sourdough bread as an example. The baked loaf is the wealth – the yield that will fill a belly and nourish a body. The flour, water, salt (all Material Capital), starter (Natural/Living Capital), time (the Master Resource), and skill (Intellectual and Experiential Capital) – not to mention the oven and all baking accoutrement (more Material Capital) – are the various forms of capital that create wealth only when carefully combined in a highly intentional way to become something of value.
The currently dominant paradigm is that Wealth = Having Money.
Is it true that simply having money makes one wealthy?
As mentioned earlier, simply having a large stock of one form of capital does not create wealth. Wealth is an intangible and transitory thing – it is the place and time where our basic survival needs are met, we are healthy in body, mind and spirit, our relationships are strong and meaningful and we have access to what we need in order to fulfill our lifeโs purpose. This state cannot be objectively tallied so easily as dollars in a bank account.
Despite this, financial capital (a tertiary form of wealth) does dominate our modern world, even though it is the least stable, most unreliable, and often most scarce form of capital (at least in the currently dominant debt-based fiat currency system of today).
NOTE: It is not our intent to bash money, its existence, or those who feel money is important. Money is important! Financial capital does have an essential role in creating a healthy, diverse wealth portfolio. It helps to buffer against material shortages and can be applied to empower businesses and other activities that improve our lives and deserve our support, not to mention being a highly liquid conduit for converting one type of capital into another – very helpful and of great benefit to all when applied ethically.
It is the bloated importance that financial capital has taken on in our modern lives that squeezes out many of the other forms of capital and leads to increasingly brittle (non-resilient) individuals, households, communities and countries with which we take issue.
Money itself is not evil. Modern money (currency really, but thatโs for another post) finds itself deformed, misaligned and out of balance with care for the Earth, care for people and reinvestment of surplus towards those two ends.
For those of us who have put most of our energy, historically, into earning and accumulating financial capital – likely most of us, as that is the world we have inherited – how do we transition into developing a truly diverse and resilient wealth portfolio that puts financial capital in its right place and relationship with the others?
We can start by implementing strategies that reduce the requirement for financial capital in daily life.
We can then begin investing financial surplus into the other seven forms of capital, in so doing freeing ourselves from the earn-to-consume treadmill.
The beauty of this approach is that many of the strategies recommended for reducing the requirement for financial capital in daily life simultaneously build other forms of capital. Function stacking – a good sign that weโre moving in the right direction!
Below is a list of some of the highest leverage ways (among countless others) to reduce the need for financial capital and invest in or create the other forms of capital, presented in approximate order of effectiveness (your mileage may vary) at reducing requirement for financial capital:
These are but a few suggestions that can help create the breathing room needed to make the leap off the highly financialized earn-to-consume treadmill. The added benefit of doing all of these things is that they result in greater personal, community, cultural, and environmental health, for only a small sacrifice in luxury โ or perhaps no sacrifice at all.
The time has come time to redefine wealth and align its creation, preservation and application with human thriving.
It is time to diversify our portfolios in order to create true resilience for ourselves as individuals, communities, and cultures. Doing so will ensure that when the next crisis occurs – whether it be a global pandemic, a natural disaster, political upheaval, or the next 4th Turning – we can not just survive, but thrive, and continue to steward this place for those that will inherit it after we are gone.
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