It's Broke, don't fix it!

Michael Pollan has often been quoted as saying that by continuously designing new fixes into a broken system, we just move it farther and farther away from operating the efficient way that nature intended.

I know he was referring to food and agriculture but I think this idea can be applied to many issues of the day.

The continued efforts to bail out a financial system based on debt, consumerism and greed which robs the poorest of us to enrich the richest,

An energy system that is cutting our own throats day by day by destabilizing the ecosystem upon we depend for our very lives,

The dominance of agribusiness that in it's arrogance erodes complex natural systems that have evolved over millions of years to be replaced by simple man made science experiments that have only just appeared on the scene and haven't even been adequately tested for safety,

The design of impersonal communities that rely on giant automobiles and dwindling petrochemicals rather than public transit, walking, cycling, and neighborliness,

A health care system that is designed not to make us healthy but to maximise profits,

And on the personal level, how we set up our households to depend on far flung countries and corporations for energy, shelter, food, clothing, clean water, transportation and income.

So what's the answer? I think we all have to find our own answers to these conundrums but for me it lies in resilience. My goals are to avoid spending on consumerism but to invest in sustainability, to choose fresh local organic food produced in a sustainable fashion if not grown by me, to wear clothing that is designed to last not to appear fashionable, preferably used and to wear it till it wears out, to set up my life such that I don't need to own a personal car, to walk or ride the bus, to generate the energy I use on site, to reduce my consumption of marketed, processed, and overpackaged resources from far flung corners of the world, to work with my neighbors to create a sustainable resilient community that works together to thrive in hard times.

Trying to save the economy we are watching meltdown is trying to fix a fatally flawed system that has no future. The sooner we abandon it, though it may mean austerity in the short term, and remake our lives using the principles of resilience and sustainability the less suffering overall in the long term we will create.