Read this this essay with bullet points summarizing discussions at the John Boyd Roundtable. (Boyd was a U.S. Air Force colonel famous for his innovative ideas about tactics and strategy, which have influenced not just the military but business- and political thinkers as well.) The author’s main takeaway from the conference: If society is going to survive in anything like the form we know it, it needs to evolve from a tightly-coupled row of dominoes, with no buffer and no resiliency, to more of a network of self-sustaining individual centers.
Excerpt:
- … there is no soft landing. We are not in a recession. We are not even in a depression. We are at the end of an era. …
- The search for efficiency and the urge to consume has set us all up like a row of dominoes – there is no buffer, no resiliency. As one problem rises it causes another. As one solution is tried it drives another problem. …
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- The world food system is exceptionally connected and tightly coupled. High fertilizer prices in 2008 will drive a food shortage in 2009. Inventories of grain are already low. … The 2008 rice problem was a harbinger for what is to come
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- Energy – with oil prices collapsing – so will our will to replace oil – the set up for Peak Oil will be perfect. … Pirates closing the Straits of Hormuz may wake us up. Imagine no oil on the East Coast for 3 months! It could happen tomorrow. What would happen to oil and food then? What fall back do you have for that?
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- Coupling – the issue is that with everything so fragile – even broken – that problems that we could have stood up too become major or even overwhelming.
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- The goal for us all to work to is clear – that we have to build back into the system Resiliency. This means that each region has to work to become largely energy, food and financially self sustaining and that each region needs to network into the others. In effect we shift from an efficient machine to a resilient network
- That the leadership model is no longer the dominant hero but the ego-less servant
(Hat tip: James Fallows; bold-face emphasis is mine.)
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