Reflections 8th September

Something about pioneer species

Devil’s Bit Scabious, encountered during a wander on Carbery Bog.

There’s an apocryphal story, adapted as needed to the region, about a lost traveller seeking directions from a local who knows the area who is told, “Well, If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”

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When encountering a problem, a glitch, or an unexpected bump in the road, I am as prone as anybody to default to thinking that if I analyse it, I can use my hard-won qualifications, skills and experience to find out what’s wrong, fix it, and carry on.

The trouble with that is that when considering the problem, those same qualifications, skills, and experience only encourage us to see what we have been taught to see. Goals are valuable tools used responsibly, but a powerful trap when they make us wilfully blind to what is happening outside the performative walls of our work.

I am still absorbing the lessons from a few days with a good friend who pays little attention to walls and is attuned to where he is in time, location, and community in ways that inspire and humble me. To learn the lessons I needed and required, I had to put my normal perspective to one side and start again, or, as Michael Dila put it yesterday on a call, adopt “a practice of beginning.”

The land I was walking on made the point for me. Ireland experienced severe deforestation from the 16th to 19th centuries, reducing forest cover to just 1%. However, forest cover has seen a resurgence since the early 1900s, reaching the current level of 11.6%, the highest in over 350 years.

There is a twist. Reforestation can be achieved via planned planting, creating single-species mono-crops to be harvested for commercial use, leaving it wild to grow naturally, or, as my friend is doing, innovating with others to create a middle way.

Pro Silva is a European confederation of professional foresters across more than 25 European countries who advocate and promote close-to-nature forest management principles as an alternative to clear felling and short-term tree plantations

I came away understanding it less as a technique and more as a mindset because it doesn’t stop at the forest but extends beyond into the community, recognising the diversity and connection of people and their natural environment as essential elements of a healthy society.

Why, I wonder, can’t we think of the world of work like this?

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Photo by Paweł Łęgowski on Unsplash

We lionise entrepreneurs who create the business equivalent of mono-crops, businesses that are subjected to massive doses of capital, only to be subjected to the equivalent of clear felling through trade sale or IPO, leaving the community that has grown them to deal with the consequences.

We know but are wilfully blind to the consequences of this (highly profitable) approach for both the land and our communities. Depleted soil, loss of sustainable skills, and fragmented communities are the collateral damage of an obsession with short-term profit for those without connection to it.

There are few “villains”. We have created and nurtured a system that rewards people in very specific ways, making the return on mobile capital far greater than the return on skills whilst creating a legislative firewall that separates actions from responsibility for consequences.

No matter how many inquiries we hold, academic reports we commission, or politically expedient initiatives there are, we are not going to plan our way out of the mess we have created for ourselves and our children.

We must look to our “pioneer species” in the areas we have clear felled.

Pioneer species are the first organisms to colonize barren or disturbed environments, initiating the process of ecological succession. They play a crucial role in creating conditions that allow other species to eventually inhabit the area.

Where I was wandering around, the pioneers were the fungi, lichen, microorganisms, mosses, fast-growing trees like birch and alder and beneath my feet, invertebrates like ants, worms, and snails improving soil quality ready to support what will follow.

Closer to home, it is the artisans—those whose motivations and skills are independent of those of employers and which will take root independently as opportunities arise. They are, and have been throughout history, those who create the networks and connections that enable the creation element of Schumpeter’s “Destruction and Creation.”

Perhaps it is ironic that the very actions that profit-hungry organisations take to feed their shareholders are creating the next generation of artisans.

Data provide trailing-edge evidence, whilst emotions provide leading-edge indicators. Like all of us, I have a restricted field of vision, but I am not the only one to be noticing the near epidemic of uncertainty amongst those who are mid career in high growth sectors. Highly qualified people in well-paid jobs who are nervous and aware that their tenure is fragile as their capacity is drained in high-performance “Google Bro” move-fast-and-break-things cultures. Threatened by a combination of hopeful AI-enthused investors, febrile geopolitics, and myopic leadership.

The good news is that we have been here before.

The Golden Age of Piracy arose during a time of uncertainty and political unrest across Europe that was similar to our modern times in many ways. Warfare was constant, leading to many injustices. People were anxious about the uncertainties of the future and fed up with self-interested establishments that exploited the working class. From amid these continent-wide hostilities, a network of pirates emerged. They were rebels who were fed up with the status quo and aimed to "pick the overflowing pockets of the governments that had long been exploiting the working class”. The pirates were not just drunken thugs, but highly skilled sailors with a well-coordinated network. Their diverse crews worked in a relatively democratic and equal system compared to the rest of Europe at the time.

Source: Perplexity.ai summary from “Be more Pirate” (Connif) and “Pirate Enlightenment” (Graeber)

The pirates were highly skilled because they had been trained by their national Navies and treated badly. Like others of similar disposition—trespassers, poachers, heretics, and artisans—they were skilled and motivated, and the market offered an opportunity.

It is not too much of a stretch to see a similarity. Well-trained people with skills and experience seek somewhere to belong, forming diverse crews under remarkably democratic management. (Pirates had equal rights, gender equality, profit sharing and medical coverage long before anyone in business)

It’s true that the “golden age” only lasted fifty years or so before being suppressed by Governments, but it proved to be a catalyst.

We don’t know how our current uncertainty will pan out, but we can be pretty confident that those who got us here are unlikely to get us there.

We need places to connect, share, and consider opportunities as they arise.

The Latin "considerare" is thought to literally mean "to observe the stars”.

We can learn from that as we consider the position we find ourselves in, and broaden the horizon of our ambitions and possibilities.

Jon Alexander continues to show us a way with his Citizens Collective, following on from his book “Citizens”. In other places, Citizens Assemblies are treading a path via those such as Democracy Next, learning from countries like Ireland, where they have already done significant work.

Perhaps here at Outside the Walls, we can make a small but significant contribution to a few:

The evidence, anecdotal perhaps but increasingly supported by data, is that we have an increasing bulge of skilled people being cast adrift in mid-career with little support, and we do not have the language to understand what is happening. “Redundancy” is an archaic term that cannot cope with the complexity of changing jobs. The recruitment industry is tied to an “employment” mentality and is too clunky to provide the infrastructure to enable the smooth connection of talent to need.

if we want to do this, we have to start where we are with what we’ve got.

So, if you’re sensing job dislocation on the horizon, in the middle of dealing with it, or have come out the other side, you can help create a language, understanding, and infrastructure to help people deal with this type of change more on their terms than those they are being given. We can connect to others doing the same in different fields. We can share what we see and perhaps make a tiny difference that is important for a few at a time when it is needed.

Catch up Call

I’ll be hosting a Zoom conversation for paid subscribers to Outside the Walls, and New Artisans, on Tuesday 17th September at 5:00pm to consider where we might go with this.

Link to call, and thoughts on how we might start, to follow.

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Origins:

Be More Pirate.

Pirate Enlightenment.