Self-Reliance

As things unravel, the one surefire strategy is to chart a course for greater self-reliance. Improving self-reliance has no downside, only upside, and everyone can increase their self-reliance incrementally in small ways.

Self-reliance isn't the same as self-sufficiency. Even Thoreau on Walden Pond used manufactured tools and supplies sourced from afar. The basic idea of self-reliance is to reduce our dependency on long, fragile supply chains and the hamster-wheel landfill Economy of planned obsolescence and waste is growth consumption, and increase what we can do for ourselves and those we care about.

Self-reliance isn't going it alone, it's assembling trusted personal networks as a producer as well as a consumer, as a means of reducing the number of links in your personal supply chain and increasing local sources of life's essentials.

Self-reliance increases as we acquire skills and capital in all its forms. Self-reliance isn't the same as money; what's truly valuable can't be bought: trust, reciprocity, integrity. Those are the foundations of self-reliance.

Self-reliance in the 21st century is uniquely challenging because we've become overly dependent on globalization and financialization--not just on traditional supply chains and finance, but a near-total dependence on hyper-globalized supply chains and hyper-financialized credit-asset bubbles that are inherently unstable and unsustainable.

There's no downside to becoming more self-reliant and enormous upside. If the Landfill Economy continues chewing through the planet's dwindling resources, it doesn't diminish the value of being able to do more for ourselves and those we care about.

But if long, fragile supply chains break and hyper-financialization blows a gasket and sinks, the self-reliant will have a much easier time than those with minimal self-reliance. We're only powerless if we cede all power over our lives to others. Self-reliance is all about taking control of our own lives rather than relying on unsustainable global supply chains and centralized authorities to provide us with essentials.

by Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com on September 27, 2022