The Transition Story: reflections from Chile
By rob hopkins 9th December 2015
Continuing our exploration of the Transition Story project, we asked different National Hubs for their reflections on the blog that opened our theme on the Transition Story. Today Silvana Bañados of the Transition Chile Hub shares her thoughts:
“During our first Chile National Hub meeting, different answers were generated referring to the question Rob set out, that the presentation of the Transition Movement – based on the threats of climate change and financial recession derived from Peak Oil – were negative and reactive. Through a Think and Listen session + round of reflections within a group of 25 representatives of local initiatives, the following key ideas were generated:
- It is important to recognize, give space to the challenges our civilization are facing. That is, we must recognize and know deeply our current reality. The key is not to remain immobilized by it
- This impact of facing reality, although hard or painful, it is necessary to leave the comfort zone
- However, this should be just the beginning. It is necessary to generate the motivation with a positive attitude. All actions must be performed from this stance
- It is an invitation to be fine, either individually or in a community. To flow from the fear to a loving empowerment
- Emphasize the role of good relationships among people
- Experience technological and social solutions to challenges such as climate change and Peak Oi in order to validate empirically the usefulness of these solutions
- It is recognized that there are many more challenges such as inequality, violence, loss of biodiversity, etc., in addition to Peak Oil and Climate Change
- Key for the next version of Transition to remember the roots of the Transition Movement in Permaculture and it´s based in design science as a discipline and profession. For us in Chile the Transition Movement came as just a rewording of the permaculture concepts and its design principles and tools to make them more available and easy to understand for the mainstream. But it seems that at an international level this has been forgotten and not clearly recognized and valued by the movement. It is relevant at this stage to manifest and honor these roots as a basis for the future vision of the transition movement and the planning of coherent next steps
Texto: Marco Ossandón