The discussions above about resilience sound very interesting and from the reading I have been doing it occurs to me that there is a dimension that wasn’t mentioned which is useful to think about. It seems that most of the perspectives above are from the view of various parts of a system- individuals, communities, organisations are all parts of the wider social-ecological system to which we belong.

Theories about Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) suggest that these systems go through an ‘adaptive cycle’ . Its complicated to explain here, but the theory suggests that resilience is the distance from which any system is in relation to the ‘collapse & renewal’ part of the cycle. So while we may all have an interest in keeping certain things as they are in our lives and so designing our lives/communities/organisations to be resilient, we also do need to think in terms of the system as a whole and where it is in its pathway around the adaptive cycle and how we fit into that.

So its important to take a perspective where we consider the health of the system as a whole, rather than our small parts of it. The book ‘A Green History of the World’ by Clive Ponting charts the rise and fall of civilisations in relation to the limits of resources of their surrounding eco-systems which reinforces this point.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that one of the important changes which needs to happen is a change in mindset where we can begin to see our lives and surroundings in terms of dynamic systems and adaptive cycles etc. Then we can understand all the different levels at which we can design for resilience. Its a bit like that shift of mind where we see our world as dynamic ‘flow’ rather than static ‘things’, but without needing to take drugs to do it!