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The Perfect Storm, The Rise of Localism,and its Effects on National Wellness

By Stephan A. Schwartz

By any one of several dozen mea-

sures here are three:

Healthcare37th in the world

Maternal Mortality31st in the world

Prison Population1st in the world

the United States is a society of ailing

communities. Our national wellness is

poor, and this condition exists and is

growing just as the country and the world

are entering into a perfect storm of transi-

tion. Here are just a few of the trends I see:

Climate change, sea level rise, and asso-

ciated extreme weather events

The green transition out of the Age of

Petroleum into an environment of non-polluting energy

The Decline of the American economicempire

A destabilizing disparity in wealth and a

increasingly alienated 99%.

A population declining in education

and even literacy

A crumbling Illness Profit System

The breakdown of American Justice

A growing and regionally based schism

fracturing the culture along value issues

The death throes of the bipolar world

we have known all our lives (US vs So-viet Union) and the rise of a multipolar

geopolitical reality

A global culture shift such that, for thefirst time in 500 years, since Henry theNavigator, the world will not be ruledby Atlantic Caucasian values.

America becoming a majority non-White multiple minority society

A major geopolitical shift away from the

power of the nation state as a result ofthe rise of the Corporate Virtual Statesglobal companies functioning as coun-tries without the burden of geography.

In this perfect storm of change, given thenews that you see on your television, dontyou think it is urgent that we ask the rightquestions about how we are to get throughthis storm of change? I think we can allagree that if you dont ask the right ques-tions you wont get the answers you needto solve the problem. Here is my sugges-

tion for the central question: How are indi-viduals, families, and communities to weatherthis transition while maintaining a decentquality of life?One answer to that questioncan be discerned in the rise of localism andthe regionalism that results as local effortsspontaneously spring up and spread com-munity to community creating regionalnetworks of citizen efforts.

Here on SouthWhidbey Island, whereIlive, three women, Mary Fisher, Dorit Zin-garelli, and Jonni Reed, created a smallfoundation, Whidbey Island Nourishes.1

Very shortly after that, in a pattern that istypical of these programs, Shirley Collins joined them; soon others would follow.WIN, recognizing that some of the is-lands children were homeless and otherslived in homes where the school lunchprogram was their main source of nutri-tion, asked themselves: What do thesekids do over the weekend? What do home-less or couch-surfing teens do about food?They discovered the answer: they wenthungry. That was not acceptable to them.

They designed and implemented a two-part program. Small children, whose fam-ilies signed up, are sent home with twogrocery bagsone for Saturday, one forSunday. Into each goes enough food thatthese paper bag stashes can easily feed sev-eral. The women soon realized that other

family members needed this food as well.Adults, particularly single mothers, wouldgo without so their littles could eat. Forthe teen program, the WIN women set upiceboxes in four locations around the is-land, and stuff them with take out sand-wiches, raw vegetables, and healthy treats.The youth community of Whidbey policethis system, and there is almost no pilfer-age by the unqualified. No fast food isinvolved. The sandwiches and snacks, aswith the younger childrens program, arelovingly made of fresh nutritious ingredi-

ents, much of it organic, so that kids getthe least possible amount of chemicals intheir diets. No fast food, no fat and sugarlaced treats. WIN works with the latest re-search dataimagine thatoutlining whatis required to nurture healthy kids. Theprogram imposes no ideological or theo-logical limitations. Neither the kids whoparticipate nor their families are lecturedat or preached to. Theyre just helped, andit is all done with a notable attitude ofrespect for the children and the fami-liesas opposed to seeing them as wards

of the state who have to be taken care of,however begrudgingly.

My wife, Ronlyn, who is one of the vol-unteers, bakes every other week. As Iwatch her carefully wrap each of theiPhone-sized rectanglesthis week it iszucchini bread made with shredded zuc-chinis from our garden, organic wholewheat flour,and walnutsand add it to thegrowing pile on our kitchen table she tellsme WIN is now feeding 240 kids eachweekend, up from 200 this time last year.

The SchwartzReport tracks emerging trends that willaffect the world, particularly the United States. ForEXPLORE it focuses on matters of health in thebroadest sense of that term, including medical issues,changes in the biosphere, technology, and policy con-siderations, all of which will shape our culture andour lives.

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So now she and several other women eachbake seven dozen at a time, where before itwas only five dozen. Other teams ofwomen assemble the rest of the food. Oneout of four families in our community25%are now on some kind of food assis-tance. Nationwide it is one in eight. Forty-

nine million Americans struggle to eat.

2

Itis very important to remember that about17 million minor children in Americaknow real hunger, and that 14.5% ofAmerican households did not haveenough to eat throughout the year in2010.3 How we justify this to ourselveswhile spending $300 million a day in Af-

ghanistan alone I cannot fathom.4

WIN is not a singleton. On Whidbeywe have an interlocking network of smallfoundations that collectively create the so-cial safety net government has failed to

provide. I wrote about this once before.5

The volunteers who devote themselves tothese programs understand that their workis not just anact of service insupport of anindividual, but an act of communitybuilding that will benefit everyone, in-cluding themselves. When people feelsupported and not alienated, they do notact out in retaliation. The proof of this isWhidbeys low crime rate, where our levelof unemployment and poverty would pre-dict much more theft, graffiti, robberies,and physical spousal abuse, to name just a

few of the benefits. Other communitiesare coming to see the same thing.

In Napa, California, philanthropist Bon-nie Meyers has created Thrive Napa, amovement similar to what is occurring onWhidbey.6 What makes these movementsdifferent than traditional values basedcharities is that these programs make few judgments. Families are not pressed tojoin, convert, listen to, or align with anyideology or theology before their childrenreceive assistance. And they are alwaystreated with dignity.

In Rockland, Maine, the Island Insti-tute, one of the first groups in the nationto seriously focus on what constitutes asustainable and resilient community,helps Maines year round islands andcoastal towns to be proactive in maintain-ing community health in the face of un-employment, poverty, a failing healthcaresystem, and a host of other crises.7

I have been collecting stories aboutthese groups for several years now, and ithas taught me that there are thousands of

such efforts around the country. These arealmost always citizen efforts, created withlittle or no reference to government orgovernment funding, although some gov-ernment funding may come when the pro-grams success is obvious. These programsarise not as ways people devise to make a

living for themselvesone of the notablethings about them, is how few people be-come permanent bureaucrats. Trainingothers to replace yourself is part of theculture. These programs are the responseof an individual or small group to a per-ceived sense of injustice, unfairness, orneed.

One of the things that stands out whenyou examine these efforts is that increas-ingly they are built on a tacit assumptionof cultural and geographical regionalism.For us on Whidbey, this means Cascadia,an area west of the Cascadia Range, run-ning roughly from Northern Californiato the Canadian border, with Vancouver of-ten included. The upper Northeastern statesmake another regional grouping, and Ala-bama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Eastern Texas,and Arkansas constitute yet another. This ishappening because what works on Whid-bey would not work in Mobile. The socialand cultural dynamics are so different thatthey are as great as the difference betweenGreece and Germany.

America is becoming a defacto allianceof countries, much as some of the Found-ers who were focused on States Rightsoriginally envisioned. Social progressiveshave not yet embraced the emerging newStates Rights movement, so passionatelyespoused by the Right. But I think this iscoming because as the Federal level twistsin gridlock and corruption at a scale thatwould have made Rome blush, the needfor new strategies will not be denied. Atrue taste of this rotcan be seen in ThomasFergusons depiction of the state of theAmerican Congress:

Uniquely among legislatures in thedeveloped world, our Congressionalparties now post prices for key slotson committees. You want ityou buyit, runs the challenge. They even sellon the installment plan: You want tochair an important committee?Thatll be $200,000 down and thesame amount later, through fundrais-ing. Unlike most retailers, though,Congressional leaders selling com-mittee positions never offer dis-counts. Prices only driftup over time.

This practice is perhaps the onecase where bipartisanship flourishesin Congress today. The Democrats2008 price schedules quoted in Cur-rinders Money in the House are justvariations on themes introduced bythe Republicans in the 1990s, whenNewt Gingrich brought in the earliest

versions of pay to play and TomDeLay consulted computer printoutsof members contributions at meet-ings to decide on committee chairs.Everybody in D.C. is in on the game.Only the public is still in the dark.8

Because of this rising tsunami of moneyand corruption, and the fact that it takes60 votes to move anything of substancethrough the Senatewhich is to say verylittle does movemeaningful solutions aregestating less and less at the Federal level,

regional distinctions are becoming evermore exacerbated, and different ap-proaches to social needs are emerging re-gionally and locally. People literally donot have time for what is going on inWashington, and they do not agree on thekind of country they want anyway. With aconstipated Federal apparatus and theneed so great and urgent, the bonds thatbound us together as a nation are frayingas they have at no other time in our historyexcept for the Civil War and, in a strangeway, this just adds to the disempowerment

of the Federal level, creating a self-rein-forcing loop.

The corporate medias inability to accu-rately see what is going on makes mattersworse. To calibrate this, remember howfor the first several weeks of the 99erMovement Big Media didnt have a cluewhat was going on. Their criticism of themovement, that it had no clear politicalagenda, missed the obvious. The Move-ment has a very clear cultural goal: thepreservation of the middle class. Corpo-rate media couldnt or wouldnt see this,

which demonstrates, I think, how big a rifthas opened between their world and reallife.

It will be important to see if this emerg-ing street movement can translate its mo-mentum into a political movement thatvotes its agenda, but the rising trend oflocalism and regionalism suggests it will.When it does, it will either fundamentallychange Washington, or tear the countryapart. Thats what scares the entrenchedinterests.

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As I walk around Langley, the nearestvillage to me, I see very few obese people,particularly children. There is less hyper-active behavior among the young. Thereare no fast food restaurants. In the com-munity-run coffee house, South WhidbeyCommonsanother of those small foun-

dationsI see kids studying, and able toget online for free.9 There is no graffiti onthe walls here. I have not seen a pregnanthomeless girl since I arrived three yearsago. I have never been panhandled, andhave never even heard of a car break-in.Whidbey is far from perfect, but it, anddozens of other communities in Cascadia,Maine, and elsewhere thrive even in ad-verse situations because of the citizen-created local programs that make every-ones life better.

It isnt clear to me how we are going to

handle climate change, or rising sea levels,but we will. Small communities acrossAmerica are rediscovering what BenjaminFranklin understood. For America to pros-per there must be a balance between indi-vidualism, and collectivism. The hyperin-dividualism that would lead an audienceof Americans to boo a soldier offering uphis life in the service of his country, or toapplaud an ignorant governor who revelsin having killed more than 200 peopleatleast one of whom was almost certainlyinnocentis not Franklins America. It is a

kind of Ayn Randian perversion of hisideas.When Franklinthe only founder who

drafted and signed all three of the docu-ments that brought the United States tobeing, the Declaration of Independence,the Treaty of Paris (September 3, 1783),and the Constitution dreamed of theAmerica he would like to see develop, theimagery that came to his mind was of amiddle-class, largely urban culture madeup of immigrants who were technologi-cally sophisticated, family oriented, joy-

ful, upwardly mobile, and who understoodthat individualism must be tempered by col-lective action involving both the govern-ment and citizen action. When he thoughtabout how we might become that society, itwasnt just the people he thought about. Healso understood the importance of infra-

structure as a factor in creating a middleclass. He felt so strongly about this that heused his will to continue to support his planfor America beyond his death.

He left specific bequests for publicworks and created the microlendingmodel that has proven such a powerful

transformative force, leaving what todaywould be several hundred thousand dol-lars each to the cities of Boston and Phil-adelphia. The infrastructure money was tobe used specifically to build such an infra-structure and nurture such a middle class.He explained his intent was to create thatWhich may be judged of most generalutility to the Inhabitants, such as Fortifi-cations, Bridges, Aqueducts, Public Build-ings, Baths, Pavements or whatever maymake living in the Town more convenientto its People and render it more agreeableto Strangers, resorting thither for Healthor a temporary residence.10

The secret of America is that we are allimmigrants, even the Native Americanscame from somewhere elsethe latest ge-netic research showing them arriving fromEast Asia.11 What made America great wasthat people could come from anywhereand, as long as they subscribed to the ideaof Franklins great middle-class demo-cratic culture, they could belong. The re-gional nasty nativism growing in someparts of the country is a violation of thatvision, and further evidence that differentregions of the country hold very differentvisions of what they want the nation to be.

In this is the mystery: the overall trendsin our culture seem to be heading intochaos, brought on by this perfect storm oftransition. But through the mechanism oflocalism and regionalism there is sponta-neously arising a road map into the future.It is not going to be the America we grewup in but, in at least some regions, it willbe better.

REFERENCES1. Whidbey Island Nourishes. Available at:

http://www.whidbeyislandnourishes.org/.Accessed October 14, 2011.

2. Hunger and poverty statistics. FeedingAmerica. Available at: http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hunger-

and-poverty-statistics.aspx.n.d. AccessedOctober 13, 2011.

3. Goyette B. Our Sputtering Economy by theNumbers: Poverty Edition. ProPublica Sep-tember 20, 2011. Available at: http://www.propublica.org/article/our-sputtering-economy-by-the-numbers-poverty-edition.Accessed September 20, 2011.

4. Afghan war costs $300 million a day: Pen-tagon. Agenc France-Presse. Available at:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gNQ3JbWwd6t-PzkuECkRJvsAlNkA. Accessed September 20, 2011.

5. Schwartz S. Trends That Will Affect Your Fu-ture Mr South Whidbey, Globalization, andthe Worship of Profit. Explore2010;6:15-16.Available at: http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2809%2900368-1/. Accessed October 14, 2011.

6. Thrive Napa. Available at: http://www.thrivenv.org/. Accessed October 14, 2010.

7. Island Institute. Available at: www.islandinstitute.org/. Accessed October 12, 2011.

8. Ferguson T. Posted prices and the capitol hillstalemate machine. The Washington Spectator.Available at: http://www.washingtonspectator.org/articles/20111015postedprices.cfm. Acce-ssed October 15, 2011.

9. South Whidbey Commons. Available at:http://southwhidbeycommons.org/. Acce-ssed October 14, 2011.

10. The Last Will and Testament of BenjaminFranklin (Franklin Institute). Available at:http://www.fi.edu/franklin/family/lastwill.html. Accessed October 8, 2011.

11. Norman B. Did the Orientation of the Conti-nents Hinder Ancient Settlement of the Ameri-

cas?Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell; 2011.Available at: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-09/w-dto092111.php.Accessed October 14, 2011.

StephanA. Schwartzis the editor of the dailyWeb publication The SchwartzReport (http://www.schwartzreport.net) , which concentrateson trends that will shape the future, an area ofresearch he has been working in since the mid-1960s. He is also the Senior Samueli Fellow inBrain, Mind and Healing at the Samueli In-stitute. For over 35 years Schwartz has also

been an active experimentalist doing researchon the nature of consciousness, particularly Re-mote Viewing, healing, creativity, religious ec-stasy, and meditation. He is the author of sev-eral books and numerous papers, technicalreports, and general audience articles on thesetopics.

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