Moving forward with resilience thinking

I wish that I had more insightful thoughts about utilizing resilience in practice than the ones that follow. Yes, I can think about how powerful of a tool it can be — a game-changer really. But unfortunately all I can focus on are the realities that Laura and Walker and Salt describe. In-the-now attitudes or doctrines of controlling nature are quite real, and are *very* powerful.  Achieving the goals of the resilience approach will be difficult and changing the deeply-rooted paradigm requires burrowing through the ideologies of anthropocentrism and individualism, and thus through the core belief of environmental domination.  It will take a great deal of time to undo what people have believed in for thousands of years and what they so powerfully instill in the modern era.  It requires that all parties involved accept nature and work with its cycles, as opposed to controlling it; or at the very least it requires that a group of influential parties begin the conversation. The task will be arduous, since such dogmas as growth and efficiency have become common-speak and pollute many sectors of public life, and thus become belief systems that have perpetually been retaught over and over again within society.   Regardless, there is a sense of urgency that undermines the demands of time in realizing change.  Our only hope can be to plant the seeds of resilience thinking in current and future generations through their [ecological] education, so they can repopulate corrupted social arenas with fruitful actions that respect the cyclical nature of life and ultimately protect the needs of humanity and the environment.

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