What’s Next for Earth: What is Resilience?

Michele Guieu | May 31, 2022 | Leave a Comment

Welcome to the Fourth chapter of the Think Resilience course: Resilience Thinking. In this session, we’ll dig into the science of resilience to better understand how our communities function and how they need to change.

You are invited to participate in @WhatsNextForEarth’s art call What is Resilience? open until July 30, 2022. What’s Next for Earth is a participative art project based on Instagram that invites artists to respond to a bi-monthly topic, reflecting on the human predicament. An online exhibition will be on view on this website and on the What’s Next for Earth website.

“In ecology, resilience is seen as the ability of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure. In other words, a system that’s resilient can adapt to change without losing the qualities that define what it is and what it does—which together comprise that system’s “identity.” Resilience boils down to an ability to adapt to both short-term disruption and long-term change while retaining the system’s essential identity. Building resilience starts with decisions about what we value about a system. Concepts like the adaptive cycle and panarchy further aid our understanding of resilience in systems.”
– Richard Heinberg

The Art Call

What’s Next for Earth is an art project that follows The Post Carbon Institute’s FREE online course THINK RESILIENCE, one lesson at a time. Please sign up at education.resilience.org (it’s easy!) – Each lesson is short and gives an excellent overview of the topic.

Think Resilience / Please watch:
– the introductory video (lesson 1)
CHAPTER ONE – Our converging Crisis
– Energy, (lesson 2)
– Population and Consumption (lesson 3).
– Depletion (lesson 4)
– Pollution (Lesson 5)
CHAPTER TWO – The Roots and Results of Our Crises
Political & Economic Management (Social Structure) (lesson 6)
Belief Systems (Lesson 7)
– Biodiversity (Lesson 8)
– Collapse (lesson 9)

CHAPTER THREE – Making Change
In this session we’ll learn how change happens, and how we might influence change in human society:
– Thinking in Systems (Lesson 10)
Shifting Cultural Stories (Lesson 11)
– Culture Change and Neuroscience (lesson 12)
If you do not get the chance to watch the video, PLEASE READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO HERE.

About the Think Resilience Course

"Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury."

Think Resilience is hosted by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s leading experts on the urgency and challenges of moving society away from fossil fuels.

We live in a time of tremendous political, environmental, and economic upheaval. What should we do?

Think Resilience is an online course offered by Post Carbon Institute to help you get started on doing something. It features twenty-two video lectures—about four hours total—by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s foremost experts on the urgency and challenges of transitioning society away from fossil fuels. Think Resilience is rooted in Post Carbon Institute’s years of work in energy literacy and community resilience. It packs a lot of information into four hours, and by the end of the course you’ll have good start on two important skills:

1. How to make sense of the complex challenges society now faces. What are the underlying, systemic forces at play? What brought us to this place? Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury.

2. How to build community resilience. While we must also act in our individual lives and as national and global citizens, building the resilience of our communities is an essential response to the 21st century’s multiple sustainability crises.

How to participate in the Art Call

1. Sign up for the THINK RESILIENCE COURSE if you did not do it before. If possible, watch all the videos, and watch “What is Resilience?”. If you do not have the time, PLEASE READ THE VIDEO TRANSCRIPT.

2. Create your piece using any format/technique you wish. 

3. Post it on your Instagram page. Include a description of your piece in your photo’s caption: title, technique, size, and, most importantly, the relationship with the theme. 

Copy and paste all these tags at the end of your description (#WhatsNextForEarth is very important to include because it is the hashtag used to find the posts participating in the art call on Instagram):

#whatisresilience #artcall
@WhatsNextForEarth
@mahbglobal
@postcarboninstitute
#extractionart
#mahbstanfordarts
#WhatsNextForEarth
#ecoart
#artactivism
#humanpredicament
#mahbartscommunity
#anthropocene
#anthropoceneart
#climateemergency
#climatechange
#codered
#TellTheTruth
#EndFossilFuels
#BlaBlaBlah

Follow What’s Next for Earth on Instagram!

What’s Next For Earth is an art project created by Michele Guieu, eco-artist, and MAHB Arts Coordinator, to reflect on the climate emergency, the human predicament and envision a desirable future. The project is supported by the MAHB. If you have any questions, please send a message to michele@mahbonline.org. 
Thank you ~

The views and opinions expressed through the MAHB Website are those of the contributing authors and do not necessarily reflect an official position of the MAHB. The MAHB aims to share a range of perspectives and welcomes the discussions that they prompt.