For me, the resilience theory makes sense as an approach or way of thinking more than a clear call to action. I understand the concept of resilience, but the way Bruce described the "shadow groups" operating outside the public mainstream confused me. I struggle to imagine an effective shadow group outside of the public eye, looking into the crystal ball with like-minded people to the doomsday ahead, and planning effective courses of action that will keep the world on track. This is what I envisioned from the readings and the discussions in class because we were given no real clear examples of community resilience groups in practice, as opposed to resilience planning for natural sytems and ecosystems, which for me is perfectly clear and logical. The only groups I could think of was the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, but they seel overly focused on unilateral environmental protection.
However, as we discussed in our blog group, political and economic systems are extremely large and complex to truly understand, let alone predict future outcomes and plan strategies to avert disaster. Even if people possessed this knowledge, it feels to me like it would be some sort of communist control, with the notion of some all-knowing benevolent master who will make the decisions to guide society to health.
I have worked in the planning and design world for 15 years, and I have learned my small role in this world, how difficult it is to effect change even at a project-level scale, let alone a local, regional, national, and global scale. But not that we all should not keep trying because there could eventually be a critical mass of like-minded thinkers coming together. My takeaway from this topic is to do your best to effect change at the local level to create a resilient community, and hopefully relilence will grow and snowball from there.