Resilient Communities in a Time of Change by JON JENSEN, Professor of Philosophy
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he Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said that you can never step into the same river twice. Since both the river and you are constantly changing, it will no longer be the same river and you will not be the same person when you step in again. Heraclitus believed that change is the fundamental reality of our universe, a view that seems quite compelling in the spring of 2020 as Luther, the US, and the world react to the everchanging circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic. As I write this essay, the Luther College campus is empty, nearly 2,000 students have left their dorms to return to their families, and most Luther faculty and staff are working from home as well. For the first time in its 160-year history, Luther is doing distance learning rather than the place-based, community focused pedagogical approach that is a hallmark of a Luther College education. We are adjusting, students and faculty alike are adapting, utilizing new technologies and techniques, making do, but the reality of change lingers and generates a nearly constant series of questions. How bad will it get? When will infections peak? When will the campus reopen? How long will this last? What will the new normal look like for us and the world? How will the community bounce back after this shock? This last question about “bouncing back” is at the very heart of my recent research and the subject of this essay. I study community resilience, the ability of a community to prepare for and respond to disruptions. Resilient communities bounce back after adversity and are able to thrive in the changing and challenging world of the 21st century. In what follows I describe a couple of these research projects before returning at the
end to some closing thoughts on the coronavirus and what it means for community resilience. What do flooding and childhood obesity have in common? No, this is not the opening for a bad joke. Like a pandemic, these are two threats to thriving, resilient communities and subjects of research projects of which I was a part. Though trained as a philosopher, my primary work for the past decade has been in the area of sustainability. As a teacher, I have been focused on integrating sustainability into the curriculum through our Environmental Studies program and throughout all disciplines and departments at Luther. My service included helping to found and direct Luther’s Center for Sustainable Communities and working on campus sustainability and community resilience projects at many levels. As a scholar, I have pursued opportunities to both study sustainability and engage with communities to nurture more resilient, thriving communities that respond to the challenges of our time. While sustainability is often associated with recycling and solar panels, and these things are important, the real work of sustainability is primarily about community and connections. While individuals can (and should) work to make their lives more sustainable, the primary unit of sustainability is communities, and the key is often to strengthen connections. Whether that is a campus community like Luther College, a municipality such as Decorah, Iowa, or a bioregion like the Driftless Region, communities must strive to achieve the balance between human systems and nature’s systems that is the hallmark of true sustainability. If community is the unit of sustainability, building connections is a primary tool of the work. How can we connect people to each
Jon Jensen other and the land? How can we help organizations make the connections that will advance their work? How do communities become more resilient to the inevitable shocks of the 21st century and improve the lives of citizens while reducing our impacts on the environment? Luther’s Center for Sustainable Communities has as its mission to “promote sustainability and be a catalyst for change on campus and in the region.” This involves the daily work of waste and energy management for the roughly 3,000 people that live, work, study, and play on the Decorah campus. But it also includes a wide variety of projects in Decorah and surrounding communities to address sustainability challenges and nurture more resilient communities. Here I highlight two projects that were part of my recent sabbatical, with an emphasis on the way that the work of sustainability can create unique learning opportunities for students while assisting communities to look to the future. The Upper Iowa River forms the western border of the Luther College Spring 2020/Agora
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