Convivial Preventative Maintenance (CPM)
How can we Prevent the Collapse of our Communities?
This article hopes to explain a method in which science and engineering could be integrated with art and culture to ensure that communities can more easily bounce back from whatever the future may throw at them.
Total Preventative Maintenance (TPM)
CPM is derived from TPM, a process used within engineering which reduces the downtime of tools and machines by performing small amounts of maintenance little and often, rather than waiting for a machine to breakdown before repairing it. This is because downtime is costly in business, just as the downtime of our water supply would be costly in terms of peoples lives.
TPM involves creating a calendar which details what maintenance should happen and when, based upon the recommendations of the manufacturer of the tools and more importantly based upon the feedback of the operators who use them. The calendar is continually updated based on this real time feedback.
Collapse
Our global supply chains are fragile. Many countries rely upon Just-In-Time systems and rely upon other countries for large shares of their resources.
In the event of a solar megaflare where integrated circuits are fried or when the oil bubble bursts or when harvests fail due to extreme weather, we are more prone to collapse.
Through Information and its convenience and the export of manufacture through globalisation. We have lost many of our skills and have become reliant upon knowing where to look for information rather than holding any of it.
What would happen if the internet were to collapse? Which technologies and resources that we take for granted would become lost to history? How many of us know how to make a fire? How many know about herbal medicines? About foraging? How can we make our knowledge bases anti-fragile?
Rebooting Society
What is the lifetime of a hard drive, of a book, who has the ability to replicate these storage devices? Who has the tools?
We currently store our rebooting tools in the arctic, how will we get there? We’ve stored the globe’s code on film there, but how easy will it be to bring together those who can read it and act on it without the internet?
And with all the manufacturing capability in China and all the material in Australian and African mines, how could we re-create the internet when the oil bubble pops or a solar megaflare fries all the ships, drills, servers and computer chips?
In the event of collapse we need to be able to reboot society quickly. Because three days after the water pumps fail or a month after our last meals, all hell will break loose.
In that time all the world’s books could be burnt for fuel, or more likely used for toilet paper.
Experience however is anti-fragile. We are more resilient than a book. There is a huge need for everyone in our society to gain experience in the maintenance of our systems and infrastructure, so we can reboot quickly in times of crisis.
A Society’s Infrastructure
So the question becomes, what infrastructure is needed to keep our societies afloat in times of collapse? Which technologies and tools could we all do with knowing about? Which tools allow us to access clean drinking water, warm housing, food, medicine?
How could governance become more democratic and inclusive? How could the intergenerational transmission of ideas be improved?
Conviviality
But who would want to spend their free time maintaining it all? Obviously not many, for if it was such fun, this article wouldn't be necessary. Thats where Conviviality comes in.
‘Conviviality’ is described as disciplined and creative playfulness within cultural relationships (Illich 1973, p.xii-xiii). In other words to be merry, festive and social.
By bringing food, music and merriment to maintenance activities, people will show up, get stuck in and will more likely learn skills. Who doesn’t like an excuse for a party? Even if for a little work.
By attaching social value to a piece of infrastructure through conviviality, planning boundaries and vandalism may also be reduced as individuals would be facing the wrath of the entire community should an infrastructure’s creation or maintenance be halted, obstructed or damaged.
A Social Calendar
If we were to organise such festive maintenance events. What time of year would be best for them? Can the different colours and weather of the seasons be utilised for symbolism and theatrics? Can activities be done indoors when people are less active during winter? Or does the event require lots of energy and a large space in the summer months?
Can we distribute the activities throughout the entire year? Can we maintain the community spirit? Especially during the darkest coldest months? Could we return to a cyclical calendar? Where the changing seasons are utilised in ceremony?
Art & Symbolism
By mimicking the elements, by personifying the trees, mountains and myths could we improve engagement and bring the subjective arts into the folds of objective maintenance?
CPM could give challenge and purpose to local artistic and dramatic groups. Where language, narrative and stories that ensure the survival of the maintenance activity could be weaved in.
May pole dancing for example could be given new meaning through the language of complexity, of weaving, of dancing, of collective emergence, where currently the original meaning of the activity has become all but lost. Maintenance provides an excuse to revive our traditions and past times as an accompaniment. An excuse to be playful and festive.
Remembrance
These events provide opportunity to give thanks. To thank the trees and hills for the materials the maintenance is carried out with, to thank those who made the event possible, to thank the day. Saying Grace does not have to be something only religious people do. After all “gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness” and “appreciation begets abundance” (Kimmerer 2013, p.111-116). A society of abundance is a self-actualised, healthy and anti-fragile one.
The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address as discussed about in Braiding Sweetgrass could provide a good template to start from for such events.
Example: Energy
A cohort of young adults could be given the challenge to build a small wind turbine that will be used in the community.
Over the course of several months they could collectively learn the principles of aerodynamics, they could look to nature for inspiration and incorporate artful flare, such as looking to humpback whale fins to improve efficiency.
They could use local materials and work out how to make it fully maintainable at the local scale. Such as using the design of WW1 planes which were made out of canvas stretched over wooden frames, rather than fiberglass which cannot be recycled.
Meanwhile children and adults alike could be preparing for a festival of wind, which will mark the unveiling of the wind turbine during autumn. Where they could theatrically personify the wind by dancing as the leaves eddying.
Many cultures practice harvest festivals at this time of year already, well what if in addition there was a festival dedicated to the harvesting of the wind? A festival of thanks for the free forces that envelope and guide us.
Example: Governance
There could be festivals, where top-level governance processes could be explained and where citizens can openly Q & A with the candidates in breakout groups, perhaps even cross-legged under the boughs of trees so that everyone is on the same level.
Food, dance and drink could then be used to bring the people together, to engage them, in what is otherwise considered a dry subject. After all, better engagement means better representation.
Thus with everyone knowing a governance process, then if collapse and fragmentation were to happen, then society may reboot more speedily.
Curriculum
CPM could enhance curriculums by providing the means to apply, simulate and prototype the endless theory. A class could work together to build a dam, a wind turbine sculpture, a velomobile, whilst integrating history, geometric patterns, biology, physics and chemistry.
Community Weaving
These events could become the fabric that weaves the youth and the old together through mentorship and by keeping idle hands busy during the winter months.
They could help provide some common ground, a shared interest, to fill the outpacing technology gap forming between them.
Similar Examples
Similar events have occurred throughout our histories where playfulness, art and science have combined to create Flugtag and box kite festivals.
These events demand the construction of technologies within a community setting for the purpose of conviviality. CPM, however directs attention to projects with some practical benefit to society as well.
Alternatively, Cider festivals have allowed communities to harvest, press and taste fresh juice and previous years batches together. Convivial in nature, they could become truly CPM, were the community to build a press using local materials in the run up to the event.
There are also the floating houses of the Ma’dan in Iraq. Their houses are built using reeds that are local to the marshes they call home. Built in as little as 3 days and lasting for more than 25 years. Theirs is a true example of a community maintaining its infrastructure.
Whilst the skills are passed down generation to generation. The youth are being ever enticed away by the western promises. They perhaps could benefit from more conviviality, to help engage them.
Conclusion
CPM offers society a bridge between art and science, young and old, collapse and rebirth as well as a transition from corporate solutions to ones appropriate to community and place. By engaging in regular convivial discourse through food, dance and song around a maintenance goal the community’s seeds can be better sown. Resulting in people learning how best to improve, transition and reboot.
Illich, I. 1973. Tools for Conviviality. 3rd Ed. London:Marion Boyars.
Kimmerer, R. W., 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass. 1st Edition. Canada: Milkweed Editions.
Kravčík, M., Pokorný, J., Kohutiar, J., Kováč, M. and Tóth, E., 2007. Water for the Recovery of the Climate — A New Water Paradigm [online]. Žilina: Krupa Print.
