Subsilience
Main > OSE > Guiding philosophies
Subsilience is the combination of subsistence and resilience. It is an updated word for the older term, neosubsistence, where the meaning of 'subsistence' has been corrupted in modern society to imply rough and brutish living conditions. Resilience, on the other hand, has a much more positive connotation, and the term subsilience masks the unsavory subsistence part and emphasizes the more palatable resilience.
Subsilience implies, from the OSE standpoint, the most advanced state of civilization in which high, appropriate technology allows people to attain an unprecedented quality of life for all - based on ubiquitous, local resources. This implies that more people are makers - or more skilled than ever before to function as meaningful producers, thereby eliminating their dependence on centralized systems, and freeing themselves from the compromises associated with such systems.
Subsilience makes the job obsolete, as people learn to produce all essential and frivolous needs within their communities. People then focus on more meaningful pursuits than making a living, thereby contributing more to the advancement of civilization.
For a discussion on subsilience, see the first introduction of this word at OSE's Economy in a Box presentation in San Francisco, June 2010. This term is introduced in the second half of this presentation:
