The way to design stability into the system in an environment of “black swans” is to make the lowest level component as autonomous as possible.  This isn’t survivalism (you can only store so much food, for example).  A better strategy is to structure communities with a set of the skills needed to function and then to facilitate communication between the communities.

John is talking about Prigogine’s dissipative structures as a model for a resilient community (Google for a description).  Boyd was enamoured of dissipative structures and they form a big part of his later conception of orientation.  In addition to stability in an era such as we’re entering now, if done well, it will be more efficient.

Dissipative structures can self-organize, which accounts for the applicability of the concept to resiliency.

The process can be spread by small teams of “vanguards” and can be assisted by social software that encourages interation (e.g., weblogs like this one).