IntegralJournal

IntegralJournal Summary

Periodically I attempt to summarize the contents of this blog.  Since there has been some recent interest in the concept developed at the blog, perhaps it is a good time to explain how I got to this point.  This may help readers to better understand the concept.

In the early 90's I became concerned with the sprawling development that was occurring in Boise, Idaho.  I formed a non-profit group that attempted to educate the public on alternatives to sprawl -- namely New Urbanism aka Traditional Neighborhood Development.  I continued to be an advocate for New Urbanism through 1998 and used my position as an institutional real estate investment manager to promote the same.  However, I came to realize that the issue of sustainability involved much more than shifting from suburbia to urbia.  Exposure to books like Limits to Growth and follow-up books caused me to realize that substantial changes had to be made in order to pull out of Overshoot.  Indeed, we have to come up with a system that cuts our energy and resource use by as much as 90%.

It soon became clear that we had to have a massive shift upward in personal development in order to correct our course.  The best guide to understanding personal development that I found was Spiral Dynamics.  Over time I came to realize that it is essential to drop the ego and understand non-duality -- a position that is consistent with science.   While saints and sages associated with all of the major religions throughout the last 2500 years have recognized that this is the way to enlightenment, it has not been introduced in a comprehensive way to a majority of the population.

I also came to realize that our education systems encourage us to be specialists who consequently do not understand the entire system.  This has caused us to be complacent about our predicament.  My conclusion with respect to religion and education is that we have to begin to educate young people as early as the age of eight in how to think rationally and how to think in terms of systems.

Lastly, I have come to the conclusion that credit is the source of most of our problems.  It has literally encouraged us to borrow against the future.  While groups like the Peterson Institute have done a good job of attempting to educate the public with respect to the federal deficit, they have not put forth a comprehensive vision of how we need to transition to a credit-free society.

Whether the label was club, university, or bank, the general theme of the blog has been that we have to learn and live in a completely different way from that which got us to this point.  The theme has also been that the for-profit/non-profit system that currently dominates all that we do is not working.

And now to the concept of MindfulWorldBank.org.  Essentially, we need to expand capitalism to everyone -- not just the top 5% or so.  MindfulWorldBank would own high-quality assets and depositors would own the bank.  Rather than paying a landlord, residents would deposit funds in an account at MindfulWorldBank; thereby building equity rather than throwing money away.  Administration would be handled by volunteers, rather than by executives/bureaucrats.  Eventually, the entire MWB infrastructure would look something similar to a health spa with paths rather than streets.  Cars might still be in our future but would not dominate the landscape and our lives as they do today.  Rather than sit behind desks and in front of computers, we could all be gardeners, gourmet chefs, bicycle mechanics, yoga instructors, or be occupied by some other meaningful work.

It should be noted that this concept is related to the work of recent Nobel recipients Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson.  It addresses the commons in a comprehensive way as well as providing a new organizational structure that is designed to bring out the best in all those who live, work, and invest in the system.  While it is exciting to see their work recognized, it would be more exciting to see it put into practice.

A new organization such as this can be developed from the ground up or with assistance of a wealthy patron.  Please help market the concept.  Questions are encouraged.

The Two Progressive Camps

It is my observation that those who are concerned about the health of the planet fall into two camps: the tribalists and the non-profiteers.  Neither is the answer to the planetary predicament.  (If you were not aware that there was a predicament, please do a Google search of "Limits to Growth" at this site.)

The Tribalists

There is much talk online about how we ought to revert to living tribally.  Those who are attracted to the concept should read The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution.  Tribalism is regressive.  We've been there and done it -- still doing it -- and it doesn't lead to quality of life.

The Non-Profiteers

The other camp believes that having more non-profits will save the planet.  One example is the proliferation of Microfinance.  Those who get a warm and fuzzy feeling about micro lending need to be aware that the average loan rate for a group like Kiva.org is approximately 24%.  The original definition of usury was charging interest period.  Credit is the root cause of our predicament -- not the solution.

What to Do?

First of all, we have to acknowledge that the following is true:

There is as yet no civilized society,
But only a society in the process of becoming civilized.
There is as yet no civilized nation,
But only nations in the process of becoming civilized.
From this standpoint,
We can now speak of a collective task of humankind.
The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization.

— Felix Adler (1851-1933)

We have to come up with something that has not been tried.  Tribalism has been tried and it failed miserably.  Non-profiteering is being tried on a massive scale and has not shifted our destructive course in any macro measurable way.

I've probably bogged readers down in the detail that I've provided at this site in the past.  The details are not important.  The important thing is to establish an institution that provides capital for quality environments -- whether single family homes or larger, comprehensive campuses -- around the world.  Those who provide the capital will not earn interest.  The concept of money earning interest discounts the future.  Instead, our new breed of capitalists will have access to the assets at the lesser of cost or market.

We have made things far too complicated.  It's time for a change.

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.

--Oliver Wendell Holmes  

Mindful Capital Club Presentation

Presentation and Background Information

From the back cover:

Those who are mindful are beginning to realize that only an entirely new operating system can prevent the collapse of civilization. However, to date, no one has presented such a system. This presentation outlines a system that has the potential to serve as a viable replacement for the current paradigm.

Sustainability Article

On American Sustainability —Anatomy of a Societal Collapse

Boundaries To Learning

By design, all of our dominant institutions -- religion, education, and work organizations -- erect barriers to learning.  I have been in the fortunate position of having the leisure time to explore dozens of disciplines through reading hundreds, if not thousands, of books.  My conclusion is that we must establish institutions that do not impose barriers to learning.  Indeed, the survival of our species and possibly all life on earth depends on there being no boundaries to learning.  The handwriting is on the wall spelling out our demise.  We simply do not have the vision to read and recognize the obvious.  It is because our institutions put blinders on us.

Of course, absolute freedom to learn must be balanced with survival and, by extension, productivity.  The two key elements of survival are food and shelter.  Another key element in my opinion is quality.  The foundation for quality is scale.  Therefore, any institution must have the production of food and shelter in a quality environment as its foundation.  It just happens that gardening, building, and cooking are three of the most gratifying activities known to man so long as they are done at a proper scale.  A human scale.

The realization that all existing institutions hinder our survivability is the key to our survivability.

A Prediction For The Next Generational Cycle: Making Hay In A Crisis

What can we expect in the next 20 years or so?

• Many of us will find that our retirement savings will be substantially eroded.  From an organic standpoint, this was to be expected.  In nature, it is only prudent to store enough to get through the winter season.  Our retirement plans assumed that we could store up decades worth of "nuts" and this is just plain nuts in an organic or natural world -- the world that we will revert to either willingly or unwillingly.  Bottom line is that most of us will be working for much of the rest of our lives.  Depending on how we structure this work, it can either be pleasant or a hellish experience.
• Most of us will not be able to pay for expensive college educations for our children.  "Higher" education will have to be restructured and it's about time.
• We will be forced to transition away from an energy-intensive lifestyle to one that uses less energy.  This will mean smaller and more energy efficient living quarters.  It also means that big, inefficient homes will decline -- yes, even further -- in value.
• We will shift from an emphasis on financial engineering to sustainable development engineering.
• Currently, we are all scrambling to make a living.  This scrambling makes it difficult to be bodhisattva-like.  We can transition to a system that encourages us to find right livelihoods.
• Independence will mean being near our food sources and possibly having our own paradise -- a walled garden.
• It makes sense to integrate education, work, and leisure in a comprehensive institution/system that also integrates Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Where would you rather have your wealth stored?  In a fund in which the principles have multiple houses and a big office or in an asset-backed account that is administered by a group of independent scholars that have taken an implicit vow of non-accumulation and sustainable living?

A fitting "post"script:

Right living is no longer the fulfillment of an ethical or religious demand.  For the first time in history the Physical survival of the human race depends on a radical change of the human heart.  However, a change of the human heart is possible only to the extent that drastic economic and social changes occur that give the human heart the chance for change and the courage and the vision to achieve it. [p.9&10]

Erich Fromm, To Have Or To Be?

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

The following sentence appeared at the end of this article:  "Growth is dead. Let’s make the most of it. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."

This is a good time to go back and review several items that were posted on this site over the last four years.  At the time they were posted, they may have not appeared as compelling as they do today.  Let's not waste this crisis.

November 17, 2004

Again, from Complexity...:

At the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based environmental think tank that Gell-Mann had helped set up in his capacity as a director of the MacArthur Foundation, founding director Gus Speth and others have argued that global sustainability is possible only if human society undergoes at least six fundamental transitions within a very few decades:

1. A demographic transition to a roughly stable world population.

2. A technological transition to a minimal environmental impact per person.

3. An economic transition to a world in which serious attempts are made to charge the real costs of goods and services -- including environmental costs -- so that there are incentives for the world economy to live off nature's "income" rather than depleting its "capital."

4. A social transition to a broader sharing of that income, along with increased opportunities for nondestructive employment for the poor families of the world.

5. An institutional transition to a set of supranational alliances that facilitate a global attack on global problems and allow various aspects of policy to be integrated with one another.

6. An informational transition to a world in which scientific research, education, and global monitoring allow large numbers of people to understand the nature of the challenges they face.

The trick, of course, is to get from here to there without one of Cowan's Class A global catastrophes.  And if we're to have any hope of doing that, said Gell-Mann, the study of complex adaptive systems is clearly critical.  Understanding these six fundamental transitions means understanding economic, social, and political forces that are deeply intertwined and mutually dependent upon one another.  You can't just look at each piece of the problem individually, as has been done in the past, and hope to describe the behavior of the system as a whole.  The only way to do it is to look at the world as a strongly interconnected system -- even if the models are crude.

But more than that, said Gell-Mann, the trick in getting from here to there is to make sure that "there" is a world worth living in.  A sustainable human society could easily be some Orwellian dystopia characterized by rigid control and narrow, confined lives for almost everyone in it.  What it should be is a society that is adaptable, robust, and resilient to lesser disasters, that can learn from mistakes, that isn't static, but allows for growth in the quality of human life instead of just the quantity of it. [p.351]

Source: Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos

November 11, 2004 

Opportunity Knocks

Read the following and consider the possibilities:

First, from Dark Age Ahead:

It has long been recognized that getting an education is effective for bettering oneself and one's chances in the world.  But a degree and an education are not necessarily synonymous.

Credentialing, not educating, has become the primary business of North American universities....  [Page 44]

Source: Dark Age Ahead

Second, from A Pattern Language:

The original universities in the middle ages were simply collections of teachers who attracted students because they had something to offer. They were the marketplace of ideas, located all over town, where people could shop around for the kinds of ideas and learning which made sense to them.  By contrast, the isolated and over-administered university of today kills the variety and intensity of the different ideas at the university and also limits the student's opportunity to shop for ideas.  [Page 232]

Source: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series)

Third, from The Economist:

What might the company of the future look like?  Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary who is now president of Harvard University, suggests in the latest Harvard Business Review that the American research university (ie, Harvard and its few peers) might be a model.  He does not mean that firms should set up their own "universities" -- although plenty, from Motorola to McDonald's, have done that.  Instead, they should adopt the research university's fluid and decentralised approach to creativity and hierarchy.  "If you look at the organisations in the economy where the greatest value is being added," argues Mr. Summers, "they are increasingly the organisations that share the values and characteristics of universities."

Source:  The Economist, July 26th, 2003, P. 62

Education has tremendous potential to be reshaped into a more comprehensive institution.

So...A university.  Although I got away from the university idea for two or three years, I eventually came back to it:

August 28, 2008

Will Your System Provide Freedom?

Before you answer the title question, you should be aware of a few key facts.  I heartily recommend that you take Chris Martenson's Crash Course.  It may cause you to have doubts that the current system will deliver.  This is not new information.  However, Chris has done an outstanding job of presenting the information.

After you have watched and digested the Crash Course come back here.  I have known that we have a sustainability problem for a number of years.  (The problem has been written about comprehensively for at least 50 years.)  All of my thinking has centered around coming up with a way to live that sets a new course.  Most ideas that are tossed about these days will only help at the margins.  Most, if not all, institutions that exist today are only positioned to help at the margins. They are not able to effect meaningful change and really serve only as a balm for the ill-informed and those who want to delude themselves.  (If you are interested in a deeper understanding of the problem, read this article.)

Freedom is the most important ingredient to a happy and healthy life in my opinion.  (Freedom, of course, has to be balanced by responsibility.)  Therefore, freedom is my "measuring stick."

• Ask yourself whether you have tangible assets or whether you have paper assets?  If your system provides only -- or mainly -- paper assets it will not provide freedom in the long run.
  

• Ask yourself whether your system is flexible enough to handle global climate change?  Will you be stuck with a living environment that may end up beneath the surface of the oceans?  Losing most of your assets in the rising seas is not freedom.

• Will you be stuck in a community that you have outgrown?   Freedom is not having to listen to those who are not well developed.

• In an age of ever increasing energy prices, will you have the resources to heat and cool your home?

• Is debt the cornerstone of your system and your balance sheet?  Debt is not freedom.  Indeed, it is probably the most insidious component of any system.

• Does your system provide a quality living and working environment to all participants?  It should.  Our freedom is contingent upon the happiness and healthiness of all.

• Does your environment promote stimulating intellectual discussions?  Freedom is the offspring of such discussions.

• Will your system leave something for future generations?  Does your freedom come at the expense of others -- now and in the future?

• Does your system provide plenty of leisure time or does it sap so much energy from you that you plop yourself down in front of the TV when you get home from work?

• The system that currently dominates our culture does not provide any of the above freedoms.  The institutions that exist today do not provide any solutions.  Maybe it is time to explore other options.

"...we have no alternatives to the models of corporate capitalism, social democratic or Soviet socialism, or technocratic "fascism with a smiling face."  The popularity of this view is largely due to the fact that little effort has been made to study the feasibility of entirely new social [and financial] models and to experiment with them."

--Erich Fromm, To Have Or To Be?

We actually don't have to give up or adopt any particular system.  We simply need to be creative about rearranging the furniture on the deck.  Fromm was one of the first to integrate several disciplines as he explains in the introduction to The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.  He realized that this was necessary in order to comprehensively explore the subject matter in the book.  We are doing the same here.  Integrating several components of life that for hundreds of years have been separate.  And, integrating them in a way that is necessary in order to live comprehensively.

Can we "rearrange the furniture" in a way that gets our footprint below one (two?) and improves our quality of life at the same time?  Is it time to come up with a way of living that provides the freedom that is so lacking in the current system?  A structure that divides work into meaningful components?  A structure that integrates shelter, food, education, work, and leisure?  Real sustainable development?

I have described this integration over the years in various posts.  Although it has evolved and will evolve in the future, the concept is simple:

• Capital from members/patrons is used to build pedestrian-only campuses around the world and as working capital.
• Living quarters will be approximately 500 s.f. with separate gourmet kitchens and dining areas dispersed throughout each campus.
• Those who build and operate the campuses are independent contractors with rolling quarter-long contracts.  These contractors live on-site.
• The entire campus will be a classroom at all times as we should all continue to learn as we live.
• On-site gardens and orchards will provide fresh fruit and produce to the extent possible. 
• Reservations will be based on seniority.  Those who reserve and occupy specific living quarters will have options to reserve those living quarters in the future.
• Members/patrons will draw down their membership accounts as they utilize/occupy the properties.  They can deposit additional membership funds at any time.  So long as funds to cover a stay have been on deposit for at least a year in advance of the commencement of any reservation period, members can reserve one or more living quarters.
• If there is a sufficient amount of cash in the working capital account, members can opt to withdraw all or some of the funds in their membership account.
• Please note that this can serve as a comprehensive alternative to the current carbon offset schemes.

Simple.

It is important for those with savings to recognize that our lifestyles will likely contract in the future.  This does not have to be unpalatable.  To the contrary, it can be invigorating.  Those who want to store their wealth may be amenable to the idea that it is better to preserve their principle rather than to expect a return over and above their principle.

One cannot expect everyone to shift immediately into more sustainable ways of living.  However, those with the capital need to realize that assets with sustainable "footprints" represent a more secure place to store wealth than non-sustainable assets represented by almost all of our current infrastructure -- offices, large homes, sprawling subdivisions, most restaurants, most retail, etc.

The physical campus described above represents a sustainable footprint.  It also represents an environment where participants are continually researching, learning, and adapting to the new reality of contraction rather than expansion.  The future must focus on the expansion of minds.

This will be easier to launch with the endorsement/participation of an established institution.  Does this institution exist?

Before you answer the title question, you should be aware of a few key facts.  I heartily recommend that you take Chris Martenson's Crash Course.  It may cause you to have doubts that the current system will deliver.  This is not new information.  However, Chris has done an outstanding job of presenting the information.

After you have watched and digested the Crash Course come back here.  I have known that we have a sustainability problem for a number of years.  (The problem has been written about comprehensively for at least 50 years.)  All of my thinking has centered around coming up with a way to live that sets a new course.  Most ideas that are tossed about these days will only help at the margins.  Most, if not all, institutions that exist today are only positioned to help at the margins. They are not able to effect meaningful change and really serve only as a balm for the ill-informed and those who want to delude themselves.  (If you are interested in a deeper understanding of the problem, read this article.)

Freedom is the most important ingredient to a happy and healthy life in my opinion.  (Freedom, of course, has to be balanced by responsibility.)  Therefore, freedom is my "measuring stick."

• Ask yourself whether you have tangible assets or whether you have paper assets?  If your system provides only -- or mainly -- paper assets it will not provide freedom in the long run.
  

• Ask yourself whether your system is flexible enough to handle global climate change?  Will you be stuck with a living environment that may end up beneath the surface of the oceans?  Losing most of your assets in the rising seas is not freedom.

• Will you be stuck in a community that you have outgrown?   Freedom is not having to listen to those who are not well developed.

• In an age of ever increasing energy prices, will you have the resources to heat and cool your home?

• Is debt the cornerstone of your system and your balance sheet?  Debt is not freedom.  Indeed, it is probably the most insidious component of any system.

• Does your system provide a quality living and working environment to all participants?  It should.  Our freedom is contingent upon the happiness and healthiness of all.

• Does your environment promote stimulating intellectual discussions?  Freedom is the offspring of such discussions.

• Will your system leave something for future generations?  Does your freedom come at the expense of others -- now and in the future?

• Does your system provide plenty of leisure time or does it sap so much energy from you that you plop yourself down in front of the TV when you get home from work?

• The system that currently dominates our culture does not provide any of the above freedoms.  The institutions that exist today do not provide any solutions.  Maybe it is time to explore other options.

"...we have no alternatives to the models of corporate capitalism, social democratic or Soviet socialism, or technocratic "fascism with a smiling face."  The popularity of this view is largely due to the fact that little effort has been made to study the feasibility of entirely new social [and financial] models and to experiment with them."

--Erich Fromm, To Have Or To Be?

We actually don't have to give up or adopt any particular system.  We simply need to be creative about rearranging the furniture on the deck.  Fromm was one of the first to integrate several disciplines as he explains in the introduction to The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.  He realized that this was necessary in order to comprehensively explore the subject matter in the book.  We are doing the same here.  Integrating several components of life that for hundreds of years have been separate.  And, integrating them in a way that is necessary in order to live comprehensively.

Can we "rearrange the furniture" in a way that gets our footprint below one (two?) and improves our quality of life at the same time?  Is it time to come up with a way of living that provides the freedom that is so lacking in the current system?  A structure that divides work into meaningful components?  A structure that integrates shelter, food, education, work, and leisure?  Real sustainable development?

I have described this integration over the years in various posts.  Although it has evolved and will evolve in the future, the concept is simple:

• Capital from members/patrons is used to build pedestrian-only campuses around the world and as working capital.
• Living quarters will be approximately 500 s.f. with separate gourmet kitchens and dining areas dispersed throughout each campus.
• Those who build and operate the campuses are independent contractors with rolling quarter-long contracts.  These contractors live on-site.
• The entire campus will be a classroom at all times as we should all continue to learn as we live.
• On-site gardens and orchards will provide fresh fruit and produce to the extent possible. 
• Reservations will be based on seniority.  Those who reserve and occupy specific living quarters will have options to reserve those living quarters in the future.
• Members/patrons will draw down their membership accounts as they utilize/occupy the properties.  They can deposit additional membership funds at any time.  So long as funds to cover a stay have been on deposit for at least a year in advance of the commencement of any reservation period, members can reserve one or more living quarters.
• If there is a sufficient amount of cash in the working capital account, members can opt to withdraw all or some of the funds in their membership account.
• Please note that this can serve as a comprehensive alternative to the current carbon offset schemes.

Simple.

It is important for those with savings to recognize that our lifestyles will likely contract in the future.  This does not have to be unpalatable.  To the contrary, it can be invigorating.  Those who want to store their wealth may be amenable to the idea that it is better to preserve their principle rather than to expect a return over and above their principle.

One cannot expect everyone to shift immediately into more sustainable ways of living.  However, those with the capital need to realize that assets with sustainable "footprints" represent a more secure place to store wealth than non-sustainable assets represented by almost all of our current infrastructure -- offices, large homes, sprawling subdivisions, most restaurants, most retail, etc.

The physical campus described above represents a sustainable footprint.  It also represents an environment where participants are continually researching, learning, and adapting to the new reality of contraction rather than expansion.  The future must focus on the expansion of minds.

This will be easier to launch with the endorsement/participation of an established institution.  Does this institution exist?

No Limits To (Personal) Growth

In an interesting book that I may have previewed here at some time in the past, Lex Hixon traces enlightenment in ten different traditions.  My interpretation of the message is that we need to move beyond the concept of a supreme being to one of a supreme identity.  This means that we must develop to the point where we drop the ego.

While enlightenment is often presented in tandem with mysticism, it can be discussed in practical terms.  It is more important than ever that anyone who is in a position to do so research enlightenment and get the message out to those who they can influence.  Remarkably enough, there are theologians who have never reached the enlightenment stage.  (I recently previewed a book, Darwin's Gift, by Francisco Ayala that makes the case that evolution explains why "God" did nasty things.  Wow!)

The concept of supreme identity is consistent not only with the advanced levels of religious traditions but also with physics, biology, psychology -- just about anything you can name.  One doesn't have to be a mystic to know this.  A few moments of reflection is all that is required.

My research has led me to the conclusion that we must have living systems that encourage individuals to develop a supreme identity.  In simple and practical terms, we're all in this together.  A sustainable system would not permit accumulation beyond what is necessary to get us through a winter or two.  Buying a 2500 s.f. house and working for 30 years or more to pay for it is not sustainable.  If we die with material assets, then we have failed the supreme identity test and the sustainability test.

Creating A Loom (Draft)

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts…they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay
(As quoted in A Bridge to the 18th Century)

I am currently reviewing a book by Amartya Sen entitled Development As Freedom.  According to the publisher: "This is a landmark work that shows how in individual human freedom -- the exclusive possession, Sen shows, of no particular nation, region or historical, intellectual or religious tradition -- lies the capacity for political participation, economic development and social progress."  In my opinion, this process of individual human freedom -- it is rare here in the U.S. -- has to be supercharged and a "loom" must be developed to integrate existing wisdom.  Developmentally, as a society, we are not even to the stage that the founders of the U.S. were in the 1700's. (Wilber, 2000)

We have to create a new loom/institution that enables us to live in a way that provides quality and reverses the destructive course of humanity.

What would the physical infrastructure look like?  While the physical structure of a village may be fine, no one has ever claimed that a village is innovative and encourages personal development.  Quite the contrary, many find village life stifling.  When I think about village, gossip springs to mind.  We need to inject a new element into the village.  That new element is the university.  Another way to look at it is to talk about injecting the university into the village.  Most individuals leave the university and their personal development stops.  They enter into structures that have boundaries: religion, family, and   work/corporations -- just for starters.  (It should be mentioned that the corporate infiltration of universities has served to impose boundaries in that institution as well.)   

Any new institution -- or re-tooled institution -- must be interdisciplinary.

There are many ideas out there that have merit.  However, they do not address the personal development that is necessary in order to lift the world up and reverse the current, widespread destruction that is occurring.

Guiding premises and goals:

• All life is important
• Reduce suffering/Eliminate empty bedrooms (there are more empty bedrooms each night in the U.S. than there are homeless individuals)
• Development is only possible though dropping the desire to acquire
• Draw from the wisdom of all religions and traditions
• Flexible
• Flow
• Adaptable
• Create an environment that can provide a way for bright, young people to envision a fulfilling life without producing offspring
• Institutions must encourage and facilitate lifelong development

Physical infrastructure might physically resemble the villages envisioned here.  The creator of the site wisely counsels us that cars need to be banished to the periphery.

Operational structure would resemble a university.   Trustees who serve without pay.  Researchers/fellows who work a baseline of 20 hours per week in hands-on productive activities.  Gardening, Cooking, etc.  Home Economics in the sense that this is work that is done anyway by someone in the household.  What we are doing is incorporating all the elements of living into one institution that is far more comprehensive than the cobbled up mess that we currently pay homage to.

Improving local sources of food is key to thriving in the coming decades.  (See this Richard Heinberg transcript for an explanation of the importance of local and labor-intensive agriculture.)  However, if someone is working on an important project, other fellows who recognize the value of their work may step in and "cover" for them in their labor obligations.  Fellows will be free to come and go at the end of the "quarter."

Capital will come from patrons who deposit money in an institution account that is drawn down as they use the services.  First class accommodations in a university village.

A change is long overdue.

Good Point

A Carolyn Baker excerpt:

One may argue that neither a chimp nor an elephant could design a computer, but I ask: What is more consequential, the ability to design a computer or the ability to protect, sustain, and nurture the planet on which one resides? Of what value is the computer if none of us is here to use it?