Positive Solutions to Yesterday's "Doom & Gloom"

Alternatives to deal with yesterday's post about the end of the world....same author and some fine links/references.

Things will change and here are ways to cope with change

Charlie, risen above the median line today........who wonders where tomorrow will find me.

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Excerpt, from the end of the article........good read, long.

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Revolution That Is Arising From The Earth

By William M. H. Kötke

13 September, 2007 Countercurrents.org

The immediate world problem is the net deficit of the earths? fertility. This is solved by self-sufficient communities. The eco villages which are being formed around the world are pointed toward self-sufficiency. Eco villages grew, in part, out of the intentional community movement that began to swell in the late nineteen sixties. As the global recognition of the plight of the earth?s life grew, so did the eco village movement.

The ?live in balance with nature? phrase does not necessarily mean adopting a loin cloth and eating roots and berries. The fact is that there are far too few roots and berries left. We can although, create ways of living that are self-sufficient and that do pay obeisance to the successful million year history of our species.

Of course there are many ?eco villages? in various cultures around the world that are still near self-sufficiency but the new eco village movement within the machine of industrial society is significant. We in industrial civilization are culturally conditioned to associate power with wealth. In reality, from top to bottom, our daily lives are governed by huge mass institutions over which we have little or no control. All our survival systems are controlled by mass institutions. We have little fundamental control of our lives. Our picture of ?freedom? is to have enough money to do ?whatever we want?. But this is not real power on the planet earth. Being able to create one?s habitation, feed oneself through one?s own efforts and live in a real human community that serves the developmental needs of each individual and the community is real power.

The eco village movement is a follow-on to the resources developed by the ?alternative community? activists. These resources are many. They involve alternative medicine as an alternative to industrial medicine. Herbalism, aromatherapy, chiropractic, body work ,which is often called energy medicine, acupuncture, nutrition and many others are resources that are popular. Gender equality is a very strong theme. Grassroots, consensus government is seen as real democracy. In the realm of habitation local materials such as straw bale, cob, adobe and other alternatives to industrial construction are emphasized. This is usually combined with passive or active solar advantages in addition to water harvesting systems. Various alternative energy systems have been perfected.

The pleasure of providing one?s food has gone beyond the European row crop system to the far more sophisticated Permaculture

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. The practice of permacultue has spread world-wide. In some aspects Permaculture is a way of designing (or planting) one?s area and watershed with a high diversity of human and ecologically useful species that all fit together into plant communities. It is based in perennial plants, does not turn the soil on the broadscale and through its diversity provides a healthy, balanced diet. Permaculture can restore soil fertility while providing more food per acre than can industrial agriculture. This comparison is somewhat unfair to the industrial system which grows monocrops on vast areas with the purpose of sucking up soil fertility by the use of annual plants for profit. Its purpose is not to feed people, but to force surpluses from the earth for profit. Permaculture on the other hand does not produce massive surpluses of monocrops, its purpose is to feed people. It can although, produce specialty crops for the local famers markets or village barter centers.

People leaving the disintegrating human culture of industrial society have experimented with many social forms. Celibacy, monogamy and group marriage are possibilities. Ritual and the creation of traditions are important. The content of our daily lives are important. How we relate to each other and how we relate to the youth are important. In community there are mentors for the youth, uncles, aunts, elders. In the impoverished human culture of industrial society the young are deposited in front of a television and then when they are a little older they are stuffed into a mass educational institution preparing them to become another industrial cipher.

In traditional cultures of our species, the youth were taught how to be human. This is artfully shown in the book, Seven Arrows, by Hyemeyohsts Storm from the Cheyenne culture of the North American Great Plains. An African couple, both who came from a small, traditional village in Ghana have been valuable resources for the intentional community movement. Sobonfu E. Some

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and her husband Malidoma Patrice Some
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help us understand what life-centered, human village life is like.

People are returning to the land and community in many forms. The direction is set and there are many paths. One unique path is a method using traditional capitalist techniques to reach that goal. Globalecovillage

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led by Biosphere II architect Phil Hawes has created a stock company listed on Wall Street to reach that goal of designed eco villages.

The elephant in the room is the Global Ecovillage Network

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that involves tens of thousands of villages. This is a world-wide network of eco villages that shows that rather than having to adopt a loin cloth, the ancient human values of our species can be established at the next higher turn of the spiral with eco villages all over the world connected and communicating over the internet like a global mind. A small solar panel or a micro hydro, a telephone connected to a satellite and there you have it. The eco village is not a retreat backwards into some kind of insignificance.

The burgeoning movement is shown by a statement from the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN). ?Network members include large networks like Sarvodaya (11,000 sustainable villages in Sri Lanka); EcoYoff and Colufifa (350 villages in Senegal); the Ladakh project on the Tibetian plateau; ecotowns like Auroville in South India, the Federation of Damanhur in Italy and Nimbin in Australia; small rural ecovillages like Gaia Asociación in Argentina and Huehuecoyotl, Mexico; urban rejuvenation projects like Los Angeles EcoVillage and Christiania in Copenhagen; permaculture design sites such as Crystal Waters, Australia, Cochabamba, Bolivia and Barus, Brazil; and educational centres such as Findhorn in Scotland, Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, Earthlands in Massachusetts, and many more.? In the U.S. there are presently eighty-three villages affiliated with the network. One can imagine the creative ideas that flow between all of these villages!

GEN is divided into three areas: GEN - Europe and Africa

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, GEN - Oceania and Asia
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, and the Eco Village Network of the Americas
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.

The worm has turned. In former decades revolutionaries vied to grab the industrial power of the elites in order to redistribute wealth. Now we have seen what the ?wealth? of the industrialist/banker has done to the earth and our future. Now we in the culturally poor but ?wealthy? societies are looking to the ?richness? of a new kind of human culture that cannot be directed but can only grow out of the base. The base is in motion. The earth is speaking. Those involved with infinite demands upon finite resources will not survive but the earth will survive along with those children embedded within her.

William H. Kötke, author of Garden Planet: The Present Phase Change of the Human Species, available at

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Amazon, Barnes and Noble and retail bookstores. He is also the author of the out-of-print, underground classic, The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future, which may be downloaded for free at
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