Saturday, December 30, 2017

the ongoing transformation of values, and our relationships with current-paradigm systems in the meantime

The purpose of money, the purpose of any transactional system, is to incentivize actions that benefit others. A crucial assumption underlying these systems is that people won't care enough about others to take such actions to the same degree without these incentives. A major challenge that we're trying to meet is that of creating a transformation of values, of consciousness, sufficient to uncontroversially falsify that assumption.

As we're in the process of creating the transformation, we'll naturally have a tendency to operate, in some ways, to some degree, within the frameworks of our transactional systems. There's no excessive contradiction or conflict, necessarily, in participating in a system while participating in a process that will make that system obsolete. It's also true that, during this process, as always, many of our actions will take place outside of transactional systems, despite these systems' prevalence in many areas, and despite any intentions/aspirations for these systems to prevail in even more areas, including some of the areas in which we're acting "extratransactionally."

Everything said above regarding transactional systems holds true for systems of hierarchical authority also.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

cooperative tiny home villages: a key strategy for constructing optimal futures

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/video/player/?tab=council (Dec 6 2017 AM Session @ 14:20)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=860&v=MRuPqEF6Y0w
(communication starts at 14:20)

Morning. I'm Josh Maurice. Last time I gave one of these 3-minute communications was 2 years ago, at the other meeting place across the river, where they have it on Thursdays, and I talked about what I've now been sometimes referring to as the cooperative tiny home village phenomenon. At that time, 2 years ago, a 3rd village had just started, and now we have 4 in Portland. And I've personally, over the last 6 months or so, had the great fortune to be able to be really personally involved in this. So I want to express, testify, that I find this very very significant, and a hopeful, positive, trend and phenomenon, which can hopefully be expanded upon expeditiously.

We have a very interesting little ecosystem of villages now, with these four; they each have their own unique character, and we all learn from each other and share information and resources. I really want to thank everyone who's helped make it possible - my fellow villagers, all the volunteers who come and lend their time and resources and know-how, and city people who've helped a lot with sanitation, reducing fire hazards, clearing brush, and so on and so forth.

It's still to some extent a fairly controversial phenomenon in many ways, but I think it helps to have an idea of where this is all going. People are a little uneasy about where it's going. It's fairly new and different. And there's so much more to say about it. But the last thing I'll mention is, if we would like to have a framework for a future paradigm that this may be prefiguring, there's a website I'd like to mention that does that in a way that I think is pretty robust and salient: https://zhergish.wixsite.com/zherg

I could go on and on, but that will have to do it for now. Thank you very much, everybody.