Sustainable Sustainability

We believe humanity has the opportunity to transition to a culture of creation over consumption if we can demonstrate sustainable sustainability, and distinct individual benefit to best practice sustainability, as a model for living a life for The Highest Good of All. To achieve this, we feel demonstrating and open source sharing duplicable models with obvious and measurable benefits is necessary because just to be off the grid, or contribute to the world, is not enough for most people to make a shift; any sustainability model that is going to be embraced by the mainstream will need to demonstrate significant individual benefit. Broadening sustainability beyond food, energy, and shelter to include more diverse cultural and human needs is one way to accomplish this.

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COMBINING WHAT IS POSSIBLE

It IS possible to create a completely sustainable civilization. Right now there are people in different places around the world that are 100% food self-sustainable, producing their own energy, and building beautiful homes that last longer and require less than 1/20th the investment of a conventional US home. There are also people demonstrating successful models of higher consciousness living like resource based economies, consensus governing, social architectures devoted to personal growth and contribution, revolutionary educational models, and more. The next natural step is the creation and open source sharing and teaching of a collaborative model that includes all of these things in one place.

ESSENTIAL FOUNDATIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY

Comprehensive sustainability starts with the basics: a sustainable food infrastructure, a renewable energy infrastructure, and a detailed plan for sustainable building practices. Right now over 40,000 people each day starve to death (World Health Organization Statistics 2008), 1.6 billion people (1/4th of humanity) are without electricity (Millennium Development Goals Report 2007), and over 100 million people worldwide are without a home (2005 UN Commission on Human Rights). With statistics like this and the current economic condition, building a comprehensive and duplicable sustainability model that includes food, energy, and affordable “build it yourself” housing has never been more needed. This reduces overhead, is a model for living in integrity because it provides more than it consumes, and it’s the foundation of creating a life where the purpose is truly living and being able to contribute freely and continuously to The Highest Good of All and global forward movement without worrying where our basic survival resources are coming from.

We believe this is essential because if people just wanted to be off the grid and grow their own food, these sustainability practices would arguably already be widespread. What people really want right now is a new way of living that is fulfilling, less stressful, allows for more time with their families and friends, celebrates the experience of being alive, provides variety and growth, and makes them feel happy. Most people in this country can afford food, energy, and housing, but working to pay for these things requires the majority of a person’s time and energy and leaves too little for anything else.

BEYOND THE FOUNDATIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY

The solution to this problem is food, energy, and structure self-sufficiency that creates the support for an expansion beyond the foundations of sustainability that meets the rest of our needs through recreation, education, personal growth, and the social architecture of a cooperative and collaborative community. Through the combination of eliminating basic survival bills and operating a cooperative-living model people are able to spend significantly less time working and more time doing the things they love so people can start the re-learning of what it means to truly live for the celebration of what it means to be ALIVE!

To make this possible we are creating a new way of living and sharing this experience founded on a 40-hour community contribution week and our open source structure. Food production/preparation, building, domestic duties like laundry and cleaning, child care, etc. are all accomplished by the collective efforts of people contributing 35 hours of their community contribution work week, and the other 5 go to the social and recreation model. Initially starting with 40 adults this equates to 200 hours of recreational/social contribution that includes music, yoga, meditation, art, education, game nights, movie nights, reading groups and any other fulfilled living practice someone would like to organize. Open source sharing all of this and inviting the world to participate, learn, and evolve the shared information drives all our revenue streams, with a particular emphasis on tourism.

WHAT SUSTAINABLE SUSTAINABILITY CONTRIBUTES TO THE WORLD

What all this creates is sustainable sustainability; sustainability that maintains and multiplies itself because it provides value to people beyond traditional living models through living for The Highest Good of All. Because it is founded on an infrastructure of self-sufficiency AND a sustainable cultural model, a structure like this is designed to be duplicated affordably anywhere in the world and provide more to the surrounding community than it requires to exist.

This creates a win-win-win situation for the people organizing the sustainable model, surrounding communities, and the global community. The people organizing and building the model get the benefit of complete freedom from the debtor system and a way of life founded on fulfilled living and meaningful contribution. Surrounding communities get a cultural integration and working demonstration of complete sustainability and what is possible to explore, evolve, and build upon in their own way. And the global community grows from the evolution and exploration of new models as each iteration improves upon itself through cooperation and collaboration with its predecessors.

For models like One Community that are willing to operate an exchange program, a scholarship program, and an open-door participation in community activities program, these benefits will all be even greater.

This creates the foundation for a completely new paradigm for humanitarianism around the world because any small group of people wishing to transform their own lives, and truly make a difference in the lives of others, can pool their resources and for less than the price of a modest house in California build themselves a fully functional community in almost anyplace that could benefit from their help and this model. Within one year the food and energy infrastructure can provide a surplus for organizers and countless others, and in establishing themselves they would not just be providing temporary assistance as outsiders, but would be achieving full integration into the local culture as providers of essential building and sustainability infrastructure, educators, and long-term residents sharing their own culture and immersing themselves in the local culture.

ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS OF THE ONE COMMUNITY SUSTAINABLE MODEL

● Zero Waste Living

Zero waste living means an environment that produces NOTHING that goes into a landfill. This is important to the One Community model and made possible through a combination of recycling, composting, and repurposing of waste materials as building materials. From an energy and ecology perspective, glass, plastic, and metals are labor intensive to create and thus are best recycled. Food items, paper, human waste, and most other items can be composted. All remaining items can be repurposed as building materials. One Community sees itself as actually negative waste living because we will be also applying our zero waste living approach to the waste of visitors.

● Resource Based Economy

A resource based economy is essentially an asset based community development model based on a philosophy of abundance, sharing, and cooperation in which all goods and services are available to all community members without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude. This means that the community (or in this case our non-profit organization) purchases and owns necessary items for the comfort and functioning of the community like a business, and all items and resources are then available to all members. A model like this eliminates the need for 50 people to own 50 cameras, laptops, toys, tools, etc. in favor of quality and quantity to meet specific needs of the group – no more, no less. By saving money this way, if additional resources are needed, they are easily purchased and if something breaks, it is quickly replaced.

● Creating a Sustainability Network

We are also creating a sustainability network to act as a hub and organizing source of information and happenings throughout the sustainability movement. This network consists of three primary components: our detailed open source model that will make us an industry leader in 6 months, our forum (officially launching as soon as we move on the property) for sharing information and answering questions generated by the open source content, and www.ethosolutions.org and www.peoplesagenda21.com, two websites dedicated to forward thinking organizations, tools, resources, and ideas we believe are for The Highest Good of All.

SUMMARY

The ultimate purpose of creating sustainable sustainability is to create an environment where living life is realized as the ends in itself; creating a space where we can work together as happy and fulfilled individuals demonstrating best practice sustainability and what it means to live life for The Highest Good of All. In doing so, we believe that we will demonstrate a result that is profound enough to motivate people to want to duplicate the model and take sustainability to a level never seen before as each iteration becomes progressively better through collaboration and the collective will to create something even better. One Community is the first step and most comprehensive plan currently in existence to create this and, while we do not know exactly what it will look like to live and contribute in this way, we know it will be wonderful to find out.