How to tell if your work is contributing to the New Economy

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I was reading YES! magazine online, and happened on an overview of David Korten's book, Agenda for a New Economy. This is an excerpt of the article:

To bring down the institutions of Empire, we must begin to build the rules, relationships, and institutions of a New Economy. These must be lived into being from the bottom up.

So how do you know whether your work is contributing to a big-picture outcome? If you can answer yes to any one of the following five questions, then be assured that it is.

  1. Does it help discredit a false cultural story fabricated to legitimize relationships of domination and exploitation and to replace it with a true story describing unrealized possibilities for growing the real wealth of healthy communities?
  2. Is it connecting others of the movement’s millions of leaders who didn’t previously know one another, helping them find common cause and build relationships of mutual trust that allow them to speak honestly from their hearts and to know that they can call on one another for support when needed?
  3. Is it creating and expanding liberated social spaces in which people experience the freedom and support to experiment with living the creative, cooperative, self-organizing relationships of the new story they seek to bring into the larger culture?
  4. Is it providing a public demonstration of the possibilities of a real-wealth economy?
  5. Is it mobilizing support for a rule change that will shift the balance of power from the people and institutions of the Wall Street phantom-wealth economy to the people and institutions of living-wealth Main Street economies?

These are useful guidelines for setting both individual and group priorities. Bear in mind that in a systems-change undertaking of this magnitude, there is no magic bullet and no one is going to make it happen on their own, so don’t be discouraged if the world looks much the same today despite your special and heroic effort yesterday. It took five thousand years to create the mess we are in today. It will take more than a few days to set it right.

With that in mind; I think we're contributing. Thanks and congratulations!

Helping Humans Evolve and Live in Balance

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The MicroCommunity Project is an initiative designed to research how complete human systems work together in harmony and balance, with the aim of creating a repeatable, exportable set of tools that work globally with minimal need to adjust, but with maximum ability to meet the needs and goals of each individual and community.

Basically, we're putting our efforts together to package the most innovative solutions to help us humans evolve and mature into a more balanced and sustainable relationship with the earth and all of her occupants.

So many dedicated and brilliant people are pushing the frontiers of alternative agriculture, architecture, energy, and human and social systems. Many of us are, in fact, waking up to the sure knowledge that things cannot go along as they have been, for so many reasons. We know there is a better, more fulfilling, and more sustaining way of life and it doesn't have much to do with buying more and more things to distract us.

We also know that we cannot wait for federal, state, or local government to implement these changes, but we must shepherd them into existence as a collective.  The change begins with us.

Start where you are with what you have

An important part of that is to begin right now with whatever changes you can.  Grow your own food, even if it is in a pot on the windowsill. The more you can furnish for yourself, the less your dependence on outside suppliers.

MicroCommunities can be any size

MicroCommunities--or as we call them, micromunities--can be any size or shape. It's really more of a mind-set. On one end of the spectrum, a micromunity could be an off-grid conscious community of like-minded people living intentionally sharing earthen housing and the duties of maintaining the community's infrastructure and organic food supply. But it could just as easily be a floor in an apartment building in Manhattan, a neighborhood in a suburb, or a village or city.

Have a system for when the system breaks down

System breakdowns are likely to happen to each and every one of us. Whether it is a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, earthquake, flood, or fire, or a man-made consequence of personal tragedy, war, or misgovernment, it is important to have a backup plan to help you navigate through the initial chaos. Micromunities can operate as a support for each other, with shared resources and people-power that can make the difference between surviving and thriving.

Quoteables

ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
if your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

Wu men

no longer forward nor behind
i look in hope or fear;
but, grateful, take the good i find,
the best of now and here.

john greenleaf whittier

If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages.

Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (1885-1962)

Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.

Douglas William Jerrold, playwright and humorist (1803-1857)

There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham.

Anna Sewell, writer (1820-1878)

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now -- always. -

Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)

since our thoughts and words are the seeds that will bring forth our harvest of the future, i will begin today to fill my consciousness with the ideas of abundance.

Pramahansa Yogananda

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a moon thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?

Rumi

What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride... Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment.

Nikola Tesla, 1919

What I stand for is what I stand on.

Wendell Berry, farmer, author (b. 1934)

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