GlobalVillages
Discuss Global Villages
 

Franz Nahrada:

In our Yahoogroup Sep 20, 2007

I still want to underline that from the original idea our focus is Global Villages, which is LOCAL villages with GLOBAL connections. Its the place and living environment of the 21st century and maybe for much longer, its our new homestead for generations to come! (except those who seek to go to outer space or love the monadic city-ocean).... We bring in all the achievements that we gathered in the city era, we do not want to loose the good things that our mental - cultural - scientific evolution has brought about. We are still far from being masters of our destiny, we must fine-tune our achievements and make them really work sustainably, but many of us are pretty shure: Global Villages are THE next step in the evolution of human society, as important as city building, trains, cars and airplanes.

Its a theme that Marshall McLuhan did touch, though in this last meaning of the word he was not very well understood. He talked of the "big implosion" followed by the first Global Renaiscance (the quantum leap in science and technology). That means we are for the first time not motivated to run, to hit, to hurt, but to stay. We are not motivated to struggle, but to share. Global Villages is about empowering spaces. its about celebrating spatial limitations. Its for people that choose to increase their connection with mother Earth, not only in a material way, but also become more mobile with their minds than with their bodies. And at the same time embody their physical nature in sym-biosis with a humanly cultivated surrounding, an incredible wealth of partner - beings from the animal-plant domain, kept together by our newly acquired gardening skills and the ability to solve problems faster through exchange of knowledge.

I am glad this is an attractive ground theme or keynote, but the music played here consists of many elements: architecture, ecology, sociology, but of course also a sound bit of collaboration theory and technical practise. Minciu Sodas is thriving on the interconnectedness of likeminded venues, and we all need to know what is going on in Africa every now and then, see how we organize community currencies and of course know about tools of collective thinking, designing, mapping. (just to name three) Lets put it that way: Andrius is working hard to establish some very interesting basic norms that allow us to do multiple-venue work without having to "switch" to an entirely different audience. The great thing is that Minciu Sodas is unfolding a cross - venue culture that makes it very easy for me to assume some familiarities with people. There are some common rules, a certain netiquette - a unifying and positive climate accross all cultures. But sorry - I cant describe it, maybe others can.

It would be great if the Minciu Sodas ecosystem could unfold further and get stronger. I cannot explain it precisely, but its somehow a masterpiece that finds the right balance between theory and compassion, valuiing the individual on the other side and remind us that we all need support. We can show our weaknesses without whining. Maybe thats the point. For me, a working mailing list has a certain possible amount of traffic, too much and too little are rather bad. Themes come, have their lifecycle and go away again, hopefully being recorded by a wiki or something similar. I am not able to do the wonderful work that Trebor Scholz is doing as moderator of the idc (Institute for distributed creativity) list, but I see what quality means, and I love to NOT be present in the list, have people orchestrate themes themselves, because I am short of time - but yet I think I can contribute to a great source of information here and also pursue my central questions: How can we live together in small communities and experience the full potential of life, be in touch with the world and be effective in healing the planet? How can we be efficient in what we do, as are the plants or the forests that manage to live on sun, earth and rain? How can we be a living techno-Forest, a stabilizing and soothing skin for the planet, also allowing us to walk around in coinfidence and without fear wherever we go? - thats a very general theme and I seek answers from many directions.

I just want to have a general agreement on standards of quality and the purpose of the list. The list is in my best imagination an ongoing and prominent news source, one of the best sources in the world because of the people participating here. They constantly throw in and explain the building blocks that make Global Villages happen; and they are creative by knowing that a Global Village is not just a unity center with some houses around them, but rather a truly complete microcosm of complex relations of relatively few people that manage to create a life circumstance that is complete and enjoying. We have questions of sober nature like emergency preparedness (Hello Lucas!), we have questiuons of fascinating challenging nature like resource use (hello Rick Nelson!) and we must also consider political circumstances, that will allow us to increase independence and autonomy of our communities (is Tom still listening?). And then above all we have the questions of spiritual nature, because we feel we are on this planet because of a purpose, we feel that our own spirit is waiting for us as something bigger that calls us home. We are sick and tired of the separating nature of the cartesian - industrial age, that condemned us to eternal isolation in our outside existence and material limitedness. We want Global Villages because out of deep peace and relaxation - aka physical health - we want to take a journey into the infinite realm of the spirit and the incredible source of creation that we are all part of. (Well Benoit - I do not call this God, at least not all the time, I do not even know if it exists, but I know I have a deep desire for it)

We all know we hae a strange mixture here, its a "post ideological community", consisting out of Agnosticists, Leftists, Religious Ones, ....that work with elements of very pragmatic solutions and building blocks of various origins (we honor mastery) in all walks of life to combine them to something really reasonable, sensual, aesthetic, brand new, attractive!! Thats almost like a magazine with many authors, only here we all talk about our subject - about contributions to a globe of vibrant villages that interact with each other to make their peaceful pattern prevail. If you like, my dream is that each contributor to the list feels as if not writing to a few people, but to an audience of 200000 readers at least. So ist fine to have discussions, but we will not sort out discussions here, mostly they will be spun off to other worknets, Global Villages is more as you say a meeting point of ingredients in a soup.


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