was: Re: electricity in Belize Now: Our Culture

(this post is being sent out to the following groups:
It was initially inspired by a post on:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EcoVillage-Belize/
it is also relevant to all of the following groups, and possibly many more:
(forward or revise & reframe & repost as you like)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BuildaCarFreeCity/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OurCultureOurCapitol/
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/carfreeecovillages
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nyc_ishmael/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ishmael-dc/

read past: "===================" if you're not seeing why.
)

My comment a while ago about high-speed internet access and
access to weights for exercise was somewhat tongue-in-cheek
(but not entirely).

As far as I can tell, Raphael's plan is for there to be two
separate areas - one that is 166 acres or so - where
everyone is living the primitive way (no electricity etc.),
and another 11 acre area separated by some miles (how
many?), where there would be things useful for interacting with the rest of the world-
like internet access.

Obviously ideally there would be a car-free foot/bicycle
path of some kind between the two areas.

It is somewhat disconcerting for me to imagine an
anarcho-primitivist sitting in the jungle with his electric
juicer, but who knows what the reality of this will be?

One stated goal of the project was that it be 100%
sustainable- for all materials in use be drawn
non-impactfully from the surrounding forests.

That definitely rules out any kind of wire, let alone
computers (one of the most toxic products produced by
humans).

So then, the stated goals of this project, and their
contrast with many of our desires (to have access to
information and people via The Network), raises a
significant question.

==========================

How do I integrate, in my thinking about how I might like to
live, and in my actual practice of living, my desire to more
fully experience and participate in living close to the
earth, with the satisfaction and meaning I get from
communicating with myself and with others using The Network.

The question goes beyond internet access-
in fact, it is a question about all our uses of technology.

I am only really beginning to attempt to address this
question myself. I think I can learn from others who have
been working on this question longer than I.

Some ideas of who to look to include Tom Elpel
(http://hollowtop.com), and others in the primitive skills
movement (Tom Brown, Larry Dean Olsen), others on this list,
others mentioned on this list (Rob Miller), others mentioned
on the EV-Belize website (John Zerzan, Derrik Jensen)... and
so on.

And do not forget the ones who have had and lived the
question for thousands of years, some representation of
which may be found in books like Bill Porter's _Road to
heaven:  Encounters with Chinese hermits_

To some extent, a significant part of humanity may be
beginning to more consciously ask this question. (related
examples may be Ken Wilber, Integral Transformative
Practice (Leonard & Murphy), CulturalCreatives (the book,
not the web site), http://gbn.org).

I started the OurCultureOurCapitol list primarily to help me work on this question

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OurCultureOurCapitol/
    (I'm trying to collect the archived messages of this list somewhere other than yahoo, but have yet to find / implement a good solution -- if you want the list archives in mbox (eudora / mozilla ) format to read, let me know.)

Here are some quotes from my now-dated description of the
purpose of that list:

    "We need a strong culture and feeling of support for walking
towards the beautiful experience that we are making, and
away from what is not beautiful.

    "If you were to construct a physical capitol for our
culture, what would it be like?

There are at least two questions implicit in the list: "what
is 'Our Culture'?"  & "what is the appropriate physical
environment for members of our culture?" -- What kind of
physical (Political, etc, etc) environment could best
correspond to what is going on within ourselves.

(You probably see the difficulty here of even
differentiating between what is happening inside ourselves
and what is happening outside, and how we live -- this is
yet another question in need of addressing)


It is possible that defining our culture as consisting of
the efforts of people who are doing things because they find
them beautiful and not for other reasons, may be the best
way of defining our culture, as vague as that seems.

If we do have internet access & computers in part of an
ecovillage it should be somehow done as part of an integral
view of our culture- we realize the construction of the
computers and electronic devices and their improper disposal
is a huge problem, yet we choose to use these devices, and
why? And as long as we choose to use them, consideration
should be given as to how to reduce the not-beautiful aspect
of using these devices (one example may be California's law
to require all electronics manufacturers to provide for the
collection and recycling / safe disposal of their products).

Another lesson related to this comes from Tom Elpel and Tom
Brown: in this case I'll refer to Tom Elpel's book,
_Participating in nature_, but Tom Brown says something very
similar.

http://www.primitive.org/metaphor.htm

"In primitive living we are faced with these needs as
realities we must meet. We are faced with the realization
that in order for our lives to go onward, we must take from
the world around us; like the coyote stalking a mouse, we
must kill and use to survive. It is too easy to forget that
in the contemporary world. We think resources come from the
store, and we forget that there are impacts and
consequences, throughout the ecosystem, from our every
purchase, our every decision. In primitive living we face
those consequences directly. We can see the effect of our
needing to eat causing the loss of life of a plant or an
animal. We can sense that by picking the berries from the
bushes we may be taking someone else's meal. Primitive
living is a metaphor that gives us an awareness of the true
costs of living, no matter where we are."


It was the partly the question of whether a carfree city
should have an airport that led me down the avenue to
creating the OurCultureOurCapitol list.

As you may know, airplane travel has, in some presentations
at least, the largest external costs (e.g. air pollution,
noise pollution, habitat destruction that is not reflected
in the cost of the ticket)
http://themes.eea.eu.int/Sectors_and_activities/transport/indicators/cost/external_costs/
"Passenger cars, trucks and aviation have the highest
external costs per transported unit."

http://www.google.com/search?&q=external+costs


=====
This has been a bit of a ramble, but maybe will lead to something valuable?

In closing I note that how I've been defining our culture
requires that we have the choice to "do things because they
are beautiful, and not for other reasons."

I realize I'm in the fortunate position of not having to
spend a lot of my time doing things (at least for the time
being) for the purpose of survival alone (a lot of where
something falls in this spectrum is due to how one looks at
it? -- but some things are easier to experience as beautiful
than others . ).  Though perhaps I'm doing this because it
allows me to survive in a different way than in a purely
biological sense?

Clearly I need some help working on the Our Culture Our
Capitol question (and feel free to suggest a better
question - to question the question)!

Colin
http://j9k.org

On Fri, 18 Apr 2003, yeoleg wrote:

> I was wondering about the electricity issue as well. It seems I'm in
> the minority in wishing that there would be no electricity/internet
> access at all in the village. I realize that probably won't happen,
> and so I'm curious as to what we would be using the electricty for
> (besides computers and, perhaps, juicers). :)
>
> Garth
>