Key phrases

last updated 11.30.09

• And until the paradigm has shifted its business as usual: "we rob the other guy, and pass the savings on to you..."
• Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food. - Albert Bartlett
• Essence of consensus is creativity - Jack Reed. I add, Essence of consensus is creativity expressed by effective production/meeting of needs. Or, we can simplify: There is no need for consensus, as long as people live and let live.
• Best things in life are free.
• Redefine ownership with use and access.
• Can't retrofit existing communities? Sure you can, starting by unplugging from the System, but political autonomy is not addressed by this yet. This requires extra work, and there are no clear solutions.
• The solution for everything is the solution for anything.
• Open Source Ecology is the practical application of general systems theory towards creating a post-scarcity society. General systems theory is telling us that that everything is interconnected - so we cannot really change what must be changed by simply rallying against one or a couple of issues.
• We do not have a representative democracy in the United States. We have an unequal democracy where the major decisions that affect our lives are affected by power/money interests. We need to return to the people the decisions that affect their everyday lives. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
• From Community Planet Foundation 38 minute video - Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power. - Benito Mussolini
• We make things that don't break
• Different system of technology means different economy and politic.
• A resilient community is by definition autonomous - no power centers involved when you are not dependent on anybody for handouts, even on trade. Trade is good - but you engage it voluntarily, not because you have to
• Voluntary contract, enterprise community
• Free enterprise is redefined - away from monopoly capitalism
• Mini-China on your desktop
• We're not a factory farm, we are a factor e enterprise - exponential improvement in productivity and quality of life.
• The political systems are broken - assessment of Earth
• The economic systems are broken - assessment of Earth
• disruptive economics
• evolve to freedom
• innovation = invention + diffusion
• post-scarcity
• opensourcing the wheel, not reinventing the wheel
• Open Source Fab Lab = RepLab
• technology has a human interface usable by a person with a high school education
• "to further the establishment and growth of novel, autonomous communities, enabling innovation with new social and industrial systems."
• Decent technology (decentralization technology)
• Resilient Community Construction Set
• the "unleashed" ability to make things
• As James Howard Kunstler once said after visiting the Googleplex: "The changes we need are not like pushing pixels around the screen." (I am paraphrasing...source: here - highly recommended audio ).

Transhumanist Audience

I think your message of independence will resonate extremely well with them. They are revoluzzis who would like nothing more than to change power structures and topple hierarchies. Focus on that and you'll win big time. I would also emphasize your important argument of high-tech neo-subsistence. These people are tech fanatics. Let's face it: all too often we don't need very sophisticated technology. Old-school, proven solutions exist, we just need to rediscover them. You know that better than I do. But that's not what they want to hear. They like high tech solutions because they have the potential to revolutionize and cause damage to existing power structures. The way to reconcile this is that you could focus on design. We rediscover and refine some old stuff (f.ex. steam engine... ). But we add a 21st century cutting edge design. That is how the environmental movement in general is succeeding in distancing itself from the jute-bag, Birkenstock wearing hippy image. Emphasize art ! This will also fly. You will make many new true fans.