Seeking Lifestyle Collaboration, Willing to Relocate

Aloha!
What is a burning question that drives your work?
How does one co-survive with any degree of mindfulness, artfulness & elegance in a dysfunctional global system where sick societies are normal? Clearly there are few like us but certainly there must be more. Where are our people? How do we meet up & work together?

How did you get started and what hurdles have you met along the way?
We got started young, helped by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring & the realization that previous generations had really screwed things up & contemporary generations seemed incapable of fixing things. Running away into the “woods” provided brief respite & we saw them consumed in the name of BAU development & economic progress.

Warned by our “betters” that we best get in line, we rebelled becoming outcasts. We lived our lives between protesting on the streets & in the woods, self-directed education, escapist activities, freelance art work, extreme sports & running away. The shutting down of the alternative press, the rise of new media & the Internet necessitated new strategies.

Our biggest hurdles involve procuring food & shelter, in both urban & rural environments. We’ve lost opportunities when identified as being dysfunctional to the dysfunctional system. Institutions do a good job filtering out people like us, we’ve done best in new programs & usually see the door slammed on our backsides to prevent more like us from entering.

We often find ourselves where none like us have gone before except in dim memory, myth or legend & none may follow for a variety of reasons. Our understanding is that this is the way the system functions to keep us separated from like-minded fellow travelers. The system appears to fear our gathering in groups, so that is what we seek.

Which doubts do you have about the work you are doing and the path forward?
We work in the arts, writing fiction & nonfiction, media production & performance; the soft sciences, personal & social psychology; & technology, media production tech support & coding for a networked world. We’re now developing & refining a focus on data science, AI, machine learning, & deep learning in several dimensions of sentiment analysis & data mining & data visualization.

Our only doubts lie in judging the efficacy of our work. Clearly we excel in academics & production but we only seem to benefit when found useful & manageable by exploitive agents of BAU. The more our cognitive ability, theory & perception evolve the harder it becomes to find acceptance from gatekeepers.

It seems to us that the path forward lies in the intersection of the work we do, especially in collaboration, which emerges as a requirement. It’s not exactly clear what that is. It appears to be like driving an unknown road at night, only able to see what’s in the headlights & no further.

What kind of support would you like to offer others traveling a similar path?
We prefer being open to what fellow travelers perceive as their needs in the way of support. We do not recommend our particular path to anyone & acknowledge that we may cross paths for unknowable reasons & appreciate input from people we happen to meet. Clearly, we do not know how to deal with this system. We do not know what people need.

We tend to be averse to those who revel in identifying “enemies” as we see that impulse emerging from paranoid-schizoid defenses and it only serves the dysfunctional system to divide us. That said, we do understand there are some very damaged & dangerous people out here that seek to exploit all they meet, we’ve met a few & see many on TV gaining celebrity status. So, perhaps the best we offer is in the way of suggesting tools & techniques useful for growing positive progressive communities.

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@Usal, great to have you here. Are you aready involved with this discussion on co-living? Sprint to the Reef ! Co-design communal and green living. Join in Brussels November 28th

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Welcome! Just a feedback to your short post (which of course cannot transport all the thoughts you have about these topics) and to the image that it transports to me:

  • to me it reads quite “dark” and it reads a bit as if you also would describe enemies or obstacles (“the system”, “sick societies”) yourself.
  • I do have the impression that communities and collectives all over the world are forming and getting much stronger and more “grounded” (e.g. introspecting the culture that they live and the ideals they try to live by).
  • I would not share the image / narrative that something tries to prevent that (people meet and try new stuff) from happening; there are plenty of initiatives trying to keep up with mapping all the projects that are done. Sure, there could be more and better support (and that will always be true). But it is amazing to see all that is happening.
  • I also do not really see the “heroes from myth and legend” that try hard and then see doors shut behind them from institutions. Its sounds like legend-building to me. Which system tries to keep you away from like-minded fellow travelers? Psychological? Couple dynamics? Neighbourhoods? States? Nation States? Capital itself? Global influencers? …

Maybe the picture describes the situation in the US - i cannot judge that - but my experiences in the EU are quite different.

That being said, it looks like a good starting point for a journey! I hope you will be able to bring in your skills where they are needed. :dove:

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Aloha @felix.wolfsteller, thank you for your candid reply. You seem correct in seeing how it reads quite “dark”. Your honesty is appreciated.

Perhaps we did not write with enough nuance. Sorry for the confusion. We do not consider dysfunction systems or sick societies as enemies, only something in great need of deep change, and being part of the hurdles we’ve faced in the context of the question we were answering.

The current economic system in America, Chomsky says, is so dysfunctional “that it cannot put eager hands to needed work using the resources that would be readily available if the economy were designed to serve human needs rather than wealth beyond the dreams of avarice for a privileged few.”

“The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on — because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions.” Noam Chomsky

“And only those who stand outside the failed institutions can lead this effort.” George Monbiot

“So, if you don’t fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed – it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.” George Monbiot

This is truly good news and confirms our choice to join Edgeryders and look towards Europe. We’re now planning to move half-way to Europe as we now live on the other side of the globe from your continent. That is the extent of our budget. The move will land us in the Ohio River Valley.

We wish you well in all your endeavors, hopefully we will be able to meet you in person one day. Thanks again for your valuable input.

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Aloha @MariaEuler and thank you very much! We are now following the discussion at Sprint to the Reef ! Co-design communal and green living. Join in Brussels November 28th and remain alert to where it might be appropriate to get involved with the discussion.

Thank you again, very much @MariaEuler!

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Usal I wish you good fortune in your quest. “Where are our people” is a question for all of us.

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