Who We Are

Some highly entertaining thoughts have come to mind as i clarify my intention and focus on the surroundings. I see myself as a person wearing many hats - each one ready to come off to the appropriate person that can successfully take over a position that i have responsibility to do. I have a tendency to push myself my further than most, as i.am curious enough to pursue a question until i have an answer that makes sense.

My friend Teasy asked a simple question last week and it took me a long time to figure out how to answer the question. In fact, i am still wondering as i write this answer, because every rabbit hole leads to a different rabbit whole. I raised Satins for 15 years and learned genetics first hand by trying to improve shoulders while producing meat to feed a family including several dogs and a large snake. Rosie the albino burmese python would eat rabbit when he could get it - which was about every other month. 

The question is what were we attempting to accomplish with the framework of Existence. Existence is a website that was produced from our early attempt at permaculture in the Ashland Oregon farm of Dead Indian Road ( i kid you not). We had a three acre field with local irrigation district flooding and we grew a three sisters garden with Pumpkin and Squash, Corn that originated in Mexico and beans that were planted too late in the season. Doc was associated with some Grange folk and the entire process was premature - we were renting land from a large landowner. Self-ownership was not there.

So much happened, but the collation of why things didn't work turned out to be a social manifestation. So, now i find myself moving in the same direction - toward intentional community via social permaculture. This seems to me to be an oxymoron, as social is together and permaculture is individual. It all is about being able to live independently of the grid. The network of road, electricity, microwaves and other artificial energies is beyond our ability to maintain when the lights go off. To be self sufficient personally has been my quest now for several years - we can live from land without further contrivance. We just don't have to.

As a natural resources chemist, i can see things as a function of scale. Much of the writing here discusses how things change or remain constant depending on the harmonics of scale. Personal responsibility has to be under self control as much as possible. Having the discipline to know when to share and when to gift, paying it forward, is an investment in individual people. This is the scale that we have to think about for new system thought. People Scale.

Town here is as small an urban area as one can imagine - 825 peeps by the 2010 census. The rule of law dictates jumping through hoops set up as preconditions based on economy from the way it is, outward. I believe that we have to look inward. Each of us knows what we expect, and what we can do if things change. Guess what. We are the agents of change. 

The illusion is that we have a common vision without discussing what our individual visions are. We each need to define ourselves, to ourselves. So in defining me - the duality schizophrenic lemme/doc pair -, I developed greater insight into how to do what it is that 'we' have to do. First things first. We need to define who 'we' are.

The new weigh can only work if each individual is empowered to be who they are. We can define all sorts of roles, but each of us wearing the hat of a certain role is responsible for fulfilling the purpose of that role. Defining what 'we' need is a matter of coming together and learning about which ties bind us - by each of us telling our stories to each other. A new media awaits - where we can pop off each others screens and have a holographic discussion in a virtual living room. 

Yes, it does mean getting out of the bathrobe on weekends, but hey, isn't being real much better than just watching a reel. We can change the movie by recording ourselves and becoming the movie. There are a few preconceived notions that have to go, which will lead to a series of posts on topic. For now - i challenge everyone to define themself in three sentence. Hold that thought on an index card.

Namaste' ... doc