Child Centered

The Emerging Vision

The modern world is filled with such people. And they can become very destructive very quickly. And it doesn't take much to ignite such a powder keg. We have seen this around the world and then we always have to clean up after that later on.

Communities that form out of the imaginary needs of these overgrown children who never grew up can only become very much like a self fulfilling prophecy of doom. That's why we do have to be able to test for these things and to monitor the results and report back to the larger group may be your first job in Eden.

Freedom or Bleedum?

Even Freedom has to be earned. If a child is old enough and able to hold true to the values that we share only then will they be entrusted with anything that we all hold to be so dear and true as you might expect to find among native peoples. Learning how to integrate this new material into your life in a positive way is one way to start. I know it is hard to drop the modern perspective. Do your best and forget the rest is what we say in Eden.

Dominator Culture

Here we must take careful measures to make sure that this community will not fall victim to this kind of thing. There may be a few little problems. But people have to hold on tight. Those who just don't care or are just on their own trip are going to eventually find out that they are among the last and the least among us and that will jettison them right out of this community in no time. We know that doesn't work. We have been there and we have done that.

We do need to be able to protect our fine project from harm. Everyone of us has to care about something very strongly just to get in. If there really even is anyone out there who doesn't care about anything, then they should probably take this as a wake up call. We then will have to decide whether we care about what you care about enough to count that as a bridge to freedom.

We need to have a clear understanding about these things and it is for these reasons that we say such things. Otherwise too many things get glossed over and become corrupted. We will not finance our own destruction with other peoples carelessness.

We will not pave the way to Eden with a Yellow Brick Road. Everything has to be as unbreakable as possible because that is more sustainable. Dominator Culture is a throw away culture. We are a sustainable culture. We might be wise to stay deeply out of debt. And we should probably stay deeply out of most all possible legal problems which can only destroy any community.

We could do this by covering the communities backside first as it should because like a newborn child it is unable to take care of itself. The normal approach would be to cover our own asses and everyone else's backsides first which would allow the forces of need and greed to run rampant. We ask people to accept that we plan to use a whole different approach.

We will work with what we do have and not what we don't have. The vision works by many people making major contributions to what is seen as being a growing body of work that nobody has a right to capitalize on the ownership of or to profit from the resale of and so we are a not for profit and yet some people do need to make a little money now and then and so we combine all things good and right and support those who have made to most contributions

Internships in Eden

Free programs. Scholarships. Internships. Easy and pleasant work in a nice outdoors environment in exchange for trainings, food, lodging and entertainment could be such a deal for some people who may not have much of the green stuff kicking around in the old back pack.

Eden First!

There is always enough for those who have more than enough and some to share. But  for those who just show up for the free ride like they did in the Haight back in the Sixties. There will be no endless free ride because nothing like that is ever going to be blindly provided here. Not for very long anyway.

Eden is not free. You do have to have or be able to earn the money to do this whole thing right and not having any money is no more of an excuse than not having any skills or good work ethics. Better to go on out there and get some fast. 

Eden is just the opposite of Jonestown. We make it very hard to get in and very easy to get out.

Everything is set up in such a way that it affords adequate protection for the community from the very dangerously out of control individuals who may come looking our way like they came to the Haight in 68. We do have to be able to stand out from the likes of Jim Jones and Charlie Manson as we do in stark contrast. And so people who like to idealize those times will have to be able to deal with that. 

We have been given almost everything brain dead backwards. Ffor that reason most people start at the top with debt and then start working their way down to excuses and then we finally get down to these empty throw away ethics of mass production.

We must all start right at the bottom here with real contributions and then we can begin work our way up to Freedom and Equality with those who will tolerate that. That's what the real difference is here. We will have to learn how to choose the well grounded as opposed to the self confounded who will not learn.

We are going to be just about exactly the opposite of what a whole lot of people might expect to be finding here. That is because we are not using the empty place holder ethics of dominator culture or its children who are carrying some of the same self centric material that only pretends to be sharing and caring. But that is only to be seen as being just a plug of filler material that may have been accepted elsewhere, but will not be accepted here in Eden.

People just looking for someplace to go will have to wait until we are good and ready for that.

It's not just a matter of information exchange. There is a natural order to the whole experience, just like when you go to visit with a native tribe in the rainforest. They didn't go to see you. You went to see them. That is why they will dictate what the tribal norms are going to be for your entire visit.

Information has killed many native peoples habitat and many a forest has been destroyed to make money. Mostly this comes from some thoughtless decisions made in the biggest of cities and this kind of negligence has killed a lot of innocent people, Trees and animals who have lost their natural habitats due to this amazingly free flow of information which allowed them to be exploited.

Information alone

What we plan to do is something quite different from anything else you may know of and so I would like to ask people to become willing to unlearn what they already think they know about all this Intentional Community stuff. Because that kind of openness to learn first is what it takes to build this new kinder and gentler world that is so badly needed now even though a lot of our people are very experienced in all such matters.

Right Participation

Womens' Centric or Self Centric?

The Children of Eden must grow up to be healthy and strong, and self sufficient as they will be the ones to inherit the homesteads, and the entire community will then be all paid off, and so easy to maintain and always ready for all to enjoy instead of always having to start from scratch every generation like insects who haven't got a plan for the woman or the man.

Everything we do here is for the Children of The Earth and Eden is about giving voice to the Spirit of the Earth. All good people will be welcomed here. Deaf People are Welcomed. Everyone is seen as having their own personal perspectives, most of which will be more Earth Centered, Child Centered and even Womens Centered as we have said, and we only work for the greater good with a new found respect for what the voice of the feminine spirit has to say.

The Womens Centric perspective could be said to be that the solutions are naturally to be found within the problems and within the local environment, and in the relationships.

This is about working within the natural relationships, among the people involved through the natural order of priorities.

Getting to know the people that we know we need to be able to work with in the local community, and to work with what we have to offer, and what we can make, and what we can do under our own power and with our own energy, without any outside inputs, from the almighty government or the state of disarray. These are the natural relationships to land and people and the spirit of place that have been discarded.

This ties in with Economic Re-Localization and Saving the Earth one step at a time which is the purpose of this project. The traditional perspective might be to buy up all the votes necessary, or to force the patriarchal government to drop the big one on the problem.

We don't need to try to force an unnatural solution upon the problem and to control the people from outside the problem, which should have been seen as being a solution in itself or containing a reflection of the solution, for those who can see it because it may be that there is no real problem, not in the entire universe, only a natural environment that we need to work within once we have begun to identify with the whole Web of Life. Those who want to come here can bring all the resources necessary.

The needs of the People do not come before the Web of Life. We have had that wrong. Neediness is a dead end. That is a trap and it is not a resource. The power of numbers alone will only bankrupt the environment and destroy all the habitat and all living things on the Earth.

It is not for the people to decide to destroy the Earth of not to destroy the Earth. They do not yet own the Earth. These are just a very few of the very new things that can be learned from a lifelong study of the Natural Order of Priorities.

We are all going to have to become reasonably self sufficient from now on, for these very same reasons, at least in the way we think about ourselves and in the way we connect up with the world because unless these humble words really do signify a major change in the direction of our thinking we will be going right back around where came from.

Let these new ideas become our one distinction.

The Honor System:

Who do we have to turn to for instance to get the help that any of us may one day need? Our Own People and not dominator culture. They are the ones that we should have earned the highest honor and respect from.

I should be able to turn to anyone in this group for instance, where I am well known and may have earned a welcome place in the hearts and minds of at least some of the people, who have come here in good faith and been good citizens within this community.

Others may have not earned very much in the way of recognition here but they may have extensive networks of supportive friends they know and they may have true companions they can trust elsewhere so it is not for us to assume that they are nobody, but they have still not proven anything with us and so they will be accorded the appropriate levels of honor and respect that would be accorded to any unknown quantity.

We all have to learn how to turn first to those with whom we have already earned the deepest trust, and the highest levels of respect, and even gratitude, which can only be earned over many years of solid, proven service towards the greater good within the community.

People who have no trust can not be entrusted.

Money alone does not make a home.

Need and Greed won't get you Freed.

These are just some of the most efficient new answers that are just now finding their way around in the wind, and that are still not yet that well enough understood within the larger society. We must leave room for some respectful disagreement.

There may be many here who cannot be expected to comprehend any of this since, they have been taught only the ethics of thoughtless dependency and reckless disregard, that is what Jonestown was built upon.

The empty bag ethics of neediness and dependency that once worked so well. But embracing that will only lead only to our greatest downfall and collective ruination of the Entire Web of Life may be hanging in the balance this time.

Those simple minded empties are all still considered to be very popular beliefs and so there is going to be much more disagreement until we have landed these people. But we do not intend to do that because it is all just an especially interesting model of mass domination which we saw represented by the Peoples Temple of Doom. The Peoples Dominion through the Power of Numbers only leads to Death and Destruction. 

Truth, my fellow Edenites, like our places on the Earth, must be Earned, before it can be Burned. This is relatively new attitude is still almost completely unknown, because we have not learned the most basic laws of the expanding universe.

We are going to have to learn how to disengage from all that which has been ruled by ignorance and the blundering power of numbers which will follow no man and will learn no thing from no Women of Truth.

That empty slogan based economy of political expedience has brought us nothing but a long series of empty promises gone bad. Luckily we do have a plan to do up some of that, but that is going to require a lot of cooperation and a willingness to accept some of the most dignified guidance and direction possible to imagine.

The power of numbers in itself, will not ever get us free, and that big dream of wrongful enrichment that so many have been clinging to out of ignorance, will only get us all killed in the end, along with the Earth, which will be our collective fate if we don't make some major changes which can only begin on the Eco-Village level.

That is why we say that what the unknown and unproven people may think they want, and may think they need, who have earned no special rights, should carry no weight in Eden, as that is entirely a Self Centric proposition.

It doesn't matter if we have a hundred or a thousand or even a million of these followers of need and greed. It all adds up to nothing at best, and at worst it will self ignite and self destruct us all right back down, along with the Earth, once it has reached a critical mass.

What we should aspire to represent is a whole new uniquely Universal perspective that no one can claim to have a full understanding of. We are all to be seen as being independent thinkers who will follow no party leader, but who do know how to stand in solidarity with the Spirit of Eden, even if we don't understand it all. And no one is going to explain it either because it changes every ten thousand years. What is true today may not be true tomorrow.

The Natural Order of Priorities

First in the order of priorities there is the Web of Life which is of primary concern.

Then comes the Rainforests Eco-systems and the Eco-Logical Communities of life that all work together to keep it together.

Then comes the Emerald Forest of Sustainable Communities of which Eden is just one of many.

Then comes the Kindred Spirits around the world who can find some way to serve the community they are a part of which in turn will serve the Earth.

Then comes all those women and even a few of the men here on Earth and a lot of other places who have heard some tell of something going on and are very interested in learning more and supporting that in a positive way. That is what the larger Resource Base is.

Even people who don't really know us that well are to be counted within our largest circle of friends as long as they mean us no harm. And whatever you really do have to say does matter even if it is just coming out of your own past and is just another regurgitation of nothing but empties that really means nothing to us here in Eden. We have to know how to listen to what people really mean to say.

At the other end of the spectrum we have the Consensus Council which will make decisions based on the collective input of all such peoples. Focus Groups and Committees of all kinds will also be created. We are connected to all the other people on Earth who are true humanitarians in good fait but we do have to grow like a Tree does from where it is and with what it has. These Trees will then be able to connect up later on as they grow larger.

The Council is a Circle of those of us who represent all the homesteaders in this community by a 3/4 Consensus. About 80 some odd possible people will be officially on the council. That doesn't mean we will always have that many people at every single meeting. That is just to show that we can provide a workable representation of what the general consensus of the community really is when we really do need to know.

We will have many friends and a large Resource Base. And they all run together and there is some overlap but there will be no internal disintegration due to the wrongful manipulation of the blundering power of numbers.

That would most likely be the result of just throwing everything together into one big compost pile in a completely disorderly manner. That is not integration. That is just what could be called mixing or averaging. The natural order of workability needs to be respected as we put these things together or we will have a premature breakdown and collapse just like you would expect to see happen in a compost pile. The big meltdown at Jonestown does come to mind as well.

A Second Chance

They will all expect to be able to be part of even the decisions that have already been made. They will be demanding answers that have not been earned about why everything is the way it is. That is why we need to be able to stand in Solidarity with the vision of an Earth Restored and a World at Peace.

We now have well over 600 great big fat members in this group which is huge for any single community email group...

Thirty Five Dollars from each real member will give us something to work with over the coming year. We have not be slacking off here.

We do have some great big fat publications in the works that are just dying to be printed, and that will allow us to reach out to a lot more people. But we can only do that with your help. In return for that we will now be able to send you not only The Eden Journal which is something real that you can show to your friends, but now you will get the Free DVD along with that just as a token of our many thanks.

- T