Village Blog

I was doing my radio show yesterday and about halfway through I played the Don Henley song 'Boys of Summer'. It wasn't planned, I just pulled it out of the computer list nearly at random and I got knocked sideways by the biggest wave of nostalgia I have ever felt.

I think beyond the normal sense that the carefree days of my life are over (just read the previous post to see what I mean) I think the fact that our society is about to enter a period of immense change is starting to hit home. I mean, I may never hear that song again.

Well, I probably will but I've read so much Derrick Jensen and Ran Prieur by now that the knowledge of civilisation's impending demise seems to afftect everything I think about. And feel.

My first proper posting is going to be a biographical whinge.
At the start of this week my family was hit by a vomit-bug. First the three year old, then the baby and me and then my wife while the baby was still sick, with the three year old chiming in with the occasional vomit on the bedclothes long after we thought she had recovered.

The worst thing for me was that I was still recovering when my wife became sick and so I immediately had to start looking after the other three. To say that it was stressful and tiring doesn't do it. I was on the run all day and then spent about two hours trying to get a crying and distraught baby to sleep before I could go to bed and then there was the usual thing of waking for nappy changes and on top of that the three three year old threw up on her bed sheets around midnight.

Did I mention that I was stll feeling queasy through all this (still am as a matter of fact). I was a bit grouchy.

Oh yes, the other thing is that the baby is refusing to eat solids now and since it is 10kg and living soley on milk my wife is exhausted and it's compromising her ability to recover.

When you have small children there are constant reminders, like this, of the insanity of the nuclear family. The silliest thing of all is that despite being in need of help we didn't ask for any because we didn't want to pass the bug onto anyone else. This sense of isolation is exactly what is wrong with our present way of living and it's why I want to be in a village setting where help is automatic.

The other thing that is bugging me is that this is the third vomiting bug that has hit us in the last 6 months (it's the first to get me personally) and I've lost track of how many times our three year old has come home with a cold this winter. Some of the other parents in town say that they expect their pre school kids  to get sick 20 times durng the winter.

Something is seriously wrong with this picture. Older parents say it never used to be like this and I certainly don't recall this level of sickness. I'm wondering if two generations of vaccinatons could have destroyed all our inherited immunity or if the amount of junk food that children (not ours though) eat these days is part of the cause. Maybe it's something crazy like chemtrails or the effects fo two generations of flouride in the water. I'm going to ask Jon who is the editor of Uncensored magazine. He's always good for an opinion on these matters. It's a worry though.

It feels too weird to fill this out but if someone insists I might think about it - sending a list of question with the request would help a bit too:-)

Originally I thought this blog was only going to be about the progress we were making with starting an ecovillage but as I've thought and read more about the subject I've realised that I'm going to want to talk a lot about the philosophy behind the village and in fact even if no ones ever reads this blog it will still serve to help develop these ideas.

I'm don't like to use the word vision to describe what I'm trying to develop here. It sounds a bit totalitarian coming from one person when a vision is supposed to belong to a group. At the moment there isn't a group and I'm afraid that I'll be so keen on what I work out that eventually when there is a group I'll end up forcing my stuff on them and then the village won't have a genuine common vision and the whole thing will fail – so I'll refer to the vision as 'My Big Ideas' as a kind of ironic reminder.

I should also add that I am already uncomfortable using the word eco-village. 'Eco' has been co-opted by so much un-ecological stuff and comes with all sorts of baggage. I definitely want to live in a village though and I tend to take the eco stuff for granted. I just assume that it will be a permaculture design, that it will seek to restore the environment rather than destroy it, and that we'll use passive solar design and earth buildings. I'll talk a bit about those things but to be honest I am more excited about the village part of eco-village. I can't wait to live in a thriving community instead of these alienating suburbs (or alienating lifestyle blocks and farms) so I'm much more likely to dwell on the issues of what makes a village and how we can get alienated westerners to learn to live in a tribe again.

After reading 'Creating A Life Together' by Diana Leafe Christian it's apparent that this is the side of things we need to focus on. I know people who want to set up communities to get ready for the coming crash and they're like; “Well, I know how to build cob houses and we've got some people who can do permaculture but we'd like someone who can do biodiesel…” It's true that all these skills will be required but if that's all a group is focused on (and people as utility is how our culture tends to define it's members) it will more than likely fail.

90% of Ecovillages to date have failed because the people in them don't share the same vision. When it comes to making key decisions on the future of the village they can't agree because they're heading in different directions and it tends to get quite desperate and acrimonious. Normally if this happens in our society we would just walk away and get a new friend/wife/job/town but that won't work in a village – we're going to need to bring the level of commitment to it that people bring to a successful marriage.

I mentioned preparing for the coming crash and I'll talk a bit about this too because I think this inability to relate combined with the high level of woundedness we all suffer from is going to be a major bar to forming communities post-crash. We're going to have to rely on each other a lot more post crash and our culture's sorry psychological state could turn out to be a major impediment to our survival chances. Our instincts are to hunker down somewhere with stockpiles of food and ammo and see how long we can survive. Needless to say this won't work for very long. I'm not entirely sure but learning to co-operate could be as important for our survival as learning how to grow food.

1. What's with that picture of yourself?

I hate photos so I put up this picture drawn by my 3 year old daughter.

2. Why are there no more questions in this FAQ?

I haven't been asked any questions frequently, even that first one was made up.