Humans On The Loop 17 - Tibet Sprague (Envisioning Utopian Communities)
This week our guest is Tibet Sprague, former solar energy system manager and scholar-practitioner in search of sustainable alternatives to our unhealthy post-industrial communities.
http://tibetsprague.com for all social links, writings, and project info
We discuss:
What it was like for Tibet growing up in a healthy community.
The difference between communities online and in person.
The possibility of a virtual nation, a modern silk road of digital nomads moving in between communities…
…but the issues with that, primarily its unsustainability, and the importance of working to create local communities and tribes.
The tension between freedom and fullness of living, independence and interdependence as valued differently by different societies.
What does it truly mean to be free and to have a society that promotes freedom?
How our individual drives are sculpted by the agencies of our environments and the people with whom we surround ourselves – so even the drive for independence is a symptom of our interrelatedness.
The challenge of building a decentralized society of loners and how culture itself may be the one true technological solution.
“My thinking about what I want to work on in the world has headed from initially thinking, ‘Oh, climate change is the most important thing to be focusing on right now, obviously,’ to ‘Maybe we can’t really resolve our climate issues without changing capitalism and changing our economic system that requires constant growth,’ and ‘Oh, well, maybe we can’t actually change our economic system without a culture that changes people’s relationships with each other, and with money, and with the world.”
“I think a lot of individual work, personal growth work, each one of us doing our own work to resolve the things in us that prevent us from living our most enlivened selves and bringing our gifts into the world, is really important.”
How Charles Eisenstein helps us articulate the core problems of, and potential solutions to, the crisis of our current age:
From separation to oneness, from scarcity to abundance.
The crisis of imagination that we don’t think it’s possible for our planet to provide for everyone.
Universal Basic Income - how it could liberate us to get culture right, or how it could be poorly implemented and create new problems.
Charles Stress’ novel Singularity Sky as one example of how unprecedented sudden affluence can ruin a society.
Might it not be for a very good reason that massively disruptive technologies we WANT (like free energy) are being (or ought to be) WISELY suppressed by the system (and/or ruling classes)?
Ramez Naam’s Nexus Trilogy as a model for how society might variously adopt and resist disruptive technologies – how technological telepathy specifically might be used by a variety of different factions, and suppressed by nation-states that want whatever vestige of control remains in eras of extraordinary change…
Tamera Healing Biotope in Portugal and their experiments in community living, the healing of interpersonal issues, processing group needs, and building toward a future that includes and nourishes us all.
The role of fearless love and re-imagined intimate relationships in new modes of community designed for peace.
The difficulty of making powerfully positive but culturally unusual steps toward love free from fear.
The Sex 3.0 Wiki and understanding sexuality as a cultural phenomenon shaped by the distributed agency of our technological surround – the enclosure and ownership of land, paternity, etc. all contributing in big ways to our current preference for monogamous mate claiming partnership.
The relationship between digital society (with its emphasis on sharing everything) and the resurgence of nonmonogamy.
Mystics and Moralists as two responses to change.
The plurality of belief systems, adaptability, and resilience.
“We can embrace the fullness and complexity of everything that’s happening in a balanced way that I believe will lead to a much more harmonious way of being on the planet.”
Moving out of an age of answers and into an age of questions…
The invention of Inheritance Day and the awesome idea of a new holiday in which we honor our ancestors and realize that we, too, are ancestors.
And lastly, just a dash of speculation on the Simulated Universe Theory and our participation in what Tibet calls “this fractal godhood…”
“If the future is watching, then don’t you want to say something valuable?” – MG
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