Regarding scale, commitment, responsibility, and life satisfaction

For ecovillages and bioregions

In the modern world many people are feeling lonely and rootless; overwhelmed by impersonal institutions and mega-technologies; vaguely dissatisfied among a surfeit of stuff but an impoverishment of spirit. It could be justifiably argued that we’ve lost more than we’ve gained from centuries of “progress and development.” Surely there has been a withering of local community life and an increasing alienation from the natural world. Economic growth has not enriched the vast majority of us, except in the most superficial ways. In fact, growth of population, production, consumption, pollution, and depletion has stressed people and the planet.

A “greening of society” movement for ecological and social sanity could be based on a vision of a healthier, more responsible relationship with the natural world and rejuvenation of local community life. ‘Eco’ for ecology; ‘village’ for community.

Renewal of a sense of place

Life satisfaction could derive from identification with a particular place on earth and commitment to a stable group of familiar others. We should cultivate an active sense of responsibility to the people, flora, and fauna of our home-place.

Most of the modern nation-states are too large. We could more readily relate to and take responsibility for entities that are more humanly-scaled; within which a more participatory form of democracy could be possible.

With that goal in mind we should be creating ecovillages. Rural agro-communities. Walkable “transition towns” in suburbia. Eco-communitarian neighborhoods within cities. Networks of such could become the basis for the eventual bioregional reorganization of society.

Strategy for change

Let’s work together under the guiding vision of an ultimate world of humanly-scaled communities and bioregional economies. By building the new within the shell of the old we could gradually and incrementally replace the toxic and congested modern industrial state. The latter is hopelessly characterized by social injustice and ecological irresponsibility. It’s gray. We want to go green.