The Ecostery concept (being a radical social-transformation ecovillage)

Excerpts from an interview by David Kupfer with Kirkpatrick Sale in Earth First! Journal, February-March 2001

[below was the ending section of interview]

DK: What would you say to younger people to point them in a positive direction for their future?

KS: I would particularly say for young people to immediately learn to live in the kind of community that devotes itself to nature. There are Indian communities of this kind. There are the Amish. There are some bioregional groups of this kind. There are intentional communities that follow this. None of it is as perfect or persuasive as it ought to be. But they don’t need that. For a young person, it’s sufficient to have the analysis of the importance of community and the necessity of being nature-based. You don’t have to have models. You don’t have to have older people. All you need is to live that life.

DK: Finally, tell me of some positive signposts you’ve recently seen toward solving some of the problems we’ve been talking about.

KS: I don’t see any solution to these problems. That’s exactly the point. Because these problems are not going to be solved, they will go on to create this catastrophe that I suggest is going to happen to us. And the sensible response I am arguing is to turn our backs on this society and establish these small, nature-based communities — just ignore the problems [like Ted Trainer says to “ignore capitalism to death”] — and to create sustained communities in their own way wherever they are located. This is a basic principle of bioregionalism that people can learn, each in their own place, how to live in the right way. And that is a healthy thing to do. In the same way, this is the principle of the Ecostery — living the right way without regard to the governments and other institutions of the world.

(in January Kirk Sale published his latest book: The Collapse of 2020)