“My work has been driven by my passion for social justice, personal liberty, world peace, and ecological restoration.” -Thomas Greco, Jr.

Connecting, building, improving, sharing socially conscious, sustainable communities.

Soon there will be a collection of resources and tools aimed at helping individuals become more empowered to help their communities and the world by focusing on what’s most important – human and environmental harmony and sustainability.

By working together we can create opportunities for many to break free from the traps and pressures of the unsustainable, greedy, predatory parts of our social system, and become more useful to ourselves and the world at a time when sustainable restoration is greatly needed.

With sustainable restoration also comes the empowerment of the lower and middle classes, allowing them to more easily provide for themselves, at a minimum the basic necessities, and at a maximum the appreciation paid forward to others through the domino effect of populism.

A few ideas include:

• do-it-yourself co-ops
• shared work hubs
• open-source technology
• open-source ecology
• shared living
• sustainable housing
• home management
• community created farms
• time sharing banks
• community tool sharing libraries
• couch-hosting and couch-surfing

We address causes and effects of societal disfunction on society and the individual:

• root causes of society’s issues – historically, scientifically
• society’s issues within the current social environment
• negative effects this social environment has on the individual

Potential ideas and solutions for society and ways to contribute:

• ways of coping with these negative effects
• alternative philosophies and movements with a focus on human collaboration and sustainability with nature
• community work and projects in line with sustainability philosophies
• paths away from the flawed system and towards personal usefulness and sustainability

Our social system is a product of old thinking – competitive human nature, endless growth, consumeristic self-interest, the monetary-based market system and fiat currencies, and concentrated power structures in all major industries – and modern science is indicating that these ideas will continue to drastically compound inequality, which in and of itself creates societies that are unhealthy in every major categories {health, life expectancy, happiness, education, innovation) when compared to more equal systems.

Our thinking used to make some sense – the dollar went further, and families could work reasonably hard and be guaranteed a good life. But as inequality grew, we failed to properly diagnose and adapting, leaving us stuck with a worldwide mess socially and ecologically.

Most of us aren’t aware of this and don’t realize the causation.  And for those who are aware, it’s hard to say what’s best to do about it:

• Should we prepare for all out chaos, focusing on life’s most necessary and minimalistic goals such as food, water, shelter, energy, and security?
• Should we move to healthier, friendlier communities around the world?  Or isolate ourselves out in nature?
• Do we put our time into learning and cultivating technological advances like the internet and open-source projects in hopes that they will save us somehow?
• Should we be capitalists and milk what’s left of a dying system and hope to exchange our money for true resources and future currencies and bartering mechanisms?
• Should we move from career specialization to well-roundedness with more central, sustainable focus?
• Should we stick with cushy high-paying jobs with low social impact or find and build new careers that help the world?

It’s hard to know in what ways our inflated system will crack and even break.  It’s been cracking for a long time, and on a global scale. This means that major changes are inevitable, creating huge opportunities to learn from past lessons and build something that’s truly sustainable – a true, people-created democracy that seeks  for the optimized alignment of all of humanity with the environment.

Anyone who is still benefiting greatly from the current system will in some way defend it.  But rather than fighting those forces through violence and slander, we should work together to create the better society.  Already we are seeing a tremendous culmination of alternative, democratized systems that help us all learn and work together in this path.  It is this force that resides deeply in my heart, and in our hearts, so I believe.  The health of all of our lives depends on it, and what could be more important than that?