To begin, we ask you to consider the premises of three visionary thinkers (among many). The first is William McDonough, the founder of the Cradle2Cradle design philosophy, who asks, “How can I love all of the children, of all of the species, for all time?” The second is Derrick Jensen, prolific writer, teacher, and liberation philosopher, whose answer to the age old question, “what is good?” is, “clean water.” describing essentially that ecology is good, habitat is good. The third is John Taylor Gatto, three time New York City Teacher of the Year, and once New York State Teacher of the Year, who ironically dedicated his life to getting children out of school as much as possible, claiming, without irony, “I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.” I encourage you to research and experience these philosophers, and to discover the wealth of like-minded ecological writings available. In fact, many solutions are out there, in the form of programs, projects, ecovillages, organizations and individuals who are putting in the work that it takes to change the world every day. Consistently “eco-topia” as it were, is offered, in large and small packages, but without the roots, the foundation, it needs to take hold. The SHIRE is an infrastructure, a new idea, a different idea, and one ready to be put in to action now.

The SHIRE is a design that assumes human stewardship of the remediation process for the benefit of all beings and the earth itself, while letting go of the exploitation of our ecological communities. There are three components to a SHIRE- Community, Industry, and Academy. (in the context of this civilization this may sound no better then a mining town, or your average suburb. The truth is, none of the above components, which we assume to be the foothold of our way of life, is offered with any hope of ecological fulfillment, or even the fulfillment upon which this country’s revolutionary war was waged. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are certainly not found in modern civilization, but to a few mercilessly exploitive members, if disassociation from your bread and butter can be called happiness. Please bear with our descriptions of the SHIRE with the knowledge that the words we use have power, and that culturally, we live in a time of lies, and the earth can’t take it anymore.)

The three components of the SHIRE are interconnected, as are all things in an ecological world. The dream of the SHIRE, its Constitution, its Declaration of Interdependence, and its Bill of Rights, is inherent in this interconnectedness, as the SHIRE is a new idea down to its very roots and cannot thrive, let alone survive, by being fit into the old mold; no more than a round block can be fit into a square hole, a child can thrive in a factory or a polar bear can thrive in a cage. However! The SHIRE infrastructure can be staged in the city, in the country, in the suburbs, or in the wild, with the ultimate goal of guiding all of our pained habitats towards permanent sustenance. Our dream and plan provide that, one by one, SHIRE Communities will form, like mycelia, to support the slow and gentle decline of our current hegemonic civilization into a safe, healthy, joyful and ecologically balanced world.

Last update: February 25, 2008
08:01 am

Published in : Eco Blogs, Habitat Restoration

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