In response to Yes Magazine article on A Sense of Purpose (click for article)
Could the Dekota “Standing Rock” action become a MoS Town? An experimental town in which people create the beneficial succession of air, water, soil and selves by design as a by-product of their living.
It could if enough like-minded permaculture earthworkers volunteered their design skills. The main purpose at this camp is to stop the Dekota Access Pipeline and therefore to stop the oil spillage into their drinking water. Secondly, reclaiming the sacred land from the 1851 Treaty unceded land. They are building solidarity globally. What is the result? One of the many products of this amazing unexpected coming together is there is seed toward creating a healthy village and model for future villages.
To be a MôS Town here is possible. The First Nation’s people have worked to keep their traditional ways of living. Perhaps they will be good at mixing the new technologies and new green systems to build the next experimental village aimed to leave a better trace — even if only for a short time at Standing Rock. I asked in 2007, who is the next person or group to build the next experimental town or village? A village designed from all the lessons of previous experimental places and historic settlements. A place that combines all the best ideas to form the next experimental settlement. Maybe SR is the next place? This place does not exist and I call it a “MoS Village” or “MoS Town”.
If SR has the mission to leave a better trace, which I think it does, this could be a MoS Town. It doesn’t have to succeed, but just try.
A MoS Town is not just an eco-village – ecologically sustainable or a village spiraling in beneficial succession. The environment helps, abundant natural resources are a help but MoS Village also is about the quality of life inside each person’s heart. A place that supports life that in-turn supports fully compassionate human beings, emphatic and able to love and support themselves and others in 2017.
MôS Town Potentials
I would like to help build a beneficial succession village. Water protectors/stewards can build a camp that doesn’t need to be heated from coal, nuclear, gas or wood. Currently energy comes in with oil in cars and trucks –which is fine to kickstart what I call a “MôS Town” . Transition to renewable regenerating energies like food waste and poop waste. Do you know how much food waste can make how much heat? A lot. If the settlement is growing and will stay for more than a few months or a year the animal and human poo can be designed to become planting fertilizer and gas.
Then bring in the e-bikes, make a land design plan with walk/bike/horse pathways. This could be fun. I think I will go there. I can see it now, lanes and streets on contour to support the health of the watershed, swales next to trees dripping with fruit, pathways with names and directions toward center camp, trading posts and many kitchens. That will be an Ephemeral MoS Town if they leave to go home.. and even if it gets bulldozed(they wont) the earth will be left better. The spot will be a legacy for future generations. It already is.
Like visiting Pompeii, the future generations can visit these “Earth Protector Sites” (EPS) originated during the “Plactic-scene Era”. The EPS spaces will have spiraling beneficial succession and empathic citizens, verdant abundance. Also can call them Ephemeral MôS Towns or Emergency Medical Towns or Earth Medicine Towns (EMTs). The future beings, also the oztracized and lost beings, will go to these EMTs and will have a renewed sense of purpose. EMTs are also good “Zone for Abandoned People” (ZAPs) filled with sustenance and meaning. EMTs are places where historic warriors protected the earth. These EMTs that pop up all over helped save the earth. Continuing to grow in such vitality, the EMTs are designed to be abandoned and thrive on their own with a few poeple. They are prime spots to be reclaimed by ZAPs because they were designed for beneficial succession. The historic EMTs are not staffed like museums. The ZAPs, not unlike an historic place or museum there are staff conducting tours. The ZAPs , who live there, maintain the space and cultivate more advanced earthworks.
Looking at another temporary settlement called Burning Man in the desert of Nevada of 50k people. The goal of Burning Man is to build a radically expressive accepting community with the 7 principles. This is not a spiritual camp and has many elments that do not align with SR. However there is a sense of living in a different paradigm once of gifting and radical inclusion and acceptance. There are lots of spiritual people there yet also drugs. Burners leave no trace on the playa, but MoS Villagers leave a better trace on the playa. BM help the local economy by donating bicycles and other surplus. In the MoS towns people sell goggles and “PlasticScene Era” survival tools. The installations are amazing on the playa. Imagine if they left a better trace — that would be quite mission on top of the already challenging one of just camping in the desert.
There is a growing effort to be green at Burning Man. Making Burning Man more green is a conversation people are having still… a “green sustainable town” is not experimental MôS Towns. MoS Towns have to re-design everything which burning man event has attempted creatively. Standing Rock will inherently do a better job I think…
The detrimental lifestyle virus covering the earth now, at the end of our “PlasticScene Era”. Is it too dire that we can not take the time to change everything drastically bit by bit? Will people concern themselves with their toxic supply chain long enough to change patterns and redesign, all parts of the system — starting with the watershed? The toxic waste stream we leave behind is getting worse. It provides conveniences habits we have become accustomed to. — However, bit by bit we can start better habits.
It’s a scary task to redesign everything — not all at once, we are doing it slowly. In these new long term encampments there is a potential town that can be developed with air, water and soil are sacred elements and are supported.
It may feel too late to build the village while trying to survive the cold for the winter at Standing Rock. Can the encampment plan ahead enough to design a one year or a 3, 5, 100 year plans that creates a village of beneficial succession? The need for toxins like fuel, bleach, chemicals, drugs supplies may be too dire around the world including at Standing Rock. Campers residents may have no interest to adapt to new patterns. I don’t yet know.
Yes, this encampment has potential to be a MôS Town because the people are passionate about water and earth. In this global shifting paradigm that has joined SR is praying together to protect our commons from total destruction. They are showing people by action how to live in a more earth caring way– they are our teachers because they still have this embedded in their lifestyles. They live lifestyles of bioremediation and symbiosis. It’s the way of nature to work in collaboration with nature.
Protectors live in community, share limited resources and food, education and healing with everyone. If it were to be a MôS Town it would have to also create the beneficial succession of water, air, soil and selves as a byproduct of our living. It’s a tall order. I am certain this will happen in the future – in the next 20 years in drips and drops it will accumulate. We all started years ago actually. We have many natural alternatives now. People combine more and more biological better alternative and put them in new systems discovered and assert them toward the next paradigm of living.
Even us, the stubborn naysayers of decadence, we can now let go of the conveniences that are toxic and happily make way for new conveniences that are even better. We too will soon languish all together in the sweet waters of bliss the protectors are standing up, healing everyone in the wake of their genocide from European settlers. We will benefit and enjoy the most decadence the earth has to offer as a result of their resistance.
All kinds of people will again have inherent by-product of beneficial succession that ripple out to serve the whole beneficially. Even the European settlers will be also an asset. It’s a village and SR has invited everyone to stand with them in prayer for the water.
Standing Rock, shall we go there to build a living system with healthy water for all life and humans? Maybe this sacred space is the perfect spot to create what I have been refering to as the Ephermeral MôS Town? It doesn’t exist but this is most promising. One has to be so convicted to clean water to stand up against the oil companies. No one can win this alone safely. To safely win this battle there needs to be lots of support.
The protectors are not going anywhere. They will stay for the -40 degree winter. Remember Zuccatti and Freedom Plaza after the tough winter months in the cold, the camp was tired, weak and with inner fighting, with demented and homeless living there amongst the protectors. It was easy for the city to clean them out– they self destroyed.
The native’s will have a better chance being on “their own land”, they are safe and with food, fires and teepees and their knowledge of winter survival.
If the engineers and the urban planning water protectors go now to help design systems now, to stand infront of them at the white supremacists they will help all water protectors to remain strong.
Dekota protectors are going to be there long enough to benefit from starting an Earth Medicine Town or Ephemeral MoS Town (EMT). The First Nation’s people are up against a nation that has skills to resist them even with the white allies. All together thought we are resilient. The First Nation people, the youth, are the only ones to lead the way to untangle this complex neural network of oil and destruction of earth and human life on it. Change will happen slowly, bit by bit. This Earth Medicine Town (EMT) will remain for years to come. More EMTs shall pop up everywhere to protect the air water, soil, people, animals and whatever it is the destructive force is after it.
