• INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY RESEARCH •
COMING SOON
1. A PHILOSOPHICAL BEGINNING What would a system look like if it were truly for the people? What makes mankind truly happy? If mankind is supposed to be here, how are we supposed to fit in harmoniously? Privitization and ownership Smashing the need and illusion in life of Ownership. I will never own a home, but I will live in over 50 houses. This is system that understands we are born with nothing material and die with nothing material. It’s experiences that we need to collect in life. This is way of life that doesn't push away existential realities, but embraced them. A system dedicated to the experiences of it's people in their lifetimes, rather than the possessions they consume and harbour. Rather than working one job for one house and one place to live, you participate in thousands of differing activities over the course of a lifetime, in a thousand beautiful locations whilst eating the best food of your life and it's all for free. Success is no longer tied to what you own or how much of something material you have, only the quality of the person you are. It acknowledged that you come into this life with nothing material and leave with nothing material, therefore your time here should not be spent towards the material, only your experiences 
3. TEST-DRIVING TIME EXCHANGE
There was a period on the road when I exchanged my artwork directly for accommodation. No money. There was a period on the road when I exchanged my painting skills directly for accommodation. No money. There was a period on the road when I travelled between house sits.. no rent, no utility or wifi bills. I travelled to places I wanted while performing a public service. Money only went towards food and travel between locations. I met a couple who’d been living that way for 8 years.. Point is, I always had a thing for making it work outside how I was told was the only way. I loved living by other means of my making. Vertical Divider
CHANGING THE RULES
More expensive to eat better food My dream is to create the first space which combines and therefore removes stress concerning housing, work, health and education security, all in 1 space. Removing money as the middle man so what you have to do for what you get and is actually our human right. doesn’t impact the environment, our wildlife or eacother 
WHATS ALREADY HAPPENING:
KEEPING IT SMALL
There's no doubt amidst the benefits of smaller communities, the right amount of people within them adi teh functionality of the community. Too few people and there's too much work to be done to maintain a full farm and kitchen. Too many people and the difficulty in managing them increases. I mean imagine running a cafe that employs even 30 people? Monitoring thousands of people are going to work every day.. not realistic. Shared work for a community can be organised most productively in smaller groups. It's easier to monitor hundreds than thousands. 
SOMETHING NEW I'm passionate about people organising themselves to take back control of their resources, energy, food, housing and work lives. Communities are for anyone who would like to reconnect with a different style of living, whether for a weekend, a term, a holiday or a lifetime. My dream is to offer community living as a viable alternative lifestyle option, where options as to HOW you contribute to a global system have never been given before. I believe that as long as man has the ability to cooperate, man has the ability to thrive. |
2. WHAT IS OUR POTENTIAL? I will always believe in the social and superhuman capabilities of mankind if our daily lives weren't geared towards the attainment of our human rights (shelter, food, water, warmth; survival), the material and competition. 
WHAT I FOUND Community living proved to me that man can live independent of stress and money by working with others. For decades Intentional Communities have been rising in numbers globally as people work to regain quality control over their human rights, namely, their food, shelter, energy impact, not to mention the quality and purposes of their daily lives. Ashrams led the way in showcasing what lifestyles are possible when people work together and contribute equally to a high- space in organised, structured shifts. 
JUST A DIFFERENT WAY TO CONTRIBUTE I believe options are best for people, however a lifestyle option has never been given before. If someone wants to buy the big house, Work the one job and earn the moneys, that's completely fine, I’m only here to let you know there is another way as rising number of people begin to understand the potential of free, moneyless living, simply by contributing to a collective. Community living is how I want to live my life and though it may not be for everyone, by rights it should be an option. I appeal to anyone not completely satisfied with their day to day, be it because of work, money or an inability to do what you love, give this way of life a try. I believe this should be offered as an option, something up until now we have always been denied. 
WHY DO WE DOUBT?
How we see the world is imperative to our experience of it, so lets give this a chance. In my opinion if a man doesn’t want to live his life again, it could have been better. We have always done it this way? This way? is changing every single day. Its not being afraid of change. To give this way of life a go before you make your mind up. forget whose really in control here, I’m not talking about people vs government, I’m talking about what we believe is possible, which is a difficult ask based on, naturally, our only knowing what’s come before. I have also discovered that the main thread connecting those who don't believe Community living can work, is that they actually don't believe in mankind, whereas many who create Communities do. Schotoma PROTECTING THESE SPACES
Being classified as a workplace within society ensures the same protection of law enforcement and the legal system. 
A NETWORK
A decentralised, reciprocal, polycentric network of egalitarian self-sustaining skill and education focused cooperative spaces. Contribution equals your human rights. A system structurally designed to bleed out money’s current roles to function, where the structure of our current system would fall into chaos if money and it’s roles are extracted. My dream is to offer these spaces as a viable work and lifestyle option. This is why I’m asking existing communities to join together and form a network of mutually benefitting WHERE COULD THIS GO? IF this were to be a viable future, will industries such as the entertainment industry shift or remodel to be controlled by the people rather than cooperations? |
A PERSONAL JOURNEY
To say that this project has run my life is an understatement.
It not only ran it.. this project; my dream, has grown with me, changed with me and ran alongside my own development and perspectives.
From the purest idealism to the darkest realms of defeatism, ultimately a realism determined not to forget where I came from and what I wanted as a child for the world and its people surfaced.
Through it I developed traumas. Through it I let go of people I once thought wanted only the best for me.
I listened to those I shouldn't have. I eventually learnt how to predetermine why someone would or would not believe in a healthy world.
"You can't talk or think about these things unless you're living without money!" A standard rhetoric I shouldn't have given credence, but none the less attempted to great success and eye-opening heights. ( see box 3. )
Before I knew I was high functioning, burn out after burn out would force me over time to learn to feel internal build ups of energy and the power of 'breath' ultimately became a life changer, once I rid myself of rejecting 'that world' entirely after my years there. These burn out's often happened due to trying to learn 'everything,' terrified of being discredited if I hadn't read that text or that policy. But I'm only one person and like all of us I learnt my limits.
Even in my early twenties, a youth encased in philosophy and over-sensitivity to the suffering of man and animal kind, meant you could find me a mass of tears in the lap of a friend after a few glasses of wine, overcome by the wasted potential and lives of human-kind that I loved so much.
'I believe that when it comes to big ideas, the best policy is complete transparency. Transparency regarding the vision. Transparency regarding the motives behind the vision. It is for these reasons that I have chosen to trace and record the well-intentioned beginnings of what I am proposing to you now, if only to communicate it's pure wish for the lives led by every man and to safeguard my fear that this vision ever fall into the wrong hands.
But let's start at the beginning..
The origin of what I have worked to envision and plan to create with my life began during a conversation around the breakfast table when I was around 11 years old and my father decided to divulge certain 'truths' about life to me upon realising I wanted to be an artist.
The truths were as follows:
Truth #1: Possessions, despite being able to bring fleeting contentment, can not ensure lasting happiness in life.
Truth #2: Realistically, despite having talents and passion for Art and Music,
I wouldn't be able to do what I loved in life as they weren't reliable sources of income. It doesn't matter how talented anyone is in this life. Bonnie, you will more likely than not fail to do anything you truly love for a living.
That was the conversation that changed my thinking.
I couldn't do what made me happy in life as my work and what I was told to work for couldn't truly make me happy..
My very young, idealistic mind went a-wall with confusion and I looked at my parents and the other adults in my life to see they had made similar sacrifices when it came to what they had wanted to be and what they felt forced to do...
My fathers sacrifice for our family hit me hard. He often reminded us what he gave up for our family. He had worked a thankless job for decades to provide for his young family. Growing up I was also influenced visually by a number of fantasy films and other worlds I thought beautiful and wanted to create. I remember feeling sadness when I saw the world just wasn't as magical, fantastical..beautiful, in my mind and I wanted to change that.
As I grew into my teens, I began to harbour an immense hatred towards the concept of money, more specifically the disservices, despite the order that the existence of money had done to man, animal and earth. I began to fill out entire books with lists and questions regarding whether money was even compatible with unchanging elements of human nature and a secret dream began to form in my mind of offering free land and lives of sustainable peace to any who wanted it. Don't pay for your shelter, it's a human right. Don't work a job you hate for food to survive, it's a human right. This was where my head remained for many years and along with these ideas, though well-intentioned, came their friends emotional isolation, constant misunderstanding by those even in my own family and screaming matches with my father regarding whether mankind even can live in peace and harmony, like you wouldn't believe.
Between the age of 16 and 22 my head was a ticking time bomb, hell bent on hating what I saw was a system that wasted lives and their potential and hating money; a tool that I saw brought out the very worst in some and kept the rest of the world struggling to subsist.
To this day, the material being immaterial remains one of my biggest truths, one that has set my life trajectory and is certainly where my first intentions to live in pursuit of experiences rather than possessions was first born.
I purchased my 1982 Toyota Coaster when I was 22 years old with an initial goal: Attain the essential, subsequently live unburdened and make life an adventure. Like many before me and certainly many to come,, The goal of monetary independence, achievable by attaining what I needed once and simply where possible, became my life plan as I sought to extract myself from a life of working to afford what I believed should be a simple stepping stones before gaining independence and freedom in life. I desired an inexpensive, simple shelter, the ability to grow my own food and supply my own clean energy and an essential wardrobe. As I grew, a thought process consumed me regarding the injustices of a system taking so much in regards to Time and Experiences from it's people and giving back so little of worth. It was then my plans to travel between and study alternative nature-balanced lifestyles and intentional communities for independent research began. It was a combination of needing to travel for my research and my intention to lay simple foundations in permanent Shelter early, that led me to the beginning of bus life. To what end was I expected to work a job that didn't fulfil me for survival? For a house too big, too expensive and far more than I required? Was I wrong to believe Shelter, Water, Food and Clothing were human rights because man's survival was dependent on them and therefore a workforce held hostage to attain base necessities was a waste of human life? soon after which I would grow my own food, simultaneously disabling monetary reliances on both Food and Petrol.Though there's no doubt that this is one of the most frustrating catch-22's of our current time. To live unburdened by money, we first have to lay foundations with it.
To say that this project has run my life is an understatement.
It not only ran it.. this project; my dream, has grown with me, changed with me and ran alongside my own development and perspectives.
From the purest idealism to the darkest realms of defeatism, ultimately a realism determined not to forget where I came from and what I wanted as a child for the world and its people surfaced.
Through it I developed traumas. Through it I let go of people I once thought wanted only the best for me.
I listened to those I shouldn't have. I eventually learnt how to predetermine why someone would or would not believe in a healthy world.
"You can't talk or think about these things unless you're living without money!" A standard rhetoric I shouldn't have given credence, but none the less attempted to great success and eye-opening heights. ( see box 3. )
Before I knew I was high functioning, burn out after burn out would force me over time to learn to feel internal build ups of energy and the power of 'breath' ultimately became a life changer, once I rid myself of rejecting 'that world' entirely after my years there. These burn out's often happened due to trying to learn 'everything,' terrified of being discredited if I hadn't read that text or that policy. But I'm only one person and like all of us I learnt my limits.
Even in my early twenties, a youth encased in philosophy and over-sensitivity to the suffering of man and animal kind, meant you could find me a mass of tears in the lap of a friend after a few glasses of wine, overcome by the wasted potential and lives of human-kind that I loved so much.
'I believe that when it comes to big ideas, the best policy is complete transparency. Transparency regarding the vision. Transparency regarding the motives behind the vision. It is for these reasons that I have chosen to trace and record the well-intentioned beginnings of what I am proposing to you now, if only to communicate it's pure wish for the lives led by every man and to safeguard my fear that this vision ever fall into the wrong hands.
But let's start at the beginning..
The origin of what I have worked to envision and plan to create with my life began during a conversation around the breakfast table when I was around 11 years old and my father decided to divulge certain 'truths' about life to me upon realising I wanted to be an artist.
The truths were as follows:
Truth #1: Possessions, despite being able to bring fleeting contentment, can not ensure lasting happiness in life.
Truth #2: Realistically, despite having talents and passion for Art and Music,
I wouldn't be able to do what I loved in life as they weren't reliable sources of income. It doesn't matter how talented anyone is in this life. Bonnie, you will more likely than not fail to do anything you truly love for a living.
That was the conversation that changed my thinking.
I couldn't do what made me happy in life as my work and what I was told to work for couldn't truly make me happy..
My very young, idealistic mind went a-wall with confusion and I looked at my parents and the other adults in my life to see they had made similar sacrifices when it came to what they had wanted to be and what they felt forced to do...
My fathers sacrifice for our family hit me hard. He often reminded us what he gave up for our family. He had worked a thankless job for decades to provide for his young family. Growing up I was also influenced visually by a number of fantasy films and other worlds I thought beautiful and wanted to create. I remember feeling sadness when I saw the world just wasn't as magical, fantastical..beautiful, in my mind and I wanted to change that.
As I grew into my teens, I began to harbour an immense hatred towards the concept of money, more specifically the disservices, despite the order that the existence of money had done to man, animal and earth. I began to fill out entire books with lists and questions regarding whether money was even compatible with unchanging elements of human nature and a secret dream began to form in my mind of offering free land and lives of sustainable peace to any who wanted it. Don't pay for your shelter, it's a human right. Don't work a job you hate for food to survive, it's a human right. This was where my head remained for many years and along with these ideas, though well-intentioned, came their friends emotional isolation, constant misunderstanding by those even in my own family and screaming matches with my father regarding whether mankind even can live in peace and harmony, like you wouldn't believe.
Between the age of 16 and 22 my head was a ticking time bomb, hell bent on hating what I saw was a system that wasted lives and their potential and hating money; a tool that I saw brought out the very worst in some and kept the rest of the world struggling to subsist.
To this day, the material being immaterial remains one of my biggest truths, one that has set my life trajectory and is certainly where my first intentions to live in pursuit of experiences rather than possessions was first born.
I purchased my 1982 Toyota Coaster when I was 22 years old with an initial goal: Attain the essential, subsequently live unburdened and make life an adventure. Like many before me and certainly many to come,, The goal of monetary independence, achievable by attaining what I needed once and simply where possible, became my life plan as I sought to extract myself from a life of working to afford what I believed should be a simple stepping stones before gaining independence and freedom in life. I desired an inexpensive, simple shelter, the ability to grow my own food and supply my own clean energy and an essential wardrobe. As I grew, a thought process consumed me regarding the injustices of a system taking so much in regards to Time and Experiences from it's people and giving back so little of worth. It was then my plans to travel between and study alternative nature-balanced lifestyles and intentional communities for independent research began. It was a combination of needing to travel for my research and my intention to lay simple foundations in permanent Shelter early, that led me to the beginning of bus life. To what end was I expected to work a job that didn't fulfil me for survival? For a house too big, too expensive and far more than I required? Was I wrong to believe Shelter, Water, Food and Clothing were human rights because man's survival was dependent on them and therefore a workforce held hostage to attain base necessities was a waste of human life? soon after which I would grow my own food, simultaneously disabling monetary reliances on both Food and Petrol.Though there's no doubt that this is one of the most frustrating catch-22's of our current time. To live unburdened by money, we first have to lay foundations with it.
