Generating a type of feeling is very achievable. Sustaining it is much harder.
Even so, I have always thought about our middle future: the possibility that you could die at moment vs the possibility that you could live for a very long time.
The present matters. What we do now shapes tomorrow — indeed, you can't see the world from the world, but you can see yesterday's world from today.
How this applies to community — we are hungry for it, rallying instantaneously around shared interests and common goals. I'm not interested in quick-grab infrastructure; I am much more interested in something like railways, vessels that allow passage through them for a hundred years. If you can cut through the noise and the hype, then I want to hear you.
Community is the ultimate buzzword. I think it is in need of redefinition and divergence. In our lifetime, we will generate many new notions of community. Which do you want to belong to? I on this end always return to my roots: literal, metaphorical, and without fail, a body of water. I will never forsake my relationship with the land [yes, topophilia, what place do you love?] ... [because the land knows you even when you are lost]
Indigenous concepts of harvest and the cultivation of our relationship with the land should permeate the ways that we build sustainable communities. It does require the relinquishing of hyper-individualism: we rely on ourselves to provide and fulfil every single need. We are productivity machines rather than contributors to a larger ecosystem. There is much conversation around these topics, but I want to focus on material action. It is a privilege to discuss theory, to marinade in ideas.
The irony is that by feeding your community, you feed yourself. By tending to the land, our earth, you simultaneously feed yourself and your community. You are not losing anything: instead, you are sustaining something. If you'll let yourself.
Digital notions of community differ from physical ones. Both, in some part, are about the legibility of your interior. What does this mean for a placeless world?
More thoughts another time.
