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Sara Siegler's avatar

I can recommend a model for discussion: intentional communities. These hubs of cooperative living have been around all over the US (& world), and lots has been written/filmed about them.

I was fortunate to live in an intentional community in Dexter Oregon… where I learned about living agreements, community councils, self-sustenance, legal and educational aspects of shared endeavors… if anyone is interested, I can recommend resources.

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Linda C's avatar

Intriguing.

One factor I think we're all ignoring: overpopulation. As i watch epidemic threatened leap from the animal world to humans (Covid, bird flu) and natural disasters devastate our dwellings (LA fires), i begin to think that the Earth itself is creating the corrective to our swarming the planet. With all the pain caused.

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Linda C's avatar

Meanwhile, President. Trump shuts down the connection to WHO, (that's World Health Organization, not Dr. Who), guts the CDC, and stops health research grants.

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Frank Montague's avatar

Agreed: STOP THE MADNESS by Every Means Necessary... while simultaneously We Create A FUTURE!

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Catherine Valencia's avatar

This is an extremely dangerous action by trump. People WILL die. It will also impact every nation worldwide.

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Corie Feiner's avatar

I like how it combines together that we must use what we know to envision what we want more of. Lucky you to have lived in an intentional community.

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cynde gragert's avatar

Thank you for bringing this forward. I'd love to see your recommended resources.

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Sara Siegler's avatar

I would like to know a bit about you…& what your specific interest is… it will help me help you. Sara

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Laura's avatar

Please share resources

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Sara Siegler's avatar

Hey Laura! Can you tell me a bit about yourself and your interest in the resources? Thanks, S

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Mike Sowden's avatar

So very glad to see you here - and equally glad that you're bringing things as hopeful as this. Thank you for publicly sitting with these questions and inviting us to do the same. It feels like the start of something grand. :)

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Teal Chimblo Fyrberg's avatar

Margaret, I was a participant in Practical Utopias and I want to thank you for initiating this project. It has energized me with resources, community, ideas and hope. Instead of despair I now feel excited about the steps, small and large, that I can take every day to save this beautiful planet and make it a more compassionate, joyful place for all beings. A million thank yous. I look forward to the next round! (yes, please!) And, hurrah for your substack.- Teal

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Laura DAmbrosio's avatar

I would love to be part of the next round since I just heard of this

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Carolyn McBride 🏳️‍🌈🇨🇦's avatar

Your words give me hope, even the simple knowing that there are doers and thinkers out there willing to consider how to build a better world is encouraging. I'd love to know more. And a step further than that - how can I contribute to building a better world?

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Lisa Mitchell Parker's avatar

Margaret,

New subscriber, longtime reader of your works here. Excuse me as I catch up.

Practical Utopias. This is what stuck me: You noted they are necessary to try because of the notion of hope. If not for hope, why bother trying to do anything. This is important and runs deeply in the youth of our world who both have hope if we allow them the space to exercise it, as it is a practice, yet it is something they are especially struggling with as well. Housing costs, education costs, healthcare concerns, climate crisis that they will live in, and political unrest and discord all around increasingly. These dissolve hope. These draw them to dystopian novels, movies, television and games because it seems most relevant. But asking my sons in their young twenties, they are desperate for hope. Practical Utopia thought experiments are practices in hope and this generation, along with the rest, will have a great impact on creating future realities--even parts and pieces of these practical utopias.

Hope is a precious commodity. It's not dreamy cotton fluff. It's hard work to keep hope as darkness descends ever more. It takes work together to solve problem by problem keeping hope that an answer is ahead. We can't give up on hope or practical utopias.

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Chevanne Scordinsky's avatar

These are all very good questions to ponder, especially in the story I’m serializing now. Part of what I think makes both utopias and dystopias so compelling is their proximity to reality. No magic wand. Even the society created in the Handmaid’s Tale forms incrementally. We accept certain things and little by little are swallowed up.

Thank you so much for sharing your insight and for this project. It’s so helpful to contemplate the many facets of the worlds we create. I’m eager to see how this progresses.

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Laura DAmbrosio's avatar

Well, I wish I had heard about disco.co and your project of creating practical utopia‘s back in September. I would’ve loved to have joined this. Hope you do it again. In the meantime, it’s great to have you here on the sub stack and I’m looking forward to reading what you have to say. Thank you.

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Sylvia Frisch's avatar

This thing about narratives shining the light on the way forward actually seems to be true – if we can see the way we might actually be able to get there!

Somehow before joining Practical Utopias as a fellow, I had been lurking around in the shadows patching together some semblance of Utopia and waiting for cultural narratives to guide us into the future. Now I am actively hopeful and actively imagining with others where we want to end up so that we can figure out how to get there together, this visioning exercise is real empowerment you have given us. Thank you Margaret for sharing your brain with the world and inspiring us to share our brains with each other!

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Sarah Bourque's avatar

I am looking forward to learning more. It’s an absolute pleasure to see you here.

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Erika Miller's avatar

Your work has taken my mind to many places. It’s so cool to encounter you here! My thoughts are deep into the How of changing our industrialized education complex (and parenting in isolation) here in the U.S. When I consider the idea of a Practical Utopia, I feel it must begin with the way we raise humans. All the Dystopias I see, real or fictional, are driven by our human behaviors.

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Moon Cat's avatar

Absolutely child raising is the hub for changing Society. That's why the Right is focusing on public schools as has the Catholics with their own schools. Earliest years are the most crucial as a child has no discernment up to around age 7/8.

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Deborah Taylor-French's avatar

Dear Margaret,

Thank you for kicking off this thoughtful discussion on designing a better future for humanity.

On housing, I think it best to consider the environment each family would live in. Here in Northern California, I've visited straw bale houses and noted they offer cool, quiet, and well insulated homes. Adobe brick and cement homes can also be built to provide efficient weather protection. All three type houses reduce the need for lumber and the cutting down of our forests.

Best,

Deborah

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Moon Cat's avatar

Earth houses are fire proof mostly but the issue is earthquake then. The 1868 quake toppled the adobe homes and killed many people. Cal Earth in Hesperia has a fireproof, earthquake proof architecture school that solves the problems for California.

https://calearth.org/blogs/superadobe-at-calearth

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Corie Feiner's avatar

I love earth houses!

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Shannon Lavell's avatar

Dear Margaret & Community

Thank you Margaret for this wonderful invitation!

My best thinking is to understand human development & maturation better and engage in small groups to heal our fears and bring forth creativity, play and innovation, slowly but surely. We want to create the optimum conditions for growth for the current and next crop of humanity. This means making sense of trauma in the current crop, and do a teeter totter of courage & cleaning up the past. Like the dragon and the treasure, we can feel some fear and trepidation while still acting on the next steps to creating a localization of the world we wish to see out there ;)

Then we can spontaneously erupt in loving acts of investment in the social determinants of optimum human functioning, which supports life on earth, and each other. Easy Schmeezy, one would think, given the warehouses full of information and experts supporting this transformation.

The evidence is in. We are amazing and we are vulnerable.

One has to be a bit of a fire walking ( life is the firewalk) closet mystic with a precious tribe to face the naysayers and the internal hopelessness, then finish the darn book. My own challenge at the moment.

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Timber Fox's avatar

I'm all for hope. And I'm tired of utopias only being presented as cautionary tales... e.g. "don't try to make things better! You might make them worse! Enjoy your soma and get back to work."

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Chevanne Scordinsky's avatar

I’d go with a small dose of Xanax or maybe a little lithium. Don’t want a sleepy workforce.

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Aaron Force's avatar

I love this! I am fascinated by the possibilities of what I call the Post-Egoic Society alongside the opportunities that AI and advanced technology may afford for humanity in the future. I am currently doing some work at this very moment for a chapter about Utopia for a book that is in development. I never realized this was a passion for you as well. I'd love to know more!

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Rand Leeb-du Toit's avatar

What a wonderful learning experience for the builders of tomorrow

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