[P2P-F] Fwd: Rewritten, for Clarity

Tue Feb 17 20:07:11 CET 2015

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanth, Rajani <rkanth at fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 10:08 PM
Subject: Rewritten, for Clarity
To: Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>

                                         The Campus of the Living Arts:
Birth of a Notion*

There is a felt-need , today, globally, to bypass formal structures based
on competition and private gain in favor of institutions vested with
structures/processes that are life-enhancing, based on mutuality, and
co-operation, and  a  true  regard for the public weal. I would think very
few educated have any doubts left , after the  financial debacle  of 2008,
as to what untrammeled acquisitiveness can do to an economy and society:
especially its moral  fibre.
Now, the spirit of experimentation  is as American as apple-pie:  and Utah
shares that within its unique heritage of Mormonism ,  which  started out
as a great  experiment in  communal living ,  imbued with  a co-operative
ethos. It is in that spirit  of voluntary self-organisation (that
Tocqueville  found so heady about America) I  am proposing to  help
institute  an alternate , novel,   Association titled a Campus of the
Living Arts – part school, part trading post, part amphitheatre, part
village -  a corpus  of people  wishing to pursue autonomous,
non-formalistic ways  of living, learning, and working , inclusive of
gaining and sharing diverse skills.  After initially forming and charging
various Committees to help plan the Project,  there will be a Convention
held , likely in Salt Lake City,  where  the specifics will be put to
resolution in  a Town-Hall style Meeting.
The Campus will be a sort of a vast ‘Skills-Exchange’  facility,  where
Participants, short term and long term,  engage one another, in a gamut of
diverse activities. The idea is to develop ‘Tools of Conviviality’, the
entire Campus being such a tool. It’s functioning  will be non-formal and
voluntaristic . Many of the engagements will be practical , and conducive
to self-employment  and self-development. All Participants will have a
choice of donating something: their time, skills, and/or monies to the
Project - as , and when,  they choose.
The Campus, eventually , will have residential annexes , sort of like a
village. It will ‘evolve’ over time in ecologically and societally sound
ways,  through mutual deliberation. It will also aim at self-sufficiency,
and may use its own labor-time  based scrip. Initially , it will seek
donations of materials: land, materials, funds, etc.: but,  eventually,
will try to  finance itself. It will be self-governing in microcosms ,
rather than as a centralized entity. Effectively, all its norms will
evolve, it is hoped,  in the  very making of it.
The Campus  will be  a living, societal, participatory, civic,
community-enterprise that will seek to model itself on the best norms
available so as to be a template, universally. It will be an autonomous,
partly residential , civic  Campus ,  in  a natural, semi-rural setting, in
Utah,  that will encourage interactive learning/gathering  of
civilisational  and cultural skills, over a  very large  range, to improve
the Quality of Life of All. It will  aim at being  a  broad, interactive
co-respective facility and a living , self-sustaining, civic, communal
entity: economically viable,  self-managing ,  and  ecologically
sustainable .
The ambit of skills, specialties, and learning options might ,
provisionally,  include:  General Arts & Crafts (pottery, quilt-making,
basket-weaving, organic farming, bee-keeping,  et.al.), the  Culinary Arts;
Music , Film, and Theatre; Philosophy,  Anthropology, Literature and
Classics;  Parenting and Familial modes, Architecture and Theology;
 Ecology, Sustainability and Human Well-Being; Ideas and Ideology;
 Culture, Community,  and  Civilisational Studies;  Healing and Therapeutic
Studies, and  perhaps even some Select Natural Sciences.
Now that we have , perforce, ‘globalised’ the world, it might  well be
time, with Projects such as just delineated,  to ‘re-localise’ it, a bit
closer to the simpler needs and drives of ordinary  humanity.

*For more information, pl. write to:  livingartscampus at gmail.com

-- 
Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at:
http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

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