z-hub.org > community (and government)
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Community: and Government
"Palleee" is a sustainable, functional community. If people build and "run" a local community, Because we want ourselves and people to be sustained, survive, and thrive, we all want our local community to be run in sustainable and functional ways. Therefore, we must discuss what a sustainable / functional community is and who runs it. There is the community government, and then there are larger governments, such as a city government, a county government, a state government, and a national government. A functional community has an EEE System (explained below). Local community residents run the community government and its EEE System, and at large and most of the time, local residents run them themselves self-reliantly. Yet larger governments have the important work of supporting and fostering a local community to establish and uphold the local community's own EEE system. Governments big and small should follow the 10 Joint Goals of GREEEPCH to help every community to establish an EEE System to become sustainable and functional. Definition of People use the word “community” in many ways and for many scales. Sometimes people use the word "community” to mean a club or a school or a group of people in one professional field. Sometimes people use the word "community” as a whole world community.
A Sustainable
● ABC Garden. A functional community includes an ABC Garden, which helps the community, agencies, adults, and schoolkids to be sustainable, to establish and uphold a palleee (a functional community), an EEE System, and the 16 Priceless Things, to follow the 10 Joint Goals of GREEEPCH, and to take actions within the 40 Sustainability Categories.
EEE System
● Democracy, Freedoms, etc. A functional community should not be overbearing on individual people and families. There should be a clear list of required community commitments, which should not take up anyone’s total time. In a functional community, people have plenty of free time for themselves and their families. Community residents must do what is on the required list but are not pressured to do more. People are free to join optional community activities and events as much or as little as they want. ● Free to Leave or to Stay. In a palleee, high school graduates and adults are not only free to leave the community to live, learn, and work elsewhere, but also, community residents (high school graduates and adults) are free to stay in the community to live, learn, and work. No one is forced to leave the community to look for jobs elsewhere. ● Walkability. A functional community has great walkability in which people walk or bicycle between their housing and places of work, school, parks, and basic shopping within the local community. Teachers teach at schools within their own local community. ● ABC Garden. A functional community includes an ABC Garden, which helps the community, agencies, adults, and schoolkids to be sustainable, to establish and uphold a palleee (a functional community), an EEE System, and the 16 Priceless Things, to follow the 10 Joint Goals of GREEEPCH, and to take actions within the 40 Sustainability Categories. ● In community education, students learn When students graduate, they are economically viable – able to earn a living to keep above poverty. Meanwhile, some jobs require more than only a high school education; hence, there can be learn-on-the-job job positions and apprenticeships. Plus, there could be work-study in non-college programs and in college programs. In college, the work-study programs fully pay for college, semester by semester. Every semester, every weekday, students could work 4-hours-in-a-row (like 8 AM to Noon), and take college classes for 4-hours-in-a-row (like 1 PM to 5 PM). The part-time work each semester could fully cover full-time college tuition, room, and board for each semester, so there are no student loans and no student debts. ● Top 10 Goals. ● 16 Priceless Things.
Just like it’s important for an adult to be able to mostly take care of one’s own self, it’s important for each community to mostly take care of its own self. We want capable people and capable communities. We do not want people to be helpless burdens to society. Likewise, we do not want communities to be helpless burdens to society either. A community should set up each high school graduate with a local job (with at least a living-wage and full benefits), but then it’s up to each graduate to do the work to support oneself and family with the job. The community can help a person to change jobs on occasion, but at each job, the person must do most of the work to support oneself. Likewise, states, nations, and cities should help to foster each community to start its own EEE system, and then it’s up to each community to work the EEE system to help the community to significantly be locally-self-sufficient. People and communities should be independent and capable entities. At large, neither people nor communities want to be chronically and helplessly dependent on charities, a domineering big government, or domineering big businesses. As mentioned above, a community should have its own recycling facility, its own credit union, its own employment agency to connect local people to local jobs, its own community gardens or farms to grow and distribute local food to local people, and so on. ● Community Center, Nature Center! Furthermore, a functional community has its own combo community center / nature center / education center with an ABC Garden, which helps the community to establish and uphold community functionality, an EEE System, and take actions in the 40 Sustainability Categories. The combo community-nature-education center could also be called a science-art-ecology-economy community center. Ideally, the nature and community center should overlap with or be adjacent to the hub of education, a public library and the local school. Ideally, there should be a park and or schoolyard at the community center. The park / schoolyard is the grounds of the nature center with a botanical garden of native plants. Also, at the park / schoolyard with the native plants there should be an ABC Garden of outdoor classrooms. An ABC Garden includes native plants, veggie gardens, and outdoor classrooms that are specifically designed for outdoor education for learning about science, art, ecology, economy, and the EEE system in one’s community. ● ABC! ● More on EEE System: Plus, the EEE System provides everyone with a Maternity and Birth to Preschool (including daycare) to School to Jobs to Retirement to Burial Continuum to keep everyone out of poverty throughout a lifetime. Common life events should not put any family into debt and poverty, including taking time for maternity and the costs of birth, education, and basic burials (biodegradable fungi burial bags, etc.). People can opt in and opt out of various parts of the continuum. Primitive societies didn’t have high school or jobs in which people earned money. But primitive communities educated their children to do science and art, to take care of nature, and to be economically able to support themselves, their family, and community. By the time every primitive child became an adult (at age 20), the person knew how to be economically viable / make-a-living / keep-above-poverty* in the hunter-gatherer economy, including how to make and maintain their own shelters, to get and cook their own food, and to make their own baskets and blankets. *Poverty = absolute poverty. Primitive people were poor in that they didn’t have the modern conveniences and luxuries that many modern people have. Yet in general, primitive people ate enough food, drank enough water, had enough clothes and shelter, etc. to be healthy and live above poverty (absolute poverty). Primitive societies had functional communities and EEE Systems. The same EEE System can be adapted to modern times. Modern EEE community systems can teach students how to take care of nature, how to work at jobs and create jobs, and communities can offer decent local jobs to high school graduates, so that graduates and all adults can live well, or at least above poverty. In past primitive times, children never learned to read and write, but in a modern EEE System, at school, students can learn to read and write, in addition to learning how to take care of nature and to work in a local economy. ● After High School Meanwhile, some jobs require more than only a high school education; hence, there can be learn-on-the-job job positions and apprenticeships. Plus, there could be work-study college programs, which fully pay for college. For the work-study college program, every semester, every weekday, full-time students could work 4-hours-in-a-row and take college classes for 4-hours-in-a-row. The part-time work each semester could fully cover full-time college tuition, room, and board for each semester, so there are no student loans and no student debts. ● Capable Community Goverments of different scales and sizes: ● Subsidiarity It’s fine if schools receive regular outside funding, such as what it roughly is now for the USA: 10% federal funding, 45% state funding, and 45% local funding. Also, rich and poor communities can establish partnerships through which poorer communities can receive some funding from richer communities, until the poorer communities can stand on their own feet. Also, larger governments are welcome to publicize suggestions for school curricula, but then let communities choose their own curricula and create their own place-based sustainable curricula to carry out education, EEE Systems, etc., for themselves. An ABC Garden includes native plants, veggie gardens, and outdoor classrooms that are specifically designed for outdoor education for learning about science, art, ecology, economy, and the EEE System in one’s community. A school itself can be thought of as a community or a club, etc. Yet a “functional community” is not a school itself in isolation from its surrounding community. Also, a local community without a school that engages with it is not a functional community either. A functional community is a local community that has a school that engages its students with its surrounding community of local nature, the local economy, an EEE System, and a School to Jobs Continuum, which offers decent local jobs to every local high school graduate. Dysfunctional A local community is merely “a local gathering of buildings and people” and is a “dysfunctional community” if it lacks an EEE System in which students learn and practice community cooperation, running a community, and taking care of local nature and local farmland and the local economy, and the system ends local poverty and offers a good local job to every high school graduate. But any local community can choose to start up an EEE System if it lacks an EEE System. People are social creatures. For as long as people are humans (Homo sapiens), for the sake of people’s health, people need functional communities, as well as family and friends. Functional communities don’t only mitigate poverty, but also, they nurture relationships between friends and between people within a family. Functional communities nurture fun and joy, “apka fun."
Local ● More about Being Local. In recent modern times, “self-sufficient homesteading,” “local food,” being “local,” and using “low-tech tools” are regaining popularity. It’s not to become stupid iron-age or stone-age people of the past (if they were ever stupid), but it’s to be wise and usefully-skilled people in general, no matter what technology we use. To lose our skills and connection to local water, food, clothes, shelter, tools, and the nature of the community landscape, makes us dumb and disconnected. Today, although the electronic “world wide web,” many modern people feel increasingly lonely, isolated, and helpless. To be connected to the world, we have to stick our hands and feet into the local mud. Henry David Thoreau lived self-reliantly at Walden Pond; yet, many people consider him to be wise. Thoreau lived at alone at Walden for only 2 years; following, he lived again in society and engaged with society, such as by writing books about nature, etc. Being skilled to be locally-self-sufficient helps a person to be wise, caring, skillful, helpful, and connected, and not ignorant, complacent, negligent, helpless, and isolated. The modern local food movement to transition from getting food from 10,000 miles away, to 4,000 miles away, to 1,000 miles away, to within 100 miles away, to within 30 miles away, and even closer is part of that desire to have communities be more self-reliant. The point of community self-reliance is not to live in isolation, but it is to be responsible, capable, (and to save energy!) and to NOT be helpless, greedy, destructive, and a burden to neighboring and distant communities by taking their wealth and resources. Communities can occasionally help each other out for temporary periods of time, to overcome a brief crisis. People can enjoy short occasional exchanges of stuff and ideas, within the region, state, nation, and globe. It’s fun. And it doesn’t take much info to get the gist of the condition of the world. (Too much information is not fun and just becomes useless junk.) Otherwise, a small group of people can be amazing and brilliant by itself, and doesn’t need billions of people helping them. Large national governments and globalized large corporations stifle people and communities, more than help them. Communities need to redevelop their empowerment and wealth, and national governments and globalized large corporations need to reduce their current power and influence and wealth. A national government needs to be powerful enough to protect communities from being destroyed by globalized corporate capitalism, but a national government should not be so powerful that it destroys community self-reliance. If national governments and corporations do anything, they should be supporting community self-reliance. A national government may be good for some things such as postal mail, general environmental laws, court systems, helping to support foreign correspondence and peace, helping to support peace by supporting community self-reliance throughout the nation and world, etc. A functional community is locally-self-sufficient. Community people cooperate together to make sure that everyone in the community gets enough stuff (shelter, water, warmth, food, soap, clothes, and basic tools). Community people cooperate together to grow and gather food and natural materials from local nature to handmake all of the needed supplies. They do so fast enough and well enough so that everyone gets enough stuff (shelter, water, warmth, food, soap, and basic tools). A functional community is locally-self-sufficient to be active, skillful, capable, responsible, sophisticated, loving, peaceful, moral, and ethical, as well as to not be helpless and desperately dependent on and a burden to other communities, near and far. A functional community is locally-self-sufficient so it does not get too dependent on and too controlled by overgrown human organizations: overbearing institutions, centralized national governments, and globalized large corporations. It is selfish, greedy, irresponsible, immoral, and unethical for any human organization to overgrow to greatly control and influence many communities. Think Global, Act Local: Global Love, Local Economy. Let’s globalize love, community love, brotherly love. Loving social interaction and loving social cooperation could regularly happen between various communities, regionally to globally. But regional, state, national, and globalized economic interaction and “cooperation” should rarely happen and only delicately happen. No community should become economically dependent on (addicted to, under the influence of) any other community, any national government, or any globalized corporation. No community should be taking value, natural wealth, and natural resources away from other communities. Furthermore, no human institution, national government, or globalized corporation should be taking (including taking while “trading”) value, natural wealth, and natural resources away from any communities. Community love, family love, and brotherly love should be globalized; to the contrary, economics (especially money and market economics) should not be globalized. On occasion and on rare emergencies, communities can help each other out with food, water, and vital supplies. But no community, organization, national government, or globalized corporation should be regularly giving any food, water, and vital supplies to any community. If human institutions, governments, and corporations do anything, they should help each community to culturally and economically function alone by itself. Encore: In recent modern times, “self-sufficient homesteading,” “local food,” being “local,” and using “low-tech tools” are regaining popularity. It’s not to become stupid iron-age or stone-age people of the past (if they were ever stupid), but it’s to be wise and usefully-skilled people in general, no matter what technology we use. To lose our skills and connection to local water, food, clothes, shelter, tools, and the nature of the community landscape, makes us dumb and disconnected. Today, although the electronic “world wide web,” many modern people feel increasingly lonely, isolated, and helpless. To be connected to the world, we have to stick our hands and feet into the local mud. Henry David Thoreau lived self-reliantly at Walden Pond; yet, many people consider him to be wise. Thoreau lived at alone at Walden for only 2 years; following, he lived again in society and engaged with society, such as by writing books about nature, etc. Being skilled to be locally-self-sufficient helps a person to be wise, caring, skillful, helpful, and connected, and NOT ignorant, complacent, negligent, helpless, and isolated. A locally-self-sufficient functional community of community cooperation helps people to be wise, caring, skillful, helpful, and connected. A palleee is very
locally-oriented.
To be local and
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