(image via flickr user ozczecho)

Gooooooood Morning SuperForest!

I’ve been working on something in me little head for the last few years and I feel like it’s finally developed enough to share it with you. In fact, I’ve not been sleeping well or eating because I’ve been so excited to share it!

My question to you all is: What is standing in the way of worldwide Peace and prosperity?

I feel that the answer lies in the way humans view the world. If you see the Earth as a rich place, full of abundance and life, with resources enough for all, in perpetuity, you are subscribing to the “Abundance model.” On the other hand, if you see the world as a violent and brutish place, where needless destruction is the norm, and there will always be strife because there aren’t enough resources to go around, then you’re subscribing to the “Scarcity model.”

If you see the world as a place of rich abundance, chances are you are going to be happy, content, peaceful, settled, neighborly, polite, and generous, because you believe that there is enough to provide for all, and that this energy will return to you if you send it out into the world.

The scarcity model is sadly what our present culture is based on. Don’t believe me? Turn on the television. There you see the Scarcity model in all its glory.

So how do we elevate the 6.8 billion humans from the Scarcity model to the Abundance model?

We create culture and media promoting abundance. That’s exactly what SuperForest is. Propaganda for abundance. (Pro-abundance-paganda?)

That’s fine and good to say, but how do we first get people into a situation where they have the time and the energy to create such media?

That’s exactly what I’ve been working on.
And here is my embryo of an answer:

Firstly, I have decided that I am the environment. To “save the environment”, I must first save myself. I must find a way into a sustainable living situation, where I have food and shelter and clothing and abundant energy to use, and I am free from violence and oppression. I must also have internet access, so as to share my experiences with my friends and internet family.

How do I get into this sustainable living situation, and what exactly does one look like?

Google the word permaculture. Permaculture is a system for creating sustainable abundance. It is a portmanteau of the words permanent and agriculture, and it is a system that allows humans to live in abundance and harmony with the natural world. A fully functioning permaculture system not only promotes abundance and resource equality for human beings, but also CREATES biodiversity and REBUILDS healthy eco-systems.

With permaculture, we have a system that is scalable, meaning it can be used on any scale, (it can support one family, or ALL families.)
Permaculture is also incredibly flexible, as it can be used anywhere on Earth that has any water and plant life. It can be used to heal land that has been badly damaged by human, animal, or weather activity. It can be used in a wasteland to create abundance, and it can be used in wonderfully abundant places to increase the abundance and diversity even further. In short, Permaculture is totally bad ass and in conjunction with other systems is going to save the human race from self-imposed extinction.

Here are two videos that show the system in action, one on a small scale in Jordan, and one on a much larger scale in Borneo. Both are a massive win for humanity.

Here’s Willie Smits describing his permaculture system via TED:

And here is Mr. Geoff Lawton from the Permaculture Design Center, describing his work in Jordan:

Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East from Craig Mackintosh on Vimeo.

There are permaculture nodes popping up all over the world including many in the United States. Find one of them. Go there and learn from them. They will welcome you with open arms. If you cannot pay, you can work in exchange. Just ask them, they will be flexible and accommodating, trust me.

The more of us who are familiar with these techniques, (and they are just techniques, easy to pass along from one mind to the next) the more of us there will be subscribing to the Abundance model, living sustainably, and the closer we will be to a world in harmony.

When we hybridize ancient and indigenous wisdom with modern technology, we get solutions never before possible in the history of our species. And the tool for spreading this meme is the internet.

So what is the internet? The internet is a massive conversation between millions of minds about what ideas have the most value. The most valuable ideas rise to the top, like cream on fresh milk, where they are eagerly imitated and adopted and simply become the norm. I like to think that SuperForest is a good idea, as the positivism that we employ takes very little energy to create and spread, and has the potential to touch and inspire many millions of people. Very little energy expended, very large result. Mass communication without mass production. Buckminster Fuller would be pleased.

The first part of my answer is Permaculture – the sustainable, scalable, abundant-life model. The second part is the positive social network. There are positive people all around, being their positive selves. What happens when you get a bunch of them together and they all start being positive in one place, sharing that positivity with one another and the world, via the net?

You get concentrated positivity.

This concentrated positivity has amazing effects on the human psyche. I am living proof of that. Sure I have my bad days, where I feel down, and sad, and stupid, and useless. But those days are getting rarer and rarer. This negativity is rapidly being replaced in my mind with a sense of overwhelming love, hope, and joy at the challenges we face, and at my little role in this energetic wave. I simply no longer have the time to be down. There is too much to do. And when I do get down, what do I do?

I read SuperForest!

Seriously, I go to my own site and read it and see all that we are doing and sharing and accomplishing and I am thrilled and satisfied. Carla has organized and overseen the translation of the Humanifesto into 20 languages! 20! Patricia is about to head over to the Millennium Seed Bank to hand them a check from SuperForest for three grand to sponsor a seed. (The Save-A-Seed project totally worked! More on that later.) We’ve got a booth at the San Diego Earth Fair where Chris, Iman, Carla, and I will spread the word about our work even further. Drake is in Korea teaching peace and English. Ewa is doing an incredible job running SuperForest Poland. The site is now getting over 1,200 hits a day, half of which are unique. SuperForest got a quarter million hits last year and we expect to double that number this year. SuperForester Amy just became the 19th member of this community of love-minded individuals.

The 4Fives are blogging away and Eco Tech School is up and running. We’ve just arranged a partnership with Sulabh International to promote their work and help them accomplish their noble goal of ending manual scavenging in India. We’re supporting Earth Island Institute and Ric O’Barry in their quest to end dolphin fishing and restore the health of the sea and it’s millions of occupants. We’re supporting the Millennium Seed Bank and their goal to bank and preserve genetic material from as many plants as possible.

I didn’t do all this, WE did all this. Positivity was the fuel that propelled us and opened doors for us. Positivity is what keeps us together and growing stronger by the day. Negativity implodes on itself and disappears. Positivity explodes and spreads.

The third part of my answer is the patron. To be free to create a permaculture system and make and share positivism via the social network, one must first have the space and time to carry out such endeavors. The patron can provide that space and time in the form of an energetic gift. That energetic gift could be money, it could be land, it could be materials, it could be all of the above, it could be simply an invitation into an already established permaculture node.

Grandma McGillicuddy lives alone on a farmhouse on 23 acres of land. You live with four roommates in a twelve story walk up apartment. You are just barely scraping by, not making enough to flourish, just enough to survive. One thing goes wrong, you get sick or hurt, or lose your job, and you will be in a nasty scrape. So you call Grandma and say: “Hey lovely! Me and my friends want to come and move in with you and work to increase your independence, your abundance, and the quality of your life. We want to make you the matriarch of an intentional permaculture community, where your knowledge and wisdom will be welcomed and cherished and you will be surrounded by loved ones and helpers. Is that cool?”

Grandma provides the house and the acreage. One of your friends has a rich parent who agrees to fund the initial growth stage, (installing solar panels, making the house itself more energy efficient with better insulation, planting gardens, buying trees and the tools needed to maintain the gardens, setting up water catchment devices, composting toilets, etc.) You have some connections to the permaculture world and you invite a permaculture practitioner to come and live with you rent free in exchange for a share in the eventual bounty of the system and him or her teaching everybody how permaculture works and is implemented and trouble-shot.

You start a blog called “Grandma’s Hands – A Back to the Land Hipster Experiment” and you begin documenting your journey into the very heart of peace and abundance and sustainability.

Grandma is the patron, as is the friend’s parents who funded the start up phase, as is the permaculture practitioner who helps you build it, as are you to the others in the node, because you set the chain in motion. You see how flexible this is? You need some land and a place to live, and someone to show you how to get the system up and running, and once it is, you know what you’ve got?

Independence. Sustainability. Abundance. Peace.

If the power goes out, you have power from your solar panels. If food runs out, you are growing your own food. If the county water runs dry or gets turned off, you’ve got abundant water from your water catchment devices. You have chickens and fish and goats, for eggs, and meat, and milk, and company, and manure for the garden, and skins for clothing, feathers for pillows. You are beholden to no one. You are free to live as you please, and to spread the message of permaculture and sustainable growth to others, that they may create similar systems.

The patron can be anyone or anything. An individual, a group of people, or a company. Ask them to help you create a permaculture node. Ask them politely and see what they say. Many will say no, but some will say yes. Engage the yesses. Hybridization and flexibility are the key words.

What does the patron get out of this? Where’s the incentive for him or her or them to support and fund such a project? Well, my answer is that they are buying peace of mind and resource security. After all, you’d never shove Grandma McGillicuddy out into the cold come wintertime, would you? It wouldn’t make sense! She not only gifted you land and shelter, but she’s a valuable and needed resource in your permaculture node. The same goes for any patron. People living in abundance have a vested interest in supporting each other, as all parts of the system bring value, richness, and diversity.

When the patron gifts a permaculture node into existence, they themselves are buying into that abundance. Abundance is peace of mind, and freedom from dependence on external resources. That’s what they get in return. They are funding a scalable techno-food forest where humans can live and work in peace. The patron is the spark plug in the engine of sustainable living.

In my case, my initial patrons have been my parents, Graham and Susan Nash. They have supported me and my work and allowed me the time and space to think and ponder and travel and learn and to study happiness and prosperity in my own way. Then came Mr. Andrew Zuckerman, who supported me during my time in New York city. Andrew has been instrumental in the shaping of SuperForest, and truly without him it might not exist. Now I am heading for Kauai in April, where my dear friend Jesse Carmichael and I are setting out to build the permaculture node Zero One. Jesse is providing the land and the start up funding, I will manage the property and work to make this vision a reality. And I’ve only named a few of the wonderful humans who have nurtured and supported me. To try to list them all would take a long time.

The generosity of my patrons allows me the freedom to do what I do. I want to work to become a patron myself, and extend that generosity to all I know and love.

Everybody has a patron. We call them our bosses. We toil for them so that they will give us money to spend on food, shelter, clothing, energy, relaxation, and communication. Let us toil for ourselves, for our own sustainability. For a better today, and a brilliant tomorrow.

Permaculture.
Positive social networks.
Patronage.

These are the Three P’s that I feel will help us get from the scarcity to abundance. I’ve given this a lot of thought, but of course these thoughts are incomplete. There is much growth and learning and refinement to be done. But now the information is out of my head and safely archived on SuperForest. Now it has been safely shared with YOU. Win.

I fully expect the help of all of you wonderful SuperForesters to question this system, point out its flaws, remind me of what I’ve forgotten and help me refine this idea. Doubt me, question me, it will make me and the ideas stronger.

For the good of our wonderfully gifted species, we must come together and share the process.

With love, gratitude, and admiration.

-Jackson de SuperForest

p.s. Pheeewwwwwwwww! Love!

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