THIS
REMINDED ME OF THIS
WHICH REMINDED ME OF THIS
And that makes my life worth living : )
Tag Archive for 'humanifesto'
This should be our theme song! It reminds me of The Humanifesto! I can’t believe I never noticed it before : P
Old song but the message has never been more true : )
LOVE!
SF Jenni
Hello again Superforest!
There are many things happening or about to happen, so I figured that I would update you awesome Superforester’s on what is going on with the project that was inspired by all of you!
Right now we are working and working on getting the ball rolling on things. It is a hefty ball, so it is taking a lot of time and work while utilizing different techniques.
I have been putting some work into the website and added a Donate page, About Matt (me) page, About Permaculture page and a Friends page.
We are scrounging up items for a garage sale right now to start raising money. I will most likely sell my mower, weedeater and chainsaw to help pay for an electric mower.
We are beginning the process of registering as a nonprofit, which is an incredibly tedious and slow process. We will most likely have our Certificate of Incorporation sent out next week. Then we will start plugging away at the IRS forms, which, by the way, are ridiculously long.
We just registered with chipin.com to start accepting donations. Since we are not a nonprofit yet, any donations made now will not be tax deductible. We will notify everybody we can and post it on the website when we are finally registered. More about that on our donations page.
We have a pair of “living-work exchangers” that found us on WWOOF tentatively scheduled to arrive in 2-3 weeks. We have another awesome person coming September 23rd or 24th for a living-work exchange. We are super excited about that.
Right now, my days are filled with working and playing with the kids while trying to cram website updates/fixes, nonprofit logistics, permaculture studying, drawing up plans for the land, working on the land and sleeping/eating in there somewhere. I am counting down to the day that we can produce enough to pay our bills and I can stay home all day and play with my kids and work on the land (taking a deep breath at the thought of it now).
I am working on trying to get registered with as many fundraisers as I can (which is hard because we are not registered yet), linking to as many sites as I can and basically just trying to draw some more attention to the project to try to get some more steam going!
We have bamboo growing on our property. It is super resilient and just keeps growing and spreading no matter what happens really.
So I think I am going to try to use bamboo as the crop to pay the bills. That way, any food we grow will be consumed by us or given away. The farmers markets have most of the crops covered, so I think I can carve a niche with bamboo. We might even try to make things out of it to sell. I never really knew how awesome bamboo is until we came here and I started using it for things.
I currently have a grey water run-off from my kitchen sink that runs-off into the front yard. I am going to extend it a little further from the house, dig down a little bit, put in some good drainage soil and transplant the bamboo that is right next to the house and trying to take over my AC unit. In a few months, we will have moved to biodegradable and natural cleaners and soaps. We also will transition from using regular toilets to building our own that will handle waste without having to waste water by flushing. Once all of that is in place, I am going to get our sewage (which will then be grey water) to run-off in the back of the property and plant bamboo around it as well. If I do it right – the bamboo should take over a good chunk of the property. Then I will start experimenting with some companion crops.
I think if we do it correctly, we can find a way to pay the bills with bamboo. Only time will tell…
Much love and aloha,
Matt
Hello Superforest!
Awhile ago, an awesome person named Kristal went on our forum looking for funds for her project called Kauai Kombucha – a project that brews Kombucha on Kauai using all recycled materials.
A few of us donated and helped spread the word. She raised enough money to get funded by Kickstarter.
That was some months ago and I wanted to share an update she sent out on the project.
Jackson – all of you at ZO so need to stop by and get some home brewed Kombucha! ; )
“Aloha! I recently looked the calendar and realized it’s already august! where does the time go?? my apologies for not getting an update on the project out sooner, but the good thing is the reason is most of my time has been spent on it! It’s coming along even better than i could have imagined. there’s still too much demand on the island for the amount of kombucha i’m able to produce ( hooray! ) so i’m putting all money coming in right back into more brewing vessels and equipment. It’s still just me working on it so i’m putting anywhere from 50 to 60 hours a week into working in my kitchen and delivering and other such things. that combined with my 3 other jobs and rescuing a puppy has kept me practically spinning in circles. i suppose the good thing is that all of my work whether it’s brewing, fire dancing, working with skydiving, and creating eco friendly clothes are all things i love so much it’s hard for me to even think of it as work. All I can say is right now i can’t imagine a more perfect outcome to what started in this kitchen 7 months ago.
There’s definitely been a few hard times for sure. Just recently i had to throw roughly 120 gallons of kombucha away and start my batches completely fresh. i say ‘roughly’ because after the 100th gallon i was weeping hysterically and throwing the worst tantrum to where i couldn’t count anymore. lol. things are always funnier when you get to look back at the situation. See the problem with kombucha is that there are a lot of small time home brewers who make enough for themselves and maybe their friends, and there are a lot of big brewers that make it the 150 million dollar industry it is. there are definitely few brewers that brew my amount ( around 50 gallons a week ) and even fewer who do it in the sustainable way that i do. So when there’s an issue with my batches i have absolutely no one to reference or even to ask. You can say I’m working on a lot of intuition. So my intuition says that with the summer spike in temperature and the lack of proper ventilation in my commercial kitchen on top of the addition of more vessels created an environment where the fermentation process went completely haywire ( i could go into the science behind it, but that’s essentially what happened ) now the good news is that it’s an easy fix and i have over 80 gallons of wonderfully fermenting booch starring at me right now. unfortunately, it will take another week or so before it’s ready for the shelves so i will be sold out for a little bit. but someone just reassured me that will help keep the demand up on it, so in the end i’m sure it’ll all work out.
before this little set back i had maxed out my production at 40-50 gallons a week, right around 200 wine bottles. I suppose the majority of my time is spent collecting and scrubbing the crap out of each of them to get the labels off and to resanatize them. Most of the time i feel like i’m in the dishwashing industry and not the brewing industry. But i know in the end it’s worth it. Eventually once my product is known enough i can cut out the bottling part and have it set up in more of a co-op form with lots of other products. So i suppose right now all this is mainly just a learning stage for me, and i’m very grateful to be where i’m at.
I have lots of ideas for expansion, so once the booch is all dialed in ( prolly another 6 months ) i will most likely be adding other products to help with the sustainability efforts on the island. it’s definitely a lot of work, but everytime just that one person understands and thanks me for all of what i am doing it makes every inch of it worth it. I couldn’t have done any of this without each one of you, and i sincerely hope you know that by pledging back in january you weren’t just helping me, but you were in the end helping the entire island have less waste and create a tighter community with our farmers and consumers. because of you it is all possible. so thank you all again. and hopefully within the next 3-4 months i’ll have another great update to send to you all!”
Congratulations Kristal!
Here is a link to her Kickstarter page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/583547191
Jackson,
I am writing this to express my appreciation and gratitude for you.
Ever since I incorporated Superforest and the Humanifesto into my life, it has gone nowhere but upwards.
I went from being an average American (which means miserable and trapped) to a super citizen of the Earth.
I went from living in an apartment in the city where my girls had to be cooped up all day to a house on 2.5 acres in the beautiful country where my girls are free to play outside without fear of abduction.
I went from avoiding conversations with strangers and neighbors to being good friends with all of my neighbors and turned into somebody who let’s total strangers into my home and have in-depth conversations with them.
I went from trying to fit in with everybody else by acting negative and trapped to trying to improve the lives of everybody I know, bringing positiveness in every situation and showing how we should be living life by setting an example.
I went from preparing my daughters for the system to preparing my daughters for life.
I went from fearing love to loving without fear.
I went from a self-centered person that was not concerned with the lives of people I don’t know to a person who actively tries to make positive changes in the world.
I went from eating McDonalds for lunch to eating kale and spinach salads out of my own garden.
I went from daily trips to Walmart for groceries to growing my own food.
I went from a wannabe macho tough guy who didn’t share any feelings or weaknesses to a person who addresses my faults with a smile on my face.
I went from almost divorcing my wife to creating the best relationship either one of us have ever been in.
I went from constantly showing toughness and professionalism to somebody who expresses love more than anything.
I went from dwelling on the negatives of life to somebody who turns every situation into a positive one.
I have become a better father, husband, friend and person.
Your posts and our conversations are what kick-started all of this. I am writing this on the site because I want everybody to know my gratitude for you and I want to show everybody how much impact one person can have on so many lives.
The site you created allowed me to meet so many awesome people, learn so many awesome things and share so many awesome ideas. You and all Superforesters have had an indescribable impact on my life and, subsequently, on all of the lives of the people I know. My wife is a better partner and mother and my daughters will better and more giving people than I.
Just from creating this community, posting your thoughts and having conversations with me, you have made countless lives better, just through me.
I want you to know that you have improved the lives of so many people that it is incredible. Your posts create so much inspiration and motivation for me. You are constantly making me strive to be a better person by just being you.
So, I give to you all of the gratitude and love I can give.
Looking forward to talking with you again.
Matt
I want to build a permaculture farm in Costa Rica.
I want it to be completely self-sustaining.
I want it to be run by solar electricity and use water-conserving methods.
I want to grow coffee, nuts, fruits and vegetable, herbs and spices.
I want to spend all day with my wife and daughters and teach them my secrets to life.
I want to build a small community that is filled with positive people that look after each other.
I want to go on marathon runs through the mountains and jungles every day.
I want to get my goods from a small local town that I can contribute to.
I want to build a small studio and teach BJJ to ticos.
This is what I want. For me, for my wife, for my kids and for my friends and family and for the world.
Explanation: My wife and I have decided that this is what we want to do with our lives. We are now working towards it by saving money, finding people, making plans and so on.
Now I have found that most of the time, the things that people want to happen, normally only happen if they keep taking about their ideas and sharing them with whoever that will listen.
So this is me, sharing them with you.
We were originally dreaming of doing this here in Oklahoma. But, the other day had an idea to make our dream a little bit better. Let’s do it in paradise! Sort of what Jackson and Melissa are doing in Hawaii, but in Costa Rica!
Thanks for reading you guys.
Much love,
Matt
P.S. I want to let you all know that you are absolutely amazing. Joining the Superforest team has changed my life and my family’s lives drastically for the better. You are all so wonderful and I am so glad that I have the chance to share my ideas with you all along with the Universe.
I have a wife and two daughters. I have a house and a car. I have a job that requires me to work 8 hours per day plus a 1 hour commute and 1 hour lunch. I have car insurance, medical insurance and homeowners insurance. My wife has a night job that requires her to work 30 hours per week.
I would like to think that I am a pretty average American man. Except that I am 21 and younger than most other people in a similar situation. This has made life a little harder for us, but has also given me a few advantages. Most men in my situation would look at them selves as “stuck” because they would have been in this same grind for over a dozen years. Since I have not been doing this day-in and day-out for so long and I am still “young”, I find myself more willing to take a chance with my life than my co-workers and other people around me.
Since the beginning of 2011, I have been working towards building my own Zero One right here in Oklahoma. After re-watching 30 Days: Off the Grid (where they take two regular single people from NYC and put them in an off the grid village for 30 days), I was reinvigorated. It really lit a fire back under me to try something like that. Then, I looked around my property and saw all of the progress I have made thus far (which is not much). I grew broccoli and some herbs this year and that is it. The rest of the work I have done is just to maintain the property.
When I was mowing last weekend, I was thinking of why I hadn’t accomplished nearly as much as I had planned on. Then it hit me: I have no time. I have no energy either. I am away for 10-11 hours per day at work while my wife is at home with the kids. Then when I get home, my wife has to rush off for work and leave me alone with the kids. We normally only have one evening and one weekend day per week where we are all together.
I want to give my kids more attention and effort, but I don’t have the time.
I want to create a beautiful and abundant compound, but I don’t have the time.
I want to keep a healthy diet and get regular exercise, but I don’t have time.
I am ready to shuck all of my unnecessary belongings and get the ball rolling. But, I have a few reservations:
I have a two year old and a nine month old. What will we do for health care for them?
How would we pay for the land we are occupying?
It’s even taken me two weeks to write this short of a post. I am ready and willing to jump in with both feet. I have some answers and ideas buzzing around in my head, but any feedback would be great.
not to have a good day when you see this:
Have a wonderful day Superforesters.
Now, go kiss somebody and give them a high five!
Science is proving it more and more everyday – we are all connected. Here is David Brooks speaking at RSA about how we are emotional creatures instead of logical and calculated and how our emotions, not our logic, is responsible for some of our most profound thoughts. Enjoy!
Heyo SuperForest!!!
Check out Wavy Gravy’s song, “Basic Human Needs”:
Definitely a song for the SuperForest Soundtrack, don’t you think?
Even more SuperForesty than that is his totally rad circus camp, Camp Winnarainbow!
Not just “that Woodstock guy” after all, in the short time I’ve taken to research him post-Woodstock online, Wavy appears to be very committed to a variety of charitable deeds and causes. Very SuperForesty indeed.
Yours from the garden of my heart,
SuperForester Heather
Hellllllooooo SuperForest!
I am currently in rainy San Francisco representing SuperForest at the California Association of Student Councils’s conference! I am here to share our story and our community with the youth of California, and am so very excited!! I will be showing our Humanifesto video, handing out the Humanifesto, and reading some of our wonderful posts!!
I talked to Jackson about this the other week, and he had the best response:
AH! The little blog that can!!
I just wanted to share how grateful I am to be here, sharing this wonderful site with those around us. To bring youth on board and see them take on the environment as themselves, as “everything that disappears when you close your eyes,” is amazingly inspiring. Thank you everyone for reading, for sharing, and for being SuperForesters. You all are rockstars.
Love to you all,
Mathew
(image via flickr user lonecellotheory)
Gooooooood Morning SuperForest!
I have been doing a lot of thinking about this lil’ site lately. Questions rattling through my head like dice down a craps table: What is SuperForest? What is it for? What does it do?
Well, SuperForest is many things, but primarily I believe that it is a website. Right? You’re reading this online, on this site. Boom.
Okay, so what does this website do? What is its function?
Again, its purposes are many. It connects like-minded people all over the world. It gives SuperForesters a chance to be their brilliant, wonderful selves. After thinking a long time about it, I have come to the conclusion that SuperForest is about sharing ideas.
The main idea that SuperForest shares is the Humanifesto, which in a nutshell says: You are the environment. If you do unto others as you’d hope they’d do unto you, your environment will be a peaceful and beautiful place, and perhaps inspire others to take responsibility for their own environments.
That’s a very nice idea!
The Humanifesto has carried us into the fourth year of SuperForest, and attracted the attention of many hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
But, could it do even more?
I have been thinking about updating the Humanifesto to include two more key ideas. I feel that by expanding the H’festo’s core givens, (and trimming some of the fat) it will be a pretty decent little document, as far as ideas are concerned.
Here are the new ideas…
Firstly, You are the environment. (That’s the original Humanifesto’s core idea.)
Secondly, Truth is what you make it.
Everybody has their own truth. Most people even have multiple truths. So, collectively, we humans have created a planet with billions upon billions of “truths.” Each persons truth is both wildly inaccurate, (swayed by culture, upbringing, environmental conditioning, and so on,) and is also absolutely true, at least as far as the believer is concerned.
Got that?
Seven billion people makes billions of versions of what is “true” and “false” and everyone is both totally right and totally wrong all at once. Funky!
The truth is a flexible and customizable concept. You can make it whatever you like.
I believe that people at their core are “good” and provided that their human needs are met, they will treat each other with kindness and respect. That is my truth. Other people would argue it with me, but it doesn’t matter, for it is my truth, and no one can take it away.
If I tell my idea of truth to someone else and they like it and decide to believe it for themselves, then my version of truth copies itself, (probably with minor alterations by the new believer,) and then there are two people sharing the same truth.
But just because two people believe the same thing, or twenty billion people believe the same thing, it has no relation to how essentially “true” our shared truth happens to be.
We could all believe that the sun was made of a lightly poached egg, and base our entire civilization around that idea, and it still wouldn’t be true. But try convincing us that!
What does this have to do with us, SuperForest?
Well, we are all meeting in this digital salon to share our truths. Our truths are the code that runs the human operating system. Truth controls behavior. If we SuperForesters create a culture of love, fun, sustainability, joy, sharing, co-creation, freedom, and peace, based on our shared truths, and that “truth” replicates and spreads around the globe, then we can potentially do a lot of good and save a lot of people from harm.
Allow me to attempt to sum up one of the core “SuperForest Truths” for your perusal:
We humans have the technology and the resources right now to feed, house, clothe, connect, and educate every human being on the planet, in perpetuity, and to not do so is impolite, and will nag at our consciences until we get it done.
With more people operating with that statement as a truth, we can affect real change, worldwide.
Thirdly, Mother Nature is in charge.
Like it or not, we humans have built in needs. We need fresh water and food. We need to bathe every so often. We need a place to put our manure, so that it can break down into its component elements. We need to laugh, to be touched, to be listened to and engaged energetically. We cannot escape these needs, for they make us what we are.
For ten-plus-thousand years, we have been at war against mother nature. We have fought with every trick in our fiendishly clever arsenal to subjugate and control the natural world, and by extension, ourselves.
And now we stand on the verge of simultaneously winning (and losing) the War against Mother Nature. For if we “win” we all die. Sadly, in this scenario, winning means destroying the natural world. And since we rely on the natural world for delicious raspberries, and clams, and a place to put our stuff, if nature gets messed up, we get messed up even worse.
But what if there was a way that we humans could live happily, have our needs met, AND the natural world could be rebuilt? What if we could have our cake and eat it too?
As in, what if we could have growth and civilization, and exploration, and clean sheets, and chocolate, and Ace Ventura movies, AND we could all live in a healthy and thriving eco system? Wild, savage, unexplored nature, and KardashianLand™? Mall of America AND Yosemite National Park?
We can.
When we come together on the internet and share our truths, we create a delicious hybrid of behaviors. With a mixture of old behaviors and new behaviors, we are creating a brand new operating system. And when the kinks are worked out, and this new way gets boiled down to its essence and is rapidly shared across the internet, the healing magic of this new hybrid behavior will be staggering in how quickly it revitalizes the planet Earth and its billions of users.
The three new givens:
1.) You are the environment. Say “please, thank you, and you’re welcome” and be nice to yourself and the people around you.
2.) The Truth is what you make it. Examine your inner truth, and see if it could use some updating, for it is flexible. Create a happy and loving truth for yourself and watch as the world around you blossoms. Share your truth if you like.
3.) Mother Nature is in charge. We must learn her rules and learn to dance with her. Without the natural world, we are lost. When we modify our behavior to include Her needs and rules, then everyone wins.
The pieces of the grand puzzle are before us on the table. The edges of the puzzle have been filled in, for they represent our human needs. The remaining puzzle pieces are the energies of the natural world. What the puzzle looks like when it is done is up to us.
So, I’d like to re-write the Humanifesto to include these new givens, and then I’d like to redesign the site around that new document. A nice video of the updated Humanifesto will play whenever a new SuperForester arrives here. That way we can spread these new truths around the world, and see if they hold up to scrutiny.
What do you think, oh brave and wise SuperForesters? Am I on to something here, or just blowing my trumpet?
Love from Zero One,
Jackson
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