I'd call you a pessimist if you weren't right so goddamn often.
Thing is, Occupy got me off my couch. Showed me that there's a ton of people that will get off their couch and try something. It didn't really work that time, but it was worth trying.
It probably wont work this time either, I'll grant you that.
I've just always been a little obsessed with the idea of sustainable living without sacrificing comfort. The Venus Project was the first thing I found that looked like it had similar ideas. I volunteered a decent amount of time towards helping them, until I began to realize that despite what it says on their website, they had no *real* intention of actually trying out their ideas in the real world. As far as I could tell, they seem to want to wait until the economy collapses and then offer TVP as a "new way of living" or something and hope people accept it. They also keep their specific blueprints and anything actually useful very close to their chest. They even trademarked "Resource-based Economy". This does not help people who actually want to do something offline, in the real world.
One Community, on the other hand, publishes the results of a TON of professional effort right on their website, albeit in a very buried-under-bullshit manner. Anyone wanting to build a self-sustainable community of ANY kind, would find a ton of useful information if they dug through the crap to get there. The website is clearly the result of someone drinking way too much of the kool-aid and vomiting it back up very very verbosely on all of the main pages. Aside from that though, a lot of people did a lot of real work and the results ARE there between the bullshit. The biggest thing that remains to be seen IMO, is if they actually build a real community in the real world. I have not found a page showing their funding progress towards purchasing the property, which may or may not be a bad sign, but if they do manage to get something workable built somewhere, I may just have to get off my couch again.
Not that I don't work and shit, I just mean actually going out and trying to do something about the shit I'm always whining about. I hate that every time I've done that in the past, my efforts never really went anywhere. Scott Walker got elected, Occupy floundered, The Venus Project made another preaching to the choir documentary, etc. If these folks get to the point where they have positive revenue stream and anywhere near as self-sufficient as they plan to be, I think I'll have to sign up.
I'm an optimistic, idealistic, stupid-ass monkey, though.
Also I admit a large part of why I want to drink this kool-aid is the idea of living in a community that is sustainable enough to give its members the added free time and resources to study, improve, create, and/or assist in whatever endeavor those individuals choose to focus their effort on. I mean, everyone would still be required to contribute to keeping things running, but if it works out anything even close to how its planned, and I mean technically and logistically, not socially, it really looks like it could provide an environment where everyone involved can have far more time and energy to focus on what really interests them.
Also also I like the idea that it's planned from the beginning for each community to spawn another like it. That's of course assuming the revenue streams work as intended and they produce the surplus they expect to, which is a rather large assumption. Still though, I can't help but respect the amount of effort put into researching absolutely everything related to the project though.
I think in the end I'm just going to wait and see. If they actually get something built in the real world that people can visit, and they show positive revenue and tourism, and things seem to go more or less as planned, I'll have a much higher degree of confidence that my efforts in helping them wont go to waste this time.
