RESOURCES
Below are excerpts from some of the many resources we use to accentuate our thinking.
We encourage you to visit the links below
The Nation
The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred.
(excerpt from The Nation website)
The Importance of the Future
To meet the challenges of the future, we need to find out about what we can plausibly expect in the years ahead so we can understand what our options are. We can then set reasonable goals and develop effective strategies for achieving them.
(excerpt from World Future Society website)
ZNet
ZNet is a huge website updated daily to convey information and provide community. About 300,000 people a week use ZNet's articles, watch areas and sub-sites, translations, archives, links to other progressive sites, daily commentary program, and more. The above link goes to ZNet's top page. Access the rest from there.
(excerpt from ZNet website)
Viable Utopian Ideas
Viable utopian ideas are an energizing resource for helping "complete the work," an artful combination of dream, detail, and determination. Our dreams help us focus beyond the present, and require us to labor at defining just what it is we are really seeking. Details keep our feet on the ground, and force us to stay pragmatic, to keep our advocacy doable, rather than fanciful. Details keep us from the hubris of seeking perfection, the Achilles Heel of traditional utopianism. And our determination reflects our brave recognition that we will not see the task completed, but at best, advanced: The task, in any case, is a moving target, and not a thing, as each generation must define it anew.
Viable utopian ideas are available for just about any and every area of life, a richness that immediately suggests this volume offers only partial coverage, and that at an introductory level. Fourteen parts of this book, complete with 46 essays (45 written for this volume), can only introduce this well-developed, many-faceted, and multi-disciplinary subject. We hope our material will whet your appetite to pursue the matter further, and we therefor cite many print and Web resources throughout.
(excerpt from Viable Utopian Ideas website)
Futurist
We share common core beliefs and values about the future and our role in creating it the future we prefer.
The future is creatable, so we have choice.
The future is not something that just happens to us. The future is something we do.
Freedom means being able to participate in the creation of your own future.
If you cannot participate, you are not truly free, and if you are uninformed you cannot participate as fully.
There is a knowable future.
While
much of the future is unpredictable and full of surprises, there are
aspects of the future which are relatively knowable, if we take the
time to look.
The future creates the present.
Our images of
the future - what we expect, what we fear, what we hope for, what we
prefer - all exert an influence on our decisions in the present. Change
our image of the future in a way that matters to us and we make
different decisions today. (excerpt from Futurist.com website)
Cohousing
Cohousing communities balance the traditional advantages of home ownership with the benefits of shared common facilities and ongoing connections with your neighbors. These cooperative neighborhoods, both intergenerational and for elders, are among the most promising solutions to many of today's most challenging social and environmental concerns.
(excerpt from Cohousing website)
Federation of Egalitarian Communities
The Federation of Egalitarian Communities is a network of communal groups spread across North America. We range in size and emphasis from small agricultural homesteads to village-like communities to urban group houses. We share a set of core principles including nonviolence, egalitarianism, and participatory decision-making.
(excerpt from FEC website)
Intentional Communities
Intentional Community is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives and other related projects and dreams.
(excerpt from IC website)
Small Planet Institute
Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé founded the Small Planet Institute to bring to light the emergence of "living democracy," a rewarding, inclusive, learned practice that creates communities that work for all. On every continent, people are bringing this democracy to life by discovering their power to act on their values. At the Institute we further this historic transition through books, articles, speeches, and other media.
(excerpt from Small Planet Institute website)
Arcosanti
In 1970, the Cosanti Foundation began building Arcosanti, an experimental town in the high desert of Arizona, 70 miles north of metropolitan Phoenix. When complete, Arcosanti will house 5000 people, demonstrating ways to improve urban conditions and lessen our destructive impact on the earth. Its large, compact structures and large-scale solar greenhouses will occupy only 25 acres of a 4060 acre land preserve, keeping the natural countryside in close proximity to urban dwellers.
(excerpt from Arcosanti website)
Institute for Alternative Futures
The Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) is a nonprofit research and educational organization founded in 1977 by Clement Bezold, James Dator and Alvin Toffler. IAF specializes in aiding organizations and individuals to more wisely choose and create their preferred futures. See our Board of Directors.
In its many projects and programs, IAF has developed unique forms of facilitation that encourage an openness to exploring the future and assist rapid learning. Operating from a thoughtful base of futures research, IAF meetings have stimulated policy discussions and facilitated strategic planning efforts for many organizations. The dialogue produced in these meetings and the associated written materials have created both greater insight into current practices and foresight about the impact that trends and emerging issues might have.
(excerpt from IAF website)
The Foundation For the Future
The Foundation For the Future manages a number of programs designed to
further its goal of understanding the factors affecting the quality of
life for the future of humanity.
(exerpt from Foundation For the Future
website)
EVOLVE
This is the mission of EVOLVE: a Global Community Center for Conscious Evolution — to serve as a central resource hub for individuals and communities worldwide that are choosing to embrace and apply the emerging principles, tools and templates of cocreative self and social conscious evolution.
(excerpt from EVOLVE website)
