This was a WikiVanning-style session in Brandon and Shelley's car, which is named Harold, on our way home from Seed 2011.
Participants
Topics
Circles of commitment
- Basic list, in decreasing order of commitment:
- Self
- Family
- Religious practice (if any)
- Friendships
- Vocation may fit somewhere in here, if you do it for more than just the money (Shelley says her job is an example)
- Community (including "communities of interest?")
- Nation (starts to get more abstract)
- Humanity? Life? (Brandon: at this point we're talking about commitment to an ideal, not an institution)
- These seem to get less visceral and more cerebral as you go down the list
- Self and Family are almost purely visceral-level commitments
- Religious practice is a mix of worship (purely visceral) and discussion (can be a mix)
- Friendships: Brandon thinks friends you choose for visceral reasons (shared experience rather than shared interests) will last longer
- Interest groups: Mostly cerebral, but Ben points out that you probably had a visceral reason for having that interest in the first place
- Job: Almost purely cerebral (unless you are some kind of corporate patriot)
Service project interest level
- Ben:
- I like the idea
- But I'm worried that certain types of service would scare me, e.g. interacting directly with homeless people
- The project needs to be big enough to justify my taking a trip to Portland to participate
- A Village Building Convergence near the Seed Village would be cool
- Brandon:
- It should be something participants can "own"
- Adopting a school would be cool
- Shelley:
- The idea is to create a bond among the participants
- So would going bowling, to an extent, but...
- Donating books to a school library would be cool
Seed Village/Architect/Earth Day
- Brandon: It would be cool to have architectural renderings for the Seed Village to show at Earth Day
- Working backwards
- First we would need sketches
- Before that, as-built plans of the current house & grounds
- Before that, we should meet with the architect we're leaning toward hiring, and Skype Ben in for part of it
- Ideally, the design would integrate well with future growth plans
- Shelley: eventually closing the street off to cars?