*This is chapter 2 of [Ben's portion of SolSeed: The Book of Life](/SolSeed:_The_Book_of_Life#The_"SolSeed_Gospel"_according_to_Ben).*
#### Our eco-village vision
Imagine a near-future community founded by the SolSeed Movement. At first glance it would appear no different from a typical eco-village: eco-friendly buildings, solar panels, organic food gardens, and a population concerned with helping Earth's ecosystems thrive.
But there is another driving concern that weaves itself into the fabric of life in this community. Under a garden-covered roof is a large workshop where some of the community members are working on small-scale satellite designs, while others are developing miniature closed ecosystem models in glass boxes, prototypes for habitats in space that could ultimately support humans. Outside, a poster announces an upcoming space-industry conference to be held in the community, with the keynotes to be delivered in a gathering space that looks like a huge rocket nose-cone emerging from the ground, made of glass and covered with climbing vines. That structure currently holds a congregation attending a quasi-religious service with the theme "How to stay motivated to work toward the Destiny when we won't reach the stars in our lifetimes?" Unperturbed by such questions, children race among the apple trees outside, playing with model spaceships that they built themselves for a school project, using everything from pieces of used bottles and cans to pebbles, twigs, and woven grass.
This is SolSeed's vision of an ideal community, and we want to work toward making it a reality. You might have different but equally beautiful ideas about how to build a life-bringing community. If so, we still want to connect with you, for two reasons: to share ideas and build solidarity as a greater meta-movement, and to give people who are looking for community the chance to find the one they find most inspiring. (See "Gatherings of Kindred" below.) We would also be happy to contribute some of our ideas to other communities; not all of them are specific to our starfaring vision.
#### SolSeed businesses
To realize these ambitious visions of community, of course, we will need financial resources. And if we want to contribute directly to the project of sending life to other worlds, the framework that will likely fit that ambition best is that of a for-profit company. So what would such a SolSeed business look like?
First, we need to emphasize that while the primary goal of any for-profit company is to make a profit, we refuse to sacrifice our core values to achieve that end. Any SolSeed business plan must include a section where an honest effort is made to demonstrate that the business will provide a net benefit to life. For example, rocket exhaust contains harmful air pollutants, so if we wanted to found a SolSeed business that builds rockets, we would have to show that our rockets are cleaner than what our customers previously used--or that some other benefit would outweigh the pollution cost. For example, maybe the rockets would be used to give human passengers a view of Earth from space, a profound experience that has been proven time and time again to motivate people to care more about protecting our fragile planet--particularly the thin skin of atmosphere that becomes so clearly visible as such when you rise above it.
As for the structure of a SolSeed business, it would derive from the principle of giving all participants the power to help shape the project they're working on. We'll want to give every employee a stake in the company's success and a voice in determining its direction. This may lead us to found the business on the employee-owned co-op model, and to adopt some of the organizational principles of open-source software projects. All major decisions affecting the company's future would be framed as proposals to all of the worker-owners, who could reject a proposal or make revisions until everyone is satisfied.
We'll also do our best to integrate these businesses into the life of our community, rather than maintaining an artificial separation between "living" and "working." The ultimate goal is to build a whole intentional society that encompasses all aspects of life: family, work, play, learning, and spiritual practice.
#### SolSeed education
So let's jump forward to a time when we've founded a successful business or two, raised the money, and built our first SolSeed community. At first, the children in that community would probably catch a yellow school bus every weekday morning to go off to an ordinary school, just like in any other neighborhood. But such schools usually don’t do nearly as much as they could to promote a sense of awe and wonder toward the world, which is why most children view school attendance as an unfortunate obligation rather than a joy. The SolSeed Movement, which is founded in that very sense of wonder, wants to find out if we can do better.
A SolSeed school would focus intensely on both science and art, both of which provide their own ways to see the beauty and grandeur of the world around us. Science teachers will strive to begin each lesson with some amazing, attention-grabbing fact, like "your body is made of *trillions* of microscopic cells" or "if you dropped a boulder and a feather off a cliff on the Moon, they would hit the bottom at the same time." Art teachers will show examples of existing art that evoke the same kind of amazement, before inviting their students to create their own.
Our schools would not be exclusive to SolSeed community members; the last thing we want to do is isolate our children from contact with the wider world. We'll also avoid too much emphasis on space travel in our curriculum; we want to let students make up their own minds about whether the SolSeed Destiny will be an important factor in their life paths.
#### Gatherings of Kindred
We try to encourage other people and communities to express and live their own values, even though the norm in American society is to avoid even talking about such things in public, for fear of offending someone or just seeming naively idealistic. One way to do this is to create a space where this kind of sincerity is encouraged, and where people can find other people, communities, and organizations that share some of their values.
We envision this space as a sort of festival, with a large outdoor area dotted with tables where people from different co-convening communities and organizations (perhaps referred to as "tribes" for the sake of brevity and historical metaphor) will stand ready to describe and promote their groups and what they stand for. The only requirement for a group to participate is a commitment to respect all life, which we see as the core value of a vast worldwide movement that is only beginning to recognize its own existence (for example, through books like *Blessed Unrest* by Paul Hawken). Some people who come to the festival, particularly young people, may be searching for a place to live and contribute within that vast "movement of movements," and many of them will find one.
The SolSeed Movement has little ambition toward changing the world all by ourselves, but the "movement of movements" has a real chance of doing so. In the next chapter, I'll discuss what kind of world we could create together.