I’m fascinated by community projects and experiments. How do they form? How do they operate? How do they impact the lives of the members and how do they interface (or choose not to interface) with the world around them. How does each variation shed light on the future of how we will live, work, love, grow and cocreate together?
I recently visited an established intentional community in Los Angeles called the LA Eco Village. It’s located near Korea Town, has 40 residents and has been there for 36 years. It’s run by an 80 year old matriarch who’s been there since the beginning and seems to have been through it all! With her oversight the private loans from their three buildings have almost all been paid off and gardens are rising up where concrete used to be. It’s inspiring to see what their dedication over a decent period of time was able to produce. Many of the residents were older, and I thought that it must feel very reassuring to have the security of a supportive community in their golden years 🙂
Since arriving in NorCal I’ve been staying at another intriguing community project in San Carlos, near Palo Alto in the Bay Area. Eight or so people live in a stunning mansion overlooking a green valley, gathered together by Mikey Siegal, founder of the Consciousness Hacking movement. The cohabitants are united by their interest and dedication to the exploration of consciousness through all sorts of games, technologies and research projects. I arrived a few days ago just before a brainstorming session was beginning. It was a meeting which had been called together in an effort to explore and define the emerging conscious demographic. It turned out that an old friend, Daniel Ford, was one of the two people engaged in the meeting and let me jump right in. I knew I was in the right place at the right time 🙂 Then on my last night at the house, a group of forty people assembled for an informal event, which included reps from Google, the Singularity University and The Institute of Noetic Sciences to name a few. The topic of the presentation and resulting conversations were all about how to bring more authenticity into Silicon Valley, and the necessity for technologies (with a special focus given to AI) to be developed with more attention given to concepts typically forgotten about in the race of technological progress. How can wet ensure that concepts such as love, mindfulness, spirit and aliveness get factored into the developer’s code?
As I drive away, onward to the next part of my adventure, I feel gratitude for the stark reminders that I’m on the right path and proceeding at just the right speed. What an amazingly interesting time to be alive 🙂
In other news, I got woken up by 3 cop cars that had surrounded my colourful VW van this morning! Once they realized I wasn’t a burglar and they were friendly and wanted to know what the Latin quotes on the car meant 🙂
*BONUS EASTER EGG: Can you spot the brain scanning headset experiment in this photo?
