Arkbuilding

Here you find practical information about building a sustainable-culture ark. The info is divided into two main categories: Cultural Design and Physical Design, each with numerous subcategories.

Cultural design information is listed first because I consider cultural design to be orders of magnitude more important than physical design. In fact, new cultural design is the central issue addressed by this website. As fun as alternative technologies are, it is alternative cultures that are at issue concerning the continuation of human beings on earth. Modern Western consumerism is culture, and it has already failed us.

Extricating yourself from the old culture (Just Stop) and establishing yourself in a new culture (Build an Ark) is a momentous job to do. One of the elements to successfully using an ark to get from old culture to new culture is realizing that the ark is not a building or a boat; the ark is not made of physical components. The ark is an energetic configuration of personal commitment to sustainable culture. Commitment to the point that sustainable culture becomes ordinary habit is what will carry us through.

Beginning ark builders tend to leap into physical design considerations: how to get financing, where to build, what sort of structures, solar and wind energy systems, methods of permaculture, greywater irrigation, all these exciting, important, and easily graspable considerations to get busy with! But if there is no new culture design there is no new-culture ark. The old culture will resurface and consume all of your noble efforts and then lick its lips and go looking for desert!

So many ark projects have failed because they jumped directly into physical design without first building themselves a firm foundation of sustainable-culture. After years of time and hundreds of thousands in money, buildings purchased or erected and people coming together, the hidden monster of cultural conflict suddenly opens its fanged mouth and suffocates the whole project in psycho-emotional halitosis. Don’t let this happen to you!

We don’t have years of time to waste. We don’t have kilobucks to throw away. And as nebulous as the culture-building work may seem at first, establishing a reliable, durable, flexible, inclusive and joyous new culture is the core work of ark building. Don’t ignore this!

The physical construction of your ark will organically form around the cultural construction. Keep paying attention to the human heart and soul of your new culture and its physical form will organically take shape as if by magic.