About the Holigent Transition Race to
Peace and Sustainability
The Greatest Hurdle in this Race
In the critical decades ahead, one of the greatest hurdle in humanity’s path towards survival on our endangered planet is misbelief. Many of our brightest and most capable and influential minds sincerely believe in the promise of technology and the market to solve the greatest challenges of our time. Reality, however, trumps this belief. The greatest challenge of humanity on our planet is not insufficient technology, but fundamentally flawed socioeconomic infrastructure that leads to practices incompatible with our planet’s carrying capacity. The danger in putting faith in the technology and market solutions is that such a belief requires an increasing investment of private and public resources towards “solutions” that most likely will not materialize as true solutions.
The technology/market “solution” relies on the existing global capitalist economic model. This model is fueled by economic growth – expanding rates of global production and consumption. When the Earth’s carrying capacity can no longer accommodate the production/consumption expansion, no matter how “green” those processes are, our planet’s life support capacity, along with the global economy, will collapse.
Given that world population has tripled since 1929 while resources diminished significantly, it is reasonable to believe that a 21st century socioeconomic collapse would be more punishing than the Great Depression that ended with World War II.
Unlike the biofuel “solution” that showed it’s undesirable side effects within a few years, the technology/market “solution” may not reveal its dead-end until manmade conflicts combined with natural disasters pass tipping points from which humanity may not be able to recover.
Introductory Thoughts
I begin this project with a philosophical and cosmic perspective. Some 13 billion years ago, soon after the universe came into being, you and I “existed” only as hydrogen atoms, the first and simplest form of physical matter formed following the emergence of the physical Universe. The cosmos contained nothing more complex than Hydrogen and an unwritten order: Build a universe filled with billions of galaxies, stars, planets and at least one planet with stunning beauty and living complexity. That rare planet must have at least one living species imbued with a brain, mind and consciousness that can reflect on itself and contemplate the Cosmos that gave it birth.
This impossible cosmic dream, in time became a reality etched into durable matter. 13 billion years later, not the cosmos, but the human residents of this planet face a new challenge: Make life on Earth peaceful, beautiful and sustainable. Compared to the earlier cosmic evolutionary challenge, this one should be playfully and pleasurably attained on this abundantly rich and hospitable planet.
This is how we are going to do it
Probability tells me that, out of six and a half billion people, I will find a few individuals that are sufficiently equipped with ability and determination to commit to this challenge and form an extraordinary team. Then we begin the work. By now, most people with wealth and/or power are aware of the multiple perils that endanger our fragile civilization and life on Earth. Therefore, we can leapfrog the tedious education and convincing process with them and go directly to the point.
Approach wealthy individuals, institutions, foundations, corporations and governments and invite all to participate in the Transition Race to Peace and Sustainability and help fund the Los Angeles Peace and Sustainability Project. The Holigent (holistic-emergent) program is to organize this race against time that will create and facilitate expanding circles of communities with the skills to survive and thrive. The Holigent Program provides a framework that will help redesign the way we live, work, commute, consume, and govern ourselves.
When the money is made available, Holigent.org, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, will develop and build a demonstration live/work complex on the bank of the soon-to-be revitalized Los Angeles River (or another suitable location). This mixed-use nonprofit complex will include light industrial/commercial space, office space and residential units. Companies will be invited to set up shop and their employees will be invited to live and work in the complex. This project will demonstrate how a web of problems, from traffic jam to CO2 reduction, can be solved. The solutions will include plans to develop a local hybrid socioeconomic model that can provide economic security, social harmony, and environmental healing and sustainability even under adverse conditions. When the complex is in place we will move on to convince more people, legislators, and governments to join the transition race to peace and sustainability and help expand this project at Olympic speed.
Social and Economic Innovations
In addition to bringing work and residences within walking distance to one another, the Holigent Solution also incorporates social and economic innovation. Residents of the complex will commit to work a certain number of hours each month in community service as part of their social contract. Residents will use community credit (C-credit) earned in community service to pay part of their rent. The Holigent Solution also provides a three-way agreement between participating employers, their employees, and the nonprofit management organization. The flexible pay scale and commitment allocation plan allows companies and employees to remain competitive and stay in business during economic hard times. However, in times of economic recession, severely stressed companies may go into a dormant state rather than shut down, their employees go on unpaid furlough instead of being laid off. Affected employee-residents could increase their community work and pay most or all of their rent with earned community credit during their time of furlough. This arrangement can save businesses and jobs and secure housing while improving the general quality of life.
When completed, the first live/work Holigent Complex will serve as a demonstration model to attract funding for further Holigent development. Such developments will provide additional affordable housing units in car-free walkable communities that offer economic security and social harmony with a light carbon footprint on the environment.
After the completion of the first live/work demonstration complex, the next goal is to build a cluster of such complexes that will make a compact urban village. Such a live/work, mixed-use Transitional/Holigent Urban Village will be non-sprawling, with an all-pedestrian core, and will facilitate the transition from car-dependent to car-free and sustainable living.
The first Transitional/Holigent Urban Village will also serve as a model to demonstrate the development of a largely self-directed and increasingly self-financed community. Such a community will generate its own rental income that will be reinvested to serve its nonprofit purpose of providing affordable housing with improved and secure quality of life for its residents.
This arrangement will provide security and quality of life superior to the commercial equivalent and will serve as a magnet to attract businesses and their employees to live and work in the Transitional/Holigent Urban Village. Such an urban village will remain compact and will not sprawl. Consequently as demand rises over time additional such compact communities will be built along the Los Angeles River and joined by a high-speed electric rail public transit system.
The Holigent Solution calls for continuous outreach to adjacent neighborhoods, across the country, then reaching out across the world. Holigent communities will help seed new projects and build networks with other such communities around the world. This process will promote and help globalize the transition to a hybrid socioeconomic system that provides economic security, social harmony and environmental healing – the essentials for building a peaceful and sustainable future.
