This is part of a series of articles in regard to building an intentional community. You can find all chapters here. Also, this is a draft, a point of starting the conversation so i encourage you to get involved.

To build a sustainable community you need a strong vision, a vision to guide through moments of difficulty, dead alleys and dred.

This vision was hard to pinpoint since it must convey important values clear enough to create a path, but open enough to allow involvement and belonging.
Permaculture has as core values „people care, planet care and fair share” but implies an agricultural way of living that I think is not the only way of living off the land.
Humanism is a beautiful way of giving people agency but sounds more like an alternative to religion then a social construct.
Socialism in the same way gives people agency, but without taking care of the planet it can’t be sustainable.
Ecovillages with thers 5 core pillars „social, cultural, ecological, economical and integral design” sound like the perfect fit, but it sounds like a local solution.

What I was searching for was a solution that will be applied locally but can be the way we organize society at large. It must include the values of human life from Humanism, the fair share of Permaculture, the power of the group from Socialism, and the values of culture and ecology from Ecovillages, so I chose Ecosocialism.

Ecosocialism is a balance between valuing the needs and diversity of people and the needs and diversity of the natural environment. Unlike our current system that values accumulation and growth, Ecosocialism values people diversity, their involvement and their power of decisions while ensuring the sustainability of human life by being good stewards of the environment and replenishing, degrowth and circular economy.

A healthy society needs productive and creative people. This can only be met if their basic needs are met. Access to housing, food, water, nature, companionship, health must be nonissues. And when these basic needs are met people can bloom. In this way you can be involved in activities that you will put all your heart and soul, you will help your neighbor, you will have a high level of social involvement, you will be comfortable with sharing your things and to ask for help or to borrow.

With unhindered connection to the land, comes great responsibility. We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors but we borrow it from our grandchildren so we need to be great stewards of this great blue marble.

We will use wood from the forest but willnout exploit it, we will harvest fruits, vegetables and mushrooms but will not exploit the land, we will have bees but will not exploit them.. Wherever we take we also take care, and replenish. We take only what we need and at the same time we increase biodiversity and the health of the soil, water, air, plant and animal life.

What I am describing here is utopic but must not be. „Utopic” comes from Greek and means a place „topos” that doesn’t exist „u”. But this must not be always true since we can take action in order to make it be and higher we aim higher we will land.

Cover photo by Akil Mazumder from Pexels.