What are the 7 Elements

Earth :: Water :: Air :: Fire :: Mind :: Spirit :: Soul

7 Elements may be many things, but to start simply, it is a community of people that wish to know where do the elements that make up their daily lives come from. What is the soil that grew their food, the system that brought them energy, the people that made their tools, the monetary systems that provide an account of value.

It is, to begin, a thought experiment, or maybe a scientific hypothesis, that there are 7 elements that make up the world we observe. Four states of matter, and 3, as of yet, still poorly defined, that seem to be.. well not-matter, but things that clearly exist, and, well, matter a lot to us.

It is a name, and a logo, that began with 7 elements farm, and an LLC of the founder.

It will be, the founder hopes, an intentional community, defined, initially by farmland and wind turbines (or maybe solar panels), and people who choose to live in a mincome-sharing community. This is not to say we are a commune. Each of us has our own private property, and for the most part, existing town and community structures, from leases to town councils and consensus whenever possible.

Conflict, change, and failure must be built into this community for it to thrive, and we must respect human autonomy and worth, and act as good people in such times. It should be a sign of strength if the community might someday splits in two, or three, or more, because consensus is easier with smaller groups of like-minded people. And as time flows, minds change, and thus the makeup of the communities, and the land and soil they grow in changes.

It is with that intention for growth, change, and continuous improvement that we organize as a mincome-sharing community, which is defined by providing for all members of the community a basic minimum income guarantee. Some of us may wish to have more, some may wish to live simply. But we, as a community have come to a consensus on what are the basic needs to live for all persons.

One of these needs is space. This is a private, personal space, which we will start with the 20 foot shipping container, 8 feet wide, 20 feet long, and 8 feet high. This is your personal sanctuary and sacred space. It is generally expected you maintain this space for sleeping, meditating, and some personal property storage. We have a standard design, or you can build it yourself.

Other needs are food, and energy for lighting, heating, cooling, and cooking in your space. These basic needs can never be stripped from you, and it is the duty of all community members to defend each and every one of us from any threat to our basic needs.

We do this with various legal agreements. No creditor can collect on your mincome guarantee. If you squander your resources in ways that damage the community, we may be forced to ask you to leave, and, if your space is a shipping container or tiny house trailer, the community will arrange to transport your space to a new destination. You can take title to you space if you wish, although if you are in debt we may advise you leave title with the community trust, so that we may protect your space from creditors.

The Mincome guarantee is adminstered by wealth redistribution proportionally from those of us that have more wealth, to all of us, equally. We may implement this via the Mincome cryptographic currency tied to leases and your reportable taxable income. Wealth has a carrying cost, and for the wealthy to be as such, they must pay the true social cost of the priviledge of being wealthy, which, for us, is the mincome guarantee.

To insure our communities well-being, we have the principle of abundance. The soil of the earth when kissed by the fires of the sun and air bringing water of the rains provide, when properly managed, abundant food and materials not only for our basic needs, but for us to be wealthy, and the true test of wealth is how much we give away. If you are doing something, we ask that it be a thing that you enjoy that manifests abundance.

If you are a farmer, grow abundant food, not just to feed us, but feed the world around us. If you are a artist or musician, make great music and art, not just for us, but to make the world abundant in great works that we can share. If you are a technologist create wonderful new things and share the designs with the world (we prefer the Debian Free Software guidelines for such things)

If you are a caregiver, or a teacher, take care and teach our children. Seek out parents who might be better technologists, farmers, artists, storytellers, and give them the freedom to manifest abundance. Parenting is a shared duty for all of us, and our children are the greatest investment we can make. We must realize both when family tradition is needed, and when family of choice, or the choice of family is needed. Our biological heritage is the tradition we come from, and we must all work through the difficult times when those traditions need to be challenged, for the good of both the parent and child.

We may ask you to leave should your presence change from a source of abundance to a drain of extraction. This will never be taken lightly, or quickly, for there are times when we must all draw on our community so that we may heal. We also acknowledge that in a material world, there are finite resources, and choices have to be made, of where to spend those resources.