Begging for the Revolution
Dearest Friends:
The year has been jammed and even though it is not done, it’s time for me to look back so i can guess where i want to go. And i want to ask for your help with these projects which speak to me, because i hope at least one of them will speak to you.
It was a joy and privilege to start the year with the successful conclusion of the Flip Georgia campaign. We wrestled two Senate seats away from the Republicans and stripped McConnell of Majority Leader status, and briefly felt hope on the country’s ability to recover from Trump. Rev Warnock’s win was confirmed the evening of January 5, and Jon Ossoff’s victory was confirmed the next morning on January 6th. A few hours later, we watched the Jan 6th insurrection at the Capitol (on tv).
Part of the Flip team was hired to explore remedies to disinformation movements in general and QAnon in particular, and we created the QRemedy project. We are trying all manner of different approaches with a special emphasis on games. We assembled an expert panel of game designers which concentrated on conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns, and was brilliantly facilitated by my dear comrade Crystal who was able to wrestle UCSC into partnering with us. Rez and Angie are working on curating our large body of research on this novel movement and its impacts, as well as misinformation and disinformation movements in general. You will find the first part of the resources we’ve compiled here, and more will be posted in the coming weeks.
It’s not all work and political struggle; i was also part of a team of “disorganizers” who pulled off a transformative festival called QuinkFair this last October. We had our share of quinks to brag about. Several people’s paths turned towards new opportunities: people quit jobs that were not serving them, joined communities, fell in love, and one chronicled the first annoyed use of the word “quink”.
He: And this relationship is important to me because …
She: Hey can we go, i want to get to this workshop which is happening soon!
He: Hold on, i am trying to have a quink here with you!
She: Okay, well, now you have my attention.
He: Will you marry me?
She: Wow – yes!
These stories and more made this one of my favorite events ever and we have been invited back to the same site for Fall 2022. QuinkFair will be in Louisa County on September 22-26, 2022. RSVP
Part of what was brilliant about QuinkFair was the work Serenity Community did helping with scholarship and work exchange especially for POC and queer participants. I have been very happy with the work i have been doing with Serenity on starting the first POC centric income sharing community in the county, and QuinkFair is a good outreach event as Serenity seeks more members and supporters. This small but important step created an unusually successful event and is why i am asking for funds for it
We are also seeking funding for QRemedy’s on-going work countering disinformation. Our work includes research and exploration of how to counter these movements, as well as crafting a new empathy/compassion guide book for people who have lost friends or family to these rabbit holes and are hoping to maintain their relationships.
Thanks for reading
Paxus on the Train
23 Exploding Mushrooms 2021
The Case Against Personal Shelters
[Update: Please read the comments at the end of this post for the proper history of what has happened at East Wind Community in Missouri regarding Personal Shelters. They are the ones who have pioneered it, and the story i have in this post is slightly wrong. I will fix it in the coming days. Paxus]
Egalitarianism is tricky. It starts out tricky because we don’t even have a common definition of it in the income sharing communities where I spend most of my time. The relevant parts of the principals from the Federation of Egalitarian Communities which describe it are:
- Hold land, labor, income and other resources in common.
- Assumes responsibility for the needs of its members, receiving the products of their labor and distributing these and all other goods equally, or according to need.
- Uses decision making which gives members an equal opportunity to participate, either through consensus, direct vote, or right of appeal or overrule.
- Works to establish the equality of all people and does not permit discrimination on the basis of race, class, creed, ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
[There are other FEC principals, like non-violence and sustainability, but these are not the core of egalitarianism.]
Should we try to be equal?
So what is missing from this important list? For starters the idea that all work is evaluated as equally worthy. An hour of my time spent writing a blog about communities is worth the same as an hour spent making a hammock or cooking a meal for many members.
One aspect of egalitarianism (that is touched upon in the second point above, but some FEC communities take much further than others) is that we are trying to avoid envy. We do this in part by avoiding the uneven distribution of our collective resources, except in agreed cases of need (for example golf carts for people with mobility problems at Twin Oaks is a needs based intentional unequal distribution).
Which brings me to the controversial idea of personal shelters. The FEC communities provide housing for our members. In several cases these communities are located on pieces of land large enough for members to build their own housing separate from typical dorm-based housing. We call these usually small buildings “personal shelters”.
The Love Shack “tree house” at Acorn – not quite a personal shelter
Quite some years ago East Wind community (on over 1,000 acres in the Ozarks) decided to permit their members to build personal shelters. This resulted in some handy/artistic folks building some really beautiful places. The problem is that these structures created envy. The bigger problem was when the original builder/owners left, they created a fairness problem. Members who had not been involved in the work of creating these shelters could potentially end up in housing that felt much nicer than what most people living in the community had access to.
The problem this created ultimately lead to East Wind banning the creation of more new personal shelters. Twin Oaks has never permitted them, largely because of East Winds’ experience. Acorn wrestles with permitting them and so far has not allowed them. Some Acorners who were really excited about the idea left to form new communities where such things are possible.
The arguments against personal shelters which GPaul outlined to me, late one night while we were driving back from a Point A gathering in NYC are:
- Energy Use/Carbon Footprint
- Fairness
- Psychic Space
One of the things income sharing communities do especially well is minimize their ecological impact. The dormitory style buildings we have share kitchens, bathrooms, living space and meals. This low impact living is very hard to achieve without a lot of people under the same roof. Personal shelters are usually just one or two persons under a roof.
Where can we cut back?
The fairness issue is covered.
The issue I had never heard before was one of psychic space. In a regular community residence dorm, you know you can stand in the hall in front of someone’s room and not worry that you are infringing on their space. The same is not true of personal shelters. The space they take up is much larger than the physical footprint of their construction. Peoples don’t know how to behave around them and this can cause discomfort and confusion.
Do you think the benefits outweigh the costs?
[Edited by Judy Youngquest]
Aliens- The Truth- The New Activism Frontier
I believe in Aliens.
There I said it.
As you may know, I am pretty open about a wide-variety of things, including, but certainly not limited to my polyglamorous relationships, my obsession with twerking, and my desire for some radical heteronormativity in my life. (while of course still maintaining my polyglamorus status.)
I must come out of the space ship, although I hold some reservations about coming out of the space ship. I feel like I will be judged negatively and that the anti-nuclear activists and the communities movement will shun me, that I will have gone too “woo woo” or maybe people will think I’ve simply gone of my rocker. Perhaps if this was just a small part of me people would understand.
But, its not.
I think spreading the truth about Space Aliens and their involvement on earth is some of the most important activism we can do. I want to be the Chelsea Manning of Extra Terrestrials. The information NEEDS to be out there and people NEED to know that aliens are among us.
You may be thinking “wow paxus has finally snapped.” As if I haven’t already, excuse me.
The rest of you are thinking ” gee, I wonder why he thinks this.”
And a small number of you, the true truthers, are thinking “yes I believe too, please go on.”
I will gladly tell you the story of how I first became aware that Aliens are real AND living on planet Earth. I am especially excited because this is not one of the stories that I tell on loop at every event ever.
When I was in the Czech, protesting nukes, I met a women named Eleanora. Eleanora was, well, odd to say the least. Her diet is one example, she specifically like invertebrates. She always said in her weird, practically indistinguishable accent “It es so much easeiar to eat dah invertabras, you do not eben ned to peek meat off das bones! You jest squeese it out.” Of course I found it to be ridiculously adorable and we spent many nights together, discussing the protein humans are missing and how nukes may destroy the planet, you know, typical radical type stuff. Another odd thing, she introduced me to twerking, before twerking was a thing, she shared a great love for it.
One night we had plans to spend time together in one of the downtown areas of the czech, she called me and told me that she could not come out that night, she didn’t feel very well. She sounded like she had been crying and I asked her if maybe I could just come over instead. After some conversation she agreed.
When I got there she complained about feeling “allown on dis planet.” and feeling like “All the odders like me have jest given oop and become followers.” At first I thought this was just your typical activist breakdown. You know “The worlds gone mad! Nobody cares!”
But, I became fascinated about how often she used the terms “on dis planet!” and finally it escalated into her practically yelling “And dere destroying the galoxy for the rest of us!”
All the emotion faded from her face, realizing she had said a bit too much. I could see it in her face and me desiring transparency asked her to please explain herself. She took a deep breath and told me that she was a Extra Terrestrial from a somewhat nearby Solar System and that she was hear to try and stop humans from poisoning the universe. She said that her species is somewhat related to hers, but that they had blue hair and some other traits.
Suddenly it all made sense, why Eleanora was constantly buying brown hair dye, while being upset about using such nasty chemicals, and why we never played with her genitals. I didn’t complain because I rather enjoyed all the fellatio I was receiving.
How “in over my head” I felt about Eleanora after she first told me the truth.
This led to years and years of Eleanora introducing me to her underground ET politcal groups and explaining to me the various species of aliens, some being related to humans, some being shape shifters. Cats are aliens that take advantage of humans parental instincts.
Remember when I hitchhiked on boats?
Well the whole reason was so that I could get far enough out to sea so that I could get picked up by a spacecraft to and go visit Eleanoras family on the celebration of some religion from their planet.
I have more information, but I have been to space and back multiple times since then.
This information needs to be out.
I know this is a lot to spring on all of you, but I swear it is all true. Its as true as my love for twerking.
Transparency is my favorite thing and this is no different.
Adieu.
The San Francisco Question
San Francisco asks one especially tricky question: Are you doing what you love?
When i was in Eugene i got into a long and heated argument with one of our larger hammocks customers who was upset about our prohibition on them selling thru Amazon and Walmart. At the end of the conversation Abigail asked “How as that for you?” After some brief reflection i replied “i have one of those conversations a month, many of my peers from college have those conversations all day long. They make 6 figures for doing that work, i am willing to have one conversation a month like that for the rest of my lucky life style.”
But it is not completely true. One of the things that this trip to San Francisco has taught me is that i need to be initiating more things. Talking with Kyle at the Feyboy Mansion got me excited about being a community creator, even if they were not places i would live. They are exploring buying land and creating a radical faery event space and commune. It was clear early in the conversation that i could be of assistance to them. Especially since they were not looking at the classical community start up problems (like a lack of cash) but instead had investors eager to support them, they had the high class problem of design and donor relations.
And i am still more than toying with the idea of starting community in this area, a net zero, income sharing, consensus decision making and transparency based communication model for maintaining personal relationship. i dont know if these will be the values of the other pioneers who i work with, but each of these ideas/philosophies has some compelling aspect.
It has been good for me to sell hammocks. It has both sharpened some of my skills and reminded me about the world that i dont really live in (despite being breed for Babylon). i am happy there has been a positive contribution from my skills to the communities economic needs. However, in the odd internal calculus i do, the community does not need my support in generating income as much as the movement needs my particularly pushy style in getting new community initiatives off the ground.
What also feels true is that i personally will enjoy initiating these next projects more myself. So listen to San Francisco and if you are not saying yes, do something new.
your passport to complaining 