| Gold mining New Civ community | 2006-03-13 20:03
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by Flemming Funch
Baron Berez has a proposal. Creating a community in Nevada, funded by a gold mining operation, but creating a new kind of community, a new civilization outpost.
Now, in the New Civilization Network there has a been a few proposals on the table over the years, aiming at creating some kind of community. NCN is about creating a different kind of world, and if it shouldn't be just talk, it makes sense for somebody to do it for real somewhere. But how? It seems like an attractive idea at first. Buy a desert island in the South Pacific, or some large piece of land far away from everything, and start over, and do things the way they should be done. But how exactly is that? Who decides how that is, and how do they decide? How does it get funded?
How to organize it still remains to be seen. But maybe Baron has an approach for the funding. 20,000 acres in Nevada that he acquired mining rights to at some point. Surveys have shown that there's around 1 million ounces of gold to be extracted from there. An ounce of gold goes for around $560 at the moment. It isn't a sure thing, of course. And it will cost significant money to set up the mining operation.
Baron is a shrewd businessman and investor who has done well. I don't know the details, but obviously he's somebody who doesn't have to work for a living. He's also about retirement age. And I guess he's more keen on doing something that leaves a bit more of a legacy.
The project needs some start capital to get going. $350,000 to set up an initial mining operation, to verify that it is viable, and to set up the legal stuff. 35 parts of $10,000 Baron is thinking.
But then the idea is that a significant portion of what would come in, 25%, will be directed towards creating a community, focused on building an infrastructure of sustainable and emerging technologies. Solar, wind, waste recycling, etc.
Can this work? Well, why not. It could be a very exciting project. If enough people get around it that find it exciting, at least. And if the plan is put together well.
There's a lot of unknowns there, of course. Lot of issues of who decides what, and according to which principles. A few major disagreements can throw off a thing like that. How would the community work? Would the investors have the final call on what goes? Would Baron? Is it a democracy? An anarchy? A corporate structure?
Does anybody think it is worth the trouble?
What I proposed to Baron was to just put it forward in a blog, and see who salutes it. Which is what I'm doing here too. A project like that needs to be able to withstand a bit of public scrutiny. Plus, it goes nowhere unless a group of people will find it exciting.
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6 comments
13 Mar 2006 @ 22:00 by : Gold Rush
My first reaction, would be, yes, this is a project which could prove a worthwile and profitable investment, especially if, as Ming points out, "Baron is a shrewd businessman and investor who has done well."
But, other than that, is it also a project from which the hubb of a New Civilization can be launched?
Those are two different questions.
St Bonaventure famously said in "Itinerarium Mentis in Deum" (The Journey of the Mind into God):
"Because it is the most simple and the greatest, it is wholly within all things and wholly outside them; hence it is an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
Well, he was not talking about NCN, naturally, but the image is a good one. The idea of a New Civilization as "an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere," as always appeared to me as the fundamental strength of a potential nascent new civilization - i.e. something emergent, ubiquitous, pervasive and DECENTRALIZED. There is power in ubiquitousness and in decentralization.
As such, the emergence of a new civilization implies (to me) either a transformation of the old civilization through an awakening of consciousness and an emancipation (from central monolithic pyramidal control) of the individual all over the globe, OR the development of a parallel new understanding and way of doing things (aka "the second superpower"), again, all over the world, PARALLEL to the existing civilization, with the new civilization eventually taking over in the same way as Homo Sapiens eventually supplanted the Neanderthal man, OR a combination of both.
Baron Berez's commendable idea of setting up a new civilization outpost as a sort of experimental project, another Walden II community---and why not?---is not a bad idea as such. But it is hard for me to imagine it becoming anything but yet another part amongst many of the greater puzzle---a spoke not a hub---as it seems to me that the concept of a New Civilization is greater than that, greater than what can be envisioned or tested in a limited environment under a limited and very specific set of rules. The strength of a possible emerging New Civilization resides in its sheer size. If we think of the emergence of a New Civilization as the emergence of a new intelligence, a perfect analogy would be to say that it is less about building a super computer in Nevada, than it is about finding a way of creating a super computer by connecting all or most of the already existing computers all over the world.
That said, it doesn't mean that Baron Berez's project is not worth pursuing, and if properly managed some good might even come out of it. Like providing NCN with a self sufficent established center and an autonomous source of income.
One of the many problem the world is facing, however, is that most people are LANDLESS (a major problem in countries like India and many countries in Latin America - one of the causes of the destruction of the rain forest,) and a gold mine is a luxury most people do not have.
Baron Berez's question is not without value: Can one build an operating New Civilization community with a gold mine?
To me, a more urgent and compelling question would be: How does one build a new civilization without a gold mine?