-The process of moving toward local and global sustainability requires the development of countless simultaneous projects. Below are lists of some of the projects that we plan to initiate, organize, facilitate, support, fund, promote,etc. Depending on the core collective's time and resources, some of these many never either start or finish. With your help and application of targeted skills and interest we can all synergize and accomplish much more together than we could alone. We are developing high-tech communication systems to integrate ideas, research, media, and art from all over the world.The Gaian Mind and all of its sub-projects can be a global outlet for artists, poets, scholars, researchers, writers, computer programmers, gardeners, and anyone else who'd like to use both our cyber and physical premises to share their work and participate in our efforts to address the ecological crisis.

-Depending on your location relative to the Gaian Mind, you should be able to find projects to participate in based on the data in the table below. Please see project descriptions for info on which aspects we need the most help with.

Notes: Geographic scope refers to where the project applies and can be operated on from, GM= Gaian Mind, L=Local southern california community, G=Global. Status refers to whether a project is Active (A), On Hold (H), or Cyber (C), or Uninitiated (blank).

Use this form to ask questions and receive participation information.

The most essential crop that must grow out of the Gaian Mind is this project. All of our commercial, educational, and technological projects serve this. The concept is to design a sort of "Metal Gear" type of 3d character model. Rather than working for the military, you're fully equipped with gadgets and tools for use in surveying for endangered species, wilderness survival, animal first aid, resource mapping, invasive species removal, ecological restoration, clean-up, etc. So we can build a "Ranger" model in 3d art, and actually implement this character through our free school wilderness program. We can either solicit equipment donations or purchase things like:

• gps systems
• compasses
• maps
• organic seeds
• flash lights
• camping knives
• leds
• endangered species i.d. materials
• digital cameras
• binoculars
• boots
• water-proof gear
• camping gear
• back-pack guitars
• fiddles, and other blue grass implements!
• dried food
• cordage
• tree climbing equipment
• kayaks
• water bottles
• etc.

We can actually become a small scale retail distributor of some of these things from the store here so that people who aren't enrolled in the eco-scouting program can just get a couple cool devices and contribute to the project at their leisure. Otherwise, all of this stuff would part of the package for enrollment in the program. Hopefully we could easily get grants and donations to cover it all. We're anxious to attain non-profit status as soon as possible.

Any equipment, experience, and other donations to this project would much appreciated. This project will take some time to get fully established however we'll be testing and building it with whatever we've got any chance we get.

The following is a list of the basic resources that are always available to the community:

• free phone
• free wireless internet
• public computers
• art supplies
• workspace
• tool library
• media library
• free box
• free school

Based on the models of various other communites who've made alternative currency we'll be setting up an economy whereby people can trade work hours for goods and services amongst each other. This system truly equalizes the value of trades because all hour tokens would be worth the same=one hour of work, or 30 mins, or 15, etc. An example of an exchange of this currency could be: a doctor needs his lawn mowed one day. He gives an hour coin to a landscaper who lives down the street for the job. That landscaper can then, say a week later, use that token to have his back looked at by the doctor. What the capitalist system would have made impossible to attain amongst even neighbors, can be facilitated by this economic system because it values all labor equally. Not only could that landscaper use the token as a credit unit to later cash in on with the same person; through a whole community network of the use of the tokens, he could have saved it and gotten a massage from someone else for his back. And maybe during the massage it just so happened that the masouse needed to have some tree's planted in front of their house, and bam, another opportunity exists to earn more equalized currency. A meme like this could very easily raise the standard of living, community intimacy, and self reliance exponentially very quickly.

Why it’s needed: We feel that the creation of a sacred space for women is vital to the health of a real community. There's a lack of a support network for women in the punk scene and beyond. Women are an isolated minority that’s contributions to the male dominated subculture are often unappreciated and unacknowledged. Furthermore, there's little collective consciousness of the power of unity among women. Individual women, who haven't experienced the joyful empowerment of a family-like, loving sisterhood within their scene don't know what they're missing, nor does the culture as a whole as it is missing so much in its state of perpetual imbalance. We all stand to gain from the healing energy, nurturing, creativity, and vision that a Sister Circle can collect and share with us all.

What's going to be accomplished: a sense of solidarity, stronger bonds, the development of a vocabulary of empowerment, development of new modes of self-defense on all physical and psychological levels, the creation of new non-dogmatic approach to feminism, women’s mental health, and general skill sharing.

Planned activities will include: co-authoring a “Patriarchy Survival Guide” with the men’s group, producing women's items for the A.G.C. merch table, such as re-usable cloth pads, herbal remedies, and other items for women, skill shares, alternative women's health-care research, encouraging initiation and maintenance of healthier habits with each other, meeting in natural places to connect with healing earth energy, creating a So Cal women’s resource list, having open and anonymous support infrastructure for crises (web, phone, and group meeting based), working with the men’s group, setting up women's gatherings timed with lunar cycles, hosting punk kids days.

This group will continue in the early summer. Please contact us if you want to be involved.

-The Gaian Mind interior and exterior design is intended to be perhaps one of the most study conducive environments ever known. Before explaining how; here's an analogy that will set up the importance and purpose of our study design.

-It is our belief that much can be learned from cellular level biology. They say, you're only as healthy as the health of your cells. This is very important fact and should prompt us to examine how things work at the cell level. First of all, cells can exist forever theoretically as long as they continue to be supplied with the nutrients they need and if their wastes are carried away. The blood stream supplies the oxygen and nutrients, the lymph system removes the wastes. When both are working at their highest performance, the cells are robust, energetic, and fully charged to do their job. Proper exercise, diet, and hydration are the determinants of the quality of cell performance.

-Unfortunately most with the U.S. don't exercise properly, they eat terrible dead nutrient-empty foods, and are chronically dehydrated. Not surprisingly their cells get swamped in lymphatic sewage, oxygen and blood are blocked from the cell, and whatever gets past is the product of fast shallow breaths and fast shallow food. The cells are constantly declining and thus so to is the overall body. The cell can't do its job right, so nothing else can either. Organs weakened, sometimes shut down, etc.

-This problem is similar to the learning process: a toxic mind in a toxic environment will not be learning in a healthy way. Memories don't form, stress hormones strip the whole body of nutrients. Negative thoughts, doubt, and lethargy lead to school performance decline and eventual expulsion.

-We believe that through juicing, raw foods, exercise, breathing, and hydration, we'll be able to help teens and college students really cleanse their systems and get them primed to learn, think, create, move, work, and play with the easy and eagerness of children.

-Once you remove the corrosive, immune system irritating, nervous system tweaking sugar and coffee and bleached white flower sugar pastries that constitute the backbone of global academic study fuel, you can actually start supplying the body and brain with clean energy and food sources that stimulate the learning processes.

-Here are a few elements we'll be combining to set up the context:

• Our raw food cafe will be serving the much healthier and safer herbal tea stimulant called Yerba Mate, a staple of many South American countries.
• All food will be sweetened either with dates or maple syrup (which is one of the most nutrient rich foods in existence
• We have many reference books
• Free wireless internet
• Community computers
• Free Voice over IP phone for free calls anywhere anytime in the U.S. and Canada
• Free food and juice for k-12 students while studying
• Store credit for college kids who make themselves available to help k-12 students
• Programs set up for students to recieve course credit for working us
• Daily free school classes to help build basic and advanced skills
• Computer program support
• Pleasant lighting, and a living room atmosphere
• Quiet isolated study areas available
• Study group friendly
• Art project supplies, space, and support
• Counseling for all issues
• School supplies for sale and work trade
• Basic subject study groups and reference materials, digital flash card games,
• Online study groups where people can log in at a scheduled time to be connected with others working on the same homework, class, test, etc.

We have a "Scenario Suggestion Box" where anyone can anonymously submit a mini-scene that they'd like to see acted out. Each Skit System session randomly draws names out of bag. When people arrive who want to act, they can write their names on strips of paper. When the scenario suggestion box is opened and a scene is introduced, we then pull names out of the name bag and a random assortment of improv volunteer actors will be assigned the roles. As the skit begins to be acted out, the audience is encouraged to verbally "paint-in" props, scene changes, other factors, ad lib lines, etc. so as to create a truly dynamic interactive environment. Our hope is that these skits can involve confronting sexism, racism, homophobia, discrimination, discouragement, family dynamics, lover conflict, etc. Any type of situation that you'd want to see represented and resolved can be played out by volunteer improv actors. From comedy to deep drama, we can all learn social skills of peace and respect and potentially even resolve past situations that we wished we'd said the right thing or done something different. Victims and perpetrators carrying the baggage of all manners of embarrassment, abuse, mistakes, etc. can bury the hatchet with their subconscious and be equipped to "do the right thing" in the future.

-The demands of modern civilization make reading for pleasure, extra-curricular learning, and even curricular learning less and less compatible with the pace of life. In response to this we'll be building a network of readers to be commissioned to read books and digitally audio record their readings. The value of this will be that rather than immobilize ourselves by each reading the same linguistic content, we'll be able to share and rapidly uptake and assimilate linguistic input without having to process and "digest" the roughage of visual data. In other words, audio-linguistic learning is a lot like using a juicer to extract the desired material from fruits and vegetables, whereas visual reading is more like chewing through them. Both methods eventually make the essential content available to the body however one requires so much effort, time, attention, and space that you can only ever get a small amount of the desired content per consumption session.

-With audio books, lectures, etc. you can be in motion, driving, cleaning, doing dishes, exercising, etc. Your hands, eyes, and even some of your attention can be made available simultaneously for other things. This will exponentially increase the amount of valuable information we can be operating from at any given moment. Just think of the amount of time we spend in cars driving in L.A. There is no reason we've not learned several languages and mastered the subjects of our interest in the commuting times many of us log everyday. And there's no discipline involved, it requires no effort whatsoever, your mind processes audio input at all times even during sleep.

-The rate of data assimilation made possible by this project can even have the effect of dislodging the obsolete ideological, prejudicial, and anedotal plaque that blocks new information from reaching people's authentic truth seeking, rational, thoughtful minds. It would be amazing to see this project humble some of the heavy-handed argumentative wind-bags.

-The highest goal would be for this accelerated learning to put an end to immature aggressive intellectual debates. Think of the feeling that many of us have had in arguments to convince family members, co-workers, teachers, peers, etc. of, for example, a basic axiom of natural law. Chances are our "opponents" were not trained in the etiquette of academic discourse nor how to identify the patterns of fallacious argument. You end up going in circles and understanding is no longer the point of speech and exchange, rather it ends up being a spirit crushing, demoralizing exercise in futility. Furthermore, this kind of communication dysfunction can deeply damage our capacity to have respect for each other and thus corrupt otherwise endearing relationships.

-We always think during the psychic hangover following these "debates" that 'if only they'd read that book I gave them they'd understand!' But the sad truth is that reading a book is a major investment of time and energy in modern society. It requires immense effort and taxes our rapidly shrinking attention spans. However, if all of our theses we're eloquently laid out in audio format, we'd be able to communicate the premises for our belief systems without demanding self-sacrifice and we'd know that at the end of an hour of spoken word, lecture, book on tape, etc. we'd have real substance to pick apart and reflect on intelligently with the antagonist.

Irrigation System

-Resevoirs of information, knowledge, skills, etc. are concentrated in academic institutions. Sadly little is done to make the fruits of academic intellectual agriculture accessible beyond the campus. Much of the work that's being done is self-referencial, encoded in post-modern abstractions, and thus never applied on a wide scale. Through the Gaian Mind, conscious academics will be working on building a cyber-irrigation system to create a flow of information from the Ivory towers to the Watts towers.

-The problem with academic inquiry for its own sake (publish or perish) is that not that the researchers themselves don't walk their talk, it's that their talk is so inaccessible that no one can use it as a map to build a path to walk on. Utilizing cutting-edge free web based communications technologies and our own web programming, the Gaian Tech Collective will be soon able to integrate, organize, decode, and apply academic data from all over the world. We'll conduct phone interviews, record lectures, network with departments and associations, and more. We'll be creating a quick and easy thesis questionairre where the premises, hypotheses, references, notes, conclusions, etc. of academics can be funnelled to us reprocessed and used to fertilize thought on the ground level of discourse.

Distiller System

-The cause for most internal and external debate grid-lock amongst scholars, intellectuals, and lay people is the lack of a common database. We'd like to use this project to set up a standard for discourse that precludes the practice of wasting time yelling at each other in mutually indistinguishable languages. The poli-sci heads who have a realist view of international relations would, in a debate with Starhawk, never be able to comprehend her notion of the cosmic healing power of the "spiral" dance because both parties speak encoded languages that don't compute.

-If this project can help build profiles of thinkers, summaries of research, and searchable databases with sophisticated criteria parameters, all those engaged in debate will be better equipped to understand both their own position and that of their antagonist. Another example of the value of a simple distillation interface could be seen in a clash of antropological axioms with political science axioms.

-In anthropolgy, the data set that shapes the field's consensus on human nature is human PRE-history. In political science that data set is history proper. Because anthropologists know the paleolithic era to be free of warfare, disease, domestication, property, hiearchy, stratification, and formal state power they're notion of human nature is far less cynical than that of most political scientists.

-In the words of Marvin Harris, “I believe it is essential that we understand our past…once we are clear about the roots of human nature…we can refute, once and for all, the notion that it is a biological imperative for our kind to form hierarchical groups. An observer viewing life shortly after cultural takeoff would easily have concluded that our species was destined to be irredeemably egalitarian…that someday the world would be divided into aristocrats and commoners, masters and slaves, billionaires and homeless beggars would have seemed wholly contrary to human nature as evidenced in the affairs of every human society then on Earth."

-In contrast, the notion of human nature embraced by political science is the "Hobbesian nightmare" which maintains that,

-"During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man. To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues. No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

-If Thomas Hobbes had a Gaian-Tech cross referencing academic field search engine, he might have discovered, even in the absence of contemporary formal anthropological data, that a completely opposite picture could be painted by many of the accounts of conquistadors who found the human state of nature to be quite orderly, fair, peaceful, and serene.

-It may seem pointless to imagine that Thomas Hobbes' cynicism could even been shaken by counter-evidence. After all it was his goal was to legitimize the modern state by instilling fear of anything but full governance by it. But perhaps a more compelling example of the potential utility of a thesis distiller would work in the case of Karl Marx.

-Marx and Engles were both facinated by anthropology, in fact Engles actually wrote an anthropology based work called, "The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State" where he explores the beginnings of animal and plant domestication and the subsequent rise of patriarchy, states, and civilization. He found that all forms of domination are rooted in male control of the productive base of society. He learned that in the state Marx called "primitive communism", humanity was characterized by gender equality, co-operation and partnership. Had both Marx and Engles realized this sooner, Marx might have scrapped the idea of "unilineal cultural evolution" discussed in Henry Lewis Morgan's work. To translate: Marx believed, as most social scientistists did, that human culture only moves in direction, from simple to complex, from stateless primitive sticks and stones, to barbaric clubs and catapults, to capitalist batons and cannons.

-To Marx, it was only after this predestined progression that the true ideal state, the one he conveniently designed, could actually come into being. There were even letters written to him by revolutionary thinkers in "undeveloped" countries asking him if since they had not experienced full-blown capitalism...would they have to wait for it to come and go in order for the true state of Marxian communism to free them forever after?

-Marx didn't live long enough it to see the wealth of anthropological evidence to be compiled by Engles. Had they both taken a broader survey of culture, they might have sooner noted that "primitive communist" existence is quite complete and in most known cases, isn't a just a developmental phase awaiting predestined growth into hierarchal violent order. Marx could have taken data compiled by even the early anthropologists and radically re-examined and redefined his scientific theory of revolution.

-He might have thrown the whole thing out and just realized that the entire trap of history, the seemingly natural urge to subvert egalitarian order, was really over-represented. He would definitely have been curious a few decades later when the Lucy fossils were found dating human antiquity to over a million years. Based on that kind of new information, he might have decided that since the majority of human existence seemed to carry on just fine before and without civilization, there was no need to convince the world that the we all had to harness the state apparatus and make it mildly resemble the true state of natural communism.

-He may have sided with Engles statement that, "Along with [the classes] the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganise production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquity, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe.”

-While my illustration of the potential for new information and evidence to undermine inherently fleeting theories may seem to have no present value; while no one reading might ever give it another thought and find this exploration unimportant; the world has certainly found whatever Marx said to be extremely important as his work is known to be the most academically quoted material of all time. That means that had any of his core theories changed, so to would the arrangement and color of many threads in the tapestry of the time/space continuum be changed. As Dr. Emmit Brown would say, we need to think "fourth dimensionally."

-Imagine a world today that Marx could have informed by in his time believing that the best way "out" is not "forward" into bogus ideologies, but rather the way "out" is "back". If his dying words could have been anything to the effect of, "the answers are in prehistory, this is where humanity was shaped, cradled, nurtured, and fully developed without states, factories, weapons, etc. for millions of years" what would the world look like today...

What will our martian colony dwelling genetically engineered clone decendents say about our theories and ideologies a hundred years from now when they ponder what lapse of academic inquiry led history on the trajectory that put them on a sterile planet with no atmosphere???

Will they wish we'd stopped jockying for artificial power and start humbling ourselves to natural power before it became too late?

Finally, the humble goal of creating a thesis distiller engine would simply be to ensure that at all times, all those engaged in academic inquiry are benefiting from the work done by their collegues mere buildings away. Since we stand at this moment at top a near-infinite wealth of archeological, cross-cultural, folk and modern scientific, philosophical, cosmological, religious, artistic, and symbolic data extracted from every remote human population in the world, it might be time to start laying these data sets on top of each other to see which forms line up and reveal hidden truths and insights...

-The Gaian-Tech collective is comprised of people in various parts of
the world who share an ecologically conscious technological
perspective. As lovers of life and nature our intent is to use
machines to ad beauty, skills, and knowledge to the living world. We
believe that technology can be a valuable tool for communication and
community and personal development but we want our engagements in
cyber-space to be as efficient and functional as possible so we can
get out and log-in to planet earth!

-It's our goal to decentralize technological skills so that anyone
who wants to be equipped to navigate the cyber terrain can do so
easily and with ample support. A major flaw in modern society's
information/skill transferral mechanism is that so many of us are
struggling separately and alone to learn the same things. In
response to this, a communal study group dynamic is what we'll be
creating at the Gaian-Mind. For example, a session could involve
creating a photoshop document and applying a vast array of basic and
advanced techniques so that we can all benefit from each others
individual experiences of the program.

-Without this type of knowledge swapping and without costly computer
classes, many users spend litteraly hundreds of accumulated hours in
application environments where they have developed awkward,
dysfunctional, and inefficient habits. The introduction of basic
elements such as keyboard shortcuts, tool bar modifications, and
hidden control panels can exponentially increase the power and
efficiency of the user.

Many of our dreams have been facilitated by craigslist alone, it is by far one of the most useful web tools in existence. We want to take the craigslist model and make a more filtered version of it for use by and for members of socially and ecologically conscious movement. It would be nice to have a system free from patriarchal exploitation, sleezey business schemes, etc. And it would be nice to have a resource, job, free stuff sharing web resource that you could trust would connect you to people who really share your core values. So for example, if you're elderly and need your lawn mowed, but you'd like to know that you're money isn't going to feed the alcohol, tobacco, and pornography industries, you could use our craiglist to seek the labor of someone who's profile reasonably convinces you that they aren't into that. Conversely, as a laborer looking for work, you can better trust that you'll not be in danger or be treated in a sexist manner.

-Craiglist is a magic valve, if we can harness its simple powers and keep them in the container of our conscious movements, our own economy, knowledge,skill, and resource base would greatly appreciate.

HELP! WE NEED PROGRAMMERS FOR THIS! THANKS

We're currently creating a 3d map of southern California for as the background to a flash game engine whereby through a website users will be able to visually navigate the landspace and find mapped gps points of natural resources, autonomous spaces, conscious business, and more. It will be a sort of "people's map" that contains only information relevant to the conscious movement. We be able to put search criteria on it that will allow the user to literally "see" the results for all the bike resources, health resources, natural beaches, edible fruit trees, medicinal herbs, etc.

-With this interface constantly being added to, we'll eventually have a solid visual reference to the resource base in so. cal. and be able to develop a strong sense of the relationality of the resources we often use but don't string together in our travels due to previous lack of a concept of their proximity. It would be rad to have to go to some dreaded appointment for work, medical reasons, or whatever and check our map and see that you're exactly 1.32 miles from a co-op house, vegan cafe, community center, river, fruit tree etc.

-As we build the protype interface, we'll be soliciting long term project involvement by game programmers, artists, and web programmers. The ultimate goal is not only to have a flash system that allows us to ad individual user interactivity with the objects on the landscape, (e.g. your can take the standard character and navigate them across the map to the Gaian Mind and see cartoon images of what garden foods are ready to pick for trade, and you could then arrange a trade transaction through a from or instant message system that's wrapped in a classic RPG village shop interface) but we eventually want to ad multi user interactivity so that you could design your own character and all the online users could see each other on the map, approach each other and converse through an IM interface that again looks just like an RPG frame.

-The basic idea is to take the static 2d world of say myspace.com and represent all the same features as flash objects on a 3 landscape. So say if some is loggin into the map at the Gaian Mind, whereas myspace would just animate its standard "user online" icon, we'd take a similar code and have it "turn on" our porch light on the caricature icon that looks like our place on the map. All objects on the map can be programmed in action script to pop up a new window with even just plain html showing the details of the person, place, or thing, but rather than looking like a stale standard profile page website, you'd be seeing it much like the nintendo game "Ninja Gaiden's" cinematic frame sequences.

-Most of these ideas would be quite simple to code however time is the most scarce resource holding back the project. Any and all support, programming volunteering, advice, etc. is welcomed.

To get a general idea of some of the foundational elements of the system that will be emulated check out this flash game engine, 3d so. cal. map, and already existing similar mapping project by clicking below:

Ecotopia Map Game Models:

Flash game engine base:
www.knifeproductions.com/gem_saver

So Cal caricature 3d map base:
unique media so cal 3d map

Already existing fruit mapping project:
www.fallenfruit.org

Other conscious flash media and game projects for reference:

The Meatrix (flash movie based on the matrix exposing the cruelty of factory farm industry)

Veal: Forget about it (anti-veal messages set to the Godfather)

Steer Madness (animal activist version of Grand Theft Auto)

Please help us add to this list of conscious flash and gaming projects so that eventually we can network and develop projects together. The Gaian Mind would be a perfect place physically gather when possible and more often and conveniently meet through the web and the use of our video projector (dreamweaver breeze service donation would be nice...)

We're currently working hard to pull the pieces together to install our raw/vegan/living foods cafe. We hope to be up and running this summer. This project is in critical need of support since it's the most expensive and labor intensive to even get started.