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Wilderness and Culture Class

Week 4 (14)– Week of March 28
Thriving,
8 Most Important Things to
Mankind on Earth,
and
10 Most Vital Community Skills

Monthly Unit:Wilderness Survival
Weekly Topic: Thriving,
8 Most Important Things to Mankind on Earth,
and 10 Vital Basic Skills, the Community Arts

Homework Title:Surviving vs. Thriving,
8 Most Important Things to Mankind on Earth,
and 10 Vital Basic Community Skills

Surviving vs. Living and Thriving

Surviving is just having stuff (shelter, water, fire, food, clothes, supplies, tools, art, etc.).
Thriving is not only having stuff, but also using, getting, and making stuff in ways that consider, support, sustain, and enrich the
7 most important things to mankind on earth:
1. morals, 2. oneself, 3. nature,
4. people, 5. community,
6. community landscape, 7. moral culture.
Without the 7 most important things to mankind on earth, people are just surviving, not thriving. Moreover, those 7 things plus having stuff (supplies), help people to be safe, healthy, wise, peaceful, etc., and to have joy and fun in life. Without the 7 most important things to mankind on earth, there is less safety, health, wisdom, peace, stuff, fun, and joy. Furthermore, supporting those 7 things helps to diminish or overcome many global and local problems: greedy culture, poverty, hunger, homelessness, illness, pollution, violence and war, etc.   

Sometimes (such as during rare emergencies), all we can manage is just to get stuff, (just to survive), in the short-run. But in the long-run, throughout most of our lifetime, it’s not good enough just to have stuff. It’s not sustainable just to have stuff. To be good, moral, ethical, responsible, sustainable, and have optimum health, we need to usually get stuff in ways that help the 7 most important things to mankind on earth. The most important thing to mankind is to have morals, including to love and help our neighbors, which includes being aware of, sustaining, and enriching the local community and beyond.

8 MOST IMPORTANT THINGS
TO MANKIND ON EARTH

1. morals – Learn about holistic goodness and community-good. Take holistic good actions that help many people and nature. Not only be polite and nice to other people, not only pick up people when they occasionally fall, but also be a daily hero to daily live, learn, work, play, rest, socialize, do science, do art, produce, and consume in ways that sustain and enrich morals, oneself, nature, people, communities, community self-sufficiency, community cooperation, community landscapes, sustainable interrelationships between people and nature within community landscapes, moral cultures, wildernesses, nature, wildlife, and the land. Be responsible and ethical. Enrich the world and communities. The most important thing to mankind is to have morals, including to love and help our neighbors, which includes being aware of, sustaining, and enriching the local community and beyond.

2. oneself, one’s unselfish self – Become self-sufficient, not to live alone, but to be skilled enough to help your family, local community, and beyond. Use your actions and talents to simultaneously help both local nature and local society. Daily live, learn, and work in ways that sustain and enrich both nature and communities. Use, get, and make stuff in ways that take good care of communities of people and nature. Think for yourself, do not be swayed by others or greedy cultures to be greedy and negligent towards the local community. Do not have a selfish (hyper-materialistic) interest in yourself for fame, fortune, high-technology, and shopping for stuff just to have stuff. Pay attention to how your actions and stuff affect people, nature, & communities.

3. local nature – Learn about local nature, because society is based on nature – for water, air, fertile soil, etc. Play outdoors. Learn about local plants, animals, habitats, geography, phenology, etc. Develop sustainable and deep interrelationships with nature within your local community landscape.

4. local people – Be aware that nature and society are interconnected and affect each other. Develop loving, helping, and deep relationships with family, friends, and community people. Engage and play with family & friends. Learn local history & world history. Develop future plans for community.

the local community and its:

5. functional community self-sufficiency and cooperation – Functional communities require both self-sufficiency and cooperation. Community people need to cooperate together to help the community to be locally-self-sufficient. Help the local community build its own buildings, get its own water, generate its own energy, grow its own food, clean itself, manage its own waste, make its own clothes, run its own schools, start its own local small businesses, have its own local sustainable moral culture, steward its own community landscape, and support its own local wildlife and people, etc. To “think global” / to “help the world,” communities need to be local (get local stuff and supplies, be locally-self-sufficient, economically independent, helpful, skillful), and not unskilled, desperate, and helplessly dependent on distant communities, nations, and corporations. Each community needs to be self-sufficient (use its own land), not to live in isolation, but to be motivated to take care of its own land and people, and to not be a burden to the world, and to not harm (take from) lands of other communities. Of course, people can still travel and communities can occasionally exchange things to help each other out, but sustainable communities are largely self-sustaining: responsible for taking care of their own lands, people, supplies, and needs.

6. community-landscape – Help to take care of all people and natural features and creatures within a 5 to 1-mile diameter area of the community landscape; be aware of, sustain, and enrich all properties: private and public: urban, rural, wild, residential, commercial, municipal, parks, etc.

7. moral-community-landscape culture, “community culture” – Help to establish, sustain, enrich, and protect a moral culture that educates people to cooperate together as a self-sufficient community to sustainably, ecologically, and economically take care the community landscape. A sustainable community culture includes sustainable education and local sustainable jobs.

8. stuff (necessities) – shelter, water, fire, food, clothes, tools and technology (low-tech and high-tech), art, energy, supplies, jobs, especially jobs and educations that have people take care of the 7 most important things to mankind as well as safety, health, peace, deep joys and fun, etc.

9. stuff (other) – toys, luxuries, extravagant comforts and conveniences, modern education degrees and diplomas, entertainment, shallow fleeting joys and fun, etc.

Of course, people should be educated. But people need a sustainable community education more so than getting just any modern education degree and diploma. It's not good enough for people to learn only academics. It's not good enough just to read, write, do math and science and art, learn modern history, use computers, and specialize in a college major. Academics alone only keeps people just surviving, just having stuff, and getting stuff in unsustainable ways that neglect and or harm communities, people, and nature. In order to thrive and to help their community, students need to learn and do the 10 Most Vital Basic Skills (sustainable skills, holistic skills) to help to sustain and enrich the 7 most important things to mankind. Students need a sustainable education to learn sustainable skills to help the community economy and landscape, and to do the skills too. Reading about housing, water, food, etc. is a good start, but students also need to do the skills too, to make these things for themselves and the community. A sustainable education (holistic education) is practical, wise, connected, caring, and takes real action in the community. Students don't just stay isolated inside a school building. A sustainable education includes that students read and write about and do the following 10 Most Vital Basic Skills. A sustainable education includes that students do math and science and art to help their community such as by doing the following 10 Most Vital Basic Skills. A sustainable education includes that students learn how to live self-sufficiently, plus "social studies classes" and other classes get students to actively cooperate within their community to do the following 10 Most Vital Basic Skills, and more.

10 MOST VITAL BASIC SKILLS,
the COMMUNITY ARTS:
Sustainable Skills,
Vital Basic Personal Skills, and
Vital Basic Community Skills:
1. morals, 2. shelter, 3. water, 4. fire,
5. food, 6. cleaning, 7. moral culture,
8. land stewarding, 9. tools, 10. clothes

We learn and practice these 10 community skills to help us to learn more deeply about local nature and the local community. The more we know about nature and communities, the better we can help to sustain and enrich them. We have these skills to be both personally self-sufficient and to cooperate within a community. We learn to be self-sufficient, not to live alone, but to be skilled enough to help people and communities. Moreover, we do these skills in order to participate in functional community cooperation. The 10 vital basic community skills help people to not only survive, but also thrive. The 10 vital basic community skills help people to thrive: to not only have stuff, but also to use, get, and make stuff in ways that support, sustain, and enrich the 8 most important things to mankind on earth: morals, oneself, local nature, local people, community, community landscape, moral-community-landscape cultures, and having stuff (shelter, water, fire, food, clothes, supplies, tools, art, etc.).

The proper way for students to begin to learn about the vital basic skills is by learning the simplest low-tech ways to do them by hand for themselves. Later, students may learn increasingly more complex and high-tech ways to do them. Likewise, in typical modern schools, students begin to learn math by figuring out how to add, substract, multiply, and divide numbers for themselves. Later, students are given computers to calculate numbers for them.

In recent modern times, “self-sufficient homesteading,” “local food,” being “local,” and using "low-tech tools” are regaining popularity. It’s not to become stupid iron-age or stone-age people of the past (if they were ever stupid), but it’s to be wise and usefully-skilled people in general, no matter what technology we use. To lose our skills and connection to local water, food, clothes, shelter, tools, and the nature of the community landscape, makes us dumb and disconnected. Today, although the electronic “world wide web,” many modern people feel increasingly lonely, isolated, and helpless. To be connected to the world, we have to stick our hands and feet into the local mud (literally, and figuratively). Henry David Thoreau lived self-reliantly at Walden Pond, in Massachusetts, for 2 years; yet, many people consider him to be wise. Being locally-self-sufficient helps a person to be wise, caring, skillful, helpful, and connected, and not ignorant, negligent, helpless, and isolated.

In modern times, being self-sufficient includes reading and writing. Read and write about how to sustain and enrich communities, people, and nature. Henry David Thoreau read many books, and he wrote about how he lived self-sufficiently at Walden Pond.

1. morals – The mental preparation. Be calm, quiet, humble, patient, and loving. Be responsible and ethical. Be aware, have moral courage, be loving and helpful, healing and creative. Enrich the world and communities. Do not panic, be unaware, ignorant, fearful, hateful, angry, greedy, impatient, arrogant, noisy, and destructive. Learn about holistic goodness and community-good. Take holistic good actions that help many people and nature. Not only be polite and nice to other people, not only pick up people when they occasionally fall, but also be a daily hero to daily live, learn, work, play, rest, socialize, do science, do art, produce, consume, and get stuff in ways that sustain and enrich morals, oneself, nature, people, communities, community self-sufficiency, community cooperation, community landscapes, sustainable interrelationships between people and nature within community landscapes, moral cultures, wildernesses, nature, wildlife, and the land.      

2. shelter – Start with the basics: practice building a “stone age” debris hut, handmake a debris hut from scratch from local nature. Also, you may help to maintain your current modern house.

3. water – Be able to get water from a local surface water source (stream, river, lake, etc.), filter it and boil it.

4. fire – Learn to get firewood from your local land and community in sustainable ways. Learn to make a fire.

5. food – Learn to gather and grow local food in sustainable ways. Learn about edible native wild plants.

6. cleaning, sanitation, waste disposal, recycling, composting – Learn to sustainably and locally manage your own waste, and how to keep your house clean and your community clean.

7. culture of moral community values,
a.k.a. “community culture,” "moral culture,”
“landscape culture,” “sustainable culture,”
moral-community-landscape culture – Help to establish, sustain, enrich, and protect a moral culture that educates people to cooperate together as a self-sufficient community to sustainably, ecologically, and economically take care the community landscape.

8. land stewardship – Help to take care of all people and natural features and creatures within a 5 to 1-mile diameter area of the community landscape; be aware of, sustain, and enrich all properties: private and public: urban, rural, wild, residential, commercial, municipal, parks, etc.

9. tools – Start with the basic “stone age” tools of plant fiber, wood, clay, bone, and stone. Handmake tools from scratch from local nature. Also, you may learn “iron age” iron tools, followed by learning how to make modern electronic technologies.

10. clothes – Start with the basic “stone age” deerskin clothes. Handmake clothes from scratch from local nature. Also, you may learn how to make “iron age” wool, cotton, and silk clothing, followed by learning how to make modern clothing.

Quiz Four (quiz 14)

1. To only have stuff (shelter, water, fire, food, clothes, supplies, tools, art, etc.) is ...
a.) to have the all the most important things
b.) good enough, moral, and sustainable
c.) to be thriving
d.) to just be surviving

2. The most imporant thing to have is ...
a.) morals
b.) people
c.) fame and fortune
d.) stuff

3. Thriving is to ...
a.) just have stuff (shelter, water, fire, food, clothes, etc.)
b.) have lots of money, luxuries, and high-technology
c.) not only have stuff, but also to use, get, and make stuff in ways that consider, support, sustain, and enrich the 7 most important things to mankind on earth: morals, oneself, local nature, local people, community, community landscape, and moral-community-landscape cultures.

4. What are not some of the 10 most vital basic skills that support the 8 most important things to mankind on earth?
a.) establishing, sustaining, and enriching morals
b.) making shelter, water, fire, food
c.) cleaning, recycling, composting, keeping the waste local
d.) shopping for luxuries and relying mostly on high-technology
e.) establishing, sustaining, and enriching moral-community-landscape cultures
f.) taking care of the community landscape
g.) making tools and clothes