The Sustainability of Freedom

Seeing as how the tag line to this project is “Creating a Sustainable Existence”, I wanted to share a little about the idea of sustainability and what it means to me.

[quote style=”boxed”]So long as we require inputs that we are unable to create ourselves, how can we ever call ourselves “free”?[/quote]

When I talk about the “basic inputs”, I am simply speaking of food, shelter, and water.  Anything above this is, on some level, a luxury as it it not mandatory to our survival.

The notion here is one of freedom of choice, not of opting out from the world.  The vast majority of us rely on inputs from outside our immediate community.  If you chose to stop working, how long would you be able to survive before you couldn’t afford food, before your landlord evicted you, or before the bank foreclosed on your home?  Based on this, you you have an imperative to earn an income in order to survive.

Now imagine that you lived in a situation where there was no rent or mortgage to pay, a freshwater stream flowed through you backyard year round, and you had a large garden and some chickens, more than capable of providing all the sustenance required.  Now that you as in individual, family, or collective are able to provide for your basic needs, you have the freedom to choose how you want to engage with the larger economy and provide for those luxuries you wish to enjoy.

The idea behind buildthefarm is to create a community and eco-village to live these principles and to teach others that it isn’t hard to create true freedom by releasing yourself from dependence upon the global economy for your own basic survival.