Global Villages

Pattern number within this pattern set: 
890
Franz Nahrada
GIVE-Global Villages Lab
Problem: 

Villages have a somehow bad connotation today. They are often synonymous with the feeling of backwardedness, ignorance, and mental stuffyness. They are often identified with agriclture as exclusive occupation. Villages are rarely the originators of new ideas or a centers of innovation, in contrast, they often resist the establishment of new patterns and procedures. In the last centuries up to today, persisting migration from rural areas occurred because villages could not secure an income for their inhabitants. It seems that only the cities could offer to the human being the freedom to lead a life according to one's demands and visions. This lead to a great imbalance between urban and rural living with grave consequences on our lives, ecological, psychological, economical. We are loosing a lot. In villages we can often find an intact eco-system, an aesthetic landscape, and a healthy environment. At least in some cultures, villages are probably the closest approximation of harmony between nature and humans.

Context: 

The globalization of business triggers competition of an unseen scale. Thus, "rivaling with everybody everywhere" automatically implies that only the best succeed and the rest fails. And cities are much better suited for this economic competition. This competition is requiring absurd amounts of energy while delivering lesser and lesser benefits. What once was a promising opportunity, to export goods and take part in global exchange, has nowadays become a nightmarish constraint which devoures the attention and the resources of nations. Global capital has become increasingly demanding on infrastructure, qualification and costs of production, so the financial resources for "unproductive" activities like health care, social work and services, culture, but also and mainly the protection and maintainance of our cultural landscapes and historical heritage are in jeopardy.

Discussion: 

The effects of the unsustainable global patterns of production- consumption triggered by the competition-growth-speed imperative even threat the planetary climate system and still produce an enormous overpopulations of "paupers" in the less favored areas of our cities. A double crisis meets the ignorance of politicians who have no choice but ignore and belittle the results of what they are enacting.

Consequently, the less lucky have only one chance to survive, if they learn to use local resources to * actively disjoin * their workplace from global competition and rather build up local cycles of efficient mutual cooperation in a self-organized way. What strengthens them is the fact that there is not only a vast movement of likeminded on the horizon, but also completely new tools like the internet and decentralized automation so knowledge can be shared and put into action and effect.

Solution: 

Global Villages are at the centerpoint of a sustainable alternative to subduing all life to competitiveness, as they allow people in a location with available natural resopurces to base their life mainly on technologically supported sustainable cycles of matter and energy - and become more autonomous and independent. "Global Villages" are opposed to "globalized villages"!!

Pattern status: 
Released