Explicit Communication and Communal Arrangements

  Steven Pinker touches upon the uniqueness of human language, and how it can create awkwardness in human relations.  He isolates three human relationship types, all with different unwritten rules.  Dominance which comes with the unwritten "don't mess with me," Communality "share and share alike," and Reciprocity "you scratch my back and I scratch yours."  All of these relationship types arise in community settings, and explicit communication styles help to mitigate the unwritten element.  

  Human relationships are difficult to tread through and in our individualistic society, are probably the biggest hurdle to tackle in living together/ working together.  Explicit arrangements, clarity in expectations, written agreements, all help alleviate any uncertainty from entering community relationships.

Many community's, like Twin Oaks in Virginia,(who run two different $1 million plus a year revenue companies on site)  use an approach of talking out all sides of an issue before voting on it.  By laying everything out on the table, all members have the opportunity to feel 'heard,' and even if the motion goes forward without 100 percent consensus, thorough communication is still executed.  Their long term time horizon as an organization is to make all members of the community comfortable and feel 'heard', all while also creating profit.

Arc 44 will be very communicative to our audience as to what our procedure and protocol are for decision making and dealing with conflict.  We will lay the groundwork for others to learn from, just as we are learning from 'best practices' in existing communities.  

Richard Branson (in the tune of Mr. Sandman)

We are crowdsourcing the lyrics to our first Arc 44 video.  Give feedback [email protected]

Bung, bung, bung, bung, bung Bung, bung, bung, bung, bung Bung, bung, bung, bung, bung Bung, bung, bung, bung, bung Bung, bung, bung, bung, bung

  Richard Branson, Lend me your ear

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

There are solutions the we can repair

 (Bung, bung, bung, bung)

We’ve got a project that you may endow

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

It adds solutions with an innovation wow

  Mr Branson we bring you a dream

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

To make a world with real efficiency stream

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

You’re a businessman that we can endear

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

With you around us there is little to fear

  Mr Branson We love your Brain

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

 Your reputation is without a stain

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

You see broken systems and clear them at once

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

We want a mentor with your Potence

  Mr Branson our project involves TV

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

 Because consumer change is very tricky

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

Creating businesses that make abundance

(Bung, bung, bung, bung)

What is intriguing about a community business incubator as a docudrama?

I hear this question from my network frequently, especially those in television.  TV is full of very unique programming options, some that educate, many that do not.  Arc 44 seeks to educate and entertain, all while tipping the scale on what is our 'collective story.'  Arc 44 is a synthesis of "the Real World" and "TED Talks."  Other members have described the project as "TED Actions." We put theory to practice.  We build systems.  We pave the way.

The 'story' most middle and upper middle class Americans have for themselves is, go to college, get a job, settle down and get married.  Many individual, insular households then turn to consuming as a way to show that they have 'made it.'  Whether that consumption actually benefited the family, or humanity as a whole is not really scrutinized.  Arc 44 creates an environment where one's consumption level does not define one's success.    To reframe, success in our community could mean that a person has a lot of money, it could mean happiness, it could mean the most projects completed, what it will not mean is most material trinkets purchased.

Arc 44 is a peitri dish; it is the combination of scientific exploration, community engagement, and business acumen.  The project is big, and requires big thinkers to be a part of it.  More than just big thinking though, we need to offer on the ground solutions/ practical systems for living together and creating abundance.  

Arc 44 lives by the thesis of biodiversity in all ecosystems.  Our community is an ecosystem and seeks diversity in age group, skill sets, perspectives, and heterogeneous opinions.  We invest in microenterprises (or very small businesses) because we feel that an economy of microenterprise entrepreneurs is more stable than an economy of mostly global corporations.  Our community is  a low cost of living environment where one can run a business that makes 30 thousand dollars a year (20k less than the average American) but still gives this person an enormous amount of surplus (or abundance) in their life.  By using Earth based construction and in house building labor, we can create a home for people for around $10,000, reducing the one of the largest expenditures a household could deal with.  By growing and producing much of our own food, a person can 'pay' for their basic necessities by offering their time handling duties the community needs done.  This reduces the community's overhead, so we can offer healthy food options to our members in a very cost effective manner.  

Lastly, these are words to describe the potential of a docudrama.  The team at Arc 44 realizes that right now is the time to produce video content about the ideas/ theories/ practical solutions that currently exist today.  We seek to showcase the experts in their respective fields who have paved the way for this type of thinking.  We seek to have fun while marketing our ideas and connecting with the influential mentors we need to be successful. We are students, not Masters, and we plan on entertaining ourselves and you on the way to producing abundance.

Military Builders and Arc 44; a Winning Combination

Military trained builders, like Navy Sea Bees and the Army Corps of Engineers, have a diverse set of building capabilities, from plumbing, electrical work, pouring concrete and they are very familiar with the capabilities of earthen construction.  As the government continues it's campaign of downsizing the military, these men and women are left with a few different options; return to the world they knew before, or help build a better one.

Service men and women have an understanding of living in community that outpaces many other Americans.  Most Americans only know an individualist perspective of existence, and they have difficulty drawing the connection between the benefits and pitfalls of a community setting.  These servicemen and women will add stabilization and discipline to our community as we can learn much from their experience serving our country.  Arc 44 opens up a new avenue for them to continue their service.  

We will be seeking accreditation as an academic organization meaning that former full time service personnel will  be able to continue to collect their GI Bill awards, which can be added to the abundance of those individuals.  We will utilize the builder's expertise as we create our Earthen Homes, and the infrastructure needed for life (energy, electric wiring, plumbing).  We will then create a profit seeking company, with these individuals leading the team, to do other building projects in our immediate area, giving our neighbors needed services while allowing them the chance to support our work.

Lastly, we will have the capacity to be resilient in times of natural disasters.  We will dispatch our teams in a model perfected by Team Rubicon, as needed throughout the community to help build temporary installations; creating community based solutions not reliant on FEMA and other government aid institutions.  This capacity could lead to expanded reach of our community message, and we will challenge our Federal Aid organizations to act equally as transparently and efficiently as we will be capable of doing.  All this will only come after we take care of our own subsistence needs. 

Don Tapcott and Anthony D. Williams book Macrowikinomics has been a major influence on the Arc 44 project.  Below are their 6 rules for reinventing business, and how they relate to our sustainable community/ business incubator.  

  6 Rules for Reinvention of Business

  1) Don't just create- curate a context for people to self organize.  

Arc 44 is made with this in mind.  Creating an incubator for business unleashes self organization principles, so all members of the collective become nourished by the energy and information of each enterprise.  These principles are the backbone of new technology endeavors, and business literature supports their benefits.

2) Return to The Commons

The Commons are what is shared collectively by society.  In this book, Dr. Tapscott writes of companies that unleash innovation by outsourcing their intellectual capital.  In the Arc 44 perspective, the Commons will be physically represented in shared resources in day to day life, and our businesses will be 'bumping up' against our current society's view of what are The Commons.  Our televised format will open up this debate to a larger audience that may not have been aware of it otherwise.

3) Let Go

Business and political leaders need to 'step back' at certain times in a self-organized organization.  This allows for heterogeneous voices to be 'heard,' and is good for crafting a vision in a rapidly changing business environment.   

4) Find and Strengthen the Vanguard

The Vanguard are the tip of the blade, the pathfinders, the wayseers.  The entire Arc 44 community will be full of the vanguard, as those who resonate with such a project are have this unique perspective.  

  5) Create a Culture of Collaboration

Collaboration is not a buzz word, its the opposite of hoarding.  Collaborative businesses and communities understand the exponential return gained from sharing knowledge.  Our society is changing too rapidly not to collaborate.

6) Empower the Net Generation

Jon Connors, MY STORY

  My road is a bit funny.  At the age of 25, I went back to school to obtain a bachelors degree in hospitality management.  I hustled for a bit, tried to open a catering company, and then ended up bartending in high end restaurants in Manhattan.  One of my regulars came in, liked my approach, and recruited me for a stock broker position in the Chrysler Building in Manhattan.

While selling financial products back in '07, my pitch was simple; seven billion people on a planet with limited resources, and mathematical models with the built in assumption of perpetual economic growth= Insane Thinking.  We were buying and selling companies that handled commodities, natural gas organizations, miners, etc, and the office was making money.  When the market began to falter, I went back and got my Master's of Finance in Financial Statement Analysis and Securities Valuation, at City University of NY's business school, Baruch College.  Week one of my degree Lehman Brothers collapsed, and as I was studying my butt off, nowhere could I find the refutation of the thesis, one globe, seven billion people, and flawed mathematical models.  All Cash Flow models have the assumption of growth, so when they are off in valuing individual companies, then market indices (which are just an aggregate of all individual companies) are also off.  Blew my mind.  I landed another sales job after my MS, and had real trouble juggling my macroeconomic outlook while selling products linked to our market paradigm.  Let's just say I sucked at it.  <3

Fast forward, I have been consulting for restaurants, cause an undergrad from Culinary School and an advanced business degree allows for that.  Then Occupy Wall Street happened.  It was wicked funny, dirty kids sleeping downtown.  I was like, 'who the hell are these guys', and the more I showed up, the more I realized they were all talking about micro issues that add up to our severe macro cognitive dissonance.  I still couldn't give credence to the Occupiers, until a binding agent assisted me.  I ended up having that 'aha moment,' where I was thinking, time to go 'all in' in this lifetime.  All the information had been digesting for years internally, I just hadn't the balls to go with it.  Now I do.  

My last year an a half I have been working with many talented souls who see the same falseness of our current paradigm as I, and in that time frame  we have started to see where we can humbly create value with limited resources.  

   Arc 38, a community in Wassaic, NY, where many of us conspirators came together to begin building and stop fighting.  Many of our Occupy brethren came to blow off steam and relax in some beautiful land.  In time some of us really connected, and looked at that experiment and thought of how to expand, making it more palatable to those who do not yet see the value of such a communal way.  We learned best practices in handling community tasks, handling conflict, delegating responsibility, and of the value of a natural hierarchy.  We love Open Source ways of collaboration, and we have a lot of fun.

    I like the televised community format we have created for Arc 44 because if people are watching us, laughing at us, connecting to us emotionally, and also see us living and thriving, then they may want to learn more about us.  They may copy us.  The more Westerners living a limited consumptive life, then rapidly the macro strains on the planet's resources begins to decrease (the 10% richest countries use 70% of the world's resources.)  As a decentralist, I am not waiting on government or NGO's to fix these issues; I am a crazy American who truly believes I can change the world.  Fortunately, I know other crazy Americans who feel the same way.  

Do you want to change the world?  Do you see the the utter falseness  between our resource consumption and the resources left around the world?  Do you want to stop consuming mindlessly?  Then connect with us, and we'll have a blast.