We know that humanity is facing several enormous crises. The temperature of the Earth continues to rise, and floods, droughts, wildfires, storms, and tornadoes are all getting more frequent and more intense.

Separately, but combining with that crisis, the growth and spread of human population and agriculture is causing habitats and biodiversity to shrink, while more and more species are going extinct.

Along with these environmental crises, trends in our economic structure are creating growing economic inequality, worsening mental health, and worsening physical health.

The combination of this economic structure with environmental crises and resource scarcity is producing a trend toward more warfare and authoritarianism around the globe.

All of these major crises appear to be coming to a head in the 21st century, and as a society we seem to be making only minor efforts to reverse these trends or avoid these crises.

Is there something an individual can do that would have any impact on this situation? Certainly the suggestions offered seem totally out of line with the problems. Separating trash and using reusable grocery bags seems woefully insufficient. Is there more one can do?

The Conventional Suggestions

The suggestions that are offered to us fit into three broad categories: activism, behavior modification, and opting out.

Activism

One core limitation of activism as it is presented today is that most of it focuses on global warming from carbon emissions. This narrows the debate down to one dimension that does not at all express all of the other massive problems listed above. (It also ignores the major impacts of methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases on warming.)

Protesting

One can join in to protests. There is nothing particularly wrong with this strategy, unless you spend a lot of resources to get to that protest. It is safe to assume that flying to any protest is on the balance more destructive to the environment than just staying home.

The intention of a protest is to get governments and corporations to change their behavior. However, corporations have always been built on the principle of extracting resources and exploiting humans in order to maximize profits. Asking a corporation to do the opposite is asking them to go against their core nature; and if they do, their competitors will overtake them.

And so protests usually focus on governments, asking them to control the corporations. Even though it is obvious from all of modern history that governments act at the whim of corporations. As corporations have grown in scale over the past century, they have leveraged their wealth to continually increase their hold on governments.

As a dramatic example, in United States federal elections, business interests now outspend all other special interests by a margin of 7-to-1, pouring billions of dollars into selected races to ensure that their interests are protected.

Protesting to these politicians amounts to begging them to act against their interests. And, as evidenced by history, they do not. The most they will do is very occasionally pass some “major legislation” that curtails some substantial harms to human health or employment, and incidentally also is somewhat beneficial to the environment in some specific ways.

But those politicians and corporations are simply incapable of fixing all the problems. They have a duty to keep the economy going: to keep people employed, prices low, transportation accessible, and housing and food available. They are locked in to perpetuating the economy, and these crises emerge out of the structure of the economy.

No amount of protesting is going to get a government to completely change its economy; as they are incapable of doing so. It may be helpful to protest, but it will not get us out of this.

Talking About It

Another action anyone can take is to talk about the situation(s) to others at every opportunity.

This action certainly can be helpful in raising awareness, though it is criticism without offering a solution. Telling people that there is a problem and then not offering them a solution just depresses them and makes them want to ignore the problem. As a result, they are also likely to look at you as “a downer” and start distancing from you.

If you go ahead and talk about all the many different crises listed above, it just becomes more depressing and demotivating to most audiences. People often become fatalistic, and think they might as well enjoy the full extravagance of this economy while it lasts.

Behavior Modification

Even though the corporations and politicians are not going to change their behaviors, we can still change ours. The corporations get their money and labor from us, and individual action here directly affects that power. So as not to make this section enormous, here is a very brief overview of behaviors one theoretically can change:

• Reduce/stop meat consumption. Meat animals consume far more land than plant-based crops; plus they produce significant amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
• Reduce/stop reliance on cars. Automobiles are a prime source of emissions, and the lifestyle they promote isolates people from each other and encourages urban sprawl.
• Stop conspicuous consumption. A growing trend, especially in social media culture, is extravagance for the sake of extravagance; leading to heavy and completely unnecessary use of resources.
• Change household practices. Here is where a lot of historical effort has been placed, on things like recycling and using less-disposable items. For most people, there are many more practices that can also be adopted to reduce their overall footprint.
• Change shopping practices. In order of preference, when shopping for anything: try to avoid buying the product in the first place; look for less impactful and/or less disposable products; buy it from a local small business; buy it direct from the manufacturer; avoid buying from any major corporation; avoid buying from behemoths like Amazon or Walmart.

All of these practices are worth adopting… however, all of them have potentially significant impacts on one’s ability to participate in the culture and/or they create hardships on the individual. One should do as much of these practices as one can, under the principle of being the change one wants to see in the world.

Changing consumer behavior directly decreases your impact on the environment; though the impact is tiny, and the impact on your own life can be significant. But doing as much of it as you reasonably can does set an example for others. There is some benefit here in terms of network effect; though overall it is quite small in comparison to the gigantic crises we face.

Opting Out

The third type of strategy often offered is to opt out of the mainstream economy. This removes one’s participation in the economy, and is the most direct and thorough way to reduce one’s overall impact.

Opting out also provides some refuge from the effects of the many crises facing us today. Under many adverse conditions, such as natural disasters or economic disruptions, it would be much safer to be self-sufficient in nature rather than trapped in a city.

Opting out to remove impact from the economy takes two basic forms: homesteading and ecovillages.

Homesteading

The most direct path to opting out is to move out to a rural area and live a subsistence life off the land. This strategy has numerous drawbacks.

First, it is simply impossible or deeply impractical for many people. It requires having or being able to afford the land to stay on, and then having the skills, physical health, and stamina to be able to maintain a farm.

Also, one would want to implement a permaculture design for that land, so as not to have a negative impact through conventional farming practices. Permaculture designs often take several years to achieve a productive balance, even in the best of circumstances. So one would need the financial resources to survive until then.

Additionally, homesteading is deeply isolating. By retreating to a rural area and exiting the mainstream economy, one is left alone or with a small family unit. There is no social connection and “nothing to do” except be on that land. This is not how humans were ever meant to live, and we suffer when isolated.

Apart from removing your own impact from the economy; homesteading does very little beyond that. The isolation doesn’t even allow you set much of an example for others. Also, this strategy simply cannot be replicated by everyone, as there is not enough land for this kind of dispersed living.

Join an Ecovillage

Ecovillages address several of the shortcomings of homesteading. Larger ecovillages are less isolating and they use land and labor much more efficiently, making the lifestyle much less burdensome.

Currently most ecovillages, especially in the US, still require direct participation in and dependence on the mainstream economy. In many cases, they are simply “green villages” where the homes are built using somewhat more natural techniques and the neighbors join in intentional community. But in those setups, most people still have jobs in the outside economy, which they rely on for even basics like much of their food.

Some ecovillages focus on internal self-reliance and try to produce all the food they need. Often they have their own village industries that sell to the outside economy. This industry provides employment for village members and access to external goods and services. As long as the outside economy is running, members can benefit from it, and yet also they can survive if/when that larger economy fails.

However, in that setup, those village industries typically provide relatively little income to the village. They either produce products such as hammocks that do not sell for significant value, or they sell services that not many people seem to want to pay for (like permaculture classes). Most ecovillages pursuing these strategies have not been successful in the long run; and have converted into the “green village” model of just being a place to live while one works a regular job.

And while they seem superior to homesteading, ecovillages still present logistical hurdles: one usually must have sufficient financial resources to be able to join.

It often also means relocating to a place where one is partially cut off from the rest of society. And regardless, it does not do a great deal in terms of network effect; being only an example of how a privileged person can protect themselves and reduce their individual impact.

The Integration Center Model

The Integration Center model is a way of addressing all of the shortcomings discussed above.

Integration Centers employ the village-industry model of ecovillage, but with a service that is high value and in high demand. Attending a retreat at an Integration Center offers psychological healing, deep social connections, and a genuine connection to nature… these are things that people currently pay large amounts of money to receive separately and often with less impact than is offered by an Integration Center.

Integration Centers also have several multiplying effects. First, they are offering healing and new perspective to many people in the mainstream culture (over a dozen each week, when fully running); enabling those people to network out into the general economy.

They also invite and draw some of those people into living in the village, removing those individuals’ impacts from the economy as well.

And when they get too large, they have the funds to start another Integration Center, providing an ever-increasing network of healthy villages.

Integration Centers are also less isolating than conventional ecovillages. They are located near population centers, and they regularly draw in people from those cities for retreats and for social gatherings. They are also designed to be large enough to hold a vibrant culture; and the people in that culture are connected to each other by healing together and by working together.

For people with access to financial resources (their own or through connections to potential donors), starting an Integration Center project is very likely the most impactful action they can take to have real, positive impact in not just escaping the current crises, but also helping reverse them.

Integration Center projects that are in progress also provide a route for people with no financial resources to be able to fully participate and to move into the village.

While healing individuals, healing the culture, and healing the environment, Integration Centers provide bridges that enable anyone to walk gently out of the current, sick economy and into a new, healthy world.

Further reading: Integration Center Business Plan
Further reading: Why Integration Centers Heal Individuals, Society, and Nature