Greetings, Steemit!
We know a thing or two about being a revolutionary community, so we are really excited to join this ground-breaking platform! We have spent years creating a new paradigm for existence, raising the standards, and leading by example, and we have a wealth of info and experience to share with Steemit users on these and numerous other topics. We know firsthand that a better world is possible--it really is possible!--because we are dedicated to living SOLUTIONS every single day, and it’s thrilling to witness a collective forming online with elevated ideals for life. We’re impressed with the keen intellects and profound insights circulating around here and look forward to mutually beneficial exchanges in our future!
Here’s more about who we are and what we do:
We are an urban eco-village on 3.5 acres in the belly of the beast--Arlington, Texas. We demonstrate the massive impact a small group of people can have when coming together with common purpose, and our accomplishments despite the challenges we’ve faced speak for themselves.
We fed 40,000 FREE meals; saved 350,000 pounds of waste from the landfill just last year; we have a negative zero carbon footprint (which means we create way more than we consume and save way more than we trash); use composting toilets; grow food; empower children; cook year-round on outdoor, wood-burning rocket stoves we built by hand from earth; reduce/reuse/recycle; shower from our well; raise chickens; and barter and trade for most of the goods and services we require and do not shop at stores.
Our 15 inhabitants (AKA Eden Knights) do not work for anyone. Instead, we dedicate ourselves to embodying our ideals. We consciously choose the “jobs” we want to perform, recognizing that everybody wins when bliss aligns with service. It’s beautiful that some of us can work in the garden all day while someone offers tech support while someone else builds sustainable housing, and at the end of the day another person has prepared a gorgeous, high-vibe meal for us all to share!
It isn’t always easy. We’re met with opposition and resistance almost more often than receiving the support we deserve. For example, did you know it’s actually illegal to feed the homeless without hundreds of dollars of permits, licenses and other daunting barriers in Dallas, Texas? We do it anyway, because it’s immoral to obey unjust laws.
And in August 2013, the government executed a $350,000 Black Ops SWAT raid on our property, breaking down our locked gate, pointing machine guns at our naked babies, and holding our people hostage at gun point for 10 hours--all under the guise of a bogus and completely false warrant that accused the Garden of Eden of being a highly armed drug trafficking cartel. After hours of terrorizing our people, destroying our crops, and stealing our sustainable salvaged building materials, they of course found nothing to justify their illegitimate claims. (They have yet to make amends for this blatant and extreme dishonorable violation. A lawsuit is pending.)
Perhaps because of these challenges, we are stronger and more dedicated than ever! After the atrocious raid, the Garden of Eden received worldwide attention and media coverage in hundreds of articles. Our founder, Quinn Eaker (@quinneaker), was interviewed on The Ron Paul Show, The Huffington Post, Alex Jones' Infowars, and appeared on numerous local & national TV shows, radio shows, and the cover of the Dallas Observer and Fort Worth Weekly.
We appreciate the outpouring of support and remain undeterred from our purpose: we share a living example of a thriving Sustainable Community. We feed, clothe, house, and educate people every single day. We create a healthier and more sustainable world for ALL.
The GoE exists as a showcase to demonstrate just how easy, abundant, enjoyable, and sustainable life CAN be!
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!
THERE’S MORE THAN ENOUGH OF EVERYTHING!
The 4 Key Elements of Life Showcased at the GoE:
1. Food Production
Food is essential for life, and the only way to be truly secure and self-existing is to have secure and reliable food resources. We grow fruits, veggies, and herbs in our football-field sized garden, and much of our small 3.5 acre property is dedicated to cultivating native, wild-crafted edible and medicinal plants that require little to no maintenance. We also raise chickens, bunnies, and goats that not only provide us food, but they consume unwanted bugs and weeds!
2. Ethical Merchantry
Today’s money-centered, consumer culture can make it difficult to see just how easy and abundant life really is. At the GoE, we prove that it is easy to make a living by providing and sourcing essentials for yourself as well as trading services and goods. We are not a business (we are a non-profit organization and a private club), nor do we sell items in a commercial capacity. We simply trade valuable services and resources of great health and beauty. Because it is easy and convenient for many, they simply donate money as the contributory trade, while others trade their own goods or services. What is important is that a valuable exchange is taking place directly between all parties involved, and we honor this transaction. We are 100% dedicated to PROCEEDS NOT PROFITS; everything we offer is by donation to our humanitarian works and social outreach. ALL of our resources are devoted to our cause. We do not participate in ANY systems of taxation (#taxationistheft!), because that supports the global military-industrial complex and furthers the interest of the global elite slave masters.
3. Sustainable Homes
Quinn (@quinneaker) is a master of alchemizing trash to treasure (or “shit to gold”, as we say). His resourcefulness extends to the spectrum of sustainable housing options represented at the GoE, from a geodesic dome, to tents and trailers, to pallet structures for our animals, to a cob cottage, to a buried underground Surburban home lovingly dubbed the “Earth Womb”.
4. Living in Community
We're unwaveringly focused on our values of sustainability, honesty, integrity, honor, responsibility, accountability, freedom, and family. The shared importance of these core aspects of being allows us to live as a unit, participating as individuals, yet working with parallel purpose and mutually beneficial inspiration.
The Garden of Eden is the first established model of Quinn's vision of thriving eco-villages that we plan to expand throughout the world, providing sustainable solutions for food production, housing, commerce, and community to many joyful and grateful people.
Here, we are creating an evolving model for sustainable, responsible, enjoyable living that encompasses all the necessities of life, and many of the niceties too!
Based on this model, the Garden of Eden can be recreated and adapted for the many different environments and cultures that exist all around the world.
The widespread and global rise of sustainable eco-villages has the potential to usher in an entirely New Paradigm of living, where humans are THRIVING in harmony with nature and one another.
Yet this reality shall exist only when we as INDIVIDUALS, en masse, are ready and willing to take full responsibility for aligning with such a reality at the depths of our very being.
That means truly loving ourselves, truly loving our planet, and truly loving one another.
From that place of true love, all decisions made will be made for the benefit of all.
THE REVOLUTION BEGINS WITHIN.