We are the Garden of Eden
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.
We support you and the garden your growing, brother! Yes, and let's remember your momentous appearance in the Wild Family film:
Yes this is one of my favorite videos ever! Thanks for posting!
A powerful video indeed! Thanks for the support!
I love this entire concept. Being able to live in community with other like minded people, all who are striving towards the same goal ( self expansion, sustainability, and raising their consciousness and vibration) is truly what this life is about. Connection. Not only with each other but with nature. Communicating. Deeply breathing in fresh prana. I am honored to have allowed the adventure of living at the Garden of Eden into my reality.
YESSSSSSS!
Grateful to be here with you~
There truly is infinite potential if we are willing to receive the blessing!
I believe sustainable community is the wave of the future. Life as we know it in the "matrix" is not sustainable as people are killing themselves just to survive. People are responsible for getting all their needs met all by themselves, and most everyone is struggling just to get by. Living sustainably and in community makes life so much easier as we can do it all together and thrive instead of just survive. The Garden of Eden exists for this purpose--we know it's possible because it already exists. Perhaps Steemit will be a big part of this change, bringing people together, sharing ideas, exploring new concepts, changing the monetary systems...showing evolutionary/revolutionary possibilities. It is a whole new world--if WE choose it to be so. I am so grateful to be a part of the change.
It's an exciting time to be alive! May all beings everywhere awaken to their TRUE potential to unfold a great new era of humanity! Steemit definitely holds potential to be REVOLUTIONARY: https://steemit.com/revolution/@quinneaker/why-steemit-is-so-important-and-even-revolutionary
Thank you all for sharing Steemit! This is exciting! Feels good here!
Wow this is impressive! Thank you for introducing me to this concept. I wish I could experience the community myself. Unfortunately, I don't live in the USA. Do you know of communities that follow Quinn's vision in the Netherlands?
Not yet @chhaylin, but we have intentions to expand worldwide!
A quick google search for sustainable communities in the Netherlands brought up this: http://www.sciencealert.com/this-dutch-town-will-grow-its-own-food-live-off-grid-and-handle-its-own-waste
which sounds cool, but I'm willing to bet there's a decent monetary investment required of potential inhabitants (and therefore there are likely some rules of engagement).
One of the most amazing things about Quinn's vision embodied in the Garden of Eden is how freely he provides EVERYTHING--no one is expected or even requested to contribute in any way whatsoever. Instead, his vortex of abundance is so generous, overflowing, and inspiring that our inhabitants & supporters are moved of their own free will to contribute their unique skills, talents, and resources in service to the greater good. And when we all come together in that sweet, inspired vibe, miracles happen. It's a blessing to be part of this!
I hope you get to visit one day and experience it for yourself!
Awesome introduction! It sounds like you are all doing some amazing things. Also, illegal to feed the homeless... what will they think of next?
Outlawing rain water harvesting or raw milk or natural, safe, gentle, effective plant medicine that cures everything
Believe it or not, there are also fines for things like improperly stacked firewood and improper use of an extension cord that governments enforce by sending men with guns into private homes. It's a sick society, but yes we are doing amazing things every single day because that pathetic standard is not good enough for us!
Steem ahead!
Full on!
Love thy neighbor as thyself: Do not to others what thou wouldn't not wish be done to thyself: Forgive injuries. Forgive thy enemy, be reconciled to him, give him assistance, invoke God in his behalf.
Bless it be~*~
We are certainly guided by the Golden Rule
Thanks for the post!!
Thanks for the support!
You're welcome!
I really like the idea of created sustainability. Not necessarily into the concept of being entirely self sufficient, but the idea of local sustainability at a community level appeals to me :)
Self-sufficiency is true sustainability!
And less capable than community sufficiency. No one person can possibly become competent in the same amount of skills and tasks that the population of a city, or a town, or a small village could. Nothing wrong with self sufficiency, as long as you're willing to sacrifice the skills of, say, heart surgeons and electronic engineers. Not the life for me, I'm afraid :P
Sustainability has many stages, many levels to it....You can look at sustainability in the choices you make as far as the time of showers or amount of stuff you throw away VS recycling. Though really thats not sustainability at all its simply LESS WASTE.
You can look at sustainability on an individual level, a community, city, state, nation. world and on. Obviously it is more efficient to have specialist working together so that whatever is being done is being done by the "best" but its still possible to have "specialist" who are part of a sustainable whole!
Steemit is actually a perfect example of a "sustainable" community in the sense that everyone is different yet we are all participating in the same thing in our individual way. We are all benefiting each other. Because the matter of fact is the MORE people participate regardless of if everyone agrees the community as a whole becomes richer.
Now if you take that to another level (like we have achieved in The Garden of Eden) we have a group of people who live for a common purpose and have common agreements AND we have specialists. So this small model we have mastered can be expounded to any scale. Its possible to have a city built upon community where every person has their own home, their own vehicle and makes their own money as long as the ENTIRE system/city operates on a sustainable infrastructure. Though for that to happen you would have to have basically EVERYTHING about how a city operates CHANGE.
Would you rather be a lonely genius, or a sociable idiot?
Lonely genius