Page 64 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Homeostatopia

sounds odd, but here is how it works: once I get a Nodal Village
prototype finalized—that means developing a small solar array
network for an optimized community—and we are very close to
doing that—I will manufacture and distribute a few dozen to key
trend-setters we have identified around the world. That is at no
charge—free but for one string attached. The power source, being
economical at the scale we have determined—about a hundred
households—will include fabrication materials and instructions for
building more units. The community thus initiated with free energy
will have a contractual debt merely to create and give away ten more
units. That will take them, once they organize into a cohesive Nodal
Village, about one or two years. Then they are free to do what they
will with their wealth and freedom. Growth will be exponential; I’ve
done the math, and most of mankind would be off the grid long
before we reach the tipping points for runaway climate change and
irreversible environmental pollution.”
“That sure sounds simple,” said I, unabashedly admiring Peña’s
peroration. “What happens when the last bunch of villages get their
kit? There won’t be anyone else left in the world to hand it off to:
how will they pay for their own kits?”
“No problem!” Hal got up to fetch another brace of brewskis.
This was thirsty work, solving the planet’s problems. “From the first,
a reserve account will be set up, with a tiny percentage of each
village’s payback going into it; the balance after a few million
transactions will suffice to subsidize the last participants. At that
point all human societies will be in a condition I call ‘homeostatopia.’
You see, all prior attempts at establishing semi-autonomous
intentional communities on a small scale have foundered on their
asymmetry with the rest of the larger political entities in which they
functioned like encapsulated tumors. This time the internal
transformation of the social organism from within will be utterly
benign and clearly not an alien invasion. And in an evolutionary
sense, the old economy will not be able to compete: expansionist
monopolistic market models of energy derived from fossil fuel
extraction are dinosaurs doomed to extinction—nobody argues that!
What we’ve got on the drawing board is self-sustaining, self-

62