What is the LightLiving Laboratory?

The LightLiving Laboratory is the LightLiving Project’s first laboratory-village in which the principles of LightLiving are being defined, tested and demonstrated.  From here it is intended to create a network of LightLiving communities spanning the globe.  They will be the kernels around which future mainstream will form itself.  We are allowing for the fact that the full vision might not come to be until many generations from now!

We need an urgent change in the way we think and behave so that we stop selfishly passing looming problems on to our children and beyond.  In this Laboratory we shall be collating the best ideas from across time and around the globe, and will develop from these models for living lightly on planet Earth.

What is LightLiving?

‘LightLiving’ means living fully aware of how our individual choices and actions impact on both our immediate and global environments. Living lightly requires us to understand the interconnectedness and interdependency of all life, and act accordingly.

What kind of future?

The kind of future we yearn for – that we feel instinctively to be possible.  Where everyone has their basic needs met – somewhere to live, food to eat, access to clean water and good sanitation.  Where we work together for the good of each other, where we take only what we require from the earth, where we share resources.   A future where there is peace, equality, harmony and joy.

Where the concept of work as an activity to earn money with which to buy material goods, or pay for the roof over one’s head, is outdated – rather where work is our pleasure and our passion, the thing we most like to do.  Where unpleasant tasks are shared and become bearable through shared endeavour.  Where we live lightly – our impact on the earth not that of rapists and parasites, but of stewards and guardians.  Where we follow as closely as practicable the laws and lessons of nature, learning how nature does things and how we can apply this to our modern world.

Not returning to tribal tents, but using the finest of our minds to apply the newest technology to the wisest traditions – updating them to fit our times cognisant of the values we still respond most to – community, connection, celebration, co-operation, collaboration.  Living in the way that gives us most joy and freedom as human beings, rather than human doings.

Where we remember who we are and what we are capable of when awake.

Why do we need it?

Everywhere we look we can see that our current models no longer fit.  Economics, education, health, government, defence, food, energy – each area presents its own seemingly insurmountable issues, and none of those issues can be taken in isolation – our world is so intertwined and interdependent that it would be like untangling a huge ball of string.

Narrow interests and interest groups are creating situations that defy understanding, that undermine all human logic.  No longer does government protect us, rather it creates controls that benefit those selfishly in quest of narrow personal goals.

Instead of always trying to unravel the old, of applying band aids here and there, the time has come to create the completely new.  To dare to dream the biggest dream, to create the best world even if now it appears Utopian.  How can we ever have the future we yearn for if we don’t allow ourselves to even envisage it.

The LightLiving Laboratory will not only envisage it, it will start to live and demonstrate it.  Scientists are only just beginning to understand the power of the mind when used consciously and with intention – when a critical mass of human beings start using conscious intention collaboratively, we have no idea what might be possible.  The mounting scientific evidence suggests that almost anything is possible.  The LightLiving Project exists to find out!

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”         

                                                                                         – Richard Buckminster Fuller

You reading these words suggests that you are on planet Earth now!  This means that you are bound to hold some dream, or vision, of what you would like the future to look like and how you would like to see this reflected in our future villages, towns and cities.

Let us know what your ideas and dreams are and we’ll build them into the future if they are aligned with the principles of LightLiving.  That’s a promise!

Please refer to our next section, Participate, to be inspired to help shape a future based on living lightly.