Developing our kids into healthy, joyful, thriving geniuses is awesome. We all want that for our kids.
But what if these healthy, joyful geniuses teamed-up to create an ecosystem of humanity uplifters and local and global problem-solvers?
Before we get into that, a quick refresher on the Inside-Out Circles of Development:
The Inner Circle — Intuition & Creativity. These are our great human differentiators from AI, which makes them the most valuable currencies our kids will carry into adulthood in the Age of AI.
The Genius Zone Circle. Creativity and intuition feed each child’s unique Genius Zone. We find the project that makes a kid’s eyes light up, then develop that genius through two hours a day of mentored, project-based learning. Kids who grow this way enter adulthood with a developed, marketable, unique genius.
The Key Life Skills Circle. Skills in Career, People, Money, and Health are what allow a genius to actually reach the world. We all know brilliant people whose gifts never made it out the door because these skills were missing.
The Community Skills Circle. The outermost circle — and today’s subject. Because the only thing better than living in your own genius is combining it with others’.
The Forest Knows How
People weren’t meant to live isolated lives. We’re meant to live in community. I think of it as an ecosystem, where every part has something unique to offer.
Take a mountain forest. The river provides hydration. The sun provides warmth and energy. The soil provides a medium for life. The plants draw in water and light to create oxygen and food. The animals turn that oxygen and food into carbon dioxide — which the plants take in to build their biomass. And the cycle repeats forever, every part expressing its genius, everything additive.
Unless the ecosystem is disrupted.
So how is our human ecosystem working? Instead of cooperating, the parts of modern society compete — running on an unsustainable, extractive model. And how is that working out? The current Outside-In model is producing these results:
90% of the ocean’s big fish are depleted
Nearly every country is buried in debt — add it up and even the big banks are trillions underwater
Big agriculture has left our soil unable to function without heavy doses of chemicals
Those chemicals get into our food and make people sick
Big healthcare profits from our sickness — not our wellness
And Outside-In education is failing our kids horribly: 52% of college grads are working high-school-level jobs, while living with their parents, carrying a huge student debt load, and dealing with, on average, at least one chronic disease
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Six Bedrooms, One-Sixth the Work
I’ve lived in two communal houses, and in both cases life was significantly better.
Here’s how it worked. Each house had six bedrooms and six to eight people at any given time (one of them, which my ex-partner and I started, is still going strong nearly twenty years later). Our criteria for selecting new housemates: they needed to be healthier and more interesting than us. (Yes, we turned down the nudist who, mid-interview, offered to show us just how comfortable he was with nudity.)
Do you know how much time the basics of life consume? Shopping, cooking, cleaning — we literally cut all of it by six. One of us shopped like crazy one week, then didn’t think about it again for another five or six. Each of us owned one dinner a week. It was a big night of prepping, cooking, and cleaning — and we made sure we CRUSHED that meal, because nobody wanted to be the slacker serving mac and cheese. The other six nights? We showed up at the table, had an amazing conversation with housemates who were healthier and more interesting than us, then pushed our chairs back and walked away. No further responsibilities.
In one house, a gifted gardener grew a food forest in our yard. Another housemate built a chicken coop — fresh eggs every morning.
Life became easier, cheaper, more interesting, and healthier.
Now when I drive past housing developments where every family is isolated in its own box, responsible for all of life’s demands alone, I shake my head. It could be so much easier, cheaper, and richer if we simply joined together.
What I Saw in Costa Rica
I felt this again recently at a remarkable event in Costa Rica hosted by an incredible organization called Frequency Capital — a gathering at an eco-property integrated with nature, in harmony with the flora, fauna, howler monkeys, sloths, and blue morphos (which I saw in abundance). The event paired conscious entrepreneurs with conscious investors, and our school was honored to be selected as one of the showcase world-changing companies.
The theme of the event: how do we create a sustainable world where everybody thrives? Many of the participants and investors had already purchased land they intend to turn into conscious, self-sustaining communities.
It struck me deep in my heart how beautiful it would be to take the model we created in those houses and amplify it into whole communities. Can you imagine? There’s enough of everything for everyone — food, goods, education, commerce, and stimulating human connection. And it takes SO much less time and effort to create a beautiful, self-expressed life together than it does alone.
These communities also follow Buckminster Fuller’s counsel: don’t try to fix a broken system. Build a new one that makes the broken system obsolete.
That’s what we’re doing.
Who Builds It? Our Kids.
Imagine a generation of young adults who have traveled through all four Inside-Out circles. Intuition and creativity fully online. A unique, developed Genius Zone. Strong skills in career, people, money, and health. AND the community skills to weave it all together — to contribute their own genius and combine it with others’, to resolve conflict, to live in harmony with nature, to enjoy the richness and stimulation that comes with real community.
Can you imagine the problems that get solved when people create everything they need with each other? When young people live their unique calling from their unique genius? When our human ecosystems start to mimic that mountain forest?
More and more, I’m hearing people call this the Harmonic Age.
Next week, I’ll paint a picture of what it looks like — and how, through healthy communities and Inside-Out education, it can unfold into the future we’ve always dreamed of. When do we need to start? Obviously: NOW.
And it starts with our kids, developing from the Inside-Out.
This is so interesting. We have been looking at the idea of a communal living space/hub-type environment here in the UAE. Just need to take those first steps!