Sustainable Cities

I think the most important issue, which is absolutely essential for creating sustainable cities, is the Baha’i Faith. Children will be raised as Baha’is from conception, until the end of life on earth. The Faith will be taught in schools, right along with reading, writing and arithmetic.

Baha’u’llah has introduced the idea that there are no foreigners. There is only we, the people of earth. The one common faith of all mankind is the antidote to the tower of babel effect, which is the end of civilization.

The attitude of voluntary submission to God and friendly, loving kindness and respect towards each other, is the most important feature of a sustainable city or a sustainable civilization.

Make it easy to earn a living. In ancient times, people made stone tools. They got really good at that. People traded different kinds of stone. The whole economy was based on the technology of stone tools. Money is just a more modern tool.

We use money as a way of accounting for our private property. And to facilitate trade. It’s a lot easier to trade your cattle, or your arts and crafts, for money; than to try to trade your property for all the other things you need.

We may or may not have money or guns, etc., during the Most Great Peace. We can be sure that, the people who use any tools, will do so in an honorable and responsible manner, because of the divine education revealed in our one common faith.

There are dozens of cities with many times more than one million people living in them, and more than 50% of all the people of earth live in urban areas. For example, the Tokyo metro area has 35 million citizens, Djakarta is over 30 million, Shanghai and Chong Qing both have about 25 million residents, Mexico City and New York City each have about 20 million inhabitants.

Human nature is evolving in response to that population density, in a way that human civilization can remain sustainable. There are plenty of resources on earth to supply a comfortable quality of life for all of us. It’s just a matter of improving our attitudes and our culture, in order to supply a vast and diverse assortment of equal opportunity and free enterprise, to establish a more perfect union, a world wide federation of nations, our universal commonwealth.

Equal Opportunity and Free Enterprise

Big business is valuable and necessary for these big cities to exist. We need them to produce our cars, planes and trains and skyscrapers and computers. We just need to make sure that all business serves the people and that they do not harm anyone.

Businesses need to be profitable in order to be sustainable. That does not mean that you should be selling an inferior product or service in order to make more profit. That’s corruption, not business. Make sure everyone you trade with gets a good deal. Make sure you get a good deal. Get really good at making good deals for everyone involved.

Be an intrapreneur, a high performance employee. Always deliver more than you promise. Love and respect each other. Life on earth is an adventure, a never ending process of self improvement, cooperation and service, to God and to all the people around us. Own the company you work with, make sure you get that profit sharing check.

Be an entrepreneur. Set yourself free from the culture of dependence that our schools are teaching, big business is selling and big government is enforcing. Mind your own business, not someone else’s.

Build yourself a WordPress website and start telling stories. Make your stories valuable, entertaining education. Get yourself some photography equipment and start taking pictures and making videos. Create your own little online art gallery.

The human population has already passed 8 billion prospects. While big business is an essential aspect of our global economy, it can not possibly supply the amount and diversity of opportunities we need for a healthy and wealthy, universal commonwealth.

We’re developing computers and the Internet into a global bazaar of information and communications, an infinite variety of equal opportunity and free enterprise, a giant cyber-shopping mall, in which we can all buy, sell and trade with each other.

If you have ideas you wish to tell others about, get started writing. I started with a free Google website and blog. That was before Google turned into the thought police. I avoid doing business with that company, as much as possible.

There are several on-line businesses that help people get their stories published in a variety of ways. You can write for other websites and businesses. You can publish on-line, or set up print on demand publishing services or use the Internet to research and help you start a traditional writing career.

Learn how to develop first class websites, and then sell that talent to people who want to use the Internet to extend their business, but want to stay focused on their own business, rather than learn website development skills. Build a little cluster of commercial websites, each one focused on one particular idea, art, craft, product or service.

I’m not at all opposed to government or big business. Jobs are a good thing, as long as they are voluntary, and people are not compelled to work for any elite ruling class.

Schools should be teaching people about capitalism. Just like we teach people the rules of grammar and language and communications, we need to teach people the rules of finance, economics and business, so that we’ll be able to create our own free enterprise, instead of working for any elite ruling class of well educated people or oligarchy of rich people.

Teach people how to produce their own private cottage industry and organize our laws to protect those small businesses and free enterprises from big business.

Ecological Earthlings

Make sure your motives are spiritual. Everyone is required to work, to produce something valuable for ourselves, our families and communities, and for our universal commonwealth.

God makes the rules. Freedom is lawful, not lawless. We need the divine rule of law between and within nations, states and cities. Selfish ambition is the dark side of human nature. Carnal desire running wild is anarchy, not freedom.

Get control of your unruly passion. Follow the rule of law revealed by the Manifestation of God. Submission to God is the very nature of freedom.

We’re going to have to make our apartments comfortable. Arts and crafts will be a good business. You’ll have to be really good, to compete against the commercial arts and crafts, as well as the other artists and craftsmen.

Start buying, selling and trading the real arts and crafts. Avoid the processed food, the toxic artificial chemicals and the commercial arts and crafts. Make your apartment a comfortable, healthy home.

Make sure you get your kitchen set up with good healthy cooking tools. Get into the habit of cooking good healthy, natural, whole food, not processed food. Make your kitchen a spiritual sanctuary.

If you have a balcony with lots of sunshine, you can hang one of those hanging tomato plants out there. Having several live plants in your apartment is a good idea. It will enliven your home. Create a healthy ecosystem in your apartment for yourself, your family and your guests.

Help make the world a better place, be kind, friendly and polite. Be the solution, not a problem. Practice compassion, harmlessness and harmony, with each other and our natural habitat.

Start cleaning up our urban ecosystem by purchasing all natural, non-toxic personal care and household products. You’re already buying shampoo and house hold cleaning supplies and nutritional products. Just make sure you purchase the non-toxic, all natural products, instead of the artificial chemicals, which are cheaper to use and more profitable, because companies can patent them and have exclusive rights to use the artificial chemicals.

I’m not opposed to using artificial chemicals, or making a profit. However, the companies that produce the chemicals are almost exclusively motivated by material profit. The individual people working for the companies need to be motivated by spirituality and the company needs to be motivated to serve their customers, not just exploit them for shareholder profit.

Be mindful of the holistic ecosystem that you are working in. All the sources of raw material, your suppliers, your transportation, your environmental impact, your distribution systems and your employers, employees and other team mates, your customers and even our universal commonwealth, are all facets of your commercial ecosystem. Be mindful of all of them.

Don’t litter. Clean up after yourself. Be considerate of the people around you. Help people get where they are going.

Urban Mobility

We need to make it easy for people to get in and out of the city. Trains, lots of trains, flowing from the inner city, all the way out to the rural areas around the city and between cities. People need to be able to get out into our natural habitat every once in a while. Make sure you get out of the city, every once in a while.

Build your roads in a way that prevents stop and go traffic every chance you get. Accelerating up to the speed limit takes a lot of fuel. Cruising along without accelerating, uses a lot less fuel. Smooth flowing traffic uses less fuel than stop and go traffic.

Make your city streets comfortable, pleasant, pedestrian friendly places. Make sure there are lots of large and small parks, sprinkled around every city. Hire some of the poor and homeless people to build sidewalks and clean up the trash. Make it easy and pleasant to walk around your city.

Eliminating Poverty

I think that homelessness should be forbidden. There should be plenty of bare bones, free public housing for anyone who needs it. Hire plenty of case managers, counselors and nurses to make sure the people have good health care.

It will be expensive. These people are our brothers and sisters. Of course we should take care of them. And besides, it will be a lot less expensive than having homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk and leaving human waste all over the place.

The free housing would include a small space with a bed and a closet. The walls would be seven or eight feet tall, but they would not reach all the way to the ceiling. If you want doors and walls that reach all the way up to the ceiling, you’re going to have to pay for it. There will be public restrooms and showering facilities, a TV room and even a small computer room.

The price for using the free public housing is that you have to be enrolled in some kind of holistic health care, vocational rehabilitation and career development program.

Refusal to be productive would be a crime, subject to arrest and incarceration. Allowing homeless people to live on the streets is lazy and irresponsible, not compassionate.

I understand about not keeping people locked up in mental institutions. I agree, that is not a good solution. However, allowing homeless people to live on the streets and harass people all the time is not a very good solution either.

Society has a right to defend itself. Our individual human rights do not trump the individual human rights of the people around us. Anarchy is not freedom. Freedom is lawful, not lawless. Civilized human beings follow the rule of law voluntarily, barbarians do not.

We have got to get these frivolous lawsuits and big government micromanaging every detail of our lives, under control. Accidents are usually not a crime, unless it is caused by some seriously grievous negligence. Right now, we need to defend ourselves from over zealous bureaucrats trying to control every detail of our lives.

Justice For All

We should develop a reparative law enforcement system. Punishment for any crime will naturally involve a comprehensive rehabilitation ecosystem. Each criminal will have a custom rehabilitation program, just like every child will have a custom educational curriculum, which will help prevent crime in the first place.

Justice and compassion are the yin and yang of civil society. Make sure that all criminals have access to the most scientifically and spirituality advanced rehabilitation services, if they want it.

The intellectual ecosystem in every prison should be strictly controlled to facilitate rehabilitation. No commercial TV or Internet. Educational programming only. The rehabilitation is for the benefit of the criminal and society. Society has a right to defend itself and humane rehabilitation of criminals is one thing we can do about all kinds of crime.

Forgiveness may be an important part of your recovery. Forgiving repeat offenders of very serious crimes is not always appropriate. We need all the people of earth to stand up to the bullies in the world and insist, with the utmost loving kindness, justice, compassion and strength that all people treat each other with dignity and respect.

Be fair. Justice and compassion are indispensable components of a comprehensive recovery program. If someone seriously injures another person in any way, then they deserve severe justice and harsh penalties in order to discourage harmful behavior.

Of course, intentional harm should be treated different than accidental harm. Turning our society into a prison, in an attempt to prevent harm, is not a good idea. Practice harmlessness.

No matter what you have done in the past, you can repent and make amends and recover. Even if you are locked in a cage for the rest of your life for a crime you committed, God loves you. You just have to love Him back, in order to be friends with God.

Make it easy for criminals to recover. Forcing criminals to suffer for the rest of their life, aggravates crime, it doesn’t solve it. Forcing people to go through a scientifically and spiritually advanced rehabilitation program is a legitimate penalty for crime.

We, the people of earth, have got to take a stand against all kinds of bullies. Whether they are street criminals, terrorists, banksters or corrupt politicians, we have got to stand up against all kinds of corruption, in every level of society.

Honorable Earthlings

Sustainable cities are intolerant of corruption of any kind.

All cities should be family friendly. We should be practicing family values in every detail of our lives. Our cities should be enabling our family values, not undermining them.

We are all responsible and accountable for each other. If you see someone in distress or someone committing a crime. Do something. Be careful. Call the police. Do something to help each other.

Be friendly. Love and respect each other. Try to understand the other persons perspective. Try to understand their agenda. Listen. Never think you are more or less important than anyone else.

Everyone is important. Every human being alive on earth is precious. No one would be a criminal or terrorist, if they knew how precious every human being is.

Jesus says, “Love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as you love yourself.” In other words. Love God. Loving God opens your heart to the infinite Power of God which is an essential attribute of civilized human nature.

Love other people exactly like you love yourself; means that we will always act for the benefit of everyone we interact with. We will never favor one person over another. Not even ourselves or our own family.

Baha’u’llah has introduced the idea that we should always be mindful of our universal commonwealth. All of our thoughts, words and deeds should always benefit ourselves, every individual human being and our one universal commonwealth.

Obviously, we’re not going to be perfect. All we can do is strive to be more and more perfect. Self improvement is a never ending process. It is an inherent attribute of human nature and civilization. No matter how advanced we get, we can always improve ourselves and human nature and civilization.