Vision of the Future: 3H Campaign: Technology, Pilgrimages, and Waystations

 So my biggest campaign I want to do is for the 3H's: Housing, Health, Happiness

But one of the most important visions I keep having is around the way I foresee technology jobs in our society. 

Have you seen the movie "Brazil"?

Most of the computer techs I've spent time around are doing redundant programming jobs. I really knew it the day my ex said, "I could replace most of my coworkers with a poorly written shell script." He called it. People are already doing the same exact thing over and over, every day, reproducing the work they did yesterday. 

Earth Mother is unhappy that so many of them are trapped in little boxes when she wants to feel their feet on the ground and feel all the love they have for going through her amazing creations. She calls us flippity-floops and is sad that we have forgotten how to flip or floop. And she can feel us being sad in our lil houses, not flipping or flooping.

With AI doing its thing to streamline, especially in the theme of replicating successful models of tech, and guys like my ex who are automation specialits, it's not hard to imagine that the next phase of technology is going to use machine intuition and machines to replace people who are doing redundant jobs for any kind of corporation. 

But what do we do with all the people trained to work on the computers? And how will we afford a segment of society that is unemployed? And what do we need to keep people from losing their fucking  minds while the world changes? 

For me, the answers are in the 3H Campaign, which include infrastructure, and which will require intentional communities established as waystations around the country for intentional pilgrims. 

For housing, I still haven't figured that out, but it's on its way. 

Health and Happiness are really Health and Education. Ok, I'm also saying these should be free to anyone. To have Free Healthcare, we have to have Free Education. The doctors we have now and the way things are arranged make it so that becoming a doctor is an elite offering you have to go into incredible debt to achieve. So, making education to be a doctor free and then offering free healthcare from there really changes the expectation of elitism in medical care. 

We're tolerating all the unhealthy things allowed or pushed through the food system, pharma, and propaganda on a daily basis. Surely we can learn to trust doctors who wanted to be one bad enough to commit to their path enough to learn medicine for free. In a world that loves redundancy, probably we can also commit to quality and excellence somehow. 

Since lots of our redundant computer positions are filled by happy nerds who enjoy learning, sharing online, being a part of a team or doing the status quo. It should be easy enough to recruit them to colleges and universities, expand the humanities and people's appreciation of the beauty in the human element. We are going to need all the contrast we can find with the machine element as times get tight.  

Expansion of healthcare includes the element of Housing, but having tried homelessness I can't help but include it. Housing has costs are outrageous. I'm surprised there aren't people marching. I'm terrified that they will or won't or that the bust is coming anytime. And just like shakeups that really wake or break a paradigm, these kinds of things happen to the whole country at the same time. People are already living in tents in most towns big enough to get a meal in, and it seems like most of these towns are doing the minimum to keep up and nothing to make change. 

Public health, societal health, these dominos fall into place in the plan as well under the H in Health for me. Putting people to work improving infrastructure and applying themselves to the public good out of a sense of purpose for making the world a safer and more beautiful place to live and play. Things we've watched lose importance in the budgets and get lost in the rhetoric. Regular important things like public education, festivals, connection, farmers markets, and care for the people who are doing just good enough that they don't feel right to ask for help. 

My heart falls in the Ark-La-Tex area for the towns here when I do "roof survey" and go down a street where more of the houses are barely standing between the ones that don't have a good roof and probably need knocked own. Can you believe Shreveport, with all its historic homes, doesn't have a Habitat for Humanity Restore to reuse all those groovy Louisiana construction features? Where does intelligence come into it? The people I talked to about it always had some theory of corruption happening, and worse, even, I felt like they had the lowdown on it. 

But what to do with the ones who are ready to wander? Called to the trail? 

We don't have any respect for the pilgrim class in this country, people who mean to be going place to place on foot or just because. Small insular towns don't want ya stopping through if you don't have anything or any prospects in their area. Naturalist areas and tourism towns, a little more so, but wanderers are low-income and might even need some place to sleep while they happen by. Rent on apartments wouldn't be such a burden for some people if hotel rooms hadn't been keeping pace. Cause who would pay more for an apartment they can't afford if they could stay in a hotel room they even could? 

So there's no respect of pilgrimage except on designated trails and some Coast to Coast highways. I was enthused brieftly to learn about "Rails to Trails" and the conversion of railway lines to hiking trails and wish this was more of a movement. It may have to be one anyway. 

So, we need a better setup for folks who intend to wander around. 

Don't cities love tourists? Not if they don't have a ton of money to spend on hotels and entertainment. 

A lot of people who want to wander around are going to be involved with Spirit and craving the outdoors. They're going to have Keyboard Burnout and want to see the wider world. Why is Vanlife such a thing?

My vision for these ones is a network of Waystations for Pilgrims around the country. Places with affordable hostels, probably located in convenient spots along walkable highways and trails. Run by intentional communities (that are not cults) and with residents and guests. Maybe even have a fair amount of outreach for homeless and people who don't intend to stay anywhere long. 

People who are walking, because that's what feels good and right for them to be doing, should have somewhere to go to rest up, somewhere with a culture of acceptance and love, somewhere they can get medicine and healing, somewhere they can be weird but kind, somewhere to stay around pilgrims while they get their van fixed, somewhere earthy to ride their motorcycles to, somewhere with a campfire and community after long days all alone with their inner-selves and reasons. 

I dream about having one of these waystations for my own silly show. It's got a farmer's market, vegetable gardens, homie arts and crafts, groceries for hikers, events for education and spirituality, education on sustainable housing, plans for food forests and remaking the trails, a river to swim in, an amphitheater, all kinds of cob houses and tree houses around. Basically, a place a Hobbit would like to chill out for a while before moving along. 

So yeah, I'm saying the labor market is about to shift away from redundant computer jobs, expand more into education and health, be publicly funded, while there is a resurgence of grassroots communication and intentional pilgrim strata with waystations and intentional communities.