CURRENT MISSION

Save humanity from the impending collapse of industrialized civilization by helping to completely re-engineer everything.

ABOUT ME

I am in the process of figuring out my trajectory, which I've realized is something I will always be doing. Life is more fun that way.

Mainly, I am interested in those structural changes we can make to human activities that will result in a biologically restorative economy, and how we can make them as fast as possible.

Check out Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart's Cradle to Cradle, and the documentary "Waste = Food" for a taste of what this would look like. Also John Fullerton's Capital Institute, and just about anyone at findtheconversation.com

PHILOSOPHY

I will save my personal philosophy for later; perhaps I'll tell you about it if we meet in the course of couch surfing. Instead, for now, I will take the liberty of sharing with you my dearly departed friend Jos Claerbout's answer to this exact question, when it was posed to him as a college admissions essay.

"Why yes, I do have a Personal Philosophy. I keep him in the garage. He is short and four legged. His fur is still soft, as he is rather young. Young that is, in comparison to his two garage companions, my Pet Peeve and my Amusing Anecdote. My Pet Peeve is a large badger-like animal, bred from a long lineage of Overly Broad Or General Essay Questions. She is expecting two children this Spring, to be named Tell Us About Yourself and Write About A Moment That Meant A Great Deal to You.

My Amusing Anecdote is getting rather old and tired; the last several months have left him completely exhausted. I will undoubtedly retire him in the middle of February. As for my Personal Philosophy, he's still young and eager to see the world. Like most Essay Topics his age, he is in an exploring stage. He values experience over possessions, and good humor over all. There hasn't been a day when I've been depressed and gloomy when my Personal Philosophy hasn't jumped up onto my lap and with one lick made me feel much better.

I know I'm going to hold onto my Personal Philosophy forever, but my parents say it's time to trade in my Amusing Anecdote and Pet Peeve for a piece or two of Humble Pie."

If you'd like to know more about this amazing human being, who was tragically taken from this planet too soon, and who had so much more to give us: http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/jon/family/jos/

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Well, I don't, yet. I'm just getting started. Ask me again later.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I have lived in a tent in the park, in a friend's garage, have done my share of traveling. Have not done it through Couchsurfing yet, though, so I'm looking forward to seeing where this leads.

Quick story, on the hosting end: my roommates decided to host some hobo friends passing through in our garage awhile back. One of them turned out to be a seriously amazing folk singer, and shared stories of having turned down serious record business prospects because the appeal to him was about fame and money, and no interest was shown in his values or anything that would make him want to do it.

Interests

Creating a biologically restorative economy, drawing, comics, music, human creativity and potential, the arts, the sciences, how to make our planet a joyous, creative symphony sometimes, and a raucous, bouncy funk ensemble at other times, and so on and so forth.

• animals
• pets
• arts
• writing
• books
• documentaries
• dining
• walking
• comics
• traveling
• drawing
• music
• fishing
• surfing
• engineering
• genealogy

Music, Movies, and Books

The work of Neil Gaiman, Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization, The Phantom Tollbooth, Jim Henson's entire body of work, Star Wars, Asteroids Galaxy Tour, YACHT, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eckhart Tolle, Enki Bilal, Le Petit Nicolas, Kurt Vonnegut, The Coup, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Dan the Automator, Rina Piccolo's early work, Wendy and Richard Pini, jus about anything Bill Murray's ever done...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I'm going to keep it small here, and say barracuda fishing off of Baja California. Not the most amazing, but pretty amazing.

Also walking on bogs in the Adirondacks in summer as a child. Nature does amazing things if you give it space to do them.

Teach, Learn, Share

Oh, such possibility here.

For the moment, let me just recommend a couple of interdependent things I think are key to extracting us from the tragic predicament we're in and trajectory we're on.

1. Totally remaking finance.
Check out the Public Banking Institute and Robert Greco's writing on monetary theory, as places to start. John Fullerton's Capital Institute and David Korten's Agenda for a New Economy, too.

2. Totally re-engineering everything humans touch
Check out the documentary "Waste = Food," and the book Cradle to Cradle. These guys are the future. Their ideas aren't new, of course; they didn't emerge in a vacuum. But they have done the most elegant synthesis and resolution of conflicting thinking, and have taken the most impactful action I know of, toward practically, physically, creating a biologically restorative human economy.