First of all, what is flourishing?

I’ve spent years now (like 15) taking a deep look at what flourishing means, listening to as many perspectives as I can—scientific, spiritual, street, indigenous, cultural, artistic, poetic, historic, etc. One helpful clue is that in just about all the languages we know, words like peace, health, and flourishing are defined by the word wholeness.

Our word to heal comes from the proto-germanic word to make whole. 

Healing means wholing. 

My best synthesis/definition so far is that flourishing is the ability to connect lovingly with oneself (mind, body, and spirit), others, and the natural world in the present moment, most of the time. 

On the flip side, as Dr. Gabor Maté points out, “The essence of trauma is disconnection.”

You know how the hard shell of an oyster shows us the shape of the soft squishy creature inside? 

I’ve come to see our built environments as a hard shell that slowly calcifies around and reveals the shape of our soft, nebulous, invisible, collective subconscious. 

Our built environments today reveal our beliefs of separation.

We believe we are separate. We build shells around us that embody that separation. The next generation grows up in these containers of separation, learns to fear and feel superior to others, and reinforces the walls.

But I’ve learned it works in the other direction, too. Some places I’ve been have reshaped me in various ways toward more connection.

In Churchill’s words, “We shape our buildings, then they shape us.” 

I also see that almost all the massive problems we face today, the systemic ones—racism, climate change, wars, poverty, hunger, patriarchy, extraction, etc.—are symptoms of beliefs and systems of separation and subsequently domination. No amount of electric cars or protests to end pollution or police violence, or pay gaps will fix the problem.

If trauma is separation and healing is wholing, as long as separation continues, the trauma continues in all its manifestations. However, if we can heal systems as living, loving, wholes, those problems mostly resolve naturally.

It seems that the smallest whole, embodied system of humans is a village or town. So that’s the work in front of us: redesign the shape of our buildings and systems in ways that work toward flourishing and connection for all of us.

A Connected Living World

flourishing = peace = connected = whole

A Disconnected Machine World

trauma = disconnected = separation

What would happen if we gathered people who are learning to live in love and connectedness and collectively calcified, embodied that love and connection? What would that look like?

It’s more than any one of us can do, but maybe, with enough of us listening deeply to one another, whatever divine guidance, and the land, I bet we could find even lots of solutions, each town as unique as fingerprints of new life.

What would happen to someone who visited that place?

What would happen if you lived there? What would happen to children growing up there?

I don’t know. 

But I know that’s the work and play I want to explore. With others. Who are ready to share power and ready to work toward collective, systemic flourishing.

It won’t be a machine built by a singular mind or vision. It will grow from a seed of people who intentionally practice loving themselves, others, and the earth.

As the mystics say, “The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.” 

The idea is that we intentionally love and calcify and embody that love around us. Like, I see you. We are not the same, but we are connected. Let’s figure out how to help each other and design beautiful lives with each other.

“Perhaps, the deepest truth is not what we can see but what we can imagine.”

— Glennon Doyle

Wakanda, Camelot, Arcadia, Shangri-La…ideal, mythical places of peace and flourishing. The cynic in all of us may scoff at the idea of trying to build a place like that. But why not try? More importantly—what’s the alternative? If we’re not trying to build toward our ideals, what are we trying to building toward? Mediocrity at best. We are capable of so much more! We have all experienced moments of more.

** On this site, I use the term Camelot as a generic ideal. I know it’s a white and western version of an ideal place but, well, I am mostly white and western. And we know the white and western imagination is one that needs redeeming so…that’s what we’re working on here.

When you think of magical places you’ve been, which places flash into your mind? Why? What do they have in common?

What if we could intentionally make amazing, magical places—not just sometimes when we get lucky?

It is possible.

If we design places that deliberately:

• honor the universal principles of beauty & flourishing

• are unique & authentic to their place & time in the world

• are structurally resilient: environmentally, economically, organizationally, & supporting creativity.

When we deeply understand these goals, we can reverse engineer an environment that moves us toward them.

Camelot=the universal

On this site, Camelot represents the human-centered, universal design principles we can apply to make any place sing. It represents an idyllic place of flourishing—loving connection with self, others, & the natural world; operating in love rather than fear.

Terroir=the specific

Here, the traits that make a place unique are held in the french word, terroir (pronounced tehr-wah). Terroir refers to the soil, climate, & human practice that makes a bottle of wine unique & unrepeatable; the taste of a specific place & time on the earth.

Enduring

We’ll look at some key structural systems designed to make a place not just sustainable & resilient, but moving toward more life & more diversity. This includes intentional design to promote creativity—we are our best problem solvers.