Lifestyle

Project TriStar understands there are inherent risks in any community that is remote, off-the-grid, and self-sustainable. The most basic of these risks being fire, flood, disease, and natural disaster, but can also include: contamination, outbreak, bio-hazards, and environmental impacts. As such, Project TriStar believes that it is essential to have emergency plans for all of these situations and more. And don't forget, the community is subterranean and also preparing for the potential of catastrophic Earth changing events.

Most modern day societies operate with a dependence on a system of risk management that is bureaucratic, political, controlling, and ultimately very unpredictable. If a fire breaks out, the fireman arrives to put out the fire. If a flood occurs, the national guard or military arrives to evacuate the people. As we have all seen, these systems have their virtues and their flaws. It's not that people are unaware of such risks, but rather a combination of insurance and complacency has caused people to often ignore the obviousness of the possibilities for disaster.

It's a simple fact that exposure to risk is influenced mostly by a combination of location and planning. No one is too surprised when a home that was built near a river is flooded. Yes, the land is fertile, but the risk was always there. And no one is surprised when a home that is built in the forest is burned as a forest fire rages. Yes, the forest is peaceful, but this risk was always there. Emergency planning in these situations could have included building a proper levy or runoff ditch and clearing trees to create a fire barrier.

In ancient times, community planning often included taking precautions for the obvious risks of fire and water since it was understood that no one else would be coming to the rescue. It is true that creating community with such considerations takes more effort and more planning, but to Project TriStar, it is essential. Project TriStar chooses to be more consciously aware of all decisions that might put the community and its members at risk and believes that many risks can be eliminated or reduced by simply making better choices for the community location, construction, and emergency planning.

Project TriStar has established an Emergency Planning Committee to review and address these very issues. The committee members are responsible for reviewing the site location topography, development plans, and internal design layout and then generating their recommendations, as well as plans on how best to deal with every risk that can be imagined. This includes defining and running drills and training members on how to handle each emergency situation.

The remote community location has been specifically chosen to reduce the unknown potential of environmental risks related to the potential Earth changes, however, the community must be prepared for the consequences from any number of potential risks including:

• Disruption in food production
• Loss or contamination of fresh water supply
• Inside or outside air toxicity and filtration
• Interior fire and smoke
• Temporary lighting blackouts
• Interior flooding
• Bacterial or viral outbreak
• Structural instability due to earthquakes
• Insect or rodent infestation
• Inability to generate electricity
• Unusual weather anomalies (i.e. excessive rain)

As a proactive and consciously awakened community, the Emergency Planning Committee is taking proactive measures and interfacing with the development team in order to build-in any possible fail safes that can be included prior to the completion of construction. In the case of those risks that are unrelated to the community physical structure or life sustaining operations, the committee is creating emergency plans, procedures, and protocols.

Part of this emergency plans and development considerations includes that addition of several containers within the community architecture that are devoted to the handling of bio-hazardous material and infectious disease. These containers include a fully functional laboratory, store for water reserves, and equipment that is not readily accessible in the remote location and which is deemed prudent to have on hand as a precaution.

Any lifestyle presents its own set of challenges and a unique lifestyle often creates unique challenges. Project TriStar is well aware of the real and potential challenges to its members for choosing this off-the-grid, sustainable, and subterranean community that is founded on conscious awareness, social responsibility, natural, and universal laws.

There is no time to be naive about the bold goals and aspirations of the community design and lifestyle, or about the reasons why members have chosen this lifestyle. Project TriStar sees many of the beliefs held in present day society as the root cause for social inequality, economic depravity, over consumption, and unconscious irresponsibility. The Project TriStar initiative is about discarding these failed belief systems and co-creating an environment that allows life to be nurtured in a more natural and harmonic manner.

For many people, life is challenging enough without adding any major changes and often people do everything possible to maintain stability by managing change to a minimum. Becoming a member in the Project TriStar community generally means that a person has already grown beyond the fear of change and has embraced the desire to change their lives in order to realize the opportunities that life has to offer. However, this doesn't mean that all members are instantly ready for Project TriStar community experience.

The Project TriStar member orientation program is designed to help each member prepare for life in the community. For most members, just living in a remote, off-the-grid, and self-sustainable environment presents tremendous change and new challenges. The community's subterranean architecture, underground operations, and communal lifestyle provides even more change and challenges. When you add the exclusive raw vegan diet, naturopathy health care, and a lifestyle based on conscious awareness, natural, and universal laws, membership in the Project TriStar community means a tremendous amount of change over a very short period of time.

Project TriStar understands this may be the first opportunity for community members to experience such a unique lifestyle. As such, Project TriStar has developed an orientation program to assist members in their understanding and incorporation of these lifestyle changes prior to moving to the remote community location. The orientation program is designed as a transition period from a lifestyle based on the conveniences of modern society to one of remote sustainability.

Each member of the community is required to go through the orientation program before relocating to the community site. In order to accomplish this goal, the orientation program is an ongoing and parallel operation to all other activities of community planning, development, construction.

The Membership Committee is responsible for organizing members into groups that will go through the orientation program together. The members in any specific group are determined by a combination of member availability, on-site manpower needs, choice of work assignment, and skill set assessment.

Before entering the orientation program, each member is provided a copy of the Member Handbook. The Member Handbook includes everything a member needs to know about the community responsibilities to support the members and the members responsibilities to support the community. After the member has gone through the handbook thoroughly, they are asked to sign a statement of understanding and acceptance of it's contents.

The orientation facility is not the remote location of the Project TriStar community, but rather an alternate location that provides many of the same lifestyle challenges except for the subterranean architecture. This location is also close enough to major roads to provide ease of access by both members and facilitators.

The orientation facility simulates an off-the-grid lifestyle in a communal environment. Besides one-on-one and group presentations by orientation facilitators, members will work, eat, sleep, and play in an environment that simulates the actual community lifestyle.

As previously stated, Project TriStar advises all members to deliberately and diligently prepare for the community lifestyle. This means becoming aware of any personal issues that may create insecurity or anxiety from living in the community. It means performing a self evaluation and being totally honest with yourself and your findings. It also means beginning to incorporate any necessary changes to your current lifestyle so the transition to the community lifestyle is as seamless as possible.

Before entering the orientation program, it is important that each member has already processed through many of the unique lifestyle changes offered by the community. The orientation program is intended to supplement a member's ongoing personal transition efforts to off-the-grid living and not as a replacement for members to take personal responsibility for this transition.

The orientation program offers flexibility for the individual needs of each member, however, the program is not indefinite. The orientation facilitators work individually with each community member to ensure the transition needs are being addressed and the member is prepared for relocation prior to leaving the orientation.

Orientation involves both indoor and outdoor activities in individual and group environments in order to facilitate the following topics:

• Review the contents of the Member Handbook
  
• Experience the close and communal living arrangements
  
• Experience the 100% raw vegan diet
  
• Skill set evaluation and determination of work assignment
• Electronic communication and device deprivation
• Remote living and isolation adjustment
• Member interaction and trust building
  
• Educational and activity interests for mind, body, and spirit
  
• Special needs analysis and medicine replacement
  
• Review emergency plans and individual responsibilities
• Emotional evaluation and group clearing exercises
• Complete physical and health examination
  
• Question and answer related to operations or governance

The Membership Committee provides ongoing review and evaluation of the member progress throughout the orientation program to ensure each member is completely ready for the community lifestyle. The committee must agree that a member is ready on every level of mind, body, and spirit before that member is relocated to the remote community.

Project TriStar understands the importance of the arts for the health and well being of an individual community member and for the community as a whole. To Project TriStar, a healthy expression of artistic abilities is the foundation for inspiring both beauty and peace in any environment.

After all, what do the terms art and artisan really mean? Aristotle said: “The general aim of art is the good on mankind”. Art is defined as “the imitation of nature in its operating manners”. Maybe even a more basic definition is that art is "the reflection of life itself". After all, isn't the development or application of any skill considered an art? In fact, isn't every action in nature, whether human or not, an expression of art?

You don't need to be labeled as an artist to be using or applying your art. An artistic expression can be painting, sculpturing, or singing, but it can also be the art of communication, growing food, or even the art of creating community. In the most simple terms, every single event that has occurred throughout history has been created out of act of artistic expression. Of course, this may be difficult to accept if you have ever been on the receiving end of a negative expression.

To the Project TriStar community, the most important thing about the application of artistic expression is that it is nourished in a positive direction and for the betterment of both the individual member and the community as a whole. If developed in a positive manner, art, as the expression of life, nurtures everything in its path. Through a healthy expression of art (i.e. life), Project TriStar believes that a community can flourish through all means of challenge and diversity.

As a community devoted to the application of natural laws, Project TriStar offers each member the opportunity to experience their artistic expression at the highest levels. Besides those experiences that may be considered artisan in nature such as painting, music, and dance, to Project TriStar, artistic expression also includes a woodworker, builder, seamstress, engineer, or scientist. To Project TriStar, every action taken by every member of the community is an act of artistic expression.

The Project TriStar community and all activities within the community revolve around the simple concepts of creativity, cooperation, and co-creation. The community concept and planning provides every member with the opportunity to develop their existing expression or evolve into new expressions. The ultimate goal always being for each member to reach as high as they can.

To enhance this goal, Project TriStar has established a series of artisan departments and developed a wide range of artisan activities. In the realm of purely artisan, these activities include: painting, sculpting, music, song, and dancing. In the realm of exercise, relaxation, and rejuvenation, these activities include: yoga, meditation, energy work, and environment rooms. In the realm of practical and man-made essentials, these activities include: pottery, seamstress, and fabrication.

These programs are designed to stimulate personal and community creativity. While most of these programs are extra-curricular and voluntary in nature, others provide essential products for the operation of the community and are part of the work assignments.

Life in an off-the-grid, self-sustainable, and remote community often means limited or no access to electricity and no ability to go shopping for clothes, tools, and other everyday essentials. The Project TriStar community plan and design creates just such an environment, but this does not mean the community is operating in the Stone Age.

Wherever possible, Project TriStar is utilizing the knowledge gained throughout history in order to provide the most practical and sustainable solutions for the community operations and lifestyle. After all, humanity has gone through the Iron Age, Industrial Age, and Information Age for a reason. Project TriStar understands that moving forward and into a world that is more consciously aware doesn’t mean that everything gained from the past must be shed. The key to moving forward is learning how to balance knowledge with conscious responsibility.

As such, everything needed by the community and for the community boils down to the thoroughness of the community plan, as well as the creativity, ingenuity, and insights of the community members. The Project TriStar community plan has been developed to consider the possibilities and probabilities for the future of the community and that of humanity. This means learning from past history and choosing from the vast knowledge of those who came before us. Examples of this knowledge include: how to live off the land, how to create tools for complex tasks, and how to overcome our addictions to technology.

The ability to make or fabricate everything a community might need for self-sustainability may be one of the most underestimated considerations of community planning. Besides basic resources, the community plan must consider access to or the ability to make tools and the required knowledge base or expertise to use those tools. The Project TriStar community has not only considered these necessities, but has planned accordingly.

Project TriStar understands there will be the periods of time where the community can access the goods and services provided by society outside the community. To Project TriStar, this access is not a substitute for self-sustainability, but rather an opportunity to access and acquire everything necessary to ensure the community reaches 100% self-sustainability.

On a purely practical level, the success of any culture can pretty much be concluded by the tools they have available and their ingenuity in using and adapting those tools to the needs of the community. With tools in hand, the Project TriStar community is planned to manufacture or fabricate everything else that may be necessary to maintain the desired lifestyle, community operations, and to ensure the health and well being of the community members.

For this reason, the Project TriStar community maintains a complete set of tools, as well as the ability to make and modify tools as needed. To accomplish this, the community includes: tools storage, pottery shop, woodworking shop, and a metal shop that is capable of working with sheet metal, tool and die, as well some metallurgy. Basically, the metal shop can fabricate everything from a pair of scissors or kitchen knife to axe heads, washers, fasteners, hinges, and garden tools. As anyone can imagine, there are literally hundreds, if not, thousands of applications where metal may not be necessary, but can be very useful.

Fabrication for the community also includes the manufacture of everyday essentials such as clothes, soap, dishes, etc. For this reason, the Project TriStar community plan includes the acquisition of tolls and equipment for these fabrication processes. Once again, all fabrication processes are all designed to operate without electricity and where electricity may be considered necessary, the ability to generate that electricity through manual methods.

Product fabrication is just one of many community functions where members can contribute their skills, manpower, and ideas for the greatest good. Members are given the opportunity to consider these activities as part of their work assignment schedule and young adults have the opportunity to work in these areas under the apprenticeship program.

As with all activities of the Project TriStar community, the focus is on off-the-grid living. This means minimal use of electricity and instead using human ingenuity combined with manual labor. As such, most fabrication equipment is powered by foot, hand, or bicycle. In most cases, this type of equipment is readily available and the community has defined this equipment as part of the purchase list. Where manual powered fabrication equipment may not be available, Project TriStar has purchased existing equipment that can be retrofitted by community members.

In addition to practicality for an off-the-grid lifestyle, the use of manually operated fabrication equipment also provides a natural and welcome source of exercise in the workplace. Project TriStar has established the Artisan Committee to manage the equipment acquisition and fabrication operations. This committee works closely with the Membership Committee and Education Committee to assist in member skill assessment and scheduling of work assignments. They also work closely with each department to determine the fabrication of consumables and essentials for the entire community.

The Project TriStar initiative includes a lifestyle that is geared towards the elimination of a need or addiction to personal and emotional competition. As such, the fabrication of products for community consumption is done in such a way to promote a sense of congruity rather than individualism. This means that all fabrication decisions are made by the committees and there are no custom orders directly from community members. If a member sees a necessity or has an idea for an item that would benefit some function of the community, they can present their request before the appropriate committee for consideration.