The Plan
A Cathedral in the Sky
What we want to create is a neighborhood help and support system where we encourage our youth to become better, to challenge them: Straight As in school, enrolling in martial arts for self-confidence, learning to play an instrument, enrolling in ballroom dancing and etiquette schools,
This concept of "odlìkāš" (=honor roll student) is widespread in Croatia and in other countries. Or in other words, we want to create more Daniels (and Danielas!) from Karate Kid.
Our modern society and COVID have torn our social fabric apart, and our elderly suffer the most. We want to end their loneliness by encouraging our youth to help them (and receive some wisdom and love that would otherwise be lost).
Simultaneously, we also want to challenge the Best and Brightest of the professional class (lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects, etc.) to serve as role models and actively participate in setting bars and challenges for our youth.
We have created a new concept, a barter system of good deeds, in which no money changes hands but we bring our communities together.
We need your help, not your money, and your burning love and our shared yearning for a better world.
What is this about?
A manifesto, if you will
First of all, we don't want your money. This is different.
The Problem:
COVID ripped our social fabric apart. Everyone is alone. Communities no longer exist. Young and old don’t talk to each other, instead children get affirmation from SM, not merit. General mayhem and absence of order.
The Solution:
Croatians believe that the weak suffer the most when there is a lack of order. The powerful will ignore the law and do as they wish. Hence a societal concept since 600 AD called Red i Zakon: first we’ll have order on terms we all agree on, then we can finally enforce the law equally for all. It works like a charm.
How do we get there? Slowly, by creating cadres of youth that practice martial arts and ballroom dancing (i.e. etiquette and good manners). A society where almost everyone practices martial arts is an extraordinarily polite society full of self-confident people.
Basically, we need more Daniels from Karate Kid (and more Ted Lassos, too!)
Add a barter economy of acts of service & good deeds in the neighborhood and community. Like the Boy and Girl Scouts paying it forward and back, caring for each other, and living the Olympic spirit with a love of nature and the outside.
Local clubhouses act as services clearing houses staffed by boy/girl scout/ROTC orderly LARPers, ages 12-25, reinforced by international exchange students and associated local youth organizations and martial arts clubs, overseen by seniors whose wisdom and patience would be lost otherwise. All religions and faiths are welcome. We actively reach out to our brothers and sister of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and many other faiths.
Sharing of valuable resources, aka why we can now have nice things, becomes possible if everyone has good manners.
But most important is relieving the overwhelmed parents by self-organization of the vesper timeslot from 3pm to 7pm: school pickup & pre-dinner & post-work rush hour.
It works because of the radical removal of financial incentives: no money changes hands, and only good deeds produce tokens for the Divine Arcade. Good deeds like walking Aunt Edna’s dog. chores for the village and telling jokes.
Best practices, master classes, mini-bars, and certifications are set by titans of the professional class, aka the League of Extraordinary Champions, aka Knights.
Or Mandalorians - to use a more contemporary term and awe the kids.
