# North Star Principles

## **Open Source** 💓

We seek a liberation from the current capitalist world-system, so that we can contribute to and receive from our shared collaborative commons, as the growing heart of human economic activity.  We will openly share everything we possibly can, about what this journey is like, what we're learning, and what we're teaching, so that others can learn from our mistakes, copy us when it makes sense, improve upon us, and ultimately leave us behind.  Practically speaking, this means that all learning material recorded for this project will be released under an open license as free cultural works.  It also means we will adopt open source solutions ourselves whenever feasible.

{% content-ref url="/pages/-LjRfq0cmkB35iu7YNcf" %}
[Open Source](/farm/our-ideological-pillars/open-generosity.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}

## **Apocoloptimism 🔥**

Apocoloptimists are people who maintain a fundamental optimism about life in the face of destruction, chaos, and the crumbling of old paradigms.  One of the core design rules that we derive from the attitude of apocoloptimism is that whatever we design or implement on the Buddhist Geeks Farm must be, "good in heaven, good in hell."  In other words, we only do things that have a good chance of working well in the most ideal conditions we could imagine (heaven) and as well as in the worst (hell), because we recognize that we don't know what the future holds.  

{% content-ref url="/pages/-Lte4dAePvqKDwc\_\_Wgh" %}
[Apocoloptimism](/farm/our-ideological-pillars/apocoloptimism.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}

## **Necessary Subtraction** ➖

By making our living situation hyper-affordable through [practicing demonitization](/farm/active-demonitization.md) we enable a [necessary subtraction](/farm/our-ideological-pillars/necessary-subtraction.md) from the capitalist world-system, and a chance to re-imagine what humans might be.  By living simply, of our own volition, we reduce dependencies, while increasingly joy & appreciation for "the simple things."  This contemplative stepping back is a retrieval of old monastic modes of living, of "being on retreat," of voluntary simplicity.

{% content-ref url="/pages/-LjhjRFaKN0x89k9kU0I" %}
[Necessary Subtraction](/farm/our-ideological-pillars/necessary-subtraction.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}


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