What would you consider a useful contribution to a "self-grown" society?

How would you get a society to grow from the bottom up so that you're less dependent on government officials to sort things out? Cos, let's face it, they've lost interest.

Carpooling has been mentioned today on the main board. What else might work?

Bookpooling?

Cooking for your 5 next door neighbours for a modest fee? Less energy waste...

Communal composting?

What I'm thinking of is getting connections between individuals set up again. We can do all sorts of "green", low impact lifestyle changes on our own but I've found that it's much easier when other people are involved. It's only, what, 20 years since my granddad and his 2 next door neighbours were all helping each other out with fences and ditches and strawberry nets and putting up doors and concreting bits of the back yard and giving each other eggs and broad beans an even stupidly ordinary things like asking each other if they needed something from the shops to save them a trip. We can't have lost things so simple in so short a space of time!

Nice, small ideas that work, that's where I think there's opportunity for growth into something healthier and away from the messy, wasteful, ugly lifestyle that so many people feel trapped in.

What do you think might work?

could be left for others to take and use.

People are extraordinarily helpful to those they know.

We allow ourselves to become a nation of strangers, with our separate vehicles, and overload of things to do.

A friend from India explained the difference. In the indian village, people walk to get where they are going. As a result, they pass the same people every day and start to salute them and know them. In the USA, he said, we only see cars. And other cars are only in our way.