Community Building
Contents
Community Building Concepts
To get back to the Moon we must build a community of people in action to return to the Moon. One of our purposes must then be community building.
Community and Action
The purpose of the Back to the Moon Wiki is to form a community of people who support the return of human beings to the Moon and are in action to move this idea forward. Communities can cause great movements within society in ways that few other efforts can. The American Civil Rights movement is one great example. Communities can and do provide both vision and opportunity for action.
Please check out Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea. Also the recent movie, "Amazing Grace" is a heroic depiction of grand community action that can achieve the impossible without violence.
Talked into Existence
If you look closely at how great things get done in human societies an odd fact emerges. All great human actions are talked into existence. One person may do a fine project, like write a book, but great human projects are done by large numbers of people and these can only be started through the use of language.
Looking at human capabilities, you might think that a great project might be started by a commanding piece of art or of music. Even as powerful as the visual arts can be and as critical imaging is to developing an idea once it has been started, the only way to get a great project started is to use language.
Sometimes the initiating language is spoken and sometimes it is written. Sometimes a great orator makes a historic speech, like President Kennedy "We choose to go to the Moon". Sometimes the project is started by hundreds of one-on-one talks and small group meetings, like the American Civil Rights movement. The language can take many forms, but it is always language.
One purpose of Lunapedia then is to provide a place to build the back to the Moon movement with language.
The wisdom of the crowd
Crowds of people can be wise, and crowds of people can be dumb. A successful Wiki is a powerful tool for drawing on the wisdom a crowd where the combined knowledge of the members exceeds the knowledge of any one member. Drawing on this wisdom is our greatest strength.
Keep the dream alive
The idea of settling space has had many ups and downs since Apollo to the Moon. Every time we built something positive we have hit a bad patch that set us back to near our beginning.
In such conditions, it is very important to keep the dream alive, to keep it in existence. One of the chief purposes of this wiki then is to keep the dream of space settlement alive through thick and thin.
