In 2020, I wrote about a million words in a project called The Upcoming Elections. The Project eventually went on for 4 years but the first year of work consisted of 270 essays about modern politics, the Trump presidency and the Democratic candidates vying for office. It was also about life here in Belarus and the Belarusian revolution, covid, social and economic problems of the region and my own decisions to engage in certain spiritual activities, practicing minimalism and enjoying a vegan diet.
In 2021 I put together a website hoping to spread the word of personal responsibility towards a more sustainable future. I spoke with a lot of people and found a lot of potential for both business investment and self-expression and media exposure towards this end.
The vision for the Green 2021 project was and is to create a series of businesses, heavy on manpower with a light ecological carbon footprint. I want to fund and start up as many small businesses as I can that depend on human labor rather than machines. The basic idea is to promote a sustainable lifestyle and raising the bar on public responsibility. The idea is to have an alternative way to make a living by providing jobs for people who need them that do good things for our communities and our environment.
It’s also about raising literacy, creating new ideas and and perhaps offering some hope against the destruction of our planet.
Eventually, the project became a themed exercise in daily writing. In 2021, the theme was ecology and personal responsibility. In 2022 it was about food, veganism and personally living a vegan lifestyle. And then in 2023, it was about Utopian literature. The website at green 2021.org has now become the Utopian! An online magazine dedicated to sustainable principles of living well on the planet Earth.
There are of course a million more ideas out there but the number one theme is ecology first, people before machines, community before wealth and bikes before cars.
There is an old Russian adage that goes that you should want a hundred friends more than $100. The green 2021 project hopes to put legitimate money in the hands of as many people as possible as payment for work done for pro ecology, pro community and pro humanity projects.
The world has become a rather dirty place. Global warming is a fact and each of us has to do our part to make things right. It is time to go green and stay that way.
Adam Goodman,
January 19th, 2021