HappyBlackSheep Japan Site access and member policies

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Who's Online

About Groups

Groups allow members to form a sub-section of the site to discuss and organise a particular community or project. Its a place to focus on location specific details. Access is limited to trusted members only.

Groups

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Okayama Inaka Community
by gecko

Members: 3

This group is looking for opportunities to establish a community in the countryside somewhere near Okayama, Japan.

Kanto Nanto Ka Naru
by yukkuri_kame

Members: 1

Looking to create a community/educational center oriented towards holism and permaculture in the Kanto region.

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Joining this Site

This site is intended to grow as a resource for members. As such, a few pages of the site are open to all to view, but much of the content is only available to members. If you wish to join up as an active member, you will be contacted via email to provide a little information about yourself, and your reason for wishing to join, and this is mainly to verify you are a real person and not a spammer. You are then strongly encouraged to provide a little background on your "My Page" as way of introduction to the rest of the members, especially where you are located so you will appear on the HBS GoogleMaps (only Trusted Members can view profile information - and individuals can limit it further to only friends). Within the site are Groups focused on specific regions of interest. These are only accessible to Trusted Members who join them, to provide a little more privacy for detailed localised discussions. Administrators reserve the right to reject or rescind membership to anyone not following the core principle of mutual respect.

Non-members can see some areas of the site, notable the first 100 characters of Blog posts and general information sections, but to access the Members list and profiles, Groups and the Forums you will need to join as a member. There is no cost to join. After you have been a member for a while you can apply to join as a trusted member, and have access to more forums and private information. To become a trusted member you must be know and sponsored by another trusted member, preferable having met face to face in the real world. Read more about the member access system here.

This site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

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Mahatma Gandhi`s seven deadly sins:

wealth without work;
pleasure without conscience;
science without humanity;
knowledge without character;
politics without principle;
commerce without morality;
worship without sacrifice.

HappyBlackSheep - Whats is all about then...

This network has been set-up to provide a meeting place and discussion group for people interested in establishing and transitioning to semi-intentional communities within Japan. The organisers area of interest is Okayama, but people wanting do something similar in other areas in Japan are also welcome to join the discovery process. We can set up groups for each area of interest. This really is an exercise in Transition Initiatives, and our aim is to use this concept to build the many resilient future communities in Japan that we want to live in.

The long term aim is to:
Discover a place/s where a group of like minded people can establish a loose collective of independent long term settlers within a countryside environment, with the intention of moving towards a simpler, more sustainable future, whilst building a supportive and resilient wider community in which to do so.

This group is especially focused on English speaking foreigners wanting to live in Japan, but does not wish to exclude people of any background, especially like minded local Japanese people. There may be a related Japanese language site to this one in the near future, though you are welcome to post here in Japanese as well.

Our core values are: mutual respect, a desire to become part of a supportive community, and a belief in building a resilient, sustainable future.

The framework is a loose collective to allow individual freedoms, whilst building a community to support the core values. Instead of an "intentional community" that seeks to impose fairly rigid guidelines and rules, the semi-intentional community is more a process of finding good neighbours, and building good neighbourhoods. While the initial focus is in the countryside, this concept can be applied just as well to towns and cities, and I hope it will! How it might work for us is what we are here to discover. :-) Each eventual community will have its own way, based on the desires of those who join, but in all cases the core values should hold.

For general discussion on Country Living please also visit the Gaijinpot.com and CountryLiving forums.

Note: Please set your username to the be same as your Gaijin.pot user name if you use that site. Helps us identify each other. :-)

Also, can I urge you use your Profile page to display a little about yourself and your own goals, and maybe use the Blog function here to outline your own personal point of views about what sort of future you would like to see, and describe your own personal journey towards that goal.

“If you do not change direction, you will end up where you are going” - Lao Tzu

Access to this site is restricted in various ways to protect its members privacy. The core value of this site is mutual respect, but that requires mutual trust, and for that to develop you have to build your trust within this community. And for member to interact in a manner that will build trust there needs to be a safe environment to promote that. That is why HBS will be a closed system, and will always remain that way into the future. There is a little bit here for visitors, a bit more for standard members, and a lot more community elements for those who work to be part of the trusted network.

Member Access Levels:

Non-Members: To build trust, only a very limited amount of member content is viewable to non-members, such as the first 100 characters of Articles, and there is no access to forums or other member profiles. Often a member login is required to see information on the site, or some areas may show as ''not authorized'. Please consider becoming a member if you are really interested in what we are doing here.

Member (Level 1): This level of access will give you access to the Articles and a limited set of forums. Its enough to get to know other members via their article posts, and more importantly for them to get to know you. This builds trust. Post questions and comments in the general forums so people can get to know you and your circumstances. Eventually, once you are known and trusted, you can apply to become a trusted member - a BlackSheep. Also use the 'Countryside Living' forum to get known. Most people here also visit there.

The Flock (Level 3): This is for members who have proven to be trusted members. A trusted member is ideally someone who another trusted member has personally met and can vouch for, or who an existing trusted member is prepared to sponsor to become a trusted member. By using this system we are not trying to exclude anyone, but instead ensuring the privacy of members is protected as a first priority. This allows for private info to be safely shared with only others in the flock. Trusted members can view a lot more forums, can view and join Groups, and can view other members profiles. (Also note, members can chose to only allow 'friends' to view their profile if they wish, for an additional level of privacy.) Entry into the trusted members group will only be via the agreement of the existing trusted members. Trusted members can be voted out of this group if they violate the memberships trust.

Note: ONLY Trusted Members can view other member profiles, and only if they are set so all members can view the profile.

Why limit access: HBS wants to promote a safe environment for all members, and that means building and sharing trust. Unlike many other virtual communities, HBS is about building real communities, with people working together face to face as well as virtually. Trust is something you have to earn in real life, and so it should be here as well. Initially I thought an open forum would be the best way to get things happening, but now I can see that on the net, this fundamentally undermines peoples willingness to invest their trust. So HBS will always remain a closed network, but open to join for people willing to display the values of mutual trust, and win the trust of the rest of the members.

How to build trust: The best way is to meet with other people face to face, share some time together and get to know each other a little better. Of course this is not possible for everyone, so the next best thing is to participate in the open forums, both here and those linked to from this site. Show others there that you are genuine and not there to cause grief. This doesn't mean you can't have your own opinions. In fact the test of trust is the ability to have a robust debate and disagree on a topic, but still respect the other persons point of view. If you can do this you will demonstrate you grasp the core value here - mutual respect.

Betraying trust: If a member fails to respect the other members, they will be downgraded to a standard member and must rebuild the trust for reentry.

Additional clarification around the idea of Trusted Members: Trust can be built many ways. One way in though your input on this site, another is though your input on the forums we link to, and a third is though your existing contributions to the online and offline community. People who maintain their own online blogs and other sites, who are honestly expressing their opinions and thoughts, are already showing a level of trust in others by putting this information out there to share with others. These are sources by which you are judged, and establish your credibility with the online community. If you have a blog you share with the world, then you are nine tenths of the way to earning the trust of members here, and its a really good way to become part of this community, assuming your views are in harmony with those on HBS. :-)

Personal Note from Gecko: It is my desire to meet every member of HBS individually, face to face. I have met some of you already, and I really hope to meet many more of you over time.