The Firebird Collective

“How can you rise, if you have not burned?”

Hiba Fatima Ahmad

The Firebird Collective is a network of people and groups that work together to help people become more self-sufficient, more independent and thereby enable them to be more actively interdependent.

The Firebird Collective works to create more active and engaged citizens by helping people become more competent and capable adults. The organizations that work within the Firebird Collective are dedicated to education, to mentoring, and to training.

The goal of the Firebird Collective is to help everyone who wishes, to become a fully functioning adult. The Firebird Collective defines an adult as somebody skilled in: critical thinking skills, self-sufficiency skills, and self-defense skills. 

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The Janus Academy

The Janus Academy exists to teach Youth how to become adults: able to choose their future and equipped to live their own lives not the lives chosen for them by those who would deprive them of knowledge to make them servants. 

The Freepath Association 

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The Freepath Association is a supportive community that exists to help graduates of the Janus Academy maintain their freedom and live in accordance with the Song of Seven. The Freepath Association is the point of entry and source of information on the Song of Seven.

The Vanguard Institute 

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The Vanguard Institute is a Continuing Education Center to provide continuing education for those who have completed the course load that the Janus Academy offers.

The Vanguard Council  

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The Vanguard Council is the organizing body that builds and curates the curriculum for both the Janus Academy and the Vanguard Institute. 

 

Camp Sol

Camp Sol is an alliance of groups intended to give social and cultural support to those people who follow the Song of Seven and the associated ethical and cultural systems. Camp Sol is named after a hypothetical central location, which at this stage serves as digital home base for the both the Freepath Association and the Vanguard Council, as well as for all those who are interested in the Song of Seven as an ethical system. 

A Note about Colonialism and Stereotypes

“So many people forget that the first country that the Nazis invaded was their own.”

Captain America: The First Avenger

Let’s talk about the Noble Savage and Colonialism. The Hungry Empire has spread across the globe. Wherever the food is under lock and key, the Hungry Empire rules. Wherever land can be owned and shelter must be purchased, the Hungry Empire rules. The Hungry Empire first found purchase in the Fertile Crescent, the Yellow River Valley, and the Indus Valley. And wherever the frontier of the Hungry Empire touches the lands of the Free Tribes, the peoples are branded as savages and primitives. The definitions are offensive: paternalistic, racist, and exoticizing. The captive citizens are simultaneously disgusted and entranced by the Free Tribes. They recognize the freedom that the tribes have, but cannot imagine a life outside their bottled cities with their wealth and conspicuous consumption.

Everyone culture today can trace its heritage back to the Free Tribes before the Hungry Empire engulfed them. There are no people alive who are not descended from an indigenous Free Path people. And we long to return, even when we do not fully or clearly remember that culture.

And so the image that the Hungry Empire paints of the Free Tribes is schizophrenic. The tribes are described as primitive brutes and monsters one minute, and noble savages who live close to nature in the next minute. Despite this mad and contradictory image, the Hungry Empire has faced a constant problem of citizens ‘going native,’ and has done for millennia. The citizens of the empire understand that they are oppressed, and many eventually seek to walk away. Of course the empire follows the runaways, always seeking to expand the size of the empire and the territory it controls. The empire cannot countenance any free territories. Everything must be owned. And the runaways themselves often do not understand the process of being free. And they frequently bring imperial ideas with them, along with romanticized ideas of what freedom looks like.

But all of that said, in order for humanity to survive, the Hungry Empire must be abandoned. I say abandoned and not beaten, because the empire is built for war. One cannot win a war against the Hungry Empire without becoming the Hungry Empire also. The empire must be abandoned. Because the empire runs on serfs, and if we deprive it of those serfs it ceases to function. But even its ideas must be abandoned. This revolution by abandonment is not a Jungle Opera. There are no Noble Savages. You are not Tarzan or Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Likewise, you are not Mad Max or Tina Turner in chainmail. The future to be built will be built by real humans in the real world, no matter how exotic the stories become.

Recommended Reading

  • The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, by Daniel Coyle
  • Dies the Fire: A Novel of the Change, by S.M. Stirling
  • The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors’ Toolkit, by Dmitry Orlov
  • The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, by Rob Hopkins