THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF CREATIVE PROVINCES
PRINCIPLE ONE:
Creative Provinces Are Communities Formed “From the Roots Up,” by People with a Shared Vision Grouping Themselves and Their Properties Together.
American Winter Scenes: Evening, Frances F. Palmer, 1854, Currier & Ives lithograph with hand coloring
...to create cultures, travelways, industries, and environments.
PRINCIPLE TWO:
Creative Provinces Are “The Real Thing” rather than “The Appearance Of.”
Let us have a robust, manly life; let us know what we know, for certain; what we have, let it be solid and seasonable and our own. A world in the hand is worth two in the bush. Let us have to do with real men and women, and not with skipping ghosts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Representative Men
Medieval Knights on Horseback, Snowshill
...They are real environments where people live, work, and travel, and engage in real activities.
They are not virtual communities, and they are not amusement parks or theme parks. Nor are they associations or clubs where people meet periodically to discuss a common interest; nor are they reenactments where people participate in something wonderful for just a weekend. However, these activities will often be important steps to forming Creative Provinces.
Steampunk
PRINCIPLE THREE:
Creative Provinces Are Limitless: They Can Have Any Vision, Be Anywhere, Be Any Size, and Can Grow, Shrink, Change Shape, Connect, Overlap, and Federalize
Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
Rossiter Worthington Raymond,
A Commentary Prayer
...This dynamic structure allows for the limitless expression of human group creativity as people create the cultures, environments, industries, and travelways of their dreams.
PRINCIPLE FOUR:
Creative Provinces Have Heritage Treasures, Which Are Integral to Their Real-Life Existence, and Which They Thus Appropriately Create, Revive, Appreciate, Maintain, Protect, and Use
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage.
Ezra Pound, Cantos
Sioux Village near Fort Laramie, Albert Bierstadt, 1859
When provincials join a Creative Province, they bring with them any number of Heritage Treasures, which correlate with the Province Vision, including themselves and their correlated expertise and property. Provincials retain legal ownership of their correlated province properties; but at the same time these are included in the aggregate Heritage Treasures of the Province.
PRINCIPLE FIVE:
Creative Provinces Are Creative Democracies
Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise King born of all England.
Sir Thomas Malory,
Le Morte d’Arthur
"Camelot Ladies of the Round Table"
Betty Ann Fraley
...They can democratically create any type of governing social, political, or economic system they want to run themselves, and they can democratically change their system.
PRINCIPLE SIX:
Creative Provinces Are Free and Open Within Their Protective Visionary Structure
In limitations he first shows himself the master. And the law can only bring us freedom.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Was Wir Bringen
Wild Geese, Minka/Pixabay
Creative Provinces adhere to the principle of freedom within their protective visionary structure: They are free and open, both within the Province, and in its relation to the outside world, to all who follow their protective visionary rules. This allows anyone to participate in a Province’s creative vision, or to interact with the Province, while at the same time allowing the Province to protect the integrity of its Vision.
PRINCIPLE SEVEN:
Creative Provinces Are in a Complimentary Relationship with Their Sovereign States
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.
Article 10 of the American Bill of Rights[1]
[1] A Bill of Rights is a “Don’t Tread on Me” statement of a citizenry, to ensure its government does not overstep its bounds.
"Les Trois Mousquetaires," Joseph-Noël Sylvestré
There are two types of sovereignty: Individual Sovereignty and Group Sovereignty. Of these two, Individual Sovereignty reigns supreme, as it is given to each person, at birth, by God.
Private property—one’s body, abode, and land—is the ultimate expression of individual sovereignty. Thus, the theft or other assault on the body or property, has been decreed unlawful by God in all religious foundations, such as in the Ten Commandments.
Individuals then give further sovereignty to a group, usually a nation-state, for the purpose of protecting individual sovereignty, through laws and the administration of justice.
When a person is a part of a group of any type, such as a family, a community such as a creative province, or a sovereign state, they retain their individual sovereignty.
Provincials are individuals who have joined together with other individuals who share a community vision. Provincials may be members of one or more Creative Provinces, where they live according to their community Vision.
Provincials also live in and are citizens of Sovereign States, participating in their democratic governments, following their laws, and receiving their protective services.
And always, Individual sovereignty reigns supreme, the individual owning his or her own life, body, property, and personal vision.
PRINCIPLE EIGHT:
Creative Provinces Hold to the Highest Principles of Creating Community Life as a Magnificent, Beautiful, and Loving Art Form
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Michelangelo
Mt. Eaton Wayne Co. Ohio Barn Raising with men working on roof behind oak shocks, © Doyle Yoder Photography