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Why
The Rabbit Hole
😌 Simple Version
The quick and simple version of our "why"
⚠️ The Rabbit Hole
Warning: Welcome… You are ready to get started.
Take your time, we do repeat ourselves, but its only because we need to drive a message home. This page will update over time, so this might be the last time your see it in its current form.
🫡 God speed.
Feedback: Let us know what you think.
◥ What is Maslow solving for?
Solving for human needs, in harmony with nature.
The initiative is solving directly for human needs in abundance and balance with nature, to co-create the (zero-cost-of- living) *profit-of-living* paradise among the stars we know this world can be.
With your eyes open, open your eyes…
⏰ We ask you a simple question:
Who are you?
What can you be?
Where are you going?
What's out there?
(Scene from the 2013 film "Her")
Before reading the rest of this page:
START HERE:👇
The most important videos you will ever watch
Bill Mollison visits Village Homes
Geoff Lawton visits Village Homes
If you read or watch nothing else on the internet today, it is of critical importance that you watch these two videos 👆. This is a kind of "Maslow Initiative" filter. Its a very simple question: Would you like to live in a place like this? Do you think we should do whatever it takes to build places like this now?
If the answer is "No", then you may safely close this browser window or tab. We thank you for stopping by The Maslow Initiative, and we will see you in another life when we are both cats. 🫡
If you answered "Yes", you may continue reading the rest of this page, and The Maslow Initiative will be a relevant universe to explore 🤝
One video is of Bill Mollison (The founder of Permaculture) visiting Village Homes in Davis California, the other is of Geoff Lawton, his student and protégé, visiting the same place some years later.
This is our takeaway:
We now know that it is possible, that it has been done. We are not inventing something new that has yet to be tested and proved. This is crucial for human beings to understand… this is what we can create, that it can be done. With simple upfront landscape design, some earthworks for passive water drainage, access ways, solar housing and circular systems and structural positions, planned action through time, and we can more or less sit back and watch abundance take over.
This is the very essence of what The Maslow Initiative is building.
With simple strategic landscape design, its absolutely possible to make sustainable, resilient multi-generational sanctuaries. If you want to get involved in what we are doing, and if you want to join us in creating a human habitat like this everywhere:
Contact us, together we can make it happen.
Or join us and help build it.
◥ What does Maslow do?
We've been struggling to answer this question since we started on the 1st of October 2023.
To understand what we do, you have to also have a deep understanding of why we are doing it. The rest of this page is dedicated 'why'.
Here are the high level attempts to describe exactly what we do:
Short Version: "WHAT"
Maslow creates off-grid, future-proof communities where the land itself meets human needs — food, water, shelter, energy, and sanitation — so people can live well, at zero cost of living, in harmony with nature.
Long Version: "WHAT"
Maslow is a property and lifestyle development company building a new model for human habitats. We design and develop landscapes that meet human needs directly — integrating food systems, clean water, renewable energy, efficient shelter, and waste cycles into the land itself.
These are not gated eco-enclaves, but living, inclusive environments, suburbs and neighbourhoods where people of all backgrounds can maintain their privacy but also thrive together. We call them permaculture-based sanctuaries — places that feel like the Garden of Eden, where food is abundant, energy is renewable, and the daily cost of living falls away as a function of design.
Maslow works as an ecosystem of “🌿 Branches” — interconnected companies that handle land acquisition, ecological design, financing, building, and community development. We open-source our methods so that this model can be replicated anywhere, because the mission isn’t just to build properties that become the most valuable real estate on the planet — it’s also to build a regenerative, multi-generational legacy of human flourishing.
High Level "WHY"
WHY
At its core, The Maslow Initiative matters because it believes every human being deserves the opportunity to flourish and fully realise their potential, to meet every level of their needs. It’s driven by the conviction that when the essential needs—from physical well-being to a sense of purpose—are met sustainably and collaboratively, we elevate not only the individual but entire communities and ecosystems. This “why” transcends profit or mere functionality. It stands on the principle that humanity’s collective future depends on ensuring people and planet thrive together.
When people understand The Maslow Initiative’s real purpose, when you really 'see it', they’re not just passive participants; they become active ambassadors and collaborators, joining a movement that’s both innovative and inclusive—grounded in a profound belief in humanity’s potential to grow, thrive, and sustain itself not only responsibly, but in abundance.
High Level "HOW"
HOW
The Maslow Initiative breathes life into this belief by doing whatever it takes to setup the tools, technologies, systems and structures, communities and teams to become the full service one-stop-shop for developing these kinds of properties. That means everything from designing courses for how and what we learn, scouting land then analysing, designing permaculture implementation plans, to building tiny houses, solar homes and off grid structures, to developing large scale low tech compost methods for fast tracking waste-to-soil, alleviating poverty in communities who cannot afford it, building a fleet of specialised vehicles and tools to action the plans large scale without relying on various contractors, and building a mapping system to track and make a strategy game out of it all. Here it the bottom line: This work needs to get done, this is how we must build landscapes from now on, we don't know if this is the best way to go about it but we must try, and fail, and see why, then adjust, and keep trying, and doing, until it is done.
It always seems impossible until it is done.
Nelson Mandela
◥ Why is Maslow solving for this?
To remember what truly matters, to help people remember the joy of meeting one's needs directly, at lower cost to themselves, their families, their communities and the environment: i.e. meeting our essential needs simply, locally, and together—reducing our cost of living (and possibly making that phrase obsolete from our vernacular as a species) while generating a regenerative “profit of living” that renews people, community, and planet (running nature on auto abundance mode through intelligently and creatively designed environments).
Also think about it, globally, the way we get our needs met, i.e. food, water, energy, shelter and sanitation, at a basic physiological level, is fundamentally unsustainable (I don't agree, its completely sustainable and let me tell you why).
At Maslow we are reading the writing on the wall and we believe that the systems we have relied on for the last 5-10 generations, will collapse within our generation. (We really want to be wrong on this one, and would happily admit it if we were). Read more below about the #metacrisis and all that scary stuff, or listen to Nate Hagen's podcast, The Great Simplification for a few episodes to really 'get it'.
Or just take 30 minutes, settle in, and watch this film, it pretty much says it all:
Just remember that with the same ability we have to wreak destruction, we can in equal measure, cast abundance and creativity in how we work with nature, work with ourselves as not separate from the natural world, but part of the whole.
Also, securing physiological needs is just the beginning. We believe that true freedom comes from abundance, where all human needs are met. Our developments lay the foundation for self-sufficient living, but that's only the first step. Over time, we prioritise integrating spaces that enrich the human experience:
🧑🏫 schools, 🫂 community centres, 🧘 yoga studios, 🧖 saunas, 🏕️ camp sites by the river, 🗿 land art, 🐎 horse riding trails, 📽️ cinemas, 🛖 retreat spaces, 🧑🎨 artist hubs, 🧑💻co-working worlds, 📖 libraries, 🪜 workshop spaces, 🎸 instrument and recording studios, 🥻clothes making & repair shops, 🪩 event and dance spots, 🎡 carnival areas, ⛲️ public fountains, 🔭 space & 🔬 science exploration buildings, 🥎 sports courts, 🎣 fishing ponds, 🎪 circuses, 🛋️ community lounges, 📚 libraries, ☕️ coffee stops, 🛝 playgrounds, 🧺 laundry services, 🚵♀️ bicycle tracks, 🧗 rock climbing routes, 🏟️ amphitheatres, 🥙 cooking classes & kitchens, ⛰️ mountain trails, 🏘️ interconnected living spaces, and so on, the possibilities are endless.
Our vision goes beyond survival; we’re building environments that nurture creativity, community, wellness, and personal growth. By securing the basics in abundance first, we set people free to thrive in every aspect of life. By reducing the average cost-of-living to zero, we allow money to take on a whole new dimension of intentional directionality, meaning it is a place where people can truly save their money, spending it on further improving their lives, their communities and the planet, for generations to come.
◥ Why call the project The "Maslow" Initiative?
Firstly, Abraham Maslow's seminal paper: "A Theory of Human Motivation", describes his then groundbreaking framework for thinking about a hierarchy of human needs, describing more or less what we need and more or less in what order we need it. In looking for a compass, a signal to noise detector, a direction in which to sail to solve for the predicament humanity finds itself in, The Maslow Initiative adopted this idea as the central focal point around what we are doing i.e. 'solving for'. We are solving for human needs, more or less in the order described, and doing so within planetary bounds, in order to create human habitats where self/community actualisation is not only possible, but the norm.
Who are you? What would you do with your time if money were no object? What would you build? How would you spend your day? With who would you spend your time? What ideas and curiosities would you explore if you lived in a cost of living free environment? How exactly do we set that up?
Secondly, in the 2004 show LOST, we follow a group of characters who crash land on an island, where we are eventually introduced to "The Dharma Initiative", a mysterious organisation that did experiments on the island. In a similar way, we are a mysterious organisation doing experiments in alternative and sustainable ways of creating human habitats and regenerative landscapes.
◥ Lets make it better than consumerism
Imagine if instead of waiting for politicians, we start building living, breathing prototypes of regenerative society today.
Micro-villages, food forests, compost economies, community energy co-ops.
Every node becomes both a survival pod and a cultural attractor — proof that another way of life exists.
These places will be open, welcoming, beautiful, and irresistible, so people taste more joy and freedom than consumer life offers.
If citizens see neighbors feeding themselves from regenerative gardens, working fewer hours, dancing more, wasting less, the story changes from doom to desire.
To position humans as meta-keystone species, we need millions of tiny actions, not just a few big assemblies.
🌄 The Great Awakening
Who are we, where are we, and where are we going?
We are at a critical moment in human history. Humanity, as a keystone species, has the unique power and responsibility to shape the landscapes we inhabit. Yet, the modern systems we rely upon—industrialized food production, energy extraction, urban living—leave us disconnected, stressed, and fundamentally misaligned with nature's rhythms.
At Maslow Initiative, we believe there's another way.
“We are all here to contribute our gifts toward something greater than ourselves, and will never be content unless we are.”
-Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Humanity is nature waking up to itself.
Zach Bush
👣 Recognizing Our Nature
Humans are not separate from nature—we are an expression of nature itself. Our bodies, minds, and communities thrive best when aligned with the inherent patterns of the ecosystems we inhabit.
Our approach is rooted in:
Observing and integrating nature’s patterns into human settlements.
Harnessing intelligent design and permaculture to embed human needs into landscapes.
Creating life-serving habitats that naturally produce abundance, eliminating survival anxiety and creating spaces for joy, creativity, and connection.
Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.
-Bill Mollison, Founder of Permaculture
#metacrisisalert
The world, as we know it, teeters on the edge of a profound crisis—what some call a metacrisis or polycrisis. It is not merely one challenge that troubles us, but the entanglement of many.
What is the "metacrisis"?
“The metacrisis is the underlying crisis driving a multitude of crises.”
“We have to better understand who and what we are, individually and collectively, in order to be able to fundamentally change how we act. That conundrum is what is now widely called the meta-crisis lying within, between and beyond the emergency and the crisis. That aspect of our predicament is socio-emotional, educational, epistemic and spiritual in nature.”
Jonathan Rowson
☢️⚠️⛔️☣️📜 WARNING: View the full POLYCRISIS / METACRISIS list at your own risk
We must turn our gaze however to the exciting opportunities we have to build the paradise we do want, not focus ad nauseam on the dystopia we hope to avoid. Now is the best time in history to be alive, we have the best kind of work to do, more ways of connecting and creating together than before. We are the keystone designer species of this planet (and don't you forget it), and as a reader of this text, you occupy the most advanced piece of machinery (as far as we know👽) that nature has ever produced: The human body…
Make no mistake: Paradise is a physical possibility. There are technical ways to produce, design and create in the environment the elements that result in paradise for the human organism and its surroundings and for all Life forms on earth. These elements are predictable, plannable, forecastable, programmable, preparable, manageable, makable, placeable, designable, anticipatable and physically buildable, real possible potential realities. Some people have never even considered the possibility of physically setting their work, their energy, their ability to act during this flash in the pan of a lifetime we get to have on this bright beautiful earth, directly towards the task of building paradise… of solving for human needs and working directly on integrating the tools, technologies and techniques towards those needs naturally being met and at scale in their settlement environment, building your needs into, as defaults, as background features of the place where you live… yet this is exactly what we are inviting you to do. Join the 🫂 movement, or hold my 🍺 beer (or come help make beer), and watch as we create paradise.
The real question is: can we, at this very moment, awaken to the reality that it is now that we must act?
Humans combine energy and materials into innovation and technology, we represent it by money, we do all this to get the same hormones and neurotransmitter feelings of our successful ancestors and the whole thing produces pollution and waste. Most people in our society don't quite understand energy. Energy is the currency of life. It is central in nature and ecosystems and it's also central in human systems. We need energy at every stage of the economic process, to invent, to mine, to process, to manufacture, to deliver, to run, to maintain, to repair and to dispose of every good in our economic system.
Nate Hagens
The Predicament We Face
Today's dominant economic superorganism—where human needs are met through disconnected, extractive systems—is unsustainable, inequitable, and fragile. i.e. they cannot sustain, i.e. will collapse. Reliance on distant supply chains, processed foods, and centralized utilities strips communities of resilience and individuals of their natural autonomy and creativity.
The option to step away from this system—toward self-sufficient, resilient, regenerative living—is virtually absent in mainstream markets. The knowledge, skills, infrastructure, and community structures needed to live simply, sustainably, and abundantly remain largely undeveloped.
Maslow Initiative was born to bridge this gap.
👓 The Vision
We are creating an ecosystem of companies developing frameworks to facilitate and execute on making properties amazing, building tiny houses, integrating resilient food, water, energy and sanitation systems, and creating an army of "Paradise Makers" who want to live this life and do this work.
I don't know how else to put it.
Its simple:
We need to do large scale permaculture landscapes. (Have any ideas on how to do that fast, and large scale?)
We need to create places where humans live where all their needs are met by structures and systems we integrate in those landscapes, meaning everything you need is walking distance.
We need to actually start enjoying life for life's sake, not at the expense of the earth's biological systems.
We need to read books, watch movies, enjoy the sunset and each other's company.
We envision a world where every community thrives within resilient, regenerative landscapes, naturally producing more abundance than they consume. Imagine:
Landscapes designed to effortlessly meet all human needs: food, water, shelter, sanitation, and energy.
Communities living in rhythm with nature, enjoying slower, richer, healthier lives.
Human settlements that strengthen and regenerate ecosystems, ensuring the well-being of future generations.
This is not hard, its just unusual in our current system. Are you ready to act? Join us.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root
Henry David Thoreau
👁️ Our collective vision is simple:
To remember a sustainable and regenerative way of living, where humans and nature co-create environments that sustain life for generations to come.
We've done it before and at scale. No technical reason why not.
Our task is not to fix the system, but to create the conditions in which a new one can emerge.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
🚀 Our Mission
Our mission is to pioneer life-serving habitats and regenerative landscapes through:
Land Acquisition and Development: Buying properties to create integrated ecosystems that support human flourishing.
Education and Training: Empowering individuals and communities with practical knowledge and skills to build and maintain regenerative lifestyles.
Community Empowerment: Supporting communities to create composting, waste-reducing, and sustainable business ventures, lifting people out of poverty and dependency.
Rapid Implementation: Deploying specialized fleets and technologies to swiftly transform landscapes into abundant ecosystems.
We fear our highest possibility (as well as our lowest one). We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments.
Abraham Maslow
Very simply put: Using Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a guide, we are developing structures and habitats that solve for human needs directly.
We are creating environments where it is not 100% necessary for all humans to "make money" in order to purchase the goods of living, but rather to be nestled in landscapes, structures and integrated systems and with the tools of production built in, in order to produce the goods of living directly instead.
Physiological needs:
🏠
shelter
🍊
food
🚿
water
⚡️
energy
🧻
sanitation
🌍
meta-crisis averting
life-serving paradise ecosystems
⚡️
eternal growth
de-growth company vision & mission
🤝
cynical and fear
optimistic & gifting based collaborative cultures
🕉️
self-actualized
community-actualized resilient human beings
🌳
market dependant
local & circular food forests & gardens
QUESTION: Where can you go right now, in the world, to simply live your life comfortably, without "cost of living" / survival by grocery store / resilient to market forces?
The *Deep* Maslow “Why”
Why we do what we do
Because the mango trees are missing.
Because we are born onto a planet of abundance, yet raised in systems of scarcity.
Because the cost of living has become the cost of being. Because the dominant story says “you must earn your right to exist”
— and we know a deeper story is possible.
Because everyone deserves access to food that nourishes, homes that shelter, waters that heal, and communities that hold them — not as luxuries, but as birthrights.
Because the world doesn’t need another gated eco-retreat or intellectual utopia. It needs real places, rooted in soil and soul, where humans remember how to live again.
Together. With nature. With purpose. With joy.
Because in this time of polycrisis, climate collapse, loneliness, and disconnection, we don’t need more innovation — we need remembrance. Of rhythms. Of rituals. Of responsibility.
Because we believe humans are not the problem — we are a keystone species with a meta-potential to heal, restore, and co-create the future we long for.
We do this work because the Earth is still generous.
Because there is still time.
Because there are mango trees yet to be planted — and children yet to play in their shade.
The great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard.
Abraham Maslow
🏠
🍊
🍊
🍊
🏠
🍊
The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.
-Masanobu Fukuoka
What does it take to get us to stand quietly, like somebody under a clear midnight sky, taking all of it in, stilled by the staggering pitch and pull of life? Things going well doesn't seem to help with this. Good fortune isn't persuasive on this matter, and it rarely gives people pause. It's when the news isn't good news; that's usually the time you find the limits of what you can bear to know. Then, maybe only then, you might be able to see that the waves of what you believed and did and held off from doing will still have their ripples, long after you're done. They outlast you. And this is tremendous news. When you are still enough for long enough, sometimes the river, the boat, and the waves and eddies-all of it-can turn into what you mean when you say, "My Life." If you can do that, you can change things. Your life becomes a little friendlier to the world, to what the world needs from you. It becomes a little friendlier to the endings of things too.
Stephen Jenkinson
🧭 Maslow Values
An evolving compass for regenerative civilisation design
1. Regeneration over Extraction
We commit to regenerating ecosystems, soils, waters, and human potential. Every project aims to leave the land, the community, and the individual more alive than before.
2. Thrivalism, Not Survivalism
We don’t just aim to meet needs — we create the conditions for flourishing. Beauty, play, creativity, and joy are essential nutrients.
3. Integrated Human Needs
We ground our work in the full spectrum of Maslow’s hierarchy — not as a ladder, but as a living system where food, water, shelter, energy, meaning, and belonging are intertwined.
4. Paradise is a Verb
“Paradise-making” is an active practice: of planting, building, composting, listening, designing, and dreaming — in harmony with the land and all beings.
5. Living Systems Thinking
We see the world not as separate parts, but as interconnected ecologies. Every action creates a ripple — and we design with those ripples in mind.
6. The Commons and the Gift
We honor the sacredness of sharing — from community land trusts to time banks and decentralized collaboration. Wealth is what we give, grow, and steward together.
7. Reverence for Life and Culture
We celebrate Indigenous wisdom, grassroots knowledge, and embodied learning. Every place and person has something to teach us.
8. Conflict as Compost
Through Nonviolent Communication, conflict circles, and repair, we compost the old and fertilize the new. Healthy communities grow through truth and tenderness.
9. Nature as Teacher, Blueprint, and Mirror
From permaculture and biomimicry to food forests and passive solar homes, we align with nature’s design intelligence to create resilient human habitats.
10. Self-Actualization in Service of Life
We believe in individual growth not as an isolated pursuit, but as a gift to the collective. When one person thrives, the whole ecosystem feels it.
Permaculture is an ethical design science, that mimics nature to supply all our human needs whilst benefiting the environment.
Geoff Lawton
What are the 7 🌿 Branches?
The problems we face today are complex — food insecurity, housing crises, waste, ecological collapse, social disconnection, economic fragility. No single solution can solve them all. That’s why we’ve built seven distinct but interwoven branches — each focused on an essential layer of the mission, and each designed as its own powerful business and engine of change.
By giving each branch a clear identity and area of responsibility — from growing food to mapping impact, from building homes to telling the story — we avoid the trap of vague promises and instead build real systems that work. These are not departments. They are fully operational teams, each solving for core human needs in their own ways, yet deeply integrated into the whole.
Think of it like a game: each branch is a class with its own powers, and together, they form a guild capable of reshaping the world. In nature, every healthy system has diversity, specialisation, and symbiosis. The Maslow Branches are no different.
Media
Documenting our story and others through filmmaking, podcasts, and impactful storytelling.
Channels
Production
Marketing
Pansophia
A school of life, providing courses and resources for regenerative living and holistic education.
Courses
Glossary
Library
LandScouts
Scouting, acquiring, designing, and selling regenerative landscapes and community settlements.
☎️ 0. Land Consultation Dream
📖 1. Site Analysis Document
🗺️ 2. Master Plan Design Document
🚶♂️ 3. On-Site Visit & Pegging
🏡 4. Grand Master Design & Implementation Plan
Buy & Sell & Donate Land
Rentals & Stays
Formations
Developing innovative, modular off-grid structures and sustainable living technologies.
Homes
Furniture
Sanitation
Circularity
GroundSwell
Transforming waste into fertile soil, creating abundant gardens and nourishing communities.
Compost
Trees
Food
Waste
Mobilise
Deploying specialized machinery and skilled teams for rapid, large-scale permaculture implementations.
This branch us under development
Atlas
Developing gamified software and mapping tools to visualize, plan, and manage regenerative community landscapes.
This branch us under development
Wealth isn't how much money you have. Wealth is what you're left with when you lose all your money.
Roger Hamilton
Breaking the Illusion: Money and Value
We must awaken to the truth: money itself has no inherent value—it is merely a medium of exchange. A real apple has value; money exchanged for that apple cannot be eaten. Today's money-dependent economy relies entirely on complex, fragile systems—market economies, supply chains, packaging, transportation, refrigeration—all depleting resources and generating waste. This abstraction of our basic needs is unsustainable, harmful, and unnecessary.
The truth is simple and empowering: Food can grow abundantly and freely, simply by thoughtful, intelligent design. We, as the keystone species, possess the unique ability to design ecosystems that produce effortlessly and abundantly, creating spaces for slower, healthier, and more connected lives.
We can, quite literally, design the Garden of Eden, bringing freedom, connection, and true abundance back into our everyday existence.
"Self" Sufficiency is a Scam
Self-sufficiency is a beautiful illusion — the fantasy that one person can be the farmer, the builder, the healer, and the poet all at once. In truth, it is a lonely burden, a scam sold by a culture obsessed with the myth of the isolated hero. Life has never worked that way. Every loaf of bread, every roof beam, every song we hum is the gift of countless unseen hands and histories. To try to be “self-sufficient” is to forget that we are already woven from others.
Community sufficiency, on the other hand, is simply how life breathes. The tree does not hoard its shade, the bee does not claim the blossom, and we need not pretend to stand alone. In community, sufficiency ceases to be a struggle and becomes a dance — my strength covering your weakness, your abundance filling my lack. Real freedom is not independence, but interdependence: a remembering that paradise is made in common.
Wildmindscommunity
Start here: (the rest will follow)
🏠
shelter
🍊
food
🚿
water
⚡️
energy
🧻
sanitation
Join the Movement
The future belongs to those who choose to align with the wisdom of nature, embracing their role as conscious stewards of life. Maslow Initiative invites you to explore, learn, participate, and co-create with us. Together, we can awaken to a world where human needs are met not by extraction and stress, but by regenerative abundance and harmony.
It’s time to reconnect, slow down, and thrive.
If we want to think about civilisation birth and midwifing, supporting the emergence of a viable, self organising, healthy, resilient civilisation… we think about the foundational shifts that have to happen, most of them involve closing open loops, so that our decision making is omniconsiderate, that our decision making ends up being in the highest good of all that is being effected by the decision.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
💸
zero-cost-of-living
profit-of-living human needs habitats
🫂
self-sufficient
community-abundant developments & projects
🌍
meta-crisis averting
life-serving global paradise making
🕉️
self-actualized
community-actualized resilient human beings
⚡️
eternal growth
de-growth movement vision & mission
🤝
cynical & fear
optimistic & gifting based collaborative cultures
🌳
market drive & scarcity
local & abundant food, water & energy
◥ What is Maslow solving for?
Solving for human needs, in harmony with nature.
The initiative is solving directly for human needs in abundance and balance with nature, to co-create the (zero-cost-of- living) *profit-of-living* paradise among the stars we know this world can be.
With your eyes open, open your eyes…
⏰ We ask you a simple question:
Who are you?
What can you be?
Where are you going?
What's out there?
(Scene from the 2013 film "Her")
Before reading the rest of this page:
START HERE:👇
The most important videos you will ever watch
Bill Mollison visits Village Homes
Geoff Lawton visits Village Homes
If you read or watch nothing else on the internet today, it is of critical importance that you watch these two videos 👆. This is a kind of "Maslow Initiative" filter. Its a very simple question: Would you like to live in a place like this? Do you think we should do whatever it takes to build places like this now?
If the answer is "No", then you may safely close this browser window or tab. We thank you for stopping by The Maslow Initiative, and we will see you in another life when we are both cats. 🫡
If you answered "Yes", you may continue reading the rest of this page, and The Maslow Initiative will be a relevant universe to explore 🤝
One video is of Bill Mollison (The founder of Permaculture) visiting Village Homes in Davis California, the other is of Geoff Lawton, his student and protégé, visiting the same place some years later.
This is our takeaway:
We now know that it is possible, that it has been done. We are not inventing something new that has yet to be tested and proved. This is crucial for human beings to understand… this is what we can create, that it can be done. With simple upfront landscape design, some earthworks for passive water drainage, access ways, solar housing and circular systems and structural positions, planned action through time, and we can more or less sit back and watch abundance take over.
This is the very essence of what The Maslow Initiative is building.
With simple strategic landscape design, its absolutely possible to make sustainable, resilient multi-generational sanctuaries. If you want to get involved in what we are doing, and if you want to join us in creating a human habitat like this everywhere:
Contact us, together we can make it happen.
Or join us and help build it.
◥ What does Maslow do?
We've been struggling to answer this question since we started on the 1st of October 2023.
To understand what we do, you have to also have a deep understanding of why we are doing it. The rest of this page is dedicated 'why'.
Here are the high level attempts to describe exactly what we do:
Short Version: "WHAT"
Maslow creates off-grid, future-proof communities where the land itself meets human needs — food, water, shelter, energy, and sanitation — so people can live well, at zero cost of living, in harmony with nature.
Long Version: "WHAT"
Maslow is a property and lifestyle development company building a new model for human habitats. We design and develop landscapes that meet human needs directly — integrating food systems, clean water, renewable energy, efficient shelter, and waste cycles into the land itself.
These are not gated eco-enclaves, but living, inclusive environments, suburbs and neighbourhoods where people of all backgrounds can maintain their privacy but also thrive together. We call them permaculture-based sanctuaries — places that feel like the Garden of Eden, where food is abundant, energy is renewable, and the daily cost of living falls away as a function of design.
Maslow works as an ecosystem of “🌿 Branches” — interconnected companies that handle land acquisition, ecological design, financing, building, and community development. We open-source our methods so that this model can be replicated anywhere, because the mission isn’t just to build properties that become the most valuable real estate on the planet — it’s also to build a regenerative, multi-generational legacy of human flourishing.
High Level "WHY"
WHY
At its core, The Maslow Initiative matters because it believes every human being deserves the opportunity to flourish and fully realise their potential, to meet every level of their needs. It’s driven by the conviction that when the essential needs—from physical well-being to a sense of purpose—are met sustainably and collaboratively, we elevate not only the individual but entire communities and ecosystems. This “why” transcends profit or mere functionality. It stands on the principle that humanity’s collective future depends on ensuring people and planet thrive together.
When people understand The Maslow Initiative’s real purpose, when you really 'see it', they’re not just passive participants; they become active ambassadors and collaborators, joining a movement that’s both innovative and inclusive—grounded in a profound belief in humanity’s potential to grow, thrive, and sustain itself not only responsibly, but in abundance.
High Level "HOW"
HOW
The Maslow Initiative breathes life into this belief by doing whatever it takes to setup the tools, technologies, systems and structures, communities and teams to become the full service one-stop-shop for developing these kinds of properties. That means everything from designing courses for how and what we learn, scouting land then analysing, designing permaculture implementation plans, to building tiny houses, solar homes and off grid structures, to developing large scale low tech compost methods for fast tracking waste-to-soil, alleviating poverty in communities who cannot afford it, building a fleet of specialised vehicles and tools to action the plans large scale without relying on various contractors, and building a mapping system to track and make a strategy game out of it all. Here it the bottom line: This work needs to get done, this is how we must build landscapes from now on, we don't know if this is the best way to go about it but we must try, and fail, and see why, then adjust, and keep trying, and doing, until it is done.
It always seems impossible until it is done.
Nelson Mandela
◥ Why is Maslow solving for this?
To remember what truly matters, to help people remember the joy of meeting one's needs directly, at lower cost to themselves, their families, their communities and the environment: i.e. meeting our essential needs simply, locally, and together—reducing our cost of living (and possibly making that phrase obsolete from our vernacular as a species) while generating a regenerative “profit of living” that renews people, community, and planet (running nature on auto abundance mode through intelligently and creatively designed environments).
Also think about it, globally, the way we get our needs met, i.e. food, water, energy, shelter and sanitation, at a basic physiological level, is fundamentally unsustainable (I don't agree, its completely sustainable and let me tell you why).
At Maslow we are reading the writing on the wall and we believe that the systems we have relied on for the last 5-10 generations, will collapse within our generation. (We really want to be wrong on this one, and would happily admit it if we were). Read more below about the #metacrisis and all that scary stuff, or listen to Nate Hagen's podcast, The Great Simplification for a few episodes to really 'get it'.
Or just take 30 minutes, settle in, and watch this film, it pretty much says it all:
Just remember that with the same ability we have to wreak destruction, we can in equal measure, cast abundance and creativity in how we work with nature, work with ourselves as not separate from the natural world, but part of the whole.
Also, securing physiological needs is just the beginning. We believe that true freedom comes from abundance, where all human needs are met. Our developments lay the foundation for self-sufficient living, but that's only the first step. Over time, we prioritise integrating spaces that enrich the human experience:
🧑🏫 schools, 🫂 community centres, 🧘 yoga studios, 🧖 saunas, 🏕️ camp sites by the river, 🗿 land art, 🐎 horse riding trails, 📽️ cinemas, 🛖 retreat spaces, 🧑🎨 artist hubs, 🧑💻co-working worlds, 📖 libraries, 🪜 workshop spaces, 🎸 instrument and recording studios, 🥻clothes making & repair shops, 🪩 event and dance spots, 🎡 carnival areas, ⛲️ public fountains, 🔭 space & 🔬 science exploration buildings, 🥎 sports courts, 🎣 fishing ponds, 🎪 circuses, 🛋️ community lounges, 📚 libraries, ☕️ coffee stops, 🛝 playgrounds, 🧺 laundry services, 🚵♀️ bicycle tracks, 🧗 rock climbing routes, 🏟️ amphitheatres, 🥙 cooking classes & kitchens, ⛰️ mountain trails, 🏘️ interconnected living spaces, and so on, the possibilities are endless.
Our vision goes beyond survival; we’re building environments that nurture creativity, community, wellness, and personal growth. By securing the basics in abundance first, we set people free to thrive in every aspect of life. By reducing the average cost-of-living to zero, we allow money to take on a whole new dimension of intentional directionality, meaning it is a place where people can truly save their money, spending it on further improving their lives, their communities and the planet, for generations to come.
◥ Why call the project The "Maslow" Initiative?
Firstly, Abraham Maslow's seminal paper: "A Theory of Human Motivation", describes his then groundbreaking framework for thinking about a hierarchy of human needs, describing more or less what we need and more or less in what order we need it. In looking for a compass, a signal to noise detector, a direction in which to sail to solve for the predicament humanity finds itself in, The Maslow Initiative adopted this idea as the central focal point around what we are doing i.e. 'solving for'. We are solving for human needs, more or less in the order described, and doing so within planetary bounds, in order to create human habitats where self/community actualisation is not only possible, but the norm.
Who are you? What would you do with your time if money were no object? What would you build? How would you spend your day? With who would you spend your time? What ideas and curiosities would you explore if you lived in a cost of living free environment? How exactly do we set that up?
Secondly, in the 2004 show LOST, we follow a group of characters who crash land on an island, where we are eventually introduced to "The Dharma Initiative", a mysterious organisation that did experiments on the island. In a similar way, we are a mysterious organisation doing experiments in alternative and sustainable ways of creating human habitats and regenerative landscapes.
◥ Lets make it better than consumerism
Imagine if instead of waiting for politicians, we start building living, breathing prototypes of regenerative society today.
Micro-villages, food forests, compost economies, community energy co-ops.
Every node becomes both a survival pod and a cultural attractor — proof that another way of life exists.
These places will be open, welcoming, beautiful, and irresistible, so people taste more joy and freedom than consumer life offers.
If citizens see neighbors feeding themselves from regenerative gardens, working fewer hours, dancing more, wasting less, the story changes from doom to desire.
To position humans as meta-keystone species, we need millions of tiny actions, not just a few big assemblies.
🌄 The Great Awakening
Who are we, where are we, and where are we going?
We are at a critical moment in human history. Humanity, as a keystone species, has the unique power and responsibility to shape the landscapes we inhabit. Yet, the modern systems we rely upon—industrialized food production, energy extraction, urban living—leave us disconnected, stressed, and fundamentally misaligned with nature's rhythms.
At Maslow Initiative, we believe there's another way.
“We are all here to contribute our gifts toward something greater than ourselves, and will never be content unless we are.”
-Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Humanity is nature waking up to itself.
Zach Bush
👣 Recognizing Our Nature
Humans are not separate from nature—we are an expression of nature itself. Our bodies, minds, and communities thrive best when aligned with the inherent patterns of the ecosystems we inhabit.
Our approach is rooted in:
Observing and integrating nature’s patterns into human settlements.
Harnessing intelligent design and permaculture to embed human needs into landscapes.
Creating life-serving habitats that naturally produce abundance, eliminating survival anxiety and creating spaces for joy, creativity, and connection.
Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.
-Bill Mollison, Founder of Permaculture
#metacrisisalert
The world, as we know it, teeters on the edge of a profound crisis—what some call a metacrisis or polycrisis. It is not merely one challenge that troubles us, but the entanglement of many.
What is the "metacrisis"?
“The metacrisis is the underlying crisis driving a multitude of crises.”
“We have to better understand who and what we are, individually and collectively, in order to be able to fundamentally change how we act. That conundrum is what is now widely called the meta-crisis lying within, between and beyond the emergency and the crisis. That aspect of our predicament is socio-emotional, educational, epistemic and spiritual in nature.”
Jonathan Rowson
☢️⚠️⛔️☣️📜 WARNING: View the full POLYCRISIS / METACRISIS list at your own risk
We must turn our gaze however to the exciting opportunities we have to build the paradise we do want, not focus ad nauseam on the dystopia we hope to avoid. Now is the best time in history to be alive, we have the best kind of work to do, more ways of connecting and creating together than before. We are the keystone designer species of this planet (and don't you forget it), and as a reader of this text, you occupy the most advanced piece of machinery (as far as we know👽) that nature has ever produced: The human body…
Make no mistake: Paradise is a physical possibility. There are technical ways to produce, design and create in the environment the elements that result in paradise for the human organism and its surroundings and for all Life forms on earth. These elements are predictable, plannable, forecastable, programmable, preparable, manageable, makable, placeable, designable, anticipatable and physically buildable, real possible potential realities. Some people have never even considered the possibility of physically setting their work, their energy, their ability to act during this flash in the pan of a lifetime we get to have on this bright beautiful earth, directly towards the task of building paradise… of solving for human needs and working directly on integrating the tools, technologies and techniques towards those needs naturally being met and at scale in their settlement environment, building your needs into, as defaults, as background features of the place where you live… yet this is exactly what we are inviting you to do. Join the 🫂 movement, or hold my 🍺 beer (or come help make beer), and watch as we create paradise.
The real question is: can we, at this very moment, awaken to the reality that it is now that we must act?
Humans combine energy and materials into innovation and technology, we represent it by money, we do all this to get the same hormones and neurotransmitter feelings of our successful ancestors and the whole thing produces pollution and waste. Most people in our society don't quite understand energy. Energy is the currency of life. It is central in nature and ecosystems and it's also central in human systems. We need energy at every stage of the economic process, to invent, to mine, to process, to manufacture, to deliver, to run, to maintain, to repair and to dispose of every good in our economic system.
Nate Hagens
The Predicament We Face
Today's dominant economic superorganism—where human needs are met through disconnected, extractive systems—is unsustainable, inequitable, and fragile. i.e. they cannot sustain, i.e. will collapse. Reliance on distant supply chains, processed foods, and centralized utilities strips communities of resilience and individuals of their natural autonomy and creativity.
The option to step away from this system—toward self-sufficient, resilient, regenerative living—is virtually absent in mainstream markets. The knowledge, skills, infrastructure, and community structures needed to live simply, sustainably, and abundantly remain largely undeveloped.
Maslow Initiative was born to bridge this gap.
👓 The Vision
We are creating an ecosystem of companies developing frameworks to facilitate and execute on making properties amazing, building tiny houses, integrating resilient food, water, energy and sanitation systems, and creating an army of "Paradise Makers" who want to live this life and do this work.
I don't know how else to put it.
Its simple:
We need to do large scale permaculture landscapes. (Have any ideas on how to do that fast, and large scale?)
We need to create places where humans live where all their needs are met by structures and systems we integrate in those landscapes, meaning everything you need is walking distance.
We need to actually start enjoying life for life's sake, not at the expense of the earth's biological systems.
We need to read books, watch movies, enjoy the sunset and each other's company.
We envision a world where every community thrives within resilient, regenerative landscapes, naturally producing more abundance than they consume. Imagine:
Landscapes designed to effortlessly meet all human needs: food, water, shelter, sanitation, and energy.
Communities living in rhythm with nature, enjoying slower, richer, healthier lives.
Human settlements that strengthen and regenerate ecosystems, ensuring the well-being of future generations.
This is not hard, its just unusual in our current system. Are you ready to act? Join us.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root
Henry David Thoreau
👁️ Our collective vision is simple:
To remember a sustainable and regenerative way of living, where humans and nature co-create environments that sustain life for generations to come.
We've done it before and at scale. No technical reason why not.
Our task is not to fix the system, but to create the conditions in which a new one can emerge.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
🚀 Our Mission
Our mission is to pioneer life-serving habitats and regenerative landscapes through:
Land Acquisition and Development: Buying properties to create integrated ecosystems that support human flourishing.
Education and Training: Empowering individuals and communities with practical knowledge and skills to build and maintain regenerative lifestyles.
Community Empowerment: Supporting communities to create composting, waste-reducing, and sustainable business ventures, lifting people out of poverty and dependency.
Rapid Implementation: Deploying specialized fleets and technologies to swiftly transform landscapes into abundant ecosystems.
We fear our highest possibility (as well as our lowest one). We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments.
Abraham Maslow
Very simply put: Using Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a guide, we are developing structures and habitats that solve for human needs directly.
We are creating environments where it is not 100% necessary for all humans to "make money" in order to purchase the goods of living, but rather to be nestled in landscapes, structures and integrated systems and with the tools of production built in, in order to produce the goods of living directly instead.
Physiological needs:
🏠
shelter
🍊
food
🚿
water
⚡️
energy
🧻
sanitation
🌍
meta-crisis averting
life-serving paradise ecosystems
⚡️
eternal growth
de-growth company vision & mission
🤝
cynical and fear
optimistic & gifting based collaborative cultures
🕉️
self-actualized
community-actualized resilient human beings
🌳
market dependant
local & circular food forests & gardens
QUESTION: Where can you go right now, in the world, to simply live your life comfortably, without "cost of living" / survival by grocery store / resilient to market forces?
The *Deep* Maslow “Why”
Why we do what we do
Because the mango trees are missing.
Because we are born onto a planet of abundance, yet raised in systems of scarcity.
Because the cost of living has become the cost of being. Because the dominant story says “you must earn your right to exist”
— and we know a deeper story is possible.
Because everyone deserves access to food that nourishes, homes that shelter, waters that heal, and communities that hold them — not as luxuries, but as birthrights.
Because the world doesn’t need another gated eco-retreat or intellectual utopia. It needs real places, rooted in soil and soul, where humans remember how to live again.
Together. With nature. With purpose. With joy.
Because in this time of polycrisis, climate collapse, loneliness, and disconnection, we don’t need more innovation — we need remembrance. Of rhythms. Of rituals. Of responsibility.
Because we believe humans are not the problem — we are a keystone species with a meta-potential to heal, restore, and co-create the future we long for.
We do this work because the Earth is still generous.
Because there is still time.
Because there are mango trees yet to be planted — and children yet to play in their shade.
The great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard.
Abraham Maslow
🏠
🍊
🍊
🍊
🏠
🍊
The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.
-Masanobu Fukuoka
What does it take to get us to stand quietly, like somebody under a clear midnight sky, taking all of it in, stilled by the staggering pitch and pull of life? Things going well doesn't seem to help with this. Good fortune isn't persuasive on this matter, and it rarely gives people pause. It's when the news isn't good news; that's usually the time you find the limits of what you can bear to know. Then, maybe only then, you might be able to see that the waves of what you believed and did and held off from doing will still have their ripples, long after you're done. They outlast you. And this is tremendous news. When you are still enough for long enough, sometimes the river, the boat, and the waves and eddies-all of it-can turn into what you mean when you say, "My Life." If you can do that, you can change things. Your life becomes a little friendlier to the world, to what the world needs from you. It becomes a little friendlier to the endings of things too.
Stephen Jenkinson
🧭 Maslow Values
An evolving compass for regenerative civilisation design
1. Regeneration over Extraction
We commit to regenerating ecosystems, soils, waters, and human potential. Every project aims to leave the land, the community, and the individual more alive than before.
2. Thrivalism, Not Survivalism
We don’t just aim to meet needs — we create the conditions for flourishing. Beauty, play, creativity, and joy are essential nutrients.
3. Integrated Human Needs
We ground our work in the full spectrum of Maslow’s hierarchy — not as a ladder, but as a living system where food, water, shelter, energy, meaning, and belonging are intertwined.
4. Paradise is a Verb
“Paradise-making” is an active practice: of planting, building, composting, listening, designing, and dreaming — in harmony with the land and all beings.
5. Living Systems Thinking
We see the world not as separate parts, but as interconnected ecologies. Every action creates a ripple — and we design with those ripples in mind.
6. The Commons and the Gift
We honor the sacredness of sharing — from community land trusts to time banks and decentralized collaboration. Wealth is what we give, grow, and steward together.
7. Reverence for Life and Culture
We celebrate Indigenous wisdom, grassroots knowledge, and embodied learning. Every place and person has something to teach us.
8. Conflict as Compost
Through Nonviolent Communication, conflict circles, and repair, we compost the old and fertilize the new. Healthy communities grow through truth and tenderness.
9. Nature as Teacher, Blueprint, and Mirror
From permaculture and biomimicry to food forests and passive solar homes, we align with nature’s design intelligence to create resilient human habitats.
10. Self-Actualization in Service of Life
We believe in individual growth not as an isolated pursuit, but as a gift to the collective. When one person thrives, the whole ecosystem feels it.
Permaculture is an ethical design science, that mimics nature to supply all our human needs whilst benefiting the environment.
Geoff Lawton
What are the 7 🌿 Branches?
The problems we face today are complex — food insecurity, housing crises, waste, ecological collapse, social disconnection, economic fragility. No single solution can solve them all. That’s why we’ve built seven distinct but interwoven branches — each focused on an essential layer of the mission, and each designed as its own powerful business and engine of change.
By giving each branch a clear identity and area of responsibility — from growing food to mapping impact, from building homes to telling the story — we avoid the trap of vague promises and instead build real systems that work. These are not departments. They are fully operational teams, each solving for core human needs in their own ways, yet deeply integrated into the whole.
Think of it like a game: each branch is a class with its own powers, and together, they form a guild capable of reshaping the world. In nature, every healthy system has diversity, specialisation, and symbiosis. The Maslow Branches are no different.
Media
Documenting our story and others through filmmaking, podcasts, and impactful storytelling.
Channels
Production
Marketing
Pansophia
A school of life, providing courses and resources for regenerative living and holistic education.
Courses
Glossary
Library
LandScouts
Scouting, acquiring, designing, and selling regenerative landscapes and community settlements.
☎️ 0. Land Consultation Dream
📖 1. Site Analysis Document
🗺️ 2. Master Plan Design Document
🚶♂️ 3. On-Site Visit & Pegging
🏡 4. Grand Master Design & Implementation Plan
Buy & Sell & Donate Land
Rentals & Stays
Formations
Developing innovative, modular off-grid structures and sustainable living technologies.
Homes
Furniture
Sanitation
Circularity
GroundSwell
Transforming waste into fertile soil, creating abundant gardens and nourishing communities.
Compost
Trees
Food
Waste
Mobilise
Deploying specialized machinery and skilled teams for rapid, large-scale permaculture implementations.
This branch us under development
Atlas
Developing gamified software and mapping tools to visualize, plan, and manage regenerative community landscapes.
This branch us under development
Wealth isn't how much money you have. Wealth is what you're left with when you lose all your money.
Roger Hamilton
Breaking the Illusion: Money and Value
We must awaken to the truth: money itself has no inherent value—it is merely a medium of exchange. A real apple has value; money exchanged for that apple cannot be eaten. Today's money-dependent economy relies entirely on complex, fragile systems—market economies, supply chains, packaging, transportation, refrigeration—all depleting resources and generating waste. This abstraction of our basic needs is unsustainable, harmful, and unnecessary.
The truth is simple and empowering: Food can grow abundantly and freely, simply by thoughtful, intelligent design. We, as the keystone species, possess the unique ability to design ecosystems that produce effortlessly and abundantly, creating spaces for slower, healthier, and more connected lives.
We can, quite literally, design the Garden of Eden, bringing freedom, connection, and true abundance back into our everyday existence.
"Self" Sufficiency is a Scam
Self-sufficiency is a beautiful illusion — the fantasy that one person can be the farmer, the builder, the healer, and the poet all at once. In truth, it is a lonely burden, a scam sold by a culture obsessed with the myth of the isolated hero. Life has never worked that way. Every loaf of bread, every roof beam, every song we hum is the gift of countless unseen hands and histories. To try to be “self-sufficient” is to forget that we are already woven from others.
Community sufficiency, on the other hand, is simply how life breathes. The tree does not hoard its shade, the bee does not claim the blossom, and we need not pretend to stand alone. In community, sufficiency ceases to be a struggle and becomes a dance — my strength covering your weakness, your abundance filling my lack. Real freedom is not independence, but interdependence: a remembering that paradise is made in common.
Wildmindscommunity
Start here: (the rest will follow)
🏠
shelter
🍊
food
🚿
water
⚡️
energy
🧻
sanitation
Join the Movement
The future belongs to those who choose to align with the wisdom of nature, embracing their role as conscious stewards of life. Maslow Initiative invites you to explore, learn, participate, and co-create with us. Together, we can awaken to a world where human needs are met not by extraction and stress, but by regenerative abundance and harmony.
It’s time to reconnect, slow down, and thrive.
If we want to think about civilisation birth and midwifing, supporting the emergence of a viable, self organising, healthy, resilient civilisation… we think about the foundational shifts that have to happen, most of them involve closing open loops, so that our decision making is omniconsiderate, that our decision making ends up being in the highest good of all that is being effected by the decision.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
💸
zero-cost-of-living
profit-of-living human needs habitats
🫂
self-sufficient
community-abundant developments & projects
🌍
meta-crisis averting
life-serving global paradise making
🕉️
self-actualized
community-actualized resilient human beings
⚡️
eternal growth
de-growth movement vision & mission
🤝
cynical & fear
optimistic & gifting based collaborative cultures
🌳
market drive & scarcity
local & abundant food, water & energy
◥ What is Maslow solving for?
Solving for human needs, in harmony with nature.
The initiative is solving directly for human needs in abundance and balance with nature, to co-create the (zero-cost-of- living) *profit-of-living* paradise among the stars we know this world can be.
With your eyes open, open your eyes…
⏰ We ask you a simple question:
Who are you?
What can you be?
Where are you going?
What's out there?
(Scene from the 2013 film "Her")
Before reading the rest of this page:
START HERE:👇
The most important videos you will ever watch
Bill Mollison visits Village Homes
Geoff Lawton visits Village Homes
If you read or watch nothing else on the internet today, it is of critical importance that you watch these two videos 👆. This is a kind of "Maslow Initiative" filter. Its a very simple question: Would you like to live in a place like this? Do you think we should do whatever it takes to build places like this now?
If the answer is "No", then you may safely close this browser window or tab. We thank you for stopping by The Maslow Initiative, and we will see you in another life when we are both cats. 🫡
If you answered "Yes", you may continue reading the rest of this page, and The Maslow Initiative will be a relevant universe to explore 🤝
One video is of Bill Mollison (The founder of Permaculture) visiting Village Homes in Davis California, the other is of Geoff Lawton, his student and protégé, visiting the same place some years later.
This is our takeaway:
We now know that it is possible, that it has been done. We are not inventing something new that has yet to be tested and proved. This is crucial for human beings to understand… this is what we can create, that it can be done. With simple upfront landscape design, some earthworks for passive water drainage, access ways, solar housing and circular systems and structural positions, planned action through time, and we can more or less sit back and watch abundance take over.
This is the very essence of what The Maslow Initiative is building.
With simple strategic landscape design, its absolutely possible to make sustainable, resilient multi-generational sanctuaries. If you want to get involved in what we are doing, and if you want to join us in creating a human habitat like this everywhere:
Contact us, together we can make it happen.
Or join us and help build it.
◥ What does Maslow do?
We've been struggling to answer this question since we started on the 1st of October 2023.
To understand what we do, you have to also have a deep understanding of why we are doing it. The rest of this page is dedicated 'why'.
Here are the high level attempts to describe exactly what we do:
Short Version: "WHAT"
Maslow creates off-grid, future-proof communities where the land itself meets human needs — food, water, shelter, energy, and sanitation — so people can live well, at zero cost of living, in harmony with nature.
Long Version: "WHAT"
Maslow is a property and lifestyle development company building a new model for human habitats. We design and develop landscapes that meet human needs directly — integrating food systems, clean water, renewable energy, efficient shelter, and waste cycles into the land itself.
These are not gated eco-enclaves, but living, inclusive environments, suburbs and neighbourhoods where people of all backgrounds can maintain their privacy but also thrive together. We call them permaculture-based sanctuaries — places that feel like the Garden of Eden, where food is abundant, energy is renewable, and the daily cost of living falls away as a function of design.
Maslow works as an ecosystem of “🌿 Branches” — interconnected companies that handle land acquisition, ecological design, financing, building, and community development. We open-source our methods so that this model can be replicated anywhere, because the mission isn’t just to build properties that become the most valuable real estate on the planet — it’s also to build a regenerative, multi-generational legacy of human flourishing.
High Level "WHY"
WHY
At its core, The Maslow Initiative matters because it believes every human being deserves the opportunity to flourish and fully realise their potential, to meet every level of their needs. It’s driven by the conviction that when the essential needs—from physical well-being to a sense of purpose—are met sustainably and collaboratively, we elevate not only the individual but entire communities and ecosystems. This “why” transcends profit or mere functionality. It stands on the principle that humanity’s collective future depends on ensuring people and planet thrive together.
When people understand The Maslow Initiative’s real purpose, when you really 'see it', they’re not just passive participants; they become active ambassadors and collaborators, joining a movement that’s both innovative and inclusive—grounded in a profound belief in humanity’s potential to grow, thrive, and sustain itself not only responsibly, but in abundance.
High Level "HOW"
HOW
The Maslow Initiative breathes life into this belief by doing whatever it takes to setup the tools, technologies, systems and structures, communities and teams to become the full service one-stop-shop for developing these kinds of properties. That means everything from designing courses for how and what we learn, scouting land then analysing, designing permaculture implementation plans, to building tiny houses, solar homes and off grid structures, to developing large scale low tech compost methods for fast tracking waste-to-soil, alleviating poverty in communities who cannot afford it, building a fleet of specialised vehicles and tools to action the plans large scale without relying on various contractors, and building a mapping system to track and make a strategy game out of it all. Here it the bottom line: This work needs to get done, this is how we must build landscapes from now on, we don't know if this is the best way to go about it but we must try, and fail, and see why, then adjust, and keep trying, and doing, until it is done.
It always seems impossible until it is done.
Nelson Mandela
◥ Why is Maslow solving for this?
To remember what truly matters, to help people remember the joy of meeting one's needs directly, at lower cost to themselves, their families, their communities and the environment: i.e. meeting our essential needs simply, locally, and together—reducing our cost of living (and possibly making that phrase obsolete from our vernacular as a species) while generating a regenerative “profit of living” that renews people, community, and planet (running nature on auto abundance mode through intelligently and creatively designed environments).
Also think about it, globally, the way we get our needs met, i.e. food, water, energy, shelter and sanitation, at a basic physiological level, is fundamentally unsustainable (I don't agree, its completely sustainable and let me tell you why).
At Maslow we are reading the writing on the wall and we believe that the systems we have relied on for the last 5-10 generations, will collapse within our generation. (We really want to be wrong on this one, and would happily admit it if we were). Read more below about the #metacrisis and all that scary stuff, or listen to Nate Hagen's podcast, The Great Simplification for a few episodes to really 'get it'.
Or just take 30 minutes, settle in, and watch this film, it pretty much says it all:
Just remember that with the same ability we have to wreak destruction, we can in equal measure, cast abundance and creativity in how we work with nature, work with ourselves as not separate from the natural world, but part of the whole.
Also, securing physiological needs is just the beginning. We believe that true freedom comes from abundance, where all human needs are met. Our developments lay the foundation for self-sufficient living, but that's only the first step. Over time, we prioritise integrating spaces that enrich the human experience:
🧑🏫 schools, 🫂 community centres, 🧘 yoga studios, 🧖 saunas, 🏕️ camp sites by the river, 🗿 land art, 🐎 horse riding trails, 📽️ cinemas, 🛖 retreat spaces, 🧑🎨 artist hubs, 🧑💻co-working worlds, 📖 libraries, 🪜 workshop spaces, 🎸 instrument and recording studios, 🥻clothes making & repair shops, 🪩 event and dance spots, 🎡 carnival areas, ⛲️ public fountains, 🔭 space & 🔬 science exploration buildings, 🥎 sports courts, 🎣 fishing ponds, 🎪 circuses, 🛋️ community lounges, 📚 libraries, ☕️ coffee stops, 🛝 playgrounds, 🧺 laundry services, 🚵♀️ bicycle tracks, 🧗 rock climbing routes, 🏟️ amphitheatres, 🥙 cooking classes & kitchens, ⛰️ mountain trails, 🏘️ interconnected living spaces, and so on, the possibilities are endless.
Our vision goes beyond survival; we’re building environments that nurture creativity, community, wellness, and personal growth. By securing the basics in abundance first, we set people free to thrive in every aspect of life. By reducing the average cost-of-living to zero, we allow money to take on a whole new dimension of intentional directionality, meaning it is a place where people can truly save their money, spending it on further improving their lives, their communities and the planet, for generations to come.
◥ Why call the project The "Maslow" Initiative?
Firstly, Abraham Maslow's seminal paper: "A Theory of Human Motivation", describes his then groundbreaking framework for thinking about a hierarchy of human needs, describing more or less what we need and more or less in what order we need it. In looking for a compass, a signal to noise detector, a direction in which to sail to solve for the predicament humanity finds itself in, The Maslow Initiative adopted this idea as the central focal point around what we are doing i.e. 'solving for'. We are solving for human needs, more or less in the order described, and doing so within planetary bounds, in order to create human habitats where self/community actualisation is not only possible, but the norm.
Who are you? What would you do with your time if money were no object? What would you build? How would you spend your day? With who would you spend your time? What ideas and curiosities would you explore if you lived in a cost of living free environment? How exactly do we set that up?
Secondly, in the 2004 show LOST, we follow a group of characters who crash land on an island, where we are eventually introduced to "The Dharma Initiative", a mysterious organisation that did experiments on the island. In a similar way, we are a mysterious organisation doing experiments in alternative and sustainable ways of creating human habitats and regenerative landscapes.
◥ Lets make it better than consumerism
Imagine if instead of waiting for politicians, we start building living, breathing prototypes of regenerative society today.
Micro-villages, food forests, compost economies, community energy co-ops.
Every node becomes both a survival pod and a cultural attractor — proof that another way of life exists.
These places will be open, welcoming, beautiful, and irresistible, so people taste more joy and freedom than consumer life offers.
If citizens see neighbors feeding themselves from regenerative gardens, working fewer hours, dancing more, wasting less, the story changes from doom to desire.
To position humans as meta-keystone species, we need millions of tiny actions, not just a few big assemblies.
🌄 The Great Awakening
Who are we, where are we, and where are we going?
We are at a critical moment in human history. Humanity, as a keystone species, has the unique power and responsibility to shape the landscapes we inhabit. Yet, the modern systems we rely upon—industrialized food production, energy extraction, urban living—leave us disconnected, stressed, and fundamentally misaligned with nature's rhythms.
At Maslow Initiative, we believe there's another way.
“We are all here to contribute our gifts toward something greater than ourselves, and will never be content unless we are.”
-Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Humanity is nature waking up to itself.
Zach Bush
👣 Recognizing Our Nature
Humans are not separate from nature—we are an expression of nature itself. Our bodies, minds, and communities thrive best when aligned with the inherent patterns of the ecosystems we inhabit.
Our approach is rooted in:
Observing and integrating nature’s patterns into human settlements.
Harnessing intelligent design and permaculture to embed human needs into landscapes.
Creating life-serving habitats that naturally produce abundance, eliminating survival anxiety and creating spaces for joy, creativity, and connection.
Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.
-Bill Mollison, Founder of Permaculture
#metacrisisalert
The world, as we know it, teeters on the edge of a profound crisis—what some call a metacrisis or polycrisis. It is not merely one challenge that troubles us, but the entanglement of many.
What is the "metacrisis"?
“The metacrisis is the underlying crisis driving a multitude of crises.”
“We have to better understand who and what we are, individually and collectively, in order to be able to fundamentally change how we act. That conundrum is what is now widely called the meta-crisis lying within, between and beyond the emergency and the crisis. That aspect of our predicament is socio-emotional, educational, epistemic and spiritual in nature.”
Jonathan Rowson
☢️⚠️⛔️☣️📜 WARNING: View the full POLYCRISIS / METACRISIS list at your own risk
We must turn our gaze however to the exciting opportunities we have to build the paradise we do want, not focus ad nauseam on the dystopia we hope to avoid. Now is the best time in history to be alive, we have the best kind of work to do, more ways of connecting and creating together than before. We are the keystone designer species of this planet (and don't you forget it), and as a reader of this text, you occupy the most advanced piece of machinery (as far as we know👽) that nature has ever produced: The human body…
Make no mistake: Paradise is a physical possibility. There are technical ways to produce, design and create in the environment the elements that result in paradise for the human organism and its surroundings and for all Life forms on earth. These elements are predictable, plannable, forecastable, programmable, preparable, manageable, makable, placeable, designable, anticipatable and physically buildable, real possible potential realities. Some people have never even considered the possibility of physically setting their work, their energy, their ability to act during this flash in the pan of a lifetime we get to have on this bright beautiful earth, directly towards the task of building paradise… of solving for human needs and working directly on integrating the tools, technologies and techniques towards those needs naturally being met and at scale in their settlement environment, building your needs into, as defaults, as background features of the place where you live… yet this is exactly what we are inviting you to do. Join the 🫂 movement, or hold my 🍺 beer (or come help make beer), and watch as we create paradise.
The real question is: can we, at this very moment, awaken to the reality that it is now that we must act?
Humans combine energy and materials into innovation and technology, we represent it by money, we do all this to get the same hormones and neurotransmitter feelings of our successful ancestors and the whole thing produces pollution and waste. Most people in our society don't quite understand energy. Energy is the currency of life. It is central in nature and ecosystems and it's also central in human systems. We need energy at every stage of the economic process, to invent, to mine, to process, to manufacture, to deliver, to run, to maintain, to repair and to dispose of every good in our economic system.
Nate Hagens
The Predicament We Face
Today's dominant economic superorganism—where human needs are met through disconnected, extractive systems—is unsustainable, inequitable, and fragile. i.e. they cannot sustain, i.e. will collapse. Reliance on distant supply chains, processed foods, and centralized utilities strips communities of resilience and individuals of their natural autonomy and creativity.
The option to step away from this system—toward self-sufficient, resilient, regenerative living—is virtually absent in mainstream markets. The knowledge, skills, infrastructure, and community structures needed to live simply, sustainably, and abundantly remain largely undeveloped.
Maslow Initiative was born to bridge this gap.
👓 The Vision
We are creating an ecosystem of companies developing frameworks to facilitate and execute on making properties amazing, building tiny houses, integrating resilient food, water, energy and sanitation systems, and creating an army of "Paradise Makers" who want to live this life and do this work.
I don't know how else to put it.
Its simple:
We need to do large scale permaculture landscapes. (Have any ideas on how to do that fast, and large scale?)
We need to create places where humans live where all their needs are met by structures and systems we integrate in those landscapes, meaning everything you need is walking distance.
We need to actually start enjoying life for life's sake, not at the expense of the earth's biological systems.
We need to read books, watch movies, enjoy the sunset and each other's company.
We envision a world where every community thrives within resilient, regenerative landscapes, naturally producing more abundance than they consume. Imagine:
Landscapes designed to effortlessly meet all human needs: food, water, shelter, sanitation, and energy.
Communities living in rhythm with nature, enjoying slower, richer, healthier lives.
Human settlements that strengthen and regenerate ecosystems, ensuring the well-being of future generations.
This is not hard, its just unusual in our current system. Are you ready to act? Join us.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root
Henry David Thoreau
👁️ Our collective vision is simple:
To remember a sustainable and regenerative way of living, where humans and nature co-create environments that sustain life for generations to come.
We've done it before and at scale. No technical reason why not.
Our task is not to fix the system, but to create the conditions in which a new one can emerge.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
🚀 Our Mission
Our mission is to pioneer life-serving habitats and regenerative landscapes through:
Land Acquisition and Development: Buying properties to create integrated ecosystems that support human flourishing.
Education and Training: Empowering individuals and communities with practical knowledge and skills to build and maintain regenerative lifestyles.
Community Empowerment: Supporting communities to create composting, waste-reducing, and sustainable business ventures, lifting people out of poverty and dependency.
Rapid Implementation: Deploying specialized fleets and technologies to swiftly transform landscapes into abundant ecosystems.
We fear our highest possibility (as well as our lowest one). We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments.
Abraham Maslow
Very simply put: Using Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a guide, we are developing structures and habitats that solve for human needs directly.
We are creating environments where it is not 100% necessary for all humans to "make money" in order to purchase the goods of living, but rather to be nestled in landscapes, structures and integrated systems and with the tools of production built in, in order to produce the goods of living directly instead.
Physiological needs:
🏠
shelter
🍊
food
🚿
water
⚡️
energy
🧻
sanitation
🌍
meta-crisis averting
life-serving paradise ecosystems
⚡️
eternal growth
de-growth company vision & mission
🤝
cynical and fear
optimistic & gifting based collaborative cultures
🕉️
self-actualized
community-actualized resilient human beings
🌳
market dependant
local & circular food forests & gardens
QUESTION: Where can you go right now, in the world, to simply live your life comfortably, without "cost of living" / survival by grocery store / resilient to market forces?
The *Deep* Maslow “Why”
Why we do what we do
Because the mango trees are missing.
Because we are born onto a planet of abundance, yet raised in systems of scarcity.
Because the cost of living has become the cost of being. Because the dominant story says “you must earn your right to exist”
— and we know a deeper story is possible.
Because everyone deserves access to food that nourishes, homes that shelter, waters that heal, and communities that hold them — not as luxuries, but as birthrights.
Because the world doesn’t need another gated eco-retreat or intellectual utopia. It needs real places, rooted in soil and soul, where humans remember how to live again.
Together. With nature. With purpose. With joy.
Because in this time of polycrisis, climate collapse, loneliness, and disconnection, we don’t need more innovation — we need remembrance. Of rhythms. Of rituals. Of responsibility.
Because we believe humans are not the problem — we are a keystone species with a meta-potential to heal, restore, and co-create the future we long for.
We do this work because the Earth is still generous.
Because there is still time.
Because there are mango trees yet to be planted — and children yet to play in their shade.
The great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard.
Abraham Maslow
🏠
🍊
🍊
🍊
🏠
🍊
The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.
-Masanobu Fukuoka
What does it take to get us to stand quietly, like somebody under a clear midnight sky, taking all of it in, stilled by the staggering pitch and pull of life? Things going well doesn't seem to help with this. Good fortune isn't persuasive on this matter, and it rarely gives people pause. It's when the news isn't good news; that's usually the time you find the limits of what you can bear to know. Then, maybe only then, you might be able to see that the waves of what you believed and did and held off from doing will still have their ripples, long after you're done. They outlast you. And this is tremendous news. When you are still enough for long enough, sometimes the river, the boat, and the waves and eddies-all of it-can turn into what you mean when you say, "My Life." If you can do that, you can change things. Your life becomes a little friendlier to the world, to what the world needs from you. It becomes a little friendlier to the endings of things too.
Stephen Jenkinson
🧭 Maslow Values
An evolving compass for regenerative civilisation design
1. Regeneration over Extraction
We commit to regenerating ecosystems, soils, waters, and human potential. Every project aims to leave the land, the community, and the individual more alive than before.
2. Thrivalism, Not Survivalism
We don’t just aim to meet needs — we create the conditions for flourishing. Beauty, play, creativity, and joy are essential nutrients.
3. Integrated Human Needs
We ground our work in the full spectrum of Maslow’s hierarchy — not as a ladder, but as a living system where food, water, shelter, energy, meaning, and belonging are intertwined.
4. Paradise is a Verb
“Paradise-making” is an active practice: of planting, building, composting, listening, designing, and dreaming — in harmony with the land and all beings.
5. Living Systems Thinking
We see the world not as separate parts, but as interconnected ecologies. Every action creates a ripple — and we design with those ripples in mind.
6. The Commons and the Gift
We honor the sacredness of sharing — from community land trusts to time banks and decentralized collaboration. Wealth is what we give, grow, and steward together.
7. Reverence for Life and Culture
We celebrate Indigenous wisdom, grassroots knowledge, and embodied learning. Every place and person has something to teach us.
8. Conflict as Compost
Through Nonviolent Communication, conflict circles, and repair, we compost the old and fertilize the new. Healthy communities grow through truth and tenderness.
9. Nature as Teacher, Blueprint, and Mirror
From permaculture and biomimicry to food forests and passive solar homes, we align with nature’s design intelligence to create resilient human habitats.
10. Self-Actualization in Service of Life
We believe in individual growth not as an isolated pursuit, but as a gift to the collective. When one person thrives, the whole ecosystem feels it.
Permaculture is an ethical design science, that mimics nature to supply all our human needs whilst benefiting the environment.
Geoff Lawton
What are the 7 🌿 Branches?
The problems we face today are complex — food insecurity, housing crises, waste, ecological collapse, social disconnection, economic fragility. No single solution can solve them all. That’s why we’ve built seven distinct but interwoven branches — each focused on an essential layer of the mission, and each designed as its own powerful business and engine of change.
By giving each branch a clear identity and area of responsibility — from growing food to mapping impact, from building homes to telling the story — we avoid the trap of vague promises and instead build real systems that work. These are not departments. They are fully operational teams, each solving for core human needs in their own ways, yet deeply integrated into the whole.
Think of it like a game: each branch is a class with its own powers, and together, they form a guild capable of reshaping the world. In nature, every healthy system has diversity, specialisation, and symbiosis. The Maslow Branches are no different.
Media
Documenting our story and others through filmmaking, podcasts, and impactful storytelling.
Channels
Production
Marketing
Pansophia
A school of life, providing courses and resources for regenerative living and holistic education.
Courses
Glossary
Library
LandScouts
Scouting, acquiring, designing, and selling regenerative landscapes and community settlements.
☎️ 0. Land Consultation Dream
📖 1. Site Analysis Document
🗺️ 2. Master Plan Design Document
🚶♂️ 3. On-Site Visit & Pegging
🏡 4. Grand Master Design & Implementation Plan
Buy & Sell & Donate Land
Rentals & Stays
Formations
Developing innovative, modular off-grid structures and sustainable living technologies.
Homes
Furniture
Sanitation
Circularity
GroundSwell
Transforming waste into fertile soil, creating abundant gardens and nourishing communities.
Compost
Trees
Food
Waste
Mobilise
Deploying specialized machinery and skilled teams for rapid, large-scale permaculture implementations.
This branch us under development
Atlas
Developing gamified software and mapping tools to visualize, plan, and manage regenerative community landscapes.
This branch us under development
Wealth isn't how much money you have. Wealth is what you're left with when you lose all your money.
Roger Hamilton
Breaking the Illusion: Money and Value
We must awaken to the truth: money itself has no inherent value—it is merely a medium of exchange. A real apple has value; money exchanged for that apple cannot be eaten. Today's money-dependent economy relies entirely on complex, fragile systems—market economies, supply chains, packaging, transportation, refrigeration—all depleting resources and generating waste. This abstraction of our basic needs is unsustainable, harmful, and unnecessary.
The truth is simple and empowering: Food can grow abundantly and freely, simply by thoughtful, intelligent design. We, as the keystone species, possess the unique ability to design ecosystems that produce effortlessly and abundantly, creating spaces for slower, healthier, and more connected lives.
We can, quite literally, design the Garden of Eden, bringing freedom, connection, and true abundance back into our everyday existence.
"Self" Sufficiency is a Scam
Self-sufficiency is a beautiful illusion — the fantasy that one person can be the farmer, the builder, the healer, and the poet all at once. In truth, it is a lonely burden, a scam sold by a culture obsessed with the myth of the isolated hero. Life has never worked that way. Every loaf of bread, every roof beam, every song we hum is the gift of countless unseen hands and histories. To try to be “self-sufficient” is to forget that we are already woven from others.
Community sufficiency, on the other hand, is simply how life breathes. The tree does not hoard its shade, the bee does not claim the blossom, and we need not pretend to stand alone. In community, sufficiency ceases to be a struggle and becomes a dance — my strength covering your weakness, your abundance filling my lack. Real freedom is not independence, but interdependence: a remembering that paradise is made in common.
Wildmindscommunity
Start here: (the rest will follow)
🏠
shelter
🍊
food
🚿
water
⚡️
energy
🧻
sanitation
Join the Movement
The future belongs to those who choose to align with the wisdom of nature, embracing their role as conscious stewards of life. Maslow Initiative invites you to explore, learn, participate, and co-create with us. Together, we can awaken to a world where human needs are met not by extraction and stress, but by regenerative abundance and harmony.
It’s time to reconnect, slow down, and thrive.
If we want to think about civilisation birth and midwifing, supporting the emergence of a viable, self organising, healthy, resilient civilisation… we think about the foundational shifts that have to happen, most of them involve closing open loops, so that our decision making is omniconsiderate, that our decision making ends up being in the highest good of all that is being effected by the decision.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
💸
zero-cost-of-living
profit-of-living human needs habitats
🫂
self-sufficient
community-abundant developments & projects
🌍
meta-crisis averting
life-serving global paradise making
🕉️
self-actualized
community-actualized resilient human beings
⚡️
eternal growth
de-growth movement vision & mission
🤝
cynical & fear
optimistic & gifting based collaborative cultures
🌳
market drive & scarcity
local & abundant food, water & energy
◥ What is Maslow solving for?
Solving for human needs, in harmony with nature.
The initiative is solving directly for human needs in abundance and balance with nature, to co-create the (zero-cost-of- living) *profit-of-living* paradise among the stars we know this world can be.
With your eyes open, open your eyes…
⏰ We ask you a simple question:
Who are you?
What can you be?
Where are you going?
What's out there?
(Scene from the 2013 film "Her")
Before reading the rest of this page:
START HERE:👇
The most important videos you will ever watch
Bill Mollison visits Village Homes
Geoff Lawton visits Village Homes
If you read or watch nothing else on the internet today, it is of critical importance that you watch these two videos 👆. This is a kind of "Maslow Initiative" filter. Its a very simple question: Would you like to live in a place like this? Do you think we should do whatever it takes to build places like this now?
If the answer is "No", then you may safely close this browser window or tab. We thank you for stopping by The Maslow Initiative, and we will see you in another life when we are both cats. 🫡
If you answered "Yes", you may continue reading the rest of this page, and The Maslow Initiative will be a relevant universe to explore 🤝
One video is of Bill Mollison (The founder of Permaculture) visiting Village Homes in Davis California, the other is of Geoff Lawton, his student and protégé, visiting the same place some years later.
This is our takeaway:
We now know that it is possible, that it has been done. We are not inventing something new that has yet to be tested and proved. This is crucial for human beings to understand… this is what we can create, that it can be done. With simple upfront landscape design, some earthworks for passive water drainage, access ways, solar housing and circular systems and structural positions, planned action through time, and we can more or less sit back and watch abundance take over.
This is the very essence of what The Maslow Initiative is building.
With simple strategic landscape design, its absolutely possible to make sustainable, resilient multi-generational sanctuaries. If you want to get involved in what we are doing, and if you want to join us in creating a human habitat like this everywhere:
Contact us, together we can make it happen.
Or join us and help build it.
◥ What does Maslow do?
We've been struggling to answer this question since we started on the 1st of October 2023.
To understand what we do, you have to also have a deep understanding of why we are doing it. The rest of this page is dedicated 'why'.
Here are the high level attempts to describe exactly what we do:
Short Version: "WHAT"
Maslow creates off-grid, future-proof communities where the land itself meets human needs — food, water, shelter, energy, and sanitation — so people can live well, at zero cost of living, in harmony with nature.
Long Version: "WHAT"
Maslow is a property and lifestyle development company building a new model for human habitats. We design and develop landscapes that meet human needs directly — integrating food systems, clean water, renewable energy, efficient shelter, and waste cycles into the land itself.
These are not gated eco-enclaves, but living, inclusive environments, suburbs and neighbourhoods where people of all backgrounds can maintain their privacy but also thrive together. We call them permaculture-based sanctuaries — places that feel like the Garden of Eden, where food is abundant, energy is renewable, and the daily cost of living falls away as a function of design.
Maslow works as an ecosystem of “🌿 Branches” — interconnected companies that handle land acquisition, ecological design, financing, building, and community development. We open-source our methods so that this model can be replicated anywhere, because the mission isn’t just to build properties that become the most valuable real estate on the planet — it’s also to build a regenerative, multi-generational legacy of human flourishing.
High Level "WHY"
WHY
At its core, The Maslow Initiative matters because it believes every human being deserves the opportunity to flourish and fully realise their potential, to meet every level of their needs. It’s driven by the conviction that when the essential needs—from physical well-being to a sense of purpose—are met sustainably and collaboratively, we elevate not only the individual but entire communities and ecosystems. This “why” transcends profit or mere functionality. It stands on the principle that humanity’s collective future depends on ensuring people and planet thrive together.
When people understand The Maslow Initiative’s real purpose, when you really 'see it', they’re not just passive participants; they become active ambassadors and collaborators, joining a movement that’s both innovative and inclusive—grounded in a profound belief in humanity’s potential to grow, thrive, and sustain itself not only responsibly, but in abundance.
High Level "HOW"
HOW
The Maslow Initiative breathes life into this belief by doing whatever it takes to setup the tools, technologies, systems and structures, communities and teams to become the full service one-stop-shop for developing these kinds of properties. That means everything from designing courses for how and what we learn, scouting land then analysing, designing permaculture implementation plans, to building tiny houses, solar homes and off grid structures, to developing large scale low tech compost methods for fast tracking waste-to-soil, alleviating poverty in communities who cannot afford it, building a fleet of specialised vehicles and tools to action the plans large scale without relying on various contractors, and building a mapping system to track and make a strategy game out of it all. Here it the bottom line: This work needs to get done, this is how we must build landscapes from now on, we don't know if this is the best way to go about it but we must try, and fail, and see why, then adjust, and keep trying, and doing, until it is done.
It always seems impossible until it is done.
Nelson Mandela
◥ Why is Maslow solving for this?
To remember what truly matters, to help people remember the joy of meeting one's needs directly, at lower cost to themselves, their families, their communities and the environment: i.e. meeting our essential needs simply, locally, and together—reducing our cost of living (and possibly making that phrase obsolete from our vernacular as a species) while generating a regenerative “profit of living” that renews people, community, and planet (running nature on auto abundance mode through intelligently and creatively designed environments).
Also think about it, globally, the way we get our needs met, i.e. food, water, energy, shelter and sanitation, at a basic physiological level, is fundamentally unsustainable (I don't agree, its completely sustainable and let me tell you why).
At Maslow we are reading the writing on the wall and we believe that the systems we have relied on for the last 5-10 generations, will collapse within our generation. (We really want to be wrong on this one, and would happily admit it if we were). Read more below about the #metacrisis and all that scary stuff, or listen to Nate Hagen's podcast, The Great Simplification for a few episodes to really 'get it'.
Or just take 30 minutes, settle in, and watch this film, it pretty much says it all:
Just remember that with the same ability we have to wreak destruction, we can in equal measure, cast abundance and creativity in how we work with nature, work with ourselves as not separate from the natural world, but part of the whole.
Also, securing physiological needs is just the beginning. We believe that true freedom comes from abundance, where all human needs are met. Our developments lay the foundation for self-sufficient living, but that's only the first step. Over time, we prioritise integrating spaces that enrich the human experience:
🧑🏫 schools, 🫂 community centres, 🧘 yoga studios, 🧖 saunas, 🏕️ camp sites by the river, 🗿 land art, 🐎 horse riding trails, 📽️ cinemas, 🛖 retreat spaces, 🧑🎨 artist hubs, 🧑💻co-working worlds, 📖 libraries, 🪜 workshop spaces, 🎸 instrument and recording studios, 🥻clothes making & repair shops, 🪩 event and dance spots, 🎡 carnival areas, ⛲️ public fountains, 🔭 space & 🔬 science exploration buildings, 🥎 sports courts, 🎣 fishing ponds, 🎪 circuses, 🛋️ community lounges, 📚 libraries, ☕️ coffee stops, 🛝 playgrounds, 🧺 laundry services, 🚵♀️ bicycle tracks, 🧗 rock climbing routes, 🏟️ amphitheatres, 🥙 cooking classes & kitchens, ⛰️ mountain trails, 🏘️ interconnected living spaces, and so on, the possibilities are endless.
Our vision goes beyond survival; we’re building environments that nurture creativity, community, wellness, and personal growth. By securing the basics in abundance first, we set people free to thrive in every aspect of life. By reducing the average cost-of-living to zero, we allow money to take on a whole new dimension of intentional directionality, meaning it is a place where people can truly save their money, spending it on further improving their lives, their communities and the planet, for generations to come.
◥ Why call the project The "Maslow" Initiative?
Firstly, Abraham Maslow's seminal paper: "A Theory of Human Motivation", describes his then groundbreaking framework for thinking about a hierarchy of human needs, describing more or less what we need and more or less in what order we need it. In looking for a compass, a signal to noise detector, a direction in which to sail to solve for the predicament humanity finds itself in, The Maslow Initiative adopted this idea as the central focal point around what we are doing i.e. 'solving for'. We are solving for human needs, more or less in the order described, and doing so within planetary bounds, in order to create human habitats where self/community actualisation is not only possible, but the norm.
Who are you? What would you do with your time if money were no object? What would you build? How would you spend your day? With who would you spend your time? What ideas and curiosities would you explore if you lived in a cost of living free environment? How exactly do we set that up?
Secondly, in the 2004 show LOST, we follow a group of characters who crash land on an island, where we are eventually introduced to "The Dharma Initiative", a mysterious organisation that did experiments on the island. In a similar way, we are a mysterious organisation doing experiments in alternative and sustainable ways of creating human habitats and regenerative landscapes.
◥ Lets make it better than consumerism
Imagine if instead of waiting for politicians, we start building living, breathing prototypes of regenerative society today.
Micro-villages, food forests, compost economies, community energy co-ops.
Every node becomes both a survival pod and a cultural attractor — proof that another way of life exists.
These places will be open, welcoming, beautiful, and irresistible, so people taste more joy and freedom than consumer life offers.
If citizens see neighbors feeding themselves from regenerative gardens, working fewer hours, dancing more, wasting less, the story changes from doom to desire.
To position humans as meta-keystone species, we need millions of tiny actions, not just a few big assemblies.
🌄 The Great Awakening
Who are we, where are we, and where are we going?
We are at a critical moment in human history. Humanity, as a keystone species, has the unique power and responsibility to shape the landscapes we inhabit. Yet, the modern systems we rely upon—industrialized food production, energy extraction, urban living—leave us disconnected, stressed, and fundamentally misaligned with nature's rhythms.
At Maslow Initiative, we believe there's another way.
“We are all here to contribute our gifts toward something greater than ourselves, and will never be content unless we are.”
-Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Humanity is nature waking up to itself.
Zach Bush
👣 Recognizing Our Nature
Humans are not separate from nature—we are an expression of nature itself. Our bodies, minds, and communities thrive best when aligned with the inherent patterns of the ecosystems we inhabit.
Our approach is rooted in:
Observing and integrating nature’s patterns into human settlements.
Harnessing intelligent design and permaculture to embed human needs into landscapes.
Creating life-serving habitats that naturally produce abundance, eliminating survival anxiety and creating spaces for joy, creativity, and connection.
Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.
-Bill Mollison, Founder of Permaculture
#metacrisisalert
The world, as we know it, teeters on the edge of a profound crisis—what some call a metacrisis or polycrisis. It is not merely one challenge that troubles us, but the entanglement of many.
What is the "metacrisis"?
“The metacrisis is the underlying crisis driving a multitude of crises.”
“We have to better understand who and what we are, individually and collectively, in order to be able to fundamentally change how we act. That conundrum is what is now widely called the meta-crisis lying within, between and beyond the emergency and the crisis. That aspect of our predicament is socio-emotional, educational, epistemic and spiritual in nature.”
Jonathan Rowson
☢️⚠️⛔️☣️📜 WARNING: View the full POLYCRISIS / METACRISIS list at your own risk
We must turn our gaze however to the exciting opportunities we have to build the paradise we do want, not focus ad nauseam on the dystopia we hope to avoid. Now is the best time in history to be alive, we have the best kind of work to do, more ways of connecting and creating together than before. We are the keystone designer species of this planet (and don't you forget it), and as a reader of this text, you occupy the most advanced piece of machinery (as far as we know👽) that nature has ever produced: The human body…
Make no mistake: Paradise is a physical possibility. There are technical ways to produce, design and create in the environment the elements that result in paradise for the human organism and its surroundings and for all Life forms on earth. These elements are predictable, plannable, forecastable, programmable, preparable, manageable, makable, placeable, designable, anticipatable and physically buildable, real possible potential realities. Some people have never even considered the possibility of physically setting their work, their energy, their ability to act during this flash in the pan of a lifetime we get to have on this bright beautiful earth, directly towards the task of building paradise… of solving for human needs and working directly on integrating the tools, technologies and techniques towards those needs naturally being met and at scale in their settlement environment, building your needs into, as defaults, as background features of the place where you live… yet this is exactly what we are inviting you to do. Join the 🫂 movement, or hold my 🍺 beer (or come help make beer), and watch as we create paradise.
The real question is: can we, at this very moment, awaken to the reality that it is now that we must act?
Humans combine energy and materials into innovation and technology, we represent it by money, we do all this to get the same hormones and neurotransmitter feelings of our successful ancestors and the whole thing produces pollution and waste. Most people in our society don't quite understand energy. Energy is the currency of life. It is central in nature and ecosystems and it's also central in human systems. We need energy at every stage of the economic process, to invent, to mine, to process, to manufacture, to deliver, to run, to maintain, to repair and to dispose of every good in our economic system.
Nate Hagens
The Predicament We Face
Today's dominant economic superorganism—where human needs are met through disconnected, extractive systems—is unsustainable, inequitable, and fragile. i.e. they cannot sustain, i.e. will collapse. Reliance on distant supply chains, processed foods, and centralized utilities strips communities of resilience and individuals of their natural autonomy and creativity.
The option to step away from this system—toward self-sufficient, resilient, regenerative living—is virtually absent in mainstream markets. The knowledge, skills, infrastructure, and community structures needed to live simply, sustainably, and abundantly remain largely undeveloped.
Maslow Initiative was born to bridge this gap.
👓 The Vision
We are creating an ecosystem of companies developing frameworks to facilitate and execute on making properties amazing, building tiny houses, integrating resilient food, water, energy and sanitation systems, and creating an army of "Paradise Makers" who want to live this life and do this work.
I don't know how else to put it.
Its simple:
We need to do large scale permaculture landscapes. (Have any ideas on how to do that fast, and large scale?)
We need to create places where humans live where all their needs are met by structures and systems we integrate in those landscapes, meaning everything you need is walking distance.
We need to actually start enjoying life for life's sake, not at the expense of the earth's biological systems.
We need to read books, watch movies, enjoy the sunset and each other's company.
We envision a world where every community thrives within resilient, regenerative landscapes, naturally producing more abundance than they consume. Imagine:
Landscapes designed to effortlessly meet all human needs: food, water, shelter, sanitation, and energy.
Communities living in rhythm with nature, enjoying slower, richer, healthier lives.
Human settlements that strengthen and regenerate ecosystems, ensuring the well-being of future generations.
This is not hard, its just unusual in our current system. Are you ready to act? Join us.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root
Henry David Thoreau
👁️ Our collective vision is simple:
To remember a sustainable and regenerative way of living, where humans and nature co-create environments that sustain life for generations to come.
We've done it before and at scale. No technical reason why not.
Our task is not to fix the system, but to create the conditions in which a new one can emerge.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
🚀 Our Mission
Our mission is to pioneer life-serving habitats and regenerative landscapes through:
Land Acquisition and Development: Buying properties to create integrated ecosystems that support human flourishing.
Education and Training: Empowering individuals and communities with practical knowledge and skills to build and maintain regenerative lifestyles.
Community Empowerment: Supporting communities to create composting, waste-reducing, and sustainable business ventures, lifting people out of poverty and dependency.
Rapid Implementation: Deploying specialized fleets and technologies to swiftly transform landscapes into abundant ecosystems.
We fear our highest possibility (as well as our lowest one). We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments.
Abraham Maslow
Very simply put: Using Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a guide, we are developing structures and habitats that solve for human needs directly.
We are creating environments where it is not 100% necessary for all humans to "make money" in order to purchase the goods of living, but rather to be nestled in landscapes, structures and integrated systems and with the tools of production built in, in order to produce the goods of living directly instead.
Physiological needs:
🏠
shelter
🍊
food
🚿
water
⚡️
energy
🧻
sanitation
🌍
meta-crisis averting
life-serving paradise ecosystems
⚡️
eternal growth
de-growth company vision & mission
🤝
cynical and fear
optimistic & gifting based collaborative cultures
🕉️
self-actualized
community-actualized resilient human beings
🌳
market dependant
local & circular food forests & gardens
QUESTION: Where can you go right now, in the world, to simply live your life comfortably, without "cost of living" / survival by grocery store / resilient to market forces?
The *Deep* Maslow “Why”
Why we do what we do
Because the mango trees are missing.
Because we are born onto a planet of abundance, yet raised in systems of scarcity.
Because the cost of living has become the cost of being. Because the dominant story says “you must earn your right to exist”
— and we know a deeper story is possible.
Because everyone deserves access to food that nourishes, homes that shelter, waters that heal, and communities that hold them — not as luxuries, but as birthrights.
Because the world doesn’t need another gated eco-retreat or intellectual utopia. It needs real places, rooted in soil and soul, where humans remember how to live again.
Together. With nature. With purpose. With joy.
Because in this time of polycrisis, climate collapse, loneliness, and disconnection, we don’t need more innovation — we need remembrance. Of rhythms. Of rituals. Of responsibility.
Because we believe humans are not the problem — we are a keystone species with a meta-potential to heal, restore, and co-create the future we long for.
We do this work because the Earth is still generous.
Because there is still time.
Because there are mango trees yet to be planted — and children yet to play in their shade.
The great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard.
Abraham Maslow
🏠
🍊
🍊
🍊
🏠
🍊
The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.
-Masanobu Fukuoka
What does it take to get us to stand quietly, like somebody under a clear midnight sky, taking all of it in, stilled by the staggering pitch and pull of life? Things going well doesn't seem to help with this. Good fortune isn't persuasive on this matter, and it rarely gives people pause. It's when the news isn't good news; that's usually the time you find the limits of what you can bear to know. Then, maybe only then, you might be able to see that the waves of what you believed and did and held off from doing will still have their ripples, long after you're done. They outlast you. And this is tremendous news. When you are still enough for long enough, sometimes the river, the boat, and the waves and eddies-all of it-can turn into what you mean when you say, "My Life." If you can do that, you can change things. Your life becomes a little friendlier to the world, to what the world needs from you. It becomes a little friendlier to the endings of things too.
Stephen Jenkinson
🧭 Maslow Values
An evolving compass for regenerative civilisation design
1. Regeneration over Extraction
We commit to regenerating ecosystems, soils, waters, and human potential. Every project aims to leave the land, the community, and the individual more alive than before.
2. Thrivalism, Not Survivalism
We don’t just aim to meet needs — we create the conditions for flourishing. Beauty, play, creativity, and joy are essential nutrients.
3. Integrated Human Needs
We ground our work in the full spectrum of Maslow’s hierarchy — not as a ladder, but as a living system where food, water, shelter, energy, meaning, and belonging are intertwined.
4. Paradise is a Verb
“Paradise-making” is an active practice: of planting, building, composting, listening, designing, and dreaming — in harmony with the land and all beings.
5. Living Systems Thinking
We see the world not as separate parts, but as interconnected ecologies. Every action creates a ripple — and we design with those ripples in mind.
6. The Commons and the Gift
We honor the sacredness of sharing — from community land trusts to time banks and decentralized collaboration. Wealth is what we give, grow, and steward together.
7. Reverence for Life and Culture
We celebrate Indigenous wisdom, grassroots knowledge, and embodied learning. Every place and person has something to teach us.
8. Conflict as Compost
Through Nonviolent Communication, conflict circles, and repair, we compost the old and fertilize the new. Healthy communities grow through truth and tenderness.
9. Nature as Teacher, Blueprint, and Mirror
From permaculture and biomimicry to food forests and passive solar homes, we align with nature’s design intelligence to create resilient human habitats.
10. Self-Actualization in Service of Life
We believe in individual growth not as an isolated pursuit, but as a gift to the collective. When one person thrives, the whole ecosystem feels it.
Permaculture is an ethical design science, that mimics nature to supply all our human needs whilst benefiting the environment.
Geoff Lawton
What are the 7 🌿 Branches?
The problems we face today are complex — food insecurity, housing crises, waste, ecological collapse, social disconnection, economic fragility. No single solution can solve them all. That’s why we’ve built seven distinct but interwoven branches — each focused on an essential layer of the mission, and each designed as its own powerful business and engine of change.
By giving each branch a clear identity and area of responsibility — from growing food to mapping impact, from building homes to telling the story — we avoid the trap of vague promises and instead build real systems that work. These are not departments. They are fully operational teams, each solving for core human needs in their own ways, yet deeply integrated into the whole.
Think of it like a game: each branch is a class with its own powers, and together, they form a guild capable of reshaping the world. In nature, every healthy system has diversity, specialisation, and symbiosis. The Maslow Branches are no different.
Media
Documenting our story and others through filmmaking, podcasts, and impactful storytelling.
Channels
Production
Marketing
Pansophia
A school of life, providing courses and resources for regenerative living and holistic education.
Courses
Glossary
Library
LandScouts
Scouting, acquiring, designing, and selling regenerative landscapes and community settlements.
☎️ 0. Land Consultation Dream
📖 1. Site Analysis Document
🗺️ 2. Master Plan Design Document
🚶♂️ 3. On-Site Visit & Pegging
🏡 4. Grand Master Design & Implementation Plan
Buy & Sell & Donate Land
Rentals & Stays
Formations
Developing innovative, modular off-grid structures and sustainable living technologies.
Homes
Furniture
Sanitation
Circularity
GroundSwell
Transforming waste into fertile soil, creating abundant gardens and nourishing communities.
Compost
Trees
Food
Waste
Mobilise
Deploying specialized machinery and skilled teams for rapid, large-scale permaculture implementations.
This branch us under development
Atlas
Developing gamified software and mapping tools to visualize, plan, and manage regenerative community landscapes.
This branch us under development
Wealth isn't how much money you have. Wealth is what you're left with when you lose all your money.
Roger Hamilton
Breaking the Illusion: Money and Value
We must awaken to the truth: money itself has no inherent value—it is merely a medium of exchange. A real apple has value; money exchanged for that apple cannot be eaten. Today's money-dependent economy relies entirely on complex, fragile systems—market economies, supply chains, packaging, transportation, refrigeration—all depleting resources and generating waste. This abstraction of our basic needs is unsustainable, harmful, and unnecessary.
The truth is simple and empowering: Food can grow abundantly and freely, simply by thoughtful, intelligent design. We, as the keystone species, possess the unique ability to design ecosystems that produce effortlessly and abundantly, creating spaces for slower, healthier, and more connected lives.
We can, quite literally, design the Garden of Eden, bringing freedom, connection, and true abundance back into our everyday existence.
"Self" Sufficiency is a Scam
Self-sufficiency is a beautiful illusion — the fantasy that one person can be the farmer, the builder, the healer, and the poet all at once. In truth, it is a lonely burden, a scam sold by a culture obsessed with the myth of the isolated hero. Life has never worked that way. Every loaf of bread, every roof beam, every song we hum is the gift of countless unseen hands and histories. To try to be “self-sufficient” is to forget that we are already woven from others.
Community sufficiency, on the other hand, is simply how life breathes. The tree does not hoard its shade, the bee does not claim the blossom, and we need not pretend to stand alone. In community, sufficiency ceases to be a struggle and becomes a dance — my strength covering your weakness, your abundance filling my lack. Real freedom is not independence, but interdependence: a remembering that paradise is made in common.
Wildmindscommunity
Start here: (the rest will follow)
🏠
shelter
🍊
food
🚿
water
⚡️
energy
🧻
sanitation
Join the Movement
The future belongs to those who choose to align with the wisdom of nature, embracing their role as conscious stewards of life. Maslow Initiative invites you to explore, learn, participate, and co-create with us. Together, we can awaken to a world where human needs are met not by extraction and stress, but by regenerative abundance and harmony.
It’s time to reconnect, slow down, and thrive.
If we want to think about civilisation birth and midwifing, supporting the emergence of a viable, self organising, healthy, resilient civilisation… we think about the foundational shifts that have to happen, most of them involve closing open loops, so that our decision making is omniconsiderate, that our decision making ends up being in the highest good of all that is being effected by the decision.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
💸
zero-cost-of-living
profit-of-living human needs habitats
🫂
self-sufficient
community-abundant developments & projects
🌍
meta-crisis averting
life-serving global paradise making
🕉️
self-actualized
community-actualized resilient human beings
⚡️
eternal growth
de-growth movement vision & mission
🤝
cynical & fear
optimistic & gifting based collaborative cultures
🌳
market drive & scarcity
local & abundant food, water & energy