1. Why We Exist
Umoja Greenlands is a living response to the convergence of crises facing humanity and the Earth—ecological collapse, mass extinction, social fragmentation, meaninglessness, and rising existential risk. These are not isolated issues; they are manifestations of a deeper systemic breakdown, which we call the Metacrisis.
We exist to co-create a way of life that reduces suffering, regenerates ecosystems, rebuilds trust, and restores coherence between humans, the more-than-human world, and future generations.
2. Ethics of Suffering Alleviation
Our ethical compass starts with a clear and urgent priority:
Reduce the most intense, avoidable, and unjust suffering—across all beings, now and in the future.
This suffering includes:
Exploitation of nonhuman animals,
Structural poverty and systemic injustice,
Ecological devastation and displacement,
Existential risks like climate collapse, war, or unaligned AI.
Rather than cling to abstract ideals like freedom or equality alone, we center ethics in compassionate realism—what causes the most suffering, and how can we relieve it?
3. Our Plant-Based Orientation
Umoja Greenlands is rooted in a plant-based way of life—not just as a diet, but as a conscious stance against exploitation and for regeneration.
Why plant-based?
To dramatically reduce greenhouse gases, water use, and land degradation,
To end industrialized animal suffering,
To heal ecosystems and nourish human health,
To support food justice and decolonial land relations,
To live in alignment with nonviolence, empathy, and planetary limits.
A plant-based orientation is one of the most practical and powerful levers for systemic change.
4. Doing, Being, Becoming
We believe personal and collective transformation unfolds in three interrelated dimensions:
Doing: The regenerative practices we engage in—like food forests, community building, and decentralized governance.
Being: The inner work—cultivating presence, reflection, responsibility, and purpose.
Becoming: The continuous reshaping of our identities, values, and roles to meet a changing world.
This integrated framework helps us avoid burnout, dogma, or disconnection between action and consciousness.
5. Three Pathways of Transformation
Umoja contributes to systems change through three interconnected strategies:
1. Personal Transformation
Inner healing, resilience, leadership development, and trauma-informed community care.
2. Alternative Institutions
Embodied experiments: permaculture farms, food forests, eco-buildings, solidarity economies, and mutual aid networks.
3. Systemic Engagement
Policy influence, advocacy, and mass mobilization to shift dominant institutions toward care, regeneration, and justice.
These approaches are not in competition—they form a movement ecology that can adapt, grow, and sustain itself over time.
6. Orientation to the Metacrisis
The Metacrisis is not a single issue—it is the pattern behind our crises:
A civilizational breakdown in coordination, sensemaking, and care.
Core Generative Dynamics:
Built-in competition (zero-sum dynamics, arms races, economic rivalry)
Growth obligations (extractive finance systems requiring infinite growth)
Structural biases (institutions distorting or oversimplifying complexity)
Devaluation of the unmonetized (e.g. ecosystems, relationships, Indigenous knowledge)
Compounding Risk Accelerators:
Technological acceleration without wisdom (AI, biotech, surveillance)
Institutional mistrust and social breakdown
Energy scarcity and supply chain fragility
If we ignore these dynamics, even good intentions will reproduce harm. Umoja exists to break that cycle and midwife new patterns of life.
7. Effective Altruism in Practice
We are inspired by Effective Altruism—the use of evidence and compassion to do the most good. At Umoja, this means:
Focusing on high-impact, neglected, and solvable problems,
Applying longtermist thinking—protecting the future of all beings,
Practicing radical transparency in how we allocate our time and resources.
But we also go beyond conventional EA:
We center place-based wisdom, not abstract optimization,
We honor non-monetary value—dignity, land, culture, community,
We embrace complexity, ethics, and systemic redesign—not only efficiency.
This is altruism rooted in ecology and embodied care.
8. Living Systems Governance
Umoja Greenlands uses decentralized, adaptive, and role-based governance inspired by Holacracy and consent-based facilitation. We believe:
Leadership is distributed,
Authority flows from expertise and accountability,
Decisions are made at the edge, where knowledge lives.
This allows for resilience, adaptability, and transparency, without hierarchy or rigidity.
9. A Living Invitation
You don’t have to be perfect to belong here. You don’t have to be fully plant-based, or deeply political, or spiritually enlightened.
You just need to care. To question. To try. To walk with us in this great transition.
Umoja Greenlands is not the answer—it’s a seed.
If you feel it in your hands, come plant it with us.
10. Compassionate Governance
At Umoja Greenlands, we align ourselves with the emerging vision of Compassionate Governance—an approach that centers the prevention of intense suffering as the highest ethical and political priority for humanity.
Inspired by the work of the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS), we recognize that decisions made today will shape the long-term future of sentient life on Earth and beyond. The stakes include not only the suffering of humans and nonhuman animals, but also potential future beings—including artificial sentiences—whose lives could be deeply affected by our systems of governance.
Compassionate Governance seeks to:
Prevent “s-risks”—scenarios of astronomical suffering caused by cruelty, neglect, or misaligned technologies.
Address structural causes of suffering, including power abuse, authoritarianism, economic exclusion, and speciesism.
Promote depolarization, truth-seeking, and collaborative problem-solving.
Support citizens’ assemblies and participatory decision-making models.
Uphold the dignity and basic needs of all beings—now and in the long-term future.
Key principles include:
An ethic of suffering prevention, prioritizing the most intense forms of avoidable harm.
Anti-speciesism—valuing equivalent suffering regardless of species.
Restorative justice and active listening, over blame and threat.
Evidence-based transparency, fact-checking, and institutional truth-seeking.
Safeguards against ethical backsliding, authoritarianism, and control by unaccountable AI systems.
We believe that a shift toward compassionate governance is not only desirable—it is necessary to avert dystopian futures and build a world where all can thrive.
For more information, visit the OPIS Compassionate Governance page and read their initiative concept note.
