AN IDEAL COMMUNITY

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The central goal and purpose of Thirdofeight is to seek to build an ideal community. In literary terms, we seek to build a New Avalon or Atlantis of sorts. Our objective is to create a place where larger imaginary and mythic ideals can take root, where our imaginations can be expressed, and where all people are free to pursue personal joy through developing the best of themselves.

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This will be a special place designed with a variety of familiar aesthetics represented often in the ancient myths and stories of western culture. It will be specifically orchestrated around a fictional but otherwise plausible history referred to in the tales we as an organization have accumulated, incorporated, and/or written as a group.

 

We seek to create a place where people will be able to live in peace and safety and beauty, and will be oriented to the eternal principles of truth and light. We literally seek to build a physical, beautiful, and functional place where people of like-minded principles can unite, build, and choose to live together.

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WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

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This city is an actual community of connected people supported by an integrated spiritual, physical, intellectual, and emotional structure.

This structure is composed of four distinct pillars:

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1. The community is made up of individuals who refuse to take counsel from their fears. Those who insist on doing so are removed.

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2. Second is a network of physical people, homes, businesses, farms, and villages dedicated to sustainable agriculture and self-reliant living. These are either owned institutionally or individually by members of the community.
 

3. Third, a formal educational system designed to assist community members in pursuit of peace and self-improvement. The school can be learned about here.

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4. The fourth pillar of the community is a fictional story and skin of sorts based on western myths and fantasy wherein truth, curiosity, play, and creativity are emphasized. The real institutions, participants, physical spaces, and aesthetics of the community are inspired by and a reflection of these fictional stories. In addition to serving the practical needs of the community, these resources take on the plausible but fictional purposes and culture reflected in the story in order to further contribute to the inspiring of participants' imaginations. The story as it stands operates under the title of "Wizarding in the Wild West," and can be learned about here.

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OUR BACKGROUND

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Begun as a dream of a "Christmas town in the mountains," our vision began as a seed in the mind and heart of its founder. His interest in sustainable living, story telling, and education contributed to the concept until these goals came together in a vortex of concerted vision in preparation for what it is today.

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The founder, Benjamin Roche, is truly a renaissance man and very much an idealist's idealist.  But not only is he an artist visionary, but he is an experiential engineer, gifted designer, and experimental educator and researcher. Rather than give up interests in favor of personal specialization, his appetite for polymathy rather has led him rather to seek areas of maximized overlap of each of his passionate preoccupations, seeking for unity amidst the diversity.

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His interests and skills pull from many fields; he has cultivated a variety and multiplicity of talents that span a wide swath of areas of expertise and experience. But despite his mastery, he is careful to not overburden himself; he insists on surrounding himself with open-minded, specialized devotees in each of these areas.

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The Third of Eight community is the results of twenty plus years of exploration, research, study, experimentation, teaching, and collaboration.

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JOIN US

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We are currently centered in downtown Springville, Utah. Come experience and learn more about it! Contact us directly or show up during one of our ongoing weekly gatherings, or just come by and knock on the door. We can be reached at (208) 819-7131. The campus is at 317 S 200 W Springville Utah 84663.