Michael Edward Arth, professionally experienced in building design, residential construction, and fine and commecial art, moved to DeLand, Florida in 2001 in order to rebuild a small slum neighborhood, today known as "The Garden District." Together with his daughter Sophie and his wife Maya, this is still where he lives today. Michael Arth is currently active with a new movie, "New Urban Cowboy: Toward a New Pedestrianism," addressing a complete reconstruction of the architectural design of the modern urban society.

1. Your major construction project, which you now call "The Garden District," was a complete remake of a neighborhood, formerly known as "Cracktown." Please explain your motivation and inspiration to take on such a great task and taking it to success?

The motivations were: 1. To find a project where I could try out some of my ideas about urban design in the real world; 2. Create a living laboratory for the book I've been working on for many years: The Labors of Hercules: Modern Solutions to 12 Herculean Problems, and; 3. Rebuild a historic neighborhood where my wife and I could live and raise a child.

Rebuilding an existing neighborhood was a partial fulfilment of a lifelong fantasy to design and build the perfect town. The next big project will probably be built from scratch, which is the best way to make sure that it embodies the principles of what I call New Pedestrianism or NP, for short. New Pedestrianism is a more pedestrian and ecology-oriented version of New Urbanism. NP segregates transportation for motor vehicles and pedestrians into two "separate but equal" networks—where the pedestrians and cyclists get to share a beautiful, tree-lined pedestrian lane in front of the houses and businesses. The cars go on a rear street, which is also tree lined and which has carriage houses with formal garden gates in the residential areas. The businesses also have entrances, front and rear, but the main entrance is on the front side—and front is always the pedestrian side.

2. In The Labors of Hercules you describe the system of corruption, which has polluted the American democracy and turned it into an oligarchy. What is the main reason why private interests have bought up public politics and turned it into a circus charade?

Even by the standards of the world's democracies, the American voting system is not very democratic, with the cards stacked in favor of private business interests, which in turn fuels the military industrial complex. Military-related expenditures are already over $700 billion in 2008, and comprise roughly half of all military expenditures in the world, even though Americans comprise only 4% of the world's population. Meanwhile, our law enforcement agencies, including the prison industrial complex, are bloated by the interminable war on drugs resulting in an incarceration rate 600% to 700% higher than Europe. There are also agricultural and oil related subsidies that are supporting unsustainable policies. These are only a few examples of policies influenced by non-proportional representation. We could improve the democracy and begin to address inequities like this in the system with these important voting rights reforms:

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) for single member elections—where the voters rank their candidates in order of preference without fear of having to strategize their vote. Gore, and the liberal majority, lost to Bush in 2000 because Ralph Nader "spoiled" the vote. There would never again be a spoiler under IRV.

Get rid of the Electoral College, which is a relic from another era and gives voters in thinly populated states much greater representation than voters in densely populated states.

For multi-member elections (like the House of Representatives) trade gerrymandered districts in favor of large, semi-permanent districts with a field of representatives elected by Proportional Representation (PR).

Enact real campaign finance reform, where money is taken out of politics as much as possible. There should be very little private campaign financing; the election cycle should be shorter; and the information on candidates should be standardized in an official Internet site that would cost taxpayers a tiny fraction of what they spend now trying to influence a very restricted selection of candidates. Unless we vastly reduce influence buying, we will not have justice.

Having a more representative government has its own dangers. Currently only about 50% of Americans even bother to vote, partly because the field of candidates is only drawn from those politicians that support the status quo, for the reasons outlined above. That is why politicians are so maddeningly non-committal. With voter reform, you could have bright, informed candidates from different walks of life willing to state their real views and take a principled stand that anyone can understand.

If voters really mattered, we would then have to deal with the problem of the American electorate being poorly informed, superstitious, and easily manipulated. Apparently, many Americans suffer from selective exposure (where people listen more to those ideas which confirm their biases). For example, when it was shown that there were not weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (and even after Bush and Cheney admitted the lack of evidence) 50% of Americans in a 2006 Harris poll still believed Saddam had WMDs. Historically, it has served the powers-that-be to leave people in the dark, and it has served politicians to say little of substance.

3. The world population growth is critical in all areas of human expansion, but it is currently most problematic in the Third World. What is the responsibility, if any, of the West to help places like Africa to downsize their population – and which political policies should in that case be applied?

Another example of selective perception is the population explosion. Despite the vast range of problems related to increasing population—pollution, congestion, climate change, resource shortages, and resource wars, to name but a few—most people don't consider it worrisome that the population of our planet goes up by 211,000 people every single day! That is 77 million more people every year, which is roughly like adding the population of England, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand every year. We should be in panic mode about what to do about this, yet it is not even on the political agenda.

It is not just a problem with the developing world, which has the highest birth rate, but with developed countries as well. The U.S. has the highest growth rate of any industrialized country—mostly due to immigrants and their high birth rate. This is a disaster in the making, because when we are talking about the dangers of overpopulation the most critical factor is not sheer numbers, but carrying capacity (carrying capacity = how many people can the Earth sustain at a certain standard of living). A hundred Bangladeshis use as many resources as one American, so more Americans are potentially as bad for the planet as 100 Bangladeshis. However, people are not trees—they move around quite easily. So every Bangladeshi who moves to a developed country multiplies his effect on the planet up to 100 times. This is why immigration from poor countries to rich countries is aggravating the problem. I'm in favor of reversing population growth immediately across the board in all countries. Japan and some European countries are nearing zero population growth and this should be cheered.

An additional factor in the population explosion is the very real possibility of life extension in the near future. Every day 155,000 people die. If the death rate was reduced to near zero, and the birth rate stayed the same, we would add 366,000 people every day, instead of 211,000. Obviously, we need to face the overpopulation issue squarely. There are people, often business interests, who make claims that increasingly the population is a good thing because it grows the economy, brings in fresh, young blood, and that American ingenuity (Terrafarm Mars! rocket to the stars!) will somehow find a place to put all these people. They laugh at Malthusian predictions of global disaster going back to the 19th century. These are the rationalizations of those with an agenda backed by whoever they can fool, similar to those who claim that global warming is not human caused. We are better able to assess the state of planet and its resources today than ever before, and the consensus of unbiased sources is that we may already be exceeding the planet's carrying capacity. It hardly seems prudent to take chances with the only habitable planet we've got.

Who knows? In the long term we might be able to upload our minds into cyberspace, and discard the bodies, but as long as we still inhabit our bodies, Birth credits is the solution. A choice-based, marketable birth license plan would be fair, non-discriminatory in regards the poor, and could stop population growth immediately. People are issued half a credit, which they can combine with a partner, and they get the first child free of charge. Any more than that, they have to buy a license, which costs a tiny fraction of what it actually costs to raise a child. Because we are used to breeding without any regard for the rest of the world, birth credits at first might sound extreme. It is a vast improvement over the one child policy, however, because people who do not have children should be rewarded, and people who are well-suited to having more children should have the option to do so. The poor would benefit the most from such a plan, because they suffer the most from the effects of having too many children. Proof of this is the fact that the average household net worth in the U.S. is in inverse proportion to the number of children in the household.

The problem in most "save the world" discussions, other than the difficulty of establishing the statistical baseline in regards resources, is to get people to agree on the boundaries between individual rights and collective rights. Our collective rights are being eroded every day by the cumulative effects of individual irresponsibility, so we need universal policies that define the boundaries of these rights.

If we could all agree on using birth credits, population growth would end and we might begin to get a handle on a wide range of problems facing our species and the other species that we share the planet with. You can read more about birth credits (which I also call a marketable birth license plan) at http://www.laborsofhercules.org.

4. You take a non-moralizing stance on topics like drugs and prostitution, emphasizing that behavioural patterns persist unless the consequences are brought to light. Do you see a future for alternative communities where drug use and prostitution might be legal under controlled forms, or would ending these prohibitions only serve as temporary examples for all people involved?

Drug prohibition and laws against prostitution constitute what we commonly call "victimless crimes." The irony is that by making these things crimes, we create far more victims. The moralistic approach to drugs and prostitution is ineffective, unethical, dangerous, and costly. It makes no sense to try and control what people do with their bodies, as long as legalization serves the greater good, which is does.

The facts regarding illegal drugs tell the story: Many, if not most, prohibited drugs (marijuana, mescaline, ayahuasca, psilocybin, LSD, DMT, MDMA, and others) are non-addictive, have proven to be effective in therapeutic and spiritual practices, and are generally not dangerous to the health. Meanwhile, the two most prominent legal drugs—alcohol and tobacco—are highly addictive, and kill 450,000 every year in the U.S. alone. Legal prescription drugs kill another 100,000. At the same time, all of the illegal drugs combined only kill about 17,000 in the U.S, with not one single documented overdose death on record attributable to marijuana, mescaline, ayahuasca, psilocybin, LSD, or DMT. If that is not enough reason to move toward legalization, we also know that many of the 17,000 killed by hard drugs would not have died if they had gotten clearly dosed, non-adulterated drugs, purchased legally.

Drug abuse is a medical problem that is compounded by the unregulated trade of criminal enterprises that exact a terrible toll on society in countless ways. The modern, popular "gangsta" culture was born of prohibition and the lure of the forbidden, and almost every town now seems to have a crack slum. We have had 40 years to observe the failed experiment in drug prohibition, which is an echo of the failed experiment of alcohol prohibition from the 1920s. Alcohol prohibition, beginning in 1919, launched the first wave of gangsterism, contempt for the law, and rapid prison expansion. We are doing it all over again, except it is much worse this time. Criminals, and others who stand to gain from the status quo, are making sure we keep pursuing the command and compliance approach. Alternative communities—like Las Vegas and Amsterdam—where prostitution and certain drugs are tolerated, are not enough. We need a universal end to prohibition.

5. With New Urbanism you envision communities where people live interconnected via compact neighbourhoods, and the automobile-oriented concrete jungles are replaced by practical, short-distance neighbourhood centers. "New Pedestrianism" develops the idea of building cities that conform to human nature (e.g. walking/jogging, social relationships, closeness to nature, public safety), instead of like today where we often make people conform to the nature of suburban cities. Explain more about the philosophy behind this vision; how will it affect people's life quality? Why do you think public officials haven't thought of looking at city architecture from this perspective?

New Pedestrianism is a more idealistic form of New Urbanism. Both movements involve reviving and expanding upon traditional street patterns. New Urbanism today is a new and improved version of what looks a lot like just about any American town before WWII. New Urbanism does not go far enough, however, because it still does not adequately deal with the cars. New Pedestrianism expands upon a few experiments in pedestrian-oriented urban design that never took hold—mostly because of the onslaught of the automobile age. Many public officials are beginning to look at New Urbanism, and change the laws accordingly. New Urbanism and New Pedestrianism are still against the law in most places because of zoning laws and street engineering standards that prescribe the width of streets, the radii of turns, setbacks, the segregation of uses, the elimination of trees within a certain distance of the street, and other restrictions that make our cities so unappealing. The New Pedestrianism movement, founded in 1999, is only now beginning to get some serious attention from planners. The city and surrounding rural municipality of Saskatoon, Saskachewan, Canada, for example, is considering five pedestrian villages that could be built on its southeastern edge. The housing bust is slowing things down in the U.S., but when things heat up again, planners may begin to realize that our suburban cities are no longer sustainable for many reasons. Pedestrian villages are compact, pedestrian-oriented, energy efficient, and beautiful. There are no automobile streets in front of any house or business, so the first instinct is to step out your front door and go for a pleasant stroll or bicycle ride on a pleasant, tree-lined, car-free lane. The second, less desirable choice would be to go out the back (where the automobile street is) and fire up the gas-guzzler.

Another era will be upon us when private cars are no longer necessary. This will come when self-driving cars have taken over, and we will have the option of getting rid of almost all the cars. Ninety percent of the time, cars are sitting around parked somewhere, taking up space, consuming precious resources, and losing value. If we can move toward eliminating private cars in favor of driverless public cars, a vehicle can be summoned when you need it. It will cost a fraction as much as owning a private car and you can have any kind of car you need on demand. Almost all of the world's 1.2 million annual deaths and 48 million injuries from motor vehicle accidents are caused by human error. Autonomous cars could vastly reduce the carnage. It is hard to imagine that un-enhanced humans would even be allowed to drive a car in 20 years in the way they do today.

The other factor is the development of fully immersive virtual reality, which could cut down drastically on the need for physical travel. Combine this with autonomous cars, and life in a pedestrian village, and it is easy to see how we could eventually reduce the number of cars to a fraction of the current level.

6. What is the relationship between an established human community and a free, wild area in nature? Is it possible to organize the architecture of our cities to work in harmony with the design of nature?

That is what New Pedestrianism is about. Not only would the villages be beautiful, sustainable, and livable, they would be surrounded by greenbelts and be adjacent to preserves or waterfronts. In almost all cases, within the pedestrian villages there would be no roads between the edge of the village and nature. Only pedestrian lanes are allowed on the periphery, so that the dynamic edge of people and their architecture is not spoiled by traffic. Have you noticed that beaches, riverfronts, lakefronts, and forests are usually bordered by a noisy, car-filled road or blocked by a building? Under NP, all these natural amenities would be bordered by a pedestrian lane, thus providing an accessible boundary and greenbelt to bring the community into balance with nature.

7. While Christianity is losing ground in the secular West, Judaism and particularly Islam continue to thrive in the Middle East. What is the future for traditional religions in an increasingly atheist-oriented world? Is the creeping death of religion and myth an unavoidable product of our time, or is there a possibility of some form of spiritual rebirth in man?

Christianity is losing ground in the West because people are wising up. Even a moderately educated person can see that more than one contradictory idea on the same subject cannot be true. We have thousands of religions with contradictory absolute beliefs about things which are unknowable. The other Abrahamic religions are thriving in the Middle East because many people in those countries are still mired in a vengeful, feudal mentality, which is even more dangerous in a technological world where cooler heads should prevail. Traditional religions have had their time, and we see the dangers involved in dogmatic beliefs and intolerance in a world that is becoming increasingly more like a big village. Faith is not a viable epistemology, just as Creationism is not science. Faith should be replaced with something more like Dale Carnegie's "power of positive thinking" while maintaining the ability to adjust to reality. Humans are quite wonderful beings when they apply the Golden Rule, look on the bright side of life, and adopt a scientific approach to knowledge. Doing those three things alone will change one's life—really. We understand the basis of the old myths now, and they are quaint but not practical. We need a guiding vision for something that really could transform our species and carry us from the mud to the stars. Prayer, superstitious practices, ritual, and absolutist thinking, is not just naïve but potentially dangerous.

8. Transhumanism has recently become a topic of hot debate. With the advancements in technology our computers are developing a more and more subtle artificial intelligence. Mary Shelley once wrote a novel about the scientist Frankenstein, who created a monster he could no longer control and eventually were forced to destroy. Do you see humanity reaching a similar problem in the future?

With change comes fear and clinging to the comfort of the familiar. It is part of our evolutionary survival mechanism, and without a certain degree of caution, balanced with curiosity, our species would not have flourished. Ever since people began building machines and tinkering with nature, and especially since the power of the atom was unleashed, people have feared what might happen if we make a false step. Are we about to open Pandora's box and give birth to a machine that will terminate our species? It is quite possible that we will develop recursively self-improving machines that can in a very short time go from human child level intelligence to god-like intelligence. This makes it imperative to watch our future baby AI very carefully and help it make the transition from a dangerous adolescent to a benevolent overmind. I call this new form of life UNICE, which stands for Universal Network of Intelligent Conscious Entities, and for a year I've been interviewing scientists and thinkers from around the world about the subject for an upcoming feature documentary. Quite simply, it may be the most important juncture that our species will face, and we need to pay close attention. We will continue to balance our curiosity with caution, and that is a wise strategy (http://www.unice.info).

We may compare our past situation to that of a rapacious caterpillar gnawing up resources at a tremendous rate while unaware that it is facing a vastly different future as a butterfly. Now, as we are wrap ourselves in a chrysalis of technology we can begin to contemplate what might lie on the other side of the great transformation. Will we survive to transcend our mortal coil and ascend the heights in a radiant new form? People may argue about whether this guiding myth of our time may happen, or whether we will be destroyed by our creations, but the process is grounded in hard science.

9. Many people in modern society seem to feel existentially bored and unfulfilled. If you agree, what do you think is the reason for this anxiety? Is there a chance for people to regain a sense of playful, adventurous creativity in life?

I can relate to some of that. I was depressed after I rejected the Roman Catholicism of my childhood, and it took me until I was 18 or 19 years old to find my way out of it and become a secular transhumanist. I remember calling myself an existentialist when I was teenager, and I read a lot of Camus, Sartre, and Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death were two of my favorite titles, but I also read Teilhard de Chardin. That was 36 years ago, and I'm still a seeker of knowledge, but it is a lot more fun now. We live in the most interesting time for humans to have been alive, and it will just get more interesting. Personally, I am very rarely bored, feel quite fulfilled, and want to live indefinitely. One lifetime is not nearly enough time to do all that I want to do.

For me, the key is to follow my interests in the service of others. Maybe that will work for others who feel that their lives are meaningless. Each person has to find their own niche that contributes to the whole. For some this means service to other people or organizations, for others it means working alone toward a cause, or on projects. When we reach through the little ego to the collective self beyond, it fills the hole that the rejection of organized religion can leave. Buddhism, a philosophy more than a religion, takes the view that the individual can transcend the misery of the ego by identifying with the whole of the universe. It helps to be passionately, almost fearlessly involved in life, and still be able to sit back and observe the theater of one's life with detachment when things get too serious.

Questions from our readers

From Victoria McMagnus

10. Isn't the real problem with drugs the lack of strong political will to crack down on drug abuse and corporate crime? What do you say to those who fear that legalising drugs would mean they would become as acceptable as alcohol and advertised all over the place?

You could make the whole world a vast penal colony and people would not stop using their drugs of choice. The U.S. already has the highest incarceration rate in the world and it is well known that both legal and illegal drugs are easily obtained in prison. It is futile and unnecessary to stamp it out. Many illegal drugs are quite useful, and, as we see with alcohol and tobacco (which are potentially quite dangerous), they are better controlled through legalization and regulation. The Dutch police told me that the average age of hard drug users in Holland has been increasing because they have eliminated the lure of the forbidden and they tolerate the addicts. We do need a strong political will—not to crack down on drug abuse—but rather to end the futile war on drugs. We also need strong political leaders who will include severe restrictions on advertising drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and other substances that have been proven dangerous to society.

In regards corporate crime: As long as our corrupt voting system allows politicians to be bought, then you'll have special interests getting special privileges.

11. With a drastic reduction in birthrate, an increase in the ratio of old people doesn't take long to materialise. How do you think this issue would affect countries like China and India in the future, should they succeed in reducing their birth rates sufficiently?

I think it is a non-issue—especially in light of future developments in life-extension, helper robots, and the fact that crime and violence will plummet in an aging population. India and China's population has risen by 300 million people in the last 20 years, because of population momentum from young populations, so those two countries are not good examples of your point. Better examples are Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan, which are nearing zero population growth. The fact that the countries with the oldest populations and slowest rate of growth are among the richest countries on Earth should tell you something. It is better to work toward a sustainable model with a stable, or declining population than to count on population growth to power the economy. We are also facing the strong possibility that humans will jump into cyberspace, or something more exotic, and leave the planet to the other species of plants and animals who may flourish in our absence.

12. How do you envisage your vision of a democracy that works being effected in a society in which corporate powers have seized such control over the government and political system? Can the corporate powers be peacefully deposed?

Traditionally, it has been hard to change society, but if UNICE develops, collective decisions governing every aspect of life will be automatic. We would have an individual consciousness at the same time as possessing UNICE consciousness. The president will be a figurehead, at most, and politicians will no longer exist in their present form, if at all. UNICE—the collective self that will comprise the future, self-aware Internet—will make sure that we solve all our various problems in the most efficient, judicious manner possible.

From Mathew Eugene

13. Much of what you suggest in your "12 Herculean Problems" would require some really fundamental changes in the current system, namely towards the growth-based economy. How is it possible to work within this system?

The fundamentals of our republic are sound, but there are institutionalized problems that need to be rooted out. The problems I list in the modern "Labors of Hercules" are generally ignored by politicians. This is why I list politics first. The first labor of Hercules, in the classic Greek myth, was the defeat of the Nemean Lion. This sneaky lion has two entrances to its cave and nothing can cut its hide except its own claws. Hercules has to shut off one of the entrances and then use the lion's own claws to flail it. When I was in Kenya working on the book and the documentary in 1997, I met a Masaai warrior who had killed a lion that was attacking his village and his livestock. He gave me one of the lion's claws from the defeated lion. I kept this claw from a real life, modern day Hercules to remind me of the first, very difficult task ahead of us. The irony is that this particular Masaai warrier was the runt of the litter, so to speak. To look at him, you would not think he had it in him, but he used his brains instead of his brawn. Might also does not make right in our struggle to reform a system where authoritarian attitudes have prevailed for years. The fight in Iraq is a sad example of this misbegotten policy. The Internet and the rise of UNICE might make it possible to work within the system. The mind of the future, self-aware Internet will hopefully become a collective wisdom, unmasking those who seek to hurt others. Or we might all go to hell in a hand basket. We shall see. There are surely at least a few acts left in the play of life.

14. Do we need an economic disaster for changes to really start happening?

No, but the folks talking about the breakdown of society following peak oil, might be onto something. Personally, I think we have a shot at tech-ing our way out of it, but it would involve reorganization along the lines that I propose in the Labors of Hercules, heeding the call to reverse population growth, and the advent of UNICE.

15. You suggest a choice-based, financial incentive strategy for population control, which seems fair enough. However, many will see this as a form of eugenics targeted towards the lower class. How would you deal with these objections?

I already addressed this to some extent above. Birth credits help the poor more than anyone else, since the well off already practice birth control and would not buy more birth credits even if they were free. Birth credits would improve society not only because of ecological issues but also because fewer unwanted children would be born. It would also free up resources to help everyone, regardless of social status. There is an interesting correlation in the U.S. between Roe v Wade decision, which allows legal abortion, and the precipitous drop in violence that followed a generation later. Presumably a lot of young, poor, single women got abortions instead of having unwanted children, who would later make up a disproportionate share of the criminals. Obviously, birth control is better than abortion, but if the correlation was really a cause, it shows that unwanted children, raised in poor circumstances, are not likely to help society advance. The poor would gain the biggest benefit from birth credits because they could be afforded a path out of multi-generational poverty. They could trade a life on welfare with multiple children destined to repeat the pernicious cycle, for education, job training, and integration into society. I don't know whether this would improve the gene stock, but so what if it does? Better eugenics than disgenics.

16. Do you consider long-term collective genetic effects in your reasoning?

Even without considering the taboo subject of eugenics there are more than enough reasons to stop population growth. Some people say that we should let nature take its course and Mother Nature will cull the herd. Well, that is roundabout way of saying we should invite pestilence, famine, climate change, natural disasters, wars, and other calamities to do the job because we do not have the good sense to practice birth control.

17. Overpopulation and immigration obviously go hand in hand. Immigration is also an extremely difficult issue, but probably less so than population control. Should immigration be tackled first?

The more pressing issue is overpopulation. Immigration problems flow from that. If Latin America had ZPG today, the immigration problem would evaporate in a generation.

18. Why would people vote for depopulation, when it would have negative effects on our growth-focused economy? Any way you look at it, aren't these ideas political suicide?

You are correct in that our politicians consider the subject political suicide, so we cannot rely on politicians to do anything about it. That is the tragedy of the commons. When everyone wants to get theirs without consideration of the commons, you get a tragedy. That is what has been unfolding in front of our eyes for the last few generations. The boom/bust cycles of our growth-focused economy are based on near-sighted goals that do not adequately address the long view. We need to do what is practical without always operating in fear of short-term consequences.

19. You just released a new movie, New Urban Cowboy: Toward a New Pedestrianism, how has the reaction been so far, and do you have any plans to distribute online?

We got good reviews, up to four and four and half stars, but for six months we were still looking for ways to improve it. We got audience reactions at four films festivals—San Francisco, Savannah, Orlando, and Daytona Beach—and then it was re-edited by Blake Wiers, my collaborator on the project. Various languages were added as subtitles in an international edition of the DVD, which is now available at http://www.newurbancowboy.com. It is actually the first film in a planned trilogy, to be followed by The Labors of Hercules: Modern Solutions to 12 Herculean Problems, and UNICE: Universal Network of Intelligent Conscious Entities. Visit http://www.goldenapplesmedia.com to find out more. My personal web site is at http://www.michaelearth.com.

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Interview was conducted by Alex Birch the 21th of May 2008.

Corrupt would like to thank Michael Arth for kindly participating in the interview and sharing his creative inspiration and visionary ideas with us.