Are you tired of fighting to survive?
Do you feel like, no matter how hard you work to make the world around you a better place, your greatest struggle is convincing others to simply care?
Do you ever wish you could start over with a clean slate?
The world is plagued with problems.
From overpopulation to lack of housing, food shortages, drought, pollution, rising water levels, disease, poverty, isolation, mental illness, xenophobia, not to mention greed and hatred, many people are having trouble remaining hopeful about the future. Not only is finding solutions to these problems difficult—but implementing them comes with the simple but significant obstacle that human beings are resistant to change. In the face of these overwhelming challenges, ask yourself this simple question:
What are you willing to do about it?
Will you settle for an easier life and try to outlive these problems?
Or will you work to make the world a better place?
We propose a solution.
We believe that the vast majority of problems that plague humanity are united by a single common issue: poor health—poor physical, mental, and/or moral health.
Ask yourself another question. What does the society you live in prioritize? Is it money? Maybe prestige, or ambition? Achievement? Fame? It's probably not health. Because of this, we constantly sacrifice our health for our higher priorities, and the long-term consequences of this are evident.
But what if we changed?
What if we built something different?
This website serves to present all the data and ideas accumulated so far towards producing a step-by-step plan to build a mass-capacity, self-sustaining submarine habitat and city-state called Augury. You will find content including a general overview of the organizational structure of Augury, the step-by-step construction plan for creating a sustainable underwater facility, and a description of the aspects of developing a culture of health, and how the community of Augury will function, give insight into what life in Augury might look like, and an address to frequently asked questions.
Augury is based upon the simple idea that human beings will successfully pursue self-optimization in a community that effectively fulfills their needs for physical, mental, and spiritual health. The purpose of Augury is to be that community, and function as an environment that prioritizes and facilitates good physical, mental, and spiritual health.
To maintain this environment with the necessary resources and conditions, Augury must be a mass capacity, self-sustaining, sub-marine habitat. The main benefits of an underwater colony are defensibility and sovereignty. Due to the hostility of the underwater environment, primary utility and life support systems must be publicly operated as part of the local government. Most citizens of Augury will be employed in these departments associated with utility and life support in maintaining a suitable living environment for humans.
Augury's government will be divided into the same three major branches as the American government: Judicial, Executive, and Legislative. The functions of these three branches, however, are significantly different. The separation of power and system of checks and balances is a crucial similarity, however—power in Augury must be diluted and distributed to the point that no individual can consolidate an abusive degree of power. Whether an individual is trusted or not is immaterial; history has taught us over and over again that power corrupts. Augury’s governing system should be organized so that officials are truly servants to the public and held accountable to the public, their responsibilities high and their compensation low, such that any office of authority would be appealing to individuals with a selfless attitude and sense of work ethic and unappealing to anyone intending to take advantage of their power.
The Executive branch, comprised mainly of the ten vital utility and life support departments, is responsible for performing the work necessary to keep the city running properly and keeping it habitable, which includes anything from cleaning the air and water, expanding the city, to power generation. Note that the things people need to stay alive should never be operated for profit in Augury. The importance of these departments shouldn’t be ranked as they are all crucial parts of maintaining a habitable environment (but this does not mean all government employees should receive the same compensation, as some jobs are more difficult and require more education than others). The unique individual needs of each person for survival is largely based on chance; the variations between these needs will be absorbed and equalized by the collective labor of the community as a whole. Teamwork and cooperation are the hallmarks of an effective society, not competition.
Furthermore, Augury should be a city which celebrates the workers, built by and for the benefit of the “blue collar” workers. That being said, governing officials should not receive preferential treatment immunity to any laws; their position must be one of public service. No abuse of their authority should ever be tolerated and they must be held to a higher moral standard than the average citizen, not less. Though the work of the executive departments covers the vast majority of the labor needed to make a society work, we must be careful to ensure that government oversight does not extend any farther over individuals personal freedom than what is necessary for the city to run smoothly.
