 
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 92 00:37:12 EDT
From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Subject: neophilic reactions
To: +dist+~js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu
Message-Id: 
Organization: The Heart of Gold BBS, Lemont PA
Comments: Validated

NE>Could you tell me(us) where to get more info on these projects...
NE>Particually New Alchemy, as I am closest to there...

Send a letter, naturally including a buck or two for postage, and ask to
be sent the catalog and put on the mailing list, to:

New Alchemy Institute
237 Hatchville Road
East Falmouth, Ma, 02536
508-564-6301

The catalog contains visitors information.
---
>From: grigsby@occs.cs.oberlin.edu (Spiral Death Trap)

>I would be willing to do whatever is necessary to start such a tribe,
>provided I am not helping to create another of the structures I have
>been trying to get away from these past years.  We must heed Nietszche's

That depends on us, our integrity, our emotional, and possibly
'spiritual' maturity, our psychological health, and the system of checks
and balances that we build into these tribes.

To put it brusquely, assholes tend to seek power, and relish exerting
power over others. Therefore, we must be sure that we are not assholes,
so that we will be respected and be able to be efffective members and
leaders of such tribes, and we must set up systems, filters, to
locate assholes and potential assholes, and steer them into some type of
healing environment, and/or steer them out of the villages.

>I don't mind tossing darts at the System/Abyss,
>but the noisier we are about being revolutionary the more likely we are to
>get squashed like bugs.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease -- or, more
>likely, gets discarded, replaced, and melted down into slag.

If we toss darts, we had best be sure to toss them from hidden and
camoflauged sites, because the corps and the governmental masters are
only going to get more vicious as the planet gets more crowded.

Despite what many might see as a centralized and planned approach in the
ideas I've been tossing, I see it as vital to start small and
diversified; so small, and apparently harmless, that the governmental
masters will ignore us in it's ceaseless automatic scan for enemies and
dissidents to be crushed.

>More concisely:  BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.  We may have to start small -- I
>know that the target size is fairly large ( > 100) so that all the major
>specialties needed for autonomy are covered, but building for that many is
>insane when the seed group is likely to be rather small.  Once we get our
>basic greenhouses, hydroponics, wind/solar power, and living space beyond
>absolute basics going, we will have more than a promise to offer and should
>be able to recruit from the ranks of people we know or encounter.  We may
>want to have an urban branch/sister communal business (type depending on
>skills of the seed group) to provide some cash inflow -- I recall that Twin
>Oaks had rotating "urban shitwork" spots, but with our skills we should be
>able to do better than work for temp agencies.

Very good thinking, and you'll get 100% agreement from me. I think I've
already mentioned the rural community/urban co-operative partnership
idea-- most of my earlier conceptions of this revolved around starting
with an rural organic farm in partnership with a urban restaurant/
/quality foods/nouvaeu-general-store and two or three co-operative
houses. Community members could live at the rural community site or in
the houses in town, moving back and forth as circumstances dictate.

Now, It's important to me that we have an electronic office environment,
and perhaps something like a DTP and printing service, a computer
consulting service, and related businesses as soon as possible.

>Assuming a US location, I recommend the Midwest, where many small towns are
>becoming deserted due to family farms selling out and having no buyers.
>There are some surprisingly cool cities to base near -- don't joke about
>Omaha, NE until you've been there -- and we could probably end up with
>actually beautiful surroundings if we look in the right places.  I personally
>need some woods and a body of water to feel truly connected.

I, unfortuneately in some ways, need to stay in the central pennsylvania
area until my daughter is off to college-- five years from now.

Something I think is fairly important, especially in choosing the first
locations, is a site that is within commuting distance to some
moderately large university. So, universities located in smallish cities
or college towns give us a search tool that focuses our energies quite a
bit.

Why universities?-- well, the university is a trype of microcosm of
western society, it has 'smart' people living and working there, it has
big libraries, and it has computers and network connections....

>BTW:  Did my last (and first) message ring any bells or push any buttons?
>I was trying to be controversial and deliberately take the extreme social
>position, which I happen to espouse, and if no one bothers to disagree I'll
>just have to assume everyone here is a bunch of sexually perverted drug-
>suckin' black magician nudist techie freak eco-anarchists and go from there.

That pretty much describes me, but I'm not at all into pulling others
into my trip. Or, more accurately, that describes me on the inside--
externally I'm a pretty damn straight fellow..... I'm a big believer in
camoflauge.

If you start a tribe that is too obviously a bunch of etc, etc, etc,;
the authorities will do just about everything in their power to shut you
down.

>Like I said before, it's the social prospects that worry me:  I have no
>doubt that we are technically capable, and the money game takes time to
>play, but I am worried that people will hit a Weirdness Threshold sometime
>after we get going and shut off: "I can't deal with you  or
>your ."

This is part of the reason why I think starting several differing types
of communities, with comunications between them, is very important. This
is also part of the rationale behind the rural/urban partnership. With
partnership communities, and differing approaches, if a person gets out
of hand, or feels unhappy, in one community situation, they can try
moving to another site. This way we may be able to salvage good people
who just can't stand, or be stood by, other members and habits in one or
another specific situation.

I also expect we'll need psychological experts, somthing on the order of
emotional healers, to work out such problems and help everyone
understand and adjust to each other.

I tend to think the way we've been brought up in this nuclear
family/regimented education society has made us all more socially
screwed-up than we need to be. In effect, we've been set at each other's
throats since we were young, and almost none of us have learned the
skills of co-operation, negotiation, and community living. Instead,
we've been taught to live pretty much alone in one big box, and stare
into picture boxes for entertainment, and work in other boxes staring
into other types of picture boxes. We have to start out by accepting
that we're 'retarded' in certain emotional/co-operative ways, and
practice some type of healing and interpersonal-communications
psychology within the community.

>I am willing to do the work, and I speak as
>a veteran of several cooperatives: are we as willing to redefine our social
>interaction with each other as we are with society in general?  Small
>example:  I live in a co-op with gang showers (i.e. big room w/a bunch of
>nozzles and no dividers.)  They are co-ed, and a subject of much discussion
>among the rest of campus.  To accomodate the squeamish, signs outside
>basically state Men only/Women only/Everybody/Nobody else.  There are a
>couple of people who, even after seven months here, still can't shower with
>anyone else.  This was their Weirdness Threshold.  Where is yours?

Maybe you should take on the role of our mailist co-operative housing
expert...;-). One of the things I've worked on over the years are models
for a co-operative household constitution-- many of the problems I've
seen arose because the basic household rules and expectations just
wern't spelled out specifically enough. That, and money-- people not
being able to pay their share, poverty among students being what it is.

Having seen years of problems with co-operative and communal housing-- I
live in a college town, and have lived in co-operative households, and
been a standard presence in many others; I now prefer to live alone
(with my girlfriend, actually) out in the country--- I think we have to
be real careful about _expecting_ others to adapt to and accept a
communal lifestyle. Some just can't handle it.

What I always expected was that there would be a combination of
communal housing, more private housing for some people, and even more
private housing for couples and families. Youngish newcomers without
much seniority would be expected to live in the cheapest communal
housing, ordinarily, and as members got more seniority and had made more
investment in the community, they would get access to more private
housing if they wanted it.

>To deal with this, I suggest this algorithm:  Everyone has some space that
>is theirs and theirs only.  In the long term (barring expansion and other
>temporary setups) this should be at least one room or other enclosed space.
>In common space and outside, anything goes -- but we all need, if only
>occasionally, a place to retreat into that no one else fucks with.  Good
>building design can make this tons o' fun, especially when you can design
>and help build your own.

I think I already discussed my particular version of this, much earlier
in this whole conversation. To re-iterate, one of my basic concepts
about these communities, something to be written in as a basic "right"
in their constitutions, is the right to have at least one room's worth
of totally private, lockable space for each member in the community.
Of course this will create natural limits to the number of members.

>I guess it boils down to the fact that I'm a hardcore neophile, and it is
>my firm (yet tender and juicy) belief that any such experiment must
>consist entirely of such hardcore neophiles.  Put this way: there are any

I pretty much assume this for the starting communities, but after a
while we'll have to be including a fair number of less adventurous
people into these communities.

All neophiles can be a very intensely reactive and unstable mix, prone
to odd emotional explosions and sexual games.

Later, Bill

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