 
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 92 01:46:48 EDT
From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Subject: the flow of response
To: +dist+~js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu
Message-Id: 
Organization: The Heart of Gold BBS, Lemont PA
Comments: Validated

>Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 15:16 EST
>From: BLUECANARYINNAOUTLET 
>BE>
>>The ideal starting combination, as I see it, is an urban compound type
>>of place in a type of sister-relationship with a more rural community.
>>In effect this creates a micro-model of a traditional city-- a
>
>   Uh... this sounds like a bad idea to me.  We need material
>self-sufficiency in these communities, not chains of dependency-- and why
>on earth would we want to create an anythingcosm of a traditional city??
>Access to a marketplace? Get thee behind me, Satan! :-)

Well, I've said this before-- we can't expect to acheive material
self-sufficiency. I've read hundreds of books describing experiments in
back-to-the-land type communities, and talked with many people involved
in such experiments. Based on these reports, and over ten years
personally of work gardening, running small businesses, keeping animals,
and a broad variety of self-sufficiency crafts and skills, I am as
certain as I can be that we can't hope to have material self sufficiency
and a lifestyle that wouldn't leave us worse off then the crudest
peasant-- even the poorest of third world peoples, including such native
peoples as the yanamamo and the !kung depend far more than we might
expect on trade.

But, despite the fact that I'm convinced we can't acheive it, it's
certainly OK with me if you _try_ to do so, or discuss the possibilities
of the same.

Remember, a central issue for me is women and children-- we're all males
here, and many people interested in these ideas are males. If we can't
create a community where women are happy living and raising children,
all we've done is created a little monastic retreat for ourselves, or
perhaps a type of retirement home.

As far as the "microcity" ideas are concerned-- I admit to being
influenced by Paolo Soleri's arguments about the city. Originally, in
fact, I was intensly opposed to cities, and still am opposed to our
types of cities, which are strongholds of oppression and inhumane
living, in my opinion. However, after condsidering Soleri's arguments,
in which he claims that the city is the machine-for-living which created
the leisure time and resources that led to science, technology, the
arts, almost all of the advances that we take for granted, I was forced
to reform my thinking.

Now, as I see it, the problem lies not with the "function" of the
cities, which I think we still need, but the application of the
principle of city-building, which I see as being based on a master-slave
model arising from thousands of years of religious and cultural
oppresion and a dependence on violence that started when agriculture
became successful enough to support warfare.

So, what I'm suggesting is that we "miniaturize" the functions of the
city, as Fuller and Soleri suggest, and incorporate them within the
structure of a dectralized village-style economy and lifestyle.

>   Specialization, centralization, concentration-- you're practically listing
>the principles that Alvin Toffler identified with the grand, dying Second
>Wave (i.e. industrial) civilization.  Phooey!

I tend to think that real progress works by incorporating the great
ideas of the past, integrating them, and transcending them. This is the
argument I'm making here-- that we integrate the functions of the city
in a community that is manageable by consensus and representative
democracy.

>   Again-- let us try to think *more universally* about what is applicable
>and practiceable.  Who by and who for.  Who benefits and why.  Think Cat
>not Corp. :-)

Well, perhaps you could write a bit of descripton of a cat-style effort,
how it got started, how the folks live, what the women would think of
it, and so on?

>   And it's true: a concrete benefit of the hightech/planned approach (can
>I shorten it as "ht/p"?) is added security.  You take much less of a risk

I just can't believe that the majority, or even anything but a
microscopic minority, will accept these ideas unless we can offer them
at least the security that they expect as a minimum from a more ordinary
lifestyle.

For myself, I can accept, and expect to be involved with, a low-security
somewwhat primitive and risky approach. But remarkably few other people
can handle that. So I've spent a lot of time thinking about ways to
offer that security, so as to give these ideas a larger appeal to the
millions of young people trying to decide on a career.

>jon>I agree with the idea that we should try to get the tools out as quickly
>>as possible. My brother has a book that discusses building houses
>>title of the book is, or who the authors are. It does serve to indicate
>>what kind of tools are available, though - even if we can't get hardware
>>into people's hands, we could start with information.

As far as getting tools and information into peoples hands, I'll refer
you to the 'university' idea I mention below. I see the New Alchemy and
Farrallones Institute as having much to offer here.

>   Hmm.  This does sound interesting, and thank you for making the
>connection.  I think that the kind of approach I think I'm advocating,
>emphasizing less planning and more speed/ubiquity of action, would
>naturally follow such a pattern.  Settlements built in this style would be
>done without officially approved safety features, insurance, etc.  This
>obviously could lead to a lot of irresponsibility, and I'd expect to see a
>good number of people die from fires and so on in poorly designed and
>built shelters of this kind.  I imagine that eventually, various

Well, they won't let you do this in america-- you'll with certainty
find yourself severly harassed by the local governments. Zoning and Code
restrictions have been used again and again as weapons against these
kind of community efforts.

You might get away with it by choosing a county that is so totally rural
that zoning and code regulations don't apply, or are enforced laxly
(with the help of a little bribery). You might also be able to do it
with a mobile or nomadic style community. Also, you should be able to do
it in other, poorer countries.

My hope is that we can go to the government of a county and bargain
somehow for a special exemption from zoning and codes. But this is a
planned approach that requires money and lawyers (hopefully in-house
lawyers), so it might be tough.

Many of my alternative building books are filled with Code horror
stories, and I have quite a bit of experience building. I have great
respect for the vindictive nastiness of code inspectors, who are usually
puffed up underpaid little bullies with a chip on their shoulder and an
instinctive hatred of "alternative types".

So, whatever you're planning, take the hostility of local governments
into account.

>>>    And what is this about being part of a "globally competitive economy"? I
>>> thought that was something worth *avoiding*! [etc.]
>>
>>I understand your desire to avoid the rat race, however, I think it is
>>important not to totally remove ourselves from the world. We must be
>>sure to keep up to date with "outside" developments, so we can take
>
>   I suppose, although I can see some value in village-scale isolationism
>*sometimes*...

If I am unable to get these communities really started in the next
fifteen years, I have vowed to myself that I will move to the US Virgin
Islands, to enter into something like a mystical retreat of
contemplation and study of the oceans. Isolationism may be sanity in a
world going through such rapid changes as our own....

Still, I expect to be able to connect to the net through the university
outposts studying the coral reef and tropical forest national park
there, and perhaps communications technology will have advanced enough
by then for me to have a small private satelite uplink. I expect to
write there, if I can.

Isolationism vs Connectivity. A tough problem, one that depends a lot on
how grim the rest of the world get's to be...


>   Ah, but that's a problem I have here.  It may begin with us, but it
>should *not* end with us, or we are a selfish elite, worthless to the rest
>of humanity-- in which case, no one *should* support our efforts.  Do you
>see what I mean? We have an obligation to the world.

I've gone back and forth, from commitment to service and obligation
to the world, to a sense that all the great new things were started by
those who left the world behind seeking new edges, and, as a side
effect, ended up transmitting great new discoveries back to the rest of
the race.

In a sense, I see these community ideas as being most effectively and
significantly implemented in the third world-- perhaps we should help
them skip the ravages of industrialism, and help them jump to a
energy-efficient, decentralized energy solar/wind/and biomass
information economy. Help them to skip the consumer goods phase, and
move into the ultimate consumer wealth-- access to education, artwork,
and travel.

Then again, maybe we would fuck them up as did any other missionary.
Maybe they would eventually shoot us, or hang us, or in other ways drive
us out. It's a tough call. But, it still seems like an avenue that must
be tried.

In a sense, by trying these experiments, and transmitting what we learn
back to the race, are we not more than fulfilling our planetary
obligations, even if we appear to be acting selfishly?

But, in answer to the original question-- one of the most important
things to do first is gather together teams of as many (ideally at least
hundreds, in several different groups) interested, serious, and talented
people as we can find. If we can't find enough people, we won't be able
to accomplish much.

(Then we start about a half dozen different community efforts, some very
cheaply, simply, with the unplanned approach, and some more slowly,
expensively, and planned out. And see what happens, communicate, in
effect start our own little university studying specifically these
subjects, practically and theoretically.) (Hmmmmm--- Formalizing this
University, incorporating it, giving it the power to give out degrees
might be something important pretty soon. Hey, the Biosphereians did
it-- we should be at least as clever, though ideally much more
forthright and scientificically sound.)

>   Yes.  I thoroughly agree.  I hope there's a technological compromise
>that can be made between high-tech luxury and low-tech drudgery.  We don't
>want a repeat of the Brook Farm experience, for instance.  Nathaniel
>Hawthorne's letters sketch out the end of *that* experiment: he couldn't
>write or read or think anymore, because he was too busy shoveling shit.

I think I would describe my goal as a high-tech simplicity-- I want the
greatest luxury of all, life close to nature and wildness. (But many
people can't handle the bugs and the isolation....) I'd also like access
to good medicine, and access to the information stream, for I am an
artist, scientist, writer and researcher as well as a mystic and a man
who loves women in his life and community in his heart. I want to have
the ability to extract from, and add to, the flowing stream of words and
ideas that may be humankinds greatest acheivement.

Avoiding a fuedal peasants lifestyle of 16 hour work days is an
absolutely essential business for me-- I won't let myself become
involved with a community effort that Is headed in that direction.

(I'll take this oppurtunity to suggest that the communities that are
most eager for self-sufficiency are going to be the communities where
the physical work is the gardest and most primitive.)

>>Basically, I envision a quiet revolution - we can go off and try to
>>start our own communities, or perhaps we just adjust our way of living
>>within the world (ie: we alter our diets, we consider what we buy and
>>where we do buisness and who we vote for). Any attempt to stand up and
>>shout, "Hey! Everyone wake up!!" is going to be met with a wall of
>>indifference, at best. Then again, maybe I am pessimistic here.

In other words, we can try to work inside the system or outside the
system. Both efforts will be needed, on a planetary scale. Some people,
such as myself, are just more emotionally suited to working outside the
system, and some will be just as emotionally suited to working within
the system. It would be good to come up with ways of uniting these two
factions, so that, for instance, those within the system can help out by
buying the products of those outside the system, and those outside the
system can help out by providing "vacations" and
healing/self-actualization support for those within the system.

I am 100 % certain, for myself, that trying to wake people up is not
only going to provoke indifference, but active hostility. Let history
wake them, as we are being wakened. Maybe we are a type of vanguard,
explorer scouts for the species....?

>approach is radical, the second liberal.  I think we may need both,
>working in parallel: the first for the future, the second for the Now.  An
>interplay more complex than any of us have been able to outline might be
>in order...

Both, in parallel, and thousands of other strategies also, all working
together synergistically, even though they appear in conflict, to effect
the transition to a new level of complexity and sophistication in human
civilization-- at least, that's how I see it.

Later, Bill


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