 
To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@ANDREW.CMU.EDU
Subject: Re: Hard Head 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 11 Sep 92 10:17:14 EDT."
             <8892.716221034@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU> 
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 11:45:56 -0400
Message-Id: <8967.716226356@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Thomas_Price@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU

Hey, hey.

Here's a question: what is everybody working on right now, and what
sort of timetables do we have for action?

I've seen a few on this maillist which, in the absence of any description
of the preparations which have been made for them, were a little bit
jarring.

A message or two ago, I described a situation with some focused vegans
living on a farm which they didn't work too hard and spending their free
time. That's one possibility for the future. I also described a family
renting agricultural land and living in a yurt with their own solar power
system. That's another, less likely possibility.

I have a dream of someday living in an intentional community /artist's colony
/permaculture-eco-village /family monastery all rolled into one. (Just as
Bill, whose last message I am still responding to, likes to use the somewhat
shocking phrase "corporate tribe", I like to use the phrase "family 
monastery"). But it's a long way from there to here and I don't want to make
a vision and force it into being; I want to work with my friends to create
something that benefits us all. My friends are computer hackers and 
international policy researchers and overcreative geniuses with attention-
span deficits still living at home, and it's more important to me that we
have a community and that that community give birth to several structures
and social arrangements during its lifetime than it is for any concrete
vision of mine to be realized. No matter what happens, I can always live by
myself and read and eat beans and rice and visit people, and be content.

Here's the outlook, sketched briefly: right now I'm involved with an 
intentional social community in Pittsburgh called the "Huckleberry
Ashram"; I no longer have the active leadership role I used to and
it seems that we've reached stasis insofar as experimentation goes; I
just live in the focal house and am enjoying it greatly. However, the 
community is growing, and right now it looks like a second house will 
form next year, organized mainly by me. It's not clear whether we'll 
want to just have more of the same, or if we'll try to branch out in 
new experimental directions. At any rate, I seem to be committed to 
that for the next 2.5 years.

After that might be the time for the "Chautaqua in Belize" -- some small
number of us whow have need of an uninterrupted block of leisure time
in order to accomplish some things which we haven't yet been able to
will go to some corner of the world where we can live for $150 per month,
as was until recently the case in Prague (and still may be), certain places
in the Caribbean, Greece, or Latin America. Eight months of time at once
intensive and laid-back. I intend to use such time to complete the reading
and draft of a philosophy thesis. The Chautaqua time will at worst be
an extraordinary life-experience, and at best will be an opportunity to
gather strength before leaping forward to conquer new worlds. (I'm not
sure what new worlds they might be, but I can identify the strength that I'll
need eight uninterrupted months to gather, and am confident that it will
be sufficient to leap somewhere and conquer something. :-)

Perhaps after that, the Sufficiency House experiment will take place: a
handful of people obtaining a house and land and attempting to be as
self-sufficient as possible and live on as little money as possible.
Note well that this seems to me like such an important thing that I
wouldn't want to try to do too much: rather than try to graft an 
intellectual community onto this arrangement, I'd want to identify a
limited time, like two years, during which we'd experiment with 
self-sufficiency. (Of course, intellectual commonality would produce a
community without any effort; we just wouldn't be pushing it.) Then, later,
we'd combine our knowledge with the other knowledge we'd gained to obtain
a more complex situation.

And, some time later, the dream commune.

I really expect child-raising to force me to crystallize a lot of things.
Again, a lot will depend on the people who join with me -- how hard they're
willing to fare, and how differently they are funded. But I can't imagine
raising children without land, and freedom, and a cooperative situation;
all of those things won't make the dream commune, but they're necessary
to it, and child-raising will force me to work with others in assembling
them, and will also force me to take a good look at knowledge and society
and so forth ... basically, if the dream commune doesn't exist by then,
child-raising will force me to build all its constituent parts in one
place! Then all that would be required would be to assemble them and 
vivify them.

Finally, a disclaimer: this is a description of what looks like it will be
worth doing in the future all things being equal. But, of course, all things
are never equal, and since these hypothetical situations are designed
to create possibilities and inspire new ideas, the future plans will be 
continually revised and improved.

Tom

PS I got kind email asking me what I was doing and where I was coming from.
I just answered the first part of the question; here's the rest: I'm 
mostly self-taught, I'm in my early twenties, I dropped out of college in
my sophomore year. While I've read very widely I have made a particular 
study of the works and thought of Aldous Huxley, John Cage, and Henry David 
Thoreau. Other men, less relevant to this mailing list, whose life work I 
have made a particular study of, are: Kierkegaard, Cummings, Twain. I was 
raised in a small Christian sect with no paid ministers and no central
hierarchy: each local group was autonomous. I have left them and am now
a taoist, although I didn't really understand Benjamin Hoff's "The Tao of
Pooh", so maybe that'll tell you something. All my friends like me. There 
you have it.

My syntax goes to blazes when I write email. Sorry. Face to face I can
wave my arms around, and in hard-copy prose I write more precisely, so
ordinarily I am less confusing.

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