 
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 92 04:35:09 EDT
From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Subject: possibilities of university
To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu
Message-Id: 
Organization: The Heart of Gold BBS, Lemont PA
Comments: Validated

From: Thomas_Price@kanga.fac.cs.cmu.edu
Subject: Re: just do it

>What is everybody
>else doing? Right now I'm seemingly the second-most active person reading this
>list; I'm surely not actually the second-most active person. Please help me
>out and put the dangerous implications to an end.

Well, it wouldn't surprise me if not too many others were concerned
about this conversation. I was surprised enough that JS reactivated
the list when he got back into the university environment, surprised, but
glad, as it somewhat refocused my thinking from my summer studies and
income, towards networking and writing about this whole community
business.

I'll be real interested to see if others speak up. Though it seems to me
that we might want to consider 'advertising' this list in a few places,
to see wether or not it appeals to anyone else....

I do want to consult with some folks who are more computer-literate than
myself, and decide wether an electronic magazine devoted to these topics
is practical considering our resources here.

I might have to start a new bbs, or accomplish the equivalent, before I
could host-site such a beast, though.

Once again, thanks to Jon Slenk for hosting this virtual salon.

>>Well, as I've said before, when I was younger, I had a vision of
>>communities which was very close to the type of thing you're describing.
>>I tried to motivate my friends to help me do it-- many were very
>>enthusiastic about it, but very ordinary money problems and the
>>pressures of ordinary life seemed to foil every attempt, and I couldn't
>
>What's ordinary life? :-) Sounds like "extraneous activities which dissipate
>resources" to me.

Well, you claim to one of the few who escaped the pressures of
ordinary life, so this shouldn't apply to you, but things like school
loans, credit card debt, rent, a vehicle, clothes for the workplace, and
the 9 to 5 grind and the 24 hour a day demands placed on the salaryman
make up the bulk of ordinary life pressures. The added pressures of a
wife and child(ren), who are in effect held hostage to the financial
success of the family, multiplies these pressures many times.

So, are you saying that those millions of young people who are
filled with vision and activism while in college, but who 'give up' and
become working drones a few years after graduation, that is, those who
don't want the monastic life--- are essentially non-entities, and are
entitled to no place in community life?

Consider the implications.

Yes, it is "extraneous activities which dissipate resources", of
course-- but 99+% of your and my peers don't see it that way. They see
us as being utopian dreamers out of touch with the real world.

Do you really want to criticize me for wanting to build communities
that contain enough of both worlds, the modern and the thoreauvian, to
provide a home for a couple of hundred thousand more of the 99+%?

>have recently outlined comes to be in a recognizable form. But we both agree
>that they are darn good starting aims, yes? The effort of pursuing them will
>create marvelous by-products.

Yes, very, very good goals to aim at, and absolutely, pursuing them will
lead to some of the best of all possible by-products.

One of the things I've talked about is the possibility of networking
together many dozens of different types of communities, which are
seperate entities, but which have agreements and links which allow them
to trade products, exchange members, and provide support for each other.

I'd be interesting in figuring out wether we can build any types of
links between the types of communities you want to build, and the types
of communities I want to build.

>Again and again I'm reminded of the Kilgore Trout short story which is a
>dialogue between two pieces of yeast, aware only that they are suffocating in
>their own shit, and unaware that it is carbon dioxide and that they are
>making champagne.

So, what you're telling me is that here on earth we're all like yeast
organisms, dying in our own excrement, and possibly making champagne.
Who is the godlike being that gets to drink this champagne? (as we might
be thought of as godlike beings to the champagne yeast, who die for our
palates in the specially created environment of the fermenting cask)

If no-one drinks our champagne, does that mean our death in choking shit
was in vain?

(I'm reminded of Gurdjieff, who claimed that the lives and death's of
the 'sleeping' masses had only one purpose, and one meaning-- it
provided "food" for the 'spiritual forces' which relied on us for
sustenance as sheep rely on the grass. Only the few people who "woke
up", gurdjieff claimed, escaped the dull fate of being food.)

>>Unfortunately, there are less young thoreaus around than you might
>>think,
>
>Uh ... none? How can there be any less than none?

Well, there's me. That's at least one. I bet we can find a few more.

Are you surprised at my claim of thoreauvian merit?

I'm reminded of a scene attributed to Maslow. Teaching a class of grad
students, he asked them (paraphrased), "Who here are going to write
the great books, and create the great ideas, of the future??" No-one
replied; they all sat mute. "If not you, then who?", Maslow asked...

If we are not the thoreaus, then who?

>>It's hard to believe what the pressures will be like when you're in your early
>twenties.
>
>Oh, this must be more of this "ordinary life" business I didn't understand
>earlier ... :-) I keep my life is so free of pressure that some people find it
>tiring -- usually when I'm shedding their friends' responsibilities and
>entanglements that they want to lay on me just like they do everybody else
>in normal social situations.

Yes, it is....

Maybe you could give some more details about your lifestyle, and how
things are handled in your ashram?

>>But scenarios are scenarios, and they don't raise babies. This talk will
>>only start to matter to most people when real property, a real roof,
>>real food, beds, and income are involved. Assume that I fully and
>>absolutely want you to succeed in your scenario-- now what I need to
>>talk about is _How_?
>
>Give me twenty-four years. I sometimes think of encouraging everybody to
>retire early, say at fifty, and then we pool our resources, freedom, and
>experience to do some things. It might not be possible beforehand. I won't
>be surprised if it's not. But it'll be worth trying to see if it is.

I happily give you 24 years. But I'd still like to hear your plans for
_How_ to get there....

The early retirement thing could be good for a lot of people. I think
I've spoken before about using at least some of the communities as
something like rural 'retirement' homes, and quite a few of my friends
have told me that they plan to do something a lot like the 'retire at
fifty' idea you mention.

I can't wait for that, myself, which is why I'm focusing my effort these
days on buying a smallish piece of land for myself and my closest tribe.

>crystallize. My chief studies, now, are not funding or material,
>but are devoted to figuring out what sort of conceptual structures about
>the world my visions imply (and what visions my conceptual structures about
>the world imply), boiling them down as simply as possible, and infecting
>people with them. Eventually the visions will begin to coalesce all by

Yeah, I understand that. What types of success have you had?

>of daily life, of course, but that's taken for granted!) "There are a thousand
>hacking at the branches of evil for one who is hacking at the root."

If you're going to hack at the root, you need a bigger axe, and greater
skill, than those who only chop at branches. What methods have you found
to be effective?

>My reading so far on the hippie movement and the hippie communitarian
>movement has made me think that they were done in by biting off more than
>they could chew: trying to synthesize too many divergent spiritual elements
>into a coherent whole, trying to incorporate everybody and his brother
>in a very egalitarian way without regard for their maturity or discipline,
>and trying out unprecedented social arrangements. All at once! Eeeeeeeeyow,
>what bravery. (I am sure that this is an idiosyncratic reading, reflecting
>my particular concerns to a large degree.)

I'd say that's a very accurate analysis.

Sometime this winter I'm hoping to make photocopies, and scan some
files, of the books I've found in PSU's Pattee library-- they put
together a surprisingly good collection. I'd like to have them in my
library, and be able to email around relavent files. If anyone else
wants to chip in and do the same types of literature searches in their
own libraries, well, that would be great.

The "community-building university" idea that we were tossing around in
the last incarnation of this list is still a damned good idea. This is a
way that folks who aren't in any position to actually pitch in and
create households or communities can involve themselves and provide a
very valuable effort. The 'university' will need to start by building a
core library of texts, papers, clippings, photos, tapes, & e-files.

>As I've indicated before, all of my practical plans are built around the
>idea of isolating the elements of the final vision and learning how to
>make them work one at a time, always as the side emphasis of a (fairly)
>normal group community such as we know can work. At some future date
>when the participants are ready, we take our knowledge from the
>string of group house-experiences and throw it all together at once.

Maybe you could paint out a scenario for me, of what this means and how
it works??

>And, of course, that's just the plan. Maybe once in a million lifetimes it
>would actually work out like that.

True enough, once in a million. And I'm a hardhead, who wills this
lifetime to be the million. Everybody's got their idiosyncrasies.

You know, I like that 'chatauqua in belize' idea very much. If you, or
anyone else ever goes down there to look around, get in touch with me
beforehand and I'll see if I can't help out with camera/videocam
expenses and the like. I very much want to gather as much info as
possible about that whole carribean region, and helping someone else do
a little research and exploration during their vacation could give me
phone numbers, addresses, and contacts down there is a high priority
for me.

The same for other explorations, too. If anyone is able to go to New
Alchemy or Arcosanti or Farrallones or any of the other sites where
community is being studied, and wants to take pictures, video, etc, then
I'll be glad to buy/trade usable photos and tapes for the 'university'.

Later, Bill


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