If at first the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it.
-- Albert Einstein
These
days I have the sense that some kind of epiphany is near, some sudden
understanding that has eluded me up until now. I have been learning and
letting myself change at an unprecedented rate over the past two years,
and I know more change is in the cards. Somehow I know that this next
great change in my ideas, my philosophy, my intentions, will be about simplicity,
about making things easier. Our lives are too hard, too complicated,
too busy. And most of the people I know are not very happy.
I
am happier than I have ever been, but I am disturbed that I have lost
some good friends in the process, mostly because I just don't have
enough time to be everything that everyone I love wants me to be for
them. I am disturbed that my life is too busy, that I don't have enough
time to just think and pay attention. I am disturbed that I cannot
articulate what has happened to me and what I now believe, to those
who, until recently, were sailing alongside me in my amazing journey of
discovery and self-realization.
The first great epiphany* in my
life came in my last year of high school, when I suddenly discovered
how to write, and that I loved to write and to read and to learn and to
discover. My second great epiphany came just six years ago, when I
began seriously studying anthropology, the history of culture and the
philosophy of science. That epiphany was the realization that the way
we live now is not the only way to live, that the presence of humans on
this planet was an improbable accident, a serendipitous occurrence, and
that our modern, 30,000-year-old civilization was not a natural
evolution but rather a gut-wrenching and massively 'unpopular'
adaptation to a series of crises that threatened our species
extinction, a cultural lobotomy. My Save the World Reading List
documents this learning voyage for me. I have always been a naturalist,
an environmentalist, and it seemed obvious to me that by studying
nature we could find better, more natural, more joyful ways to live
today, in communion with all-life-on-Earth.
The third epiphany, and the one that this blog has largely documented, occurred almost three years ago when I read John Gray's Straw Dogs,
and suddenly realized that trying to 'save the world' from
civilization's excesses was futile. He provides a compelling argument
that our civilization is in its last century and then concludes:
Political
action has come to be a surrogate for salvation; but no political
project can deliver humanity from its natural condition. However
radical, political programmes are expedients -- modest devices for
coping with recurring evils. Hegel writes that humanity will be content
only when it lives in a world of its own making. In contrast, Straw Dogs
argues for a shift from human solipsism [belief in our aloneness and
our disconnection from everything else]. Humans cannot save the world,
but this is no reason for despair. It does not need saving. Happily,
humans will never live in a world of their own making.
Since then I've been refocused, as my blog masthead now says, on
'finding a better way to live and make a living, and a better
understanding of how the world really works'. That 'better way' has
been and, I thought, would continue to be, through walking away from
civilization (as Daniel Quinn describes it and as Bucky Fuller
espoused) instead of confronting it, and Letting-Myself-Change to
become a model, and to develop models, based on Love, Conversation and Community, of a better way to live. Life's meaning emerges from conversation in community with people you love, I've concluded.
I
am at heart an uncomplicated guy. I'm perhaps even lazy -- I don't like
working hard. I want things to be simple, easy, natural. I'm an
incorrigible idealist -- I am in love with imagined possibilities,
especially when those possibilities are rooted in how humans apparently
lived before civilization, and how wild creatures have always lived. I
don't think life should be hard, or was meant to be hard. It makes far
more sense, from an evolutionary perspective, for life to be easy,
carefree, full of fun. I think this is what I observe when I study wild
creatures and I think this is how humans lived before they left their
natural rainforest habitat.
I think I was born a century too
early -- I believe that, once our terrible (though well-intentioned)
civilization has collapsed, the world of the future will again be
joyful, easy, natural, full of Love, Conversation and Community. In
this future world there will at last, again, be time and space to live
a natural life. In our overcrowded world there is neither, and we are
so effectively indoctrinated by modern propaganda that we can't imagine
another way to live than the only life we know.
I
have great respect for those who don't share my infatuation with
creating Model Intentional Communities (MICs): A few examples:
- Dave Smith quotes Wendell Berry
as saying ICs are "a rather escapist idea". I love Berry's work, but I
have always had reservations about his orthodox religious views. He
believes the world is the way it is because of God's will, so it is not
surprising he is offended by the idea that 'God's creation' is a total
fuck-up. Why, why, why, should we not
have the ability 'to pick our own neighbour'? It is only impossible
today because we have been brainwashed to believe we have the
(God-given) right to so overpopulate and pollute the planet that we
must live cheek-to-jowl at the expense of all other life on Earth.
- Stephen Downes worries that IC's "take
us into an environment where all our transactions are group
transactions". It fascinates me how well we have all become
indoctrinated by the culture of individualism. What will it take before
we realize that 'we' are not individuals, but merely containers for our
body's organs, which evolved 'our' brains and consciousness as their feature-detection
system? When will we get past this dangerous delusion that we do, or
ever can, 'possess' land, property, people or other creatures? That we
have 'rights'? A transaction is nothing more than an exchange. To the
extent it is an exchange of information, such an exchange is, ideally,
collective. To the extent it is an exchange of 'property', it is either
a gift, an equalization of Gaia's resources, or it is a transfer of the
proceeds of theft. Why are we so frightened of being collective, a part
of community, belonging to the land, and a part of all-life-on-Earth?
What do we have to hide?
- Dave Snowden
argues that (a) IC's are a retreat into isolationism and a breeding
ground for cult behaviour, (b) no 'natural' community has ever been
egalitarian, and (c) MIC's are over-prescribed and a distraction from
more important political and social actions that our world needs. Dave
is a brilliant thinker and an extraordinary debater, and he is of
course entitled to his opinion. But it is exactly that -- an opinion,
based on his worldview, which
does not jibe with mine. My 'prescription' for MICs is evolutionary,
diverse and well-connected with each other, the very antithesis of
isolationism and cultism. It is hard for me to imagine anything more
isolated than the modern 'nuclear' family, except perhaps orthodox
religious sects, Gulags and factory farms -- these areall modern social
constructs designed to enhance propaganda and conceal outrages from
public scrutiny. My reading of history and anthropology is that all natural
communities are egalitarian, but then I had to work past the
psychological dogma that equates self-organization and alpha behaviour
in animals with human hierarchy (which is nonsense), and the political
propaganda that portrays 'pre-historic' humans' lives as 'nasty, short
and brutish' (when the opposite was true). My 'prescription' for
qualities for an MIC was a starting-point only, a list of capacities
and principles that I think I would like to see in people I
lived in community with. A 'model' is exactly that -- an example,
hopefully one that works and can be adapted by others, not a
cookie-cutter template that permits of no variation or evolution. As
for MICs being a distraction from other important social, economic and
political innovation and work (Dave cites microlending as an example) I
can only say that I can't imagine a better location for incubating such
inventions than an MIC.
I really don't see much point in
getting into debates with people who think my intention to focus my
energies on Love, Conversation and Community is ill-conceived,
impractical, or a distraction from more important work (or worse). I
agree with Lakoff, and Daniel Quinn, that there is no changing the
minds of people who see the world through a completely different lens
or worldview. I hate arguing, and I don't like being baited (e.g. Dave
Snowden in his post gleefully linked to a blogger who was so offended
by my proposed MIC that he wanted to find it, "burn down the walls and
glory in its destruction" -- I would have thought Dave above that kind
of provocation).
While I am unfazed by the critiques of my
stance on MICs and on polyamorism, and intend to make both important
elements of my life, I confess that the criticisms bother me, mostly
because I think they represent a misunderstanding of what I'm saying,
and proposing to do. I take responsibility for that misunderstanding --
as a writer my meaning should be clear. If people understand but don't
like what I'm saying, that's another matter, one that doesn't concern
me. But the misunderstandings concern me. So just to be clear:
- The capacities and principles (including poly) I'd like to see in my MIC are negotiable, and they'll evolve as collectively agreed upon by the members of the MIC. They're not for every MIC.
- The
MIC I am a part of will have no leader. It will be responsive and
responsible and sustainable and connected to other ICs and open (as a working model)
for others to explore and learn about and discuss. It will be a place
of innovation and collaboration, and it will be generous with what it
creates.
- I'm not trying to build a Utopia. There is no such
thing and no such place. You can be an idealist without being an
ideologue. I just want to be part of a place built on love and
conversation, where life is easy, simple, meaningful, joyful. That's
not Utopian, it's natural. Even in today's terrible, overcrowded world.
I've
quoted Einstein above (another guy with a great admiration for
simplicity) because the vituperative nature of much of the response to
my ideas has convinced me, more than anything else, that I'm on to
something important.
I thought it was interesting that, in her new book, Diana Leafe Christian, recognized as the
authority on ICs (she's lived in several and spent a lot of time
visiting and studying others), identifies almost exactly the same
capacities that "work well" in ICs that I did in my post: high degree
of "self-confidence, self-acceptance and self-esteem, assertiveness,
humility, willingness to listen and learn, to serve, and to contribute
to something larger than yourself". Her arguments for joining or
forming an IC if you have these qualities include lessening ecological
footprint, being healthier, experiencing connection and having more
fun. She doesn't wax on them being 'models'. But these sound like good
models of how to live to me. And these are working models, not just some debatable theory.
Absurd, eh? Maybe there's hope for it.
*It
is perhaps ironic that I'm using the word 'epiphany' to refer to a
sudden realization or manifestation of meaning. The word has been
thoroughly co-opted by organized Western religion, but I'm using it in
its original sense of 'something that suddenly appears'.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
