scales of change for utopians

In "Picture Imperfect," Jacoby acknowledges that utopianism doesn't change the world on a large scale, but is still a practice in dreaming that is necessary for the betterment of the world. For me this prompts questions about what happens on different scales of utopian thought and for those involved. We may not see the ripple effect on the global scale from a particular "utopian" group, but what happens at the small scale, and how far can you trace those ripples? How quickly does the butterfly effect become too entangled to track anymore? Jacoby writes at some length about two Jewish men who are hard to categorize, who lived during the era of WWI - Martin Buber and Gustav Landauer. Among their character complexities involving mysticism, anarchism, pacifism and Zionism, Jacoby calls them iconoclastic utopians. He laments that they are among the thinkers who were pulled down with the collapse of communism and who are lost to most of history, though they were staunch critics of Marxism and offered alternatives still to those.

In one account of the activities of these men, Jacoby says they joined the Forte Circle, a group of writers, poets and visionaries who were motivated by utopian and political aspirations. They wanted to create a community "in the almost mystical hope that the truths they uncovered would radiate outward and transform society" (100). When WWI broke out, Buber and Landauer called on the group "to assemble with the goal of creating a community 'that would have significance for the development of the world.'" I am struck by the familiarity of their goal - the almost incredible belief that the efforts of a handful of dedicated, creative and sincere people might literally create such hope and motivation as to change the world. I see this in groups I've mentioned before - perhaps more VBC-esque than intentional communities. This gets into differences between models of practical applications vs what appear to be more faith-centered efforts to create large-scale transformation... which is still really sticky for me to sort out and I won't focus on it here. The point of this post, rather, concerns those people involved with the group. Surely a detached, big picture look at the efforts of the Forte Circle is inadequate to really judge what happened there - clearly they didn't prevent WWI, but what did happen there? Who was involved? How might they have been changed by their involvement in the group? What did they go on to create?

In other words, while people may hold out the ideal that their community or personal actions might change the world on a large scale, what may be more important is tracing the trail of their actions on a small scale. And what, I wonder, is the difference between people/groups who seek to change the world, and those who seek only to change their locale? This reminds me of Paul Hawken's recent book "Blessed Unrest". I've only read an excerpt, but essentially he tries to pull together all these disparate efforts, some of which focus on the global situation and some of which do not, to show how really the biggest combined movement ever is happening right now.

It's so difficult to make sense of all of this sometimes...

The Quest for Utopia (Miller)

Timothy Miller gives a detailed description of American communes dating back to the 19th century through the 1950s. For each time period, he discusses the predominant themes or types of communes. In the 19th century, communes were predominantly religious, spiritual (supernatural/extraterrestrial), philosophical, and art and crafts related. In the 20th century, themes included socialism, anarchism, social reform, ethnic identity, self-sufficient agriculture and art. The 1920s was a quiet decade, but the few communities that were formed consisted of educational and religious communities with a few ethnic communities. In the 1940s, with the war and expended resources, very few communities formed. However, as peace abounded, the 1940s and 1950s marked a period of communal living that touched on themes beyond Judeo-Christian religion. Communities that practiced eastern religion were more popular. Then, in the 1960s, communitarianism went in all directions.

Miller comments that communal living later in the 20th century has deep roots in the "American communal past" and that communal life has an ebb and life of its own. Considering America's roots in communal life and the fluctuation of communities and community themes, I think that the comparison of communities from one decade to the next could be telling. The trends in community formation in the past two centuries could reveal reasons for community formation that are rooted in a larger socioeconomic context. I am wondering how our interviewee's convictions and the reasons current Oregon intentional communities formed (or what their credo is) compare with historical intentional communities. Are their larger socioeconomic trends that affect these communities/community formation across the board? Or alternatively, is there something inherent about these communities that lead to formation/dissolution after a given period of time? These are the questions come to my mind...

I do think it would be very interesting to do a historical comparison with the communities Miller and other's describe and our communities (once we know what their ideals/dreams are)!

Binaries of Ecotopia

I was reading page 108 in Ecotopia, where the narrator describes how different the two women he is involved with really are. He says that Marissa would never go to New York and Francine would never go to Ecotopia, therefore he must be some sort of a "famous schizophrenic" as a lover. This makes me consider visions of Ecotopia - what it would look like socially and geographically - as visions that create strict binaries between alternatives and everything else. While this might just be stating the obvious, I think that it is important division to make note of because with the alternative nation divided from the world outside, there is little room for those who dwell (or seek!) somewhere on the threshold (or for those who are undecided for that matter). Or at least that is the dynamic created by Callenbach. I am wondering if this is also true in some ways with modern visions of alt. living/ecotopia? Of course I can see how geographically speaking ecotopia exists within conventional society, but I am interested to see the extent of which an individual and group can take on both alternative and conventional ideals. I.e., how socially acceptable is it for one who drives his Hummer in Beaverton to build a cob house? If intentional communities intend on being role-models for society, I wonder how equipped they are to change certain social norms (maybe even having to do so gradually, accepting that that guy from suburbs might still want to drive a Hummer). This is getting off on a bit of a tangent, so I will stop there. 

Howdy, Ecotopians!

So, I'm sneaking in here for (almost…darned Amber beat me to it by a minute) the first blog, but this is designed for all of us to spew thoughts, not necessarily thoughts for alot of discussion (the Moodle forum works for that) but thoughts that others may conceivably find of interest. I'd urge you to use this blog liberally, as only those subscribed to the blog or subscribed to our Moodle page (and it's password protected) can read these blogs.

Seeker vs. Dweller's Utopia

Here is the most recent Ecotopia thread to launch off our discussion! Jim wrote:

What would be a dweller's utopia? a seeker's utopia? How would they be
similar/different? If someone is both a dweller and a seeker (or some place
consists of both dwellers and seekers), what sorts of tensions would result?

Let's get the discussion rolling here...