There's a Place

by Neil Gillespie
The Justice Network

This post was inspired by Valerie, Anne, DreamsAmelia and others who commented on Karen’s post "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

Each of you expressed a fundamental theme of human existence, the need for shelter and community. Is it better to rent or buy a home? Is real neighborliness in person with your actual neighbors the bedrock of society, or can an online "community" suffice? And how does all this fit into the larger world or work and family?

There is another way: You can have it all, in an intentional community. The following is inspired by many people and ideas too numerous to mention here, so I’ll begin with one person, Scott Nearing. "If I am rich and you are poor," Nearing wrote, "both of us are corrupted by inequality."

Scott Nearing was a radical professor at the Wharton School. According to a University of Pennsylvania publication, he was "shocked in 1915 when he was the only assistant professor with a favorable recommendation from the faculty not to be rehired. His outspoken views against child labor and other progressive causes had run afoul of Penn’s trustees, who thought he was a dangerous influence on his many followers. Nearing won litigation concerning his dismissal, giving a significant victory to academic freedom - one step toward the creation of the tenure system."(Scott Nearing is profiled further on my website.)

"By 1917 Nearing was fired from the University of Toledo as an administrator and professor due to his opposition to America’s World War I involvement. In March 1918 he was indicted, but later exonerated by the federal government via the Espionage Act for his antiwar writing. In the 1920s he joined the Communist party until he was expelled from that organization for being too radically independent.

Nearing later  espoused a simple lifestyle of abstaining from products and economic practices that he believed hurt society. Among his 50 books was the classic Living the Good Life, co-authored with his wife Helen in 1954 and republished in 1970, inspiring the countercultural movement of the time. Nearing died in 1983 shortly after his 100th birthday."

Scott Nearing

Fast forward to 2011. The politics, economy and technology of today may provide the foundation for a new rendition of the intentional community, sometimes called a commune. Think of the possibilities of a physical community, somewhere in the wide-open spaces of America, combined with the interconnectedness of the Internet. A place run by people, not the corporations.

A place where we build our sustainable homes by hand, without debt, in the tradition of the Amish barn raising...

A place where we grow our own organic food, raise animals and fish, to nourish our body and soul...

A place where we manufacture quality products, made in America, by people, not corporations. Real jobs, with humane benefits and working conditions...

A place where we can operate e-commerce business online, with clients worldwide... 

A place where we govern ourselves without the corrupting influence of corporate money... 

A place with our own bank, banking system, and local currency... 

A place where we establish our own courts, where judges are not lawyers, and the practice of law and the delivery of legal service is open to the free market...

A place where we decide who serves on our police force and how they should behave, a place that may have a chief like OWS supporter Ray Lewis, a retired Philadelphia police captain...

A place where we build and run our own hospitals, daycare, nursing homes and hospice...

A place where we build and run our own primary schools and university, an affordable university where the emphasis is on learning and sustainable living, in contrast to the current debt-based college education with its emphasis on sports and consumer consumption...

A place where animals are respected and incorporated into our lives, as companions, or workers mowing our lawn (grazing), public service (dogs) or transportation (horses, camels) 

A place with sustainable public transportation, electric cars, horses, or camels...

A place with a sustainable public utility that produces green power and clean water...

A place where people of all faiths, races, ethnic groups, and orientations are welcome...

A place that values creative thinking... 

This is just the beginning. Feel free to add your own ideas. Add to it the best of liberal, conservative, libertarian, progressive, radical, eastern and western thought, and others not mentioned. Barack Obama may have betrayed the dream, but we don’t have to...


For further reading: Two classics by Helen & Scott Nearing: "Living the Good Life" and "Leaving the Good Life" are available in a one-volume paperback called "The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living". (Schocken Books, Jan. 1990)