The Emperor Has No Clothes A Practical Guide for Environmental and Social Transformation (25 page)

101 Before starting with this list it should
be noted that the context and amplitude of the expression of some
of these traits govern whether they are beneficial or not.

The grass roots social organization that is
being proposed would be comprised of a more communal style of
living where the members do not privately own the facilities were
they reside. These types of communities are referred to as
intentional communities. In these communities members receive some
personal cash periodically for personal usage and everything else
is provided by the community, i.e., food, housing, transportation,
recreational facilities, day care, educational support, etc. The
fruits of their labor are of equal value and belong to their
organization. The type of organization being proposed is a
non-for-profit corporation which is formed by being Incorporated
under IRS code 501 D. In this type of corporation taxable income is
paid individually by the members who are considered to be
partners.

The structure of the proposed community has a
highly egalitarian character and is managed using the
planner/manager system. In this system three planners are elected
for a 1 ½ year period which is staggered. They are not allowed to
continuously occupy this position for longer than one period. Their
purpose is to make strategic decisions for the community based upon
members (communards) input. The method the planners use is to post
a proposal in a designated community area where members will
consider the proposal. Upon consideration of pending proposals the
members affix written and signed comments. The planners use these
comments to refine the proposal. Once a proposal is in its final
form it is submitted to the community for approval which requires
80 % of the community to be in favor of it for implementation. If
the 80 % approval is not reached the project is shelved or dropped.
The mangers take care of the operational aspects of the various
activities. In these communities the managers are usually workers
in other areas. The planners also participate as managers and
workers; the social structure is not hierarchical. For example, a
manager of the vegetable garden may be a worker in building
maintenance, etc. It should be emphasized that these people occupy
these positions through strong community support and can be easily
removed from their positions by the members.lii In the intentional
community Twin Oaks which is being used as a model in this
discussion a member can be removed if 20 % of the other members
vote for them to leave. If you want to probe how these communities
operate in depth, I would highly recommend that you read “Is It
Utopia Yet?” which is about the Twin Oaks community. The
Intentional Community organization and Twin Oaks community web
sites also have all types of useful detailed information such as
incorporation documents, membership agreements, etc.

The basic unit of the proposed new grass
roots level of social organization is largely based upon this style
of egalitarian community. Henceforth, I will refer to these basic
units as community segments or more simply as segments. The number
of persons who are members of a segment needs to be restricted to a
maximum of 200 and in the early formative period to 100 or less
(Twin Oaks was started in 1967 and usually has around 85 adults and
15 children according to Kinkade). The reason for the numerical
restriction of 200 is based upon anthropological research on
egalitarian societies. This research found that the maximum number
of people that a human being can actually have any significant
knowledge of and interaction with, is 200. What occurs when a
egalitarian community grows any larger, the level of direct
personal knowledge of the other members becomes too tenuous.
Because of the excessively attenuated level of knowledge after 200
members are reached, this lack provides the latitude for persons of
poor character and an opportunistic bent to engage in nefarious,
undesirable, and destructive behavior to the community. For
example, the Hutterites who have lived in collective communities
for hundreds of years limit the size of their communities to around
100 persons. They have found that when their communities are larger
someone will engage in dishonest activities. Once one person starts
to engage in undesirable actions their activities then corrupt
other members and the community will eventually collapse. The
Buddhists have larger monastic communities than 200 persons,
however the monks or nuns live a spartan life in a highly
structured communal environment. Traditionally a monk or nun only
posses 3 robes and a bowl and does not have any money. They also
have an extensive network of training monasteries that are
structured to provide an environment suited to the attenuation of
afflictive states of mind. Initially the Buddhist trainee enters
the monastery with all their raw abrasive undesirable egotistical
characteristics. The monastic regimen is designed to chafe against
undesirable states of mind causing them to manifest, thereby
allowing them to be identified and eliminated. The process of
attenuation and elimination is guided by senior monks who are very
skilled in this form of training. A significant part of this
process employes various types of meditation that allows the
trainee to metabolize the evoked afflictive states of mind and
augment desirable states. If you wish to delve into training and
life at Buddhist monasteries you may wish to refer to D. T.
Suzuki's book. While I have no personal experience of being in a
monks training monastery, I have been on a number of Zen sesshin
[102] (retreats) that give a slight taste of the more thorough
training at a monastery. As a result of my early sesshin
experiences I wrote the following descriptive poem:

Pebbles in the stream with sharp edges,

growing smooth cry; ouch, ouch!!!

102 Sesshin can be translated as meaning
touching the mind.

Of course the segment style of egalitarian
community we are discussing isn't being envisioned as being a
knock-off of a Buddhist monastery. However there are some
commonalities, a shared cooperative life that would tend to evoke
undesirable states of mind in egotistical people. Undesirable
states of mind are a source of many of the problematic actions
which generate acrimony and internal pressures that disrupt the
harmony of the community. An effective means of reducing the
presence of negative personality traits is by the application of
well proven Buddhist meditation practices. In order to effectively
carry out these practices a qualified meditation teacher will be
needed to provide instruction and also provide ongoing support to
members who are willing to work on personal improvement. What will
happen after awhile, as these negative mental states are reduced
the sharp edges will be gone and things will become smooth, smooth
and easy, easy without as much ouch, ouch.

The reason “segment” was chosen to describe
an individual egalitarian community is that the envisioned social
structure would be comprised of a larger network of loosely
interactive segments. By having this arrangement the advantages of
economies of scale and a broad range of skill sets would be
available. Thus, a social organization with the advantages of large
scale while preserving the social advantages of the small
individual segments can be attained. The combination of these
characteristics have the potential to be a practical means of
providing all the goods and services presently produced by the
multinational laissez faire capitalist system without its
environmental and social disadvantages.

If the basic economic activities that are
organic to these types of communities are considered, this style of
organization would produce a significantly reduced level of
consumption and impact on the environment. The production of much
of their own food on site eliminates squandering resources on
packaging, transportation, and storage for fresh and preserved
foods. Since the food needs of the low number of people in these
communities are relatively small it is impractical for them to
utilize large scale industrial agricultural methods. This in fact
is much more productive, according to the 1992 United States
agricultural census small farms grow 2 to 10 times as much food per
acre as large farms and tiny farms that are 4 acres or less can be
100 times more productive than the industrial giants. A 1989
national research study also found that “well managed alternative
farming systems nearly always use less synthetic chemical
pesticides, fertilizers and antibiotics per unit of production than
conventional farms.” The same study found that the reduced use of
these inputs also reduced production costs and the potential of
environmental and negative health effects while not decreasing and
often increasing per acre crop yields. Another 24 year study
conducted in China on the effectiveness of chemical methods found
that soil fertility declined unless supplemented with straw and
manure. How does the GMO crops compare to small farms? Contrary to
the PR about how GMO crops are needed to save the world from
starvation recent studies by the National Academy of Sciences found
that GMO seeds actually produced smaller harvests than hybrid seeds
and a USDA study also found no overall reduction of pesticide
usage. A more recent 30 year study conducted by the Rodale
Instituteliii found that the yield of organic farming methods
matched conventional and GMO type crops during years with adequate
rainfall. However, the use of organic methods out performed the
conventional and GMO crops during years of moderate drought.[103]
The differential they found is fairly large, to use organically
grown corn as an example, they found that during periods of low
precipitation the average yields were 134 bushels/acre for organic,
and 102 bushels/acre from conventional chemical based farming. This
study also indicated that traditional plant breeding methods have
increased the “yields of major grain crops three to four times more
than GM varieties (p.12).” They also found that the use of GMO
crops have produced a great increase in the use of herbicides and
number of resistant weeds. Recently the EPA approved an increase of
twenty times the allowable amount of the herbicide Glyphosate
residue that can be left on food as a result of its increasing use
(Rodale p.12). Obviously changing to a society comprised of the
smaller types of farms used by the envisioned segmented society
would greatly reduce the amount of land required to provide food.
The surplus land that would no longer be needed could be returned
to a natural state. By restoring the surplus land to a natural
state large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from
agricultural sources would be produced, in addition to reductions
in fossil fuel usage and improvements in ecological balance.

103 Only the last 14 years of this study
included GMO crops since they did not exist when the study
started.

Another great advantage these types of
communities have for agriculture is that the property is owned by
the community corporation which provides a long term type of land
tenure. By having long term land tenure it is in the segments
interest to use the best agricultural practices that avoids erosion
and improves soil fertility. It also provides the opportunity for
the communities to practice micro- adaptation of their crops to the
specific agricultural environment on their property. Traditionally
plants were selected by removing the poorer ones before they
produced pollen. This practice eliminates their contribution to the
gene pool. The second part of this technique was to retain seeds
from the very best plants for future plantings. This method
produced perfectly adapted plants to the local conditions giving
very high yield and superior innate resistance to plant diseases
and pests. Saving seed in this way also provides the further
advantage of eliminating the costs of purchasing seeds,
transporting them, and the use of excessive disposable
packaging.

This type of social organization provides a
number of other significant advantages over what currently
prevails. Time and resources spent commuting to work are greatly
reduced since most of the communards perform their work on site.
The reduction in commuting and freight transport moves us much
closer to our goals of reducing fossil fuel usage. These reductions
would be realized not only from the reduction in traffic, but also
by lowering the amount of wear and tear on publicly owned roads.
Road maintenance and construction uses large quantities of
materials that takes a lot of energy to produce and apply. By
reducing road maintenance and construction the need to collect
taxes to fund this activity would also be reduced.

Since these communities engage in a broad
spectrum of economic and social activities they generally have
facilities that are far superior to those than is generally
available to citizens of the current wider society. For example,
generally these communities have a large efficient well outfitted
commercial style kitchen and dining area where most of the meals
are taken and a few smaller kitchens for communards who want to
individually prepare a meal or snack. In these types of communities
a work quota employing labor credits where one labor credit
corresponds to a work hour [104 for everyone is established. So if
one chooses to be a cook, wash dishes, do laundry, garden, provide
maintenance, work on construction, receive medical care, computer
work, etc., all of these and more produce labor credits. In these
communities communards often work at more than one job in a day and
can change jobs according to their desire, thereby providing much
greater variety and also opportunities for personal growth. Another
great advantage is that the things that need to be purchased from
outside the community can be obtained at much lower bulk
prices.

104 With the exception of child care where
only a partial work credit / hour child care is received.