The Compassionate Pursuit of Happiness

Communes: In Search of Utopia

October 25, 2015

In his 1933 Utopian novel Lost Horizon, author James Hilton created a mystical, harmonious community, Shangri-La, in which all citizens were vital contributors to the welfare of each other. The highest common good for all prevailed, everyone’s talents were maximized, and everyone benefited from the community. The novel, set in a fictional, isolated and sheltered valley among the high Himalayas, was reportedly inspired by the travels of Russian artist Nicholas Roerich, who was one of the first westerners to explore Central Asia. And it’s said that Roerich, who traveled through India, Tibet, Nepal, Mongolia, and surrounding countries, was in search of Utopia.

From the beginning of recorded time, Utopia has been an idea promoted through storytelling and philosophy:

Genesis—the first book of the Bible (5^th/6^th Century BC)
Plato’s Republic (380 BC)
Thomas Moore’s Utopia (16^th Century AD)
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (19^th Century AD)
G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia (1905)
Eric Frank Russell’s The Great Explosion (1963)

Ever since humans were metaphorically tossed from the Garden of Eden, we’ve longed to create paradise on earth. And while paradisiacal ideals differ from person to person and culture to culture, the one thing theme that remains constant is this: All members of the community are equally afforded the opportunity to thrive mentally, physically, intellectually, and economically.

Caroline Myss, in her book The Sacred Contract of America: Fulfilling the Vision of Our Mystic Founders, offers the theory that the U.S. was founded specifically with the intention of becoming a Utopian community. If that’s true, obviously the experiment is failing.

However, smaller scale Utopian societies—communes—have been successful in other parts of the world. This article takes a quick look at the history of communes with the view of taking what has worked and moving it forward to create successful self-sustaining economic communities (SSECs) today.

Communes

The Massachusetts Bay Colony—Established by the Puritans in the 17^th century, this might have been the first attempt to establish Utopia in the Americas.
Kibbutz—Perhaps the best-known communes are the kibbutzim of Israel. Kibbutz is Hebrew for “communal settlement.” The prevailing philosophy of the kibbutz is “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The first kibbutz was formed in 1908, 40 years before the establishment of the State of Israel. Today, 270 kibbutzim, with memberships ranging from 40 to more than 1,000, are scattered across Israel.
Mondragon Corporation—A federation of worker cooperatives (meaning, worker owned companies) based in the Basque region of Span, Mondragon was founded in 1956. It is the 10^th largest company in Spain. For more information: http://www.mondragon-corporation.com/eng/.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s commune initiative—The former First Lady attempted to create a government-supported, back-to-the-earth commune in West Virginia. While unsuccessful in creating the commune, Eleanor Roosevelt’s socialist initiatives sought to create economic equality for racial minorities and women.

Despite the failure of the commune system of the 1960s and 70s in the U.S., versions of communes not only still exist, but actually thrive today. One of the most successful communes, San Francisco’s Rainbow Grocery, a worker-owned co-op that has grown steadily over the past 40 years despite Whole Foods opening a store in every neighborhood, proves that we as a society can come together for the common good. For more information: http://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/S-F-s-Rainbow-Grocery-a-counterculture-6433041.php.

In future articles, we’ll look at a key missing component in previous commune systems—profit—and how profitizing communes can help create the economic equality needed to bring true harmony and happiness to all.

The 11th Commandment: Compassionate Humanity

August 31, 2015

If Your Primary Goal In Life Is To Be Part of the Common Good, You’ve Come To The Right Place

The oldest written version of the 10 Commandments are the set of laws of Ur-Nammu, 21^st century BC, that the first Sumerian city dwellers established (about 5000 BC, even much earlier than the written code) so that man can live together in harmony.

In writings during the period of Ur-Nammu, the word “equity” is central to the code of living together. We transpose this to the meaning of “common good.”

For all to thrive, the code of the American way of life must be modified: “Life, Liberty, and the Compassionate Pursuit of Happiness.”

Post Free Market (PFM) World

Our present free-market political/economic system prevents the majority of earth’s population from enjoying the bounty of our world. The system is certainly not optimized for the common good. On the other hand, there is much good in what we have and in the tradition of history. We do not want to watch our world to be swept away by violence or revolution. We wish to transition to a PFM world without violence and with evolution.

Failings of the Free Market
How to Keep What Works & Improve What Does Not Without Violence

Professional economists did not formulate the present analysis. These are the observations of a retired Physicist, who was born a peasant in Hungary before the Second World War. With God’s help I survived wars and communism and enjoyed the golden age of free-market capitalism in the US in the 1960s. I have also witnessed the decline of the free market economy to the degree where life in the US has become difficult for an ever-increasing portion of the population. We ask you, our friends, with your inquiring minds to comment on the ideas advanced here.

The opportunity to work in equity and generate a livelihood for us and for our loved ones does not exist any more. Joblessness is epidemic, and many of us who are working are underemployed, under utilizing our educations, intelligence, and experience.
The distribution of wealth is not fair, and this distribution prevents job creation and is counterproductive.
Making money with money is interchangeable at will with creating value by labor leading to a collapse of the standard of living for majority of Americans.
Measuring the value creation of the economy by measuring the magnitude of consumption not only destroys the value of labor and corrupts our moral fiber, but also destroys our environment and the planet in the process.

Is There a Better Way?

God created the genius of man: Man has the ability to evolve and overcome. The technology for a better world already exists. Just as a changing climate caused by overuse of fossil fuels has taken us to the verge of disaster, we created the solution: Solar PV.

This website can not offer a simple solution, but we would like to start a dialogue focusing on issues that may lead to a post free market—PFM—world where most of us will feel at home, adding the 11^th commandment: compassionate living for all.

Here are our starting points for beginning this evolution:

We form small Self-Sustaining Economic Communities (SSECs).
These communities can start like a franchise model, to be reproduced across the country.
Within the community all will own part of the wealth, will work for the common good, and will be employed to the level of their education, experience, and skill set.
The community will take care of those incapable of caring for themselves.
All economic activity will be created to be profit making, competitive, and self-sustaining.
The SSECs will communicate seamlessly with each other and with the necessary establishments.
Within the SSECs, productivity will be superseded by the desire to create the maximum number of jobs. All this with restrains, recognizing that there are products and jobs where automation does a better job, or is able to perform jobs humans cannot.
SSECs involve a hybrid economy, where the collection of the SSEC franchises will live in harmony with the automation and established big business.

This hybrid economy will reflect itself by the exercise of democratic tools also in a hybrid political order, where the SSECs in proportion to their increasing size can be partners of the government of increasing importance. Some of the expensive functions, such as caring for the sick, the old, and the unemployed can be outsourced and can be done with compassion at a lower cost in the SSEC communities.

If you think this is UTOPIA, you are correct. Let’s start a dialogue to make it reality.