Archive for January, 2007
Modern Commune Life #1–Dramatis Personae
~By Tom (Tet)
Since both Augur and Kofi have expressed an interest, (and since Brenda has also asked in the past about my religious affiliation and history) I’ve decided to risk boring everyone in the blogosphere by talking about my household.
To give other people a chance to comment on specifics, I’m going to divide the entire article into three parts. This first part will concentrate on the people involved, the second on the physical makeup of the living arrangements and the third on the philosophies and practical agreements that enable us to work on a day-to-day basis. I expect to finish part 2 on Tuesday and 3 on Thursday of next week.
Before I start, I want to make a definition. I don’t know how many of you have heard of the term polyamory. It is a neologism that covers both polygamy and polyandry, but translated into terms better suited to the equality of status that is desirable in modern America. In other words, although we are a group marriage, neither of the genders has dominance in the relationship. Perhaps the easist way of thinking of us is as a “normal marriage” in which n=5, rather than n=2.
One quick note: The ONLY topic that is completely off-limits in the discussions that will follow is sex. I will not discuss anything about my family’s sex life. It’s not relevant, any more than Brandon’s is if he’s talking about how he and his wife manage their finances or how his atheism/agnosticism affects his outlook on life. OK?
So, at present there are five of us. In the past, there have been as many as 11, since three of our children and their families had homes in our immediate vicinity.
There’s an interesting mathematical relationship that I’ll describe in a minute. Let’s start with me. I’m 54, a farm boy gone bad. I’ve done some interesting things in the past–I was in college during the radical years, I worked my way up from the assembly line to the head of Quality Control for a manufacturing firm, I was part of the team that found the Top Quark at Fermilab and I’ve been an instructor at the University of Illinois now for about 15 years. I’ve been in varying degrees of ill health for about a year, which, along with my political disgust for the educational system as it is now, is going to result in my retirement at the end of this year. I have three children who range in age from 34 to 30 and two grandchildren, 13 and 9.
The other four of us are spaced evenly in age at 5 year intervals. The oldest has asked me not to use her proper name in my columns because she desires to be anon, which is just fine with me. She was born in 1950 and she and I met in 1970 at the Channing-Murray Foundation’s Red Herring Coffeehouse. Thirty-seven years is a hell of a long time to know someone–you’ve seen both the good and the bad in their lives. She has been a social worker, radical tax resister and accountant in the past, but retired from straight work two years ago. Currently, she has a home business selling Pure Romance products and works half-time for one of the charitable organizations in town as their accountant. She has a married son with two daughters.
The next in line is kitten, who will be 52 this year. She, like myself, went to college under the Illinois State Scholarship program and studied English and Library Science at Eastern Illinois University. She’s one of the Secret Masters of Science-Fiction Fandom and is currently working on the Robert Heinlein Centennial which will be held in Kansas City this coming July. She’s been a library worker for about 20 years now and currently does circulation for one of the larger libraries on campus here. She and I have lived together for 22 years, give or take a month.
Cheron was born in 1960 and is quite remarkable. When she came to live with us, she brought her wolf, Cody, with her. She’s an expert in computer networking and software, but that’s not the limit of her talents. She can take a sheep, shear it and walk the wool through all the steps to make a shirt out of it. She’s also a crack shot with firearms, a lover of nature in all of its forms and was the author of a Table-top RPG called Psi-World which was published during the 1980s. She owned a gameshop in Northern Virginia during the 1990s and did gun and game shows up and down I-81 for over a decade. She was part of an IRC channel called #callahans and came out to live with us in 2000. She has a married daughter and the cutest granddaughter in the world.
Sean is the youngest. He was born in 1965, the son of a country-western/rock singer. He has an IQ that is so high that I find much of what’s going on in his mind incomprehensible. He’s a large man, but so quiet that you often forget that he’s in the room. He can scratch-build a computing system or network to your specifications within a couple of hours, as well as virtually any kind of carpentry work, building design or cabinetmaking. When our present house was converted from student apartments to a (large) single-family dwelling, he did things like move concrete walls and put up ceilings and down floors. He, like Cheron, is a devoted computer gamer and spends his leisure time online (although he takes time to GM an ongoing D&D campaign.) He came to live with us 10 years ago and has been essential ever since.
In addition to the people, we have seven cats, distributed within the 2100 square feet of the main house and a half-shepherd, half-beagle that lives in the cottage.
People often call communes “intentional families”. In our case, it was more like “accidental family.” We began with me and kitten, added Sean (a ‘Net friend of kitten’s) in ‘97 (about the same time I re-established contact with my old friend from college.) In 2000, as I said above, Cheron came from Virginia, and both my daughter and eldest son rented duplex-halves in the neighborhood where we lived. (We lived on the edge of town in very low-rent CPM duplexes to save money.) During this time, Cheron’s daughter stayed with us for a couple months before she headed back to Virginia.
By 2004, the kids had all moved into homes they bought on their own. We wanted to get a place, but it had to have enough room for all of us, *plus* a separate air-supply for Cheron, since she was mildly allergic to cats. I also, having studied the polygamist LDS sects, insisted on a separate kitchen for each wife. In spite of a real-estate boom, we were finding a place to even consider about once every six-months. Finally, we found a piece of rental property in Champaign that would fulfil our needs.
Coming next: Our House, is a very, very fine house…..
~By Tom (Tet)
When Good Communes Go Bad: A Guide
~By Tom (Tet)
I figure that now is as good a time as any to do my article on my past experience with the various forms of small-C communism, anarchy and off-the-grid living. I was, as some of you know, one of the hippies back so very long ago. I watched experiments in social structures ranging from an alternative City Council in Champaign-Urbana to Stephen Gaskin’s Farm in Tennessee. Virtually all of the ones I knew are gone now, major failures. Even Gaskin’s Farm stopped being Communistic in 1983, switching to a system where each family was expected to support itself with its own income.
I’ve lived in a multi-adult household during the early period, as well as a successful 5-10 person city block/purchased house group during the last decade. Why have the ones I’ve been part of been successful while others have failed? There are various reasons that I’ll cover in the rest of this article.
Reason #1:
Hierarchy and Coercion.
Celine’s Second Law states that Communication is Only Possible Between Equals. This means that success in social interactions only occurs when there is no coercion on either side. Two of the mistakes made by unsuccessful communes were due to this principle being ignored. There is first of all the despot/guru model where the spiritual leader makes the rules with or without input from the populace. The most extreme example of this type, of course, was Charles Manson’s Family. A number of the surviving communes still have this structure.
The opposite extreme was the democratic model where major terms of discussion were put to a vote. These deteriorated rapidly, since the unity was quickly broken down into power blocs and cliques, sort of like 7th Grade School elections. Almost all of these communes are gone now. (If anyone knows of any that are still operating at this time, let me know, I’d love to study why.)
The successful communes I have seen have worked on a veto principle that resembles neither of the above. In order for anything controversial to happen, there has to be a unanimous consent between all of the members. In this case, since the entire membership has agreed on the item on the agenda, no one can feel that their input has been overridden. This also has a tendency to reduce the amount of risk-taking actions, since one or more members would have the good sense to realize that the risk is too high for the action. It also encourages compromise, since in order to get part of what you want, you have to be willing to give up some things you desire to get the cooperation of other people. This veto power, however, seriously limits the number of people in a working commune, since if you get too high a number, essential changes cannot be made in time to evolve to meet crises.
Reason #2:
Inappropriate Economics for Size
I’ve been trying to find the approximate cut-off point for true Communism for some time–you know, “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.” My guess is that it’s about 13.
Why does this occur? My theory is this: It has something to do with the Pareto Principle (the 80-20 rule.) I learned about this in Quality Control Engineering when we found out that 20% of the workers made 80% of the mistakes. A different 20% of the workers were responsible for 80% of the profit of the company.
How does this apply to commune living? The “from each…” formula only works if people have approximately equal amounts of both assets and liabilities. It is easy to select for this *if* the number of people in the commune are small enough that the statistics of small numbers are in operation. If you get large, suddenly 20% of the population is resentful, since their contribution is essential, but they’re working all of the time. At the same time, 80% of the money/materials that they make is going to support the needs of 20% of the communal population (who are, most likely, completely different people.)
This resentment eventually destroys the commune, and occurs time after time. This is why true Communism or Socialism WILL NOT WORK IN REAL LIFE WITHOUT COERCION, and inevitably leads to a loss of freedom.
Reason #3:
Failure to deal with the rest of the world adequately.
I can best illustrate this with an example. Back around 1974, there was an alternative City Council (called the Community Council) with representatives from all of the “hippie businesses” and business collectives at that time. [There were dozens in this town, ranging from a gas station to a dressmaking collective to a restaurant. The only remainders of this period still extant are Good Vibes, Strawberry Fields and People's Performance Automotive--the rest collapsed, usually noisily and involving lawsuits.]
I was on this Council, along with my wife at the time. At one point, the Twin Cities offered us the opportunity to play Softball in the City League against teams fielded by the “straight” businesses.
Simple, right? Nope. Didn’t happen.
The people within the communes refused to deal with playing SOFTBALL with the rest of the city because a) THEY KEPT SCORE, and teams should not be fielded with the idea of competiton, but merely for the enjoyment of the play and b) THEY USED RULES.
Need I say more? Billy Joe, I can sense you staring at me in disbelief. It really happened, I swear to God.
Reason #4:
Lack of a common belief system
Any government that wishes to rule without coercion cannot depend on a police force or an army to control civil order. The populace itself has to be primarily virtuous and in agreement with the social contract. The same is true of a commune. The successful ones consistently were picky, taking only those who were willing to commit to a social contract that ensured that the good of everyone was the top priority.
All it takes is one criminal or exploiter within a non-coercive social group in order for it to collapse. Human nature being what it is, those that were good judges of human nature lasted, those who were not, died.
Hopefully, this sheds some light on remarks that I’ve made in the past about freedom and social structure and alternative living. For those who are curious about the 60s and 70s, I hope that it also gives you the reasons (besides “hippies were stupid and stoned”) that the social experiments during that period failed and showed some of the things that could be learned from them.
~By Tom (Tet)
Creating Alternatives to Endless War
Thanks to Erik for this post, which he sent around to many of the newspapers for publication. Also, thanks to my brother, Eric Mills (generalmills211@yahoo.com), for the aesthetic changes to Urbanagora that you see now. He’s great with this kind of stuff, so if you need help manipulating your blog’s html or with designing header images on Photoshop try asking him for help, he’s just 15 years old, so he won’t charge you :)
It seems that the gap between public sentiment and mainstream debate grows wider every day. This Wednesday the Bush Administration outlined a plan to escalate the violence in
Many of the proposals which have been offered by the peace movement would lay the groundwork for a future reconciliation with the Muslim world (one such proposal recently supplied by Helena Cobban and readily available online), but all share a number of common themes: A sincere apology for the damage wreaked by our war, recognition of Iraq’s sovereignty and control of its own resources and an appeal for international cooperation in repairing the country’s decimated infrastructure—all set to a definite timetable for troop withdrawal.
Some might argue that such a policy would be doomed by its idealism; the same, I believe, could be said of the proposal to escalate the violence which plunged
Winner: A Bro Not Lost
Thanks to Tom (Tet) for this eulogy:
Robert Anton Wilson died yesterday morning. He shared with my father the greater part of the influence that created the person that I am today.
It was shortly after my college career when my buddy Marq handed me a copy of ILLUMINATUS! It was still in the three-book form. I opened it and fell into a world where an intelligent, omniscient computer described a world very much like my own, but from a point of view that was a lot like what Timothy Leary and James Joyce would come up with at a cocktail party.
It had everything–intelligent dolphins, Yog-Sothoth being imprisoned in the center of the Pentagon, pacifist sex magick, the answer to who *really* shot John Kennedy (it was Dillinger), the Dealy Lama, and undead Nazi storm troopers planning to Immanetize the Eschaton by killing a rock-festival full of heavy-metal heads.
My mind was completely blown. It was funnier than hell, but underlying it was a small-l Libertarian philosophy that smacked of both Karl Hess and Hugh Hefner. I was in the market right then for one, having just watched the collectivist and left-anarchist movements eat their young while they were still breathing. *Shudder*
There were some remnants of the “Revolution” hanging around like Marq. The most survival-oriented were a breed apart–we considered ourselves “techno-hippies”, since we didn’t share the Luddite insanity of most of the other remnants of the Left.
As the years passed, I would take other books that he had written like SCHRODINGER’S CAT to work with me at the factory. Occasionally, over the next thirty years, I’d find someone who shared my ideals, at which point I would slip Wilson’s books into their hand. If they made it through the first fifty pages, they would invariably have an epiphany or two. It was like a computer virus for the brain.
I had an opportunity or two to meet and talk to Wilson in person, the first time during Labor Day Weekend of 1991. [This is the HIGH WEIRDNESS WEEKEND, that I keep planning to write about and somehow never accomplish. Soon, I promise.]
He was just as fucking bugnuts in person as he was in print. He was probably the world’s top authority on conspiracy theories, yet never gave in 100% to any of them, nor did he surrender to the “consensual reality” that we live in during our mundane day-to-day lives.
[Example: His daughter was murdered during the mid-1970s. He had her head cryogenically frozen by one of the life-extension firms in California in the hopes that she could be reconstituted later or have her intelligence uploaded into another body. I do not know her ultimate fate, nor do I know if his will provided for continuous payment of her power bills.]
He invented the Illuminati as the sectarian, constantly warring masters of the Earth and the term “fnord” for subliminal messages. He, with Leary, was the founder of SMI2LE–
SPACE MIGRATION, INTELLIGENCE INCREASE AND LIFE EXTENSION
He was the author of Celine’s Laws on government.
He also authored the definitive encyclopedia of Conspiracy Theories EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL.
About a month after Timothy Leary died, Wilson received an email from him that said, best that I can remember, “Hiya Bob! Heaven is nothing like I imagined, it’s a lot more crowded. Be seeing ya!”
He always figured it was a prank easter egg that Tim had put into his computer. I guess now he may know for sure.
One last note–Wilson was crazy about anagrams, seeing them as a form of English gematria. In his honor, I created the title of this article.
Rest in peace, man, rest in peace.
~By Tom (Tet)
Sick Sad Little World
Thanks to Brandon for this intimately and sincerely written piece. As an update, Urbanagora will soon be changing, we will be adding more regular authors and we may have a new look. Stay tuned:
I sometimes find myself slipping for months into accepting the world we live in and then something happens. It’s like a spark. I read a book, see a movie, or meet someone new that reawakens the idealist within me. Whether it is reading Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Sinclair’s Jungle, or watching a movie like “Motorcycle Diaries” as I did last night, I am every once in a while reminded of who I am and what my philosophical foundations are. I am constantly reminded of the big picture, think big. That’s why I often think we live in a sick sad little world.
I think much of this sense is captured in a quote by C. Wright Mills from his Essay “The Sociological Imagination”:
“The facts of contemporary history are also facts about the success and the failure of individual men and women…Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both. Yet men do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change and institutional contradiction. The well-being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live.”
In fact, I was looking for another quote by the same man that went something along the lines of: ‘Each of us lives out our biographies, our individual lives within the context of a much larger historical period…’ and so on, but couldn’t find it. Anyway, the point is made.
The sick sad little world is the private lives each of us lead. Over the course of the continuing industrial revolution, humanity has been in a constant state of change. Sometimes this change is in violent upheaval such as civil wars and revolutions. At other times it is in economic booms and busts. For the past few centuries, human life has been in a constant state of flux, never the same from one generation to the next and these changes has profoundly shaped modern life.
We have withdrawn from public space and into our private McMansions in our gated communities with private security. We get into our cars each day and drive from home to work and then back at the end of the day only to repeat it again the next. Our leisure time is spent watching television shows of infotainment which blur the lines between information and entertainment (think most of Fox News or its Comedy Central counterparts). We have become increasingly private and isolated. We lack public forums and spaces. The modern idea of a public space is a shopping center, a
Recent studies have shown that people have fewer close friends than they did a generation ago. We are becoming the world of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. If you have any doubts go to your nearest electronics store and look at what they’re selling—wall-sized televisions that bring you crystal-clear lifelike pictures so you can watch TV and stay at home. We live in a capitalistic “me culture” that encourages us to think of nothing but ourselves (no doubt a contributor to the rise of Libertarianism) and our personal gratification at this exact moment rather than taking a long view of our lives and the impacts our actions will have on future generations.
We have created the fantasy of the individual to make ourselves feel special and different while we constantly want to be different with someone else. We constantly deny the fact the humans are essentially social in nature and not only desire but at some basic level need to be surrounded by others and to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We find this in groups of friends, churches, organizations, etc and yet these things are dying a slow death (except possibly churches). Read Bowling Alone and you’ll get a better idea of the death of public life.
I’m not here to say that each of us does not have quirks or particular sets of beliefs and combinations thereof, but rather that who we are is inexorably linked to the world in which we live. Hitler would not have been Hitler if he did not live in a cultural time and a place that was supportive of his ideology. Alexander would not have been Alexander if he had not been his father’s son, was not taught by Aristotle, and did not live in a time when it was believed that humans could be gods. It is pure folly to try to disassociate one’s biography, one’s individual life from the specific socio-historical context in which one lives. Dad losing his job at Ford isn’t just a stroke of bad luck for dad, it has to do with global markets and the decline of the American auto sector. Grandpa and grandma getting that house back in the 50s, the equity of which they used to send mom and dad to college (if they even had to pay given the low tuition costs back then) had a lot more to do with the Montgomery GI bill than it did with Grandpa’s hard work.
I suppose the overarching point to this is that we cannot divorce ourselves from society and the world around us. We should never speak of our lives in a vacuum but always look to the larger picture of the world surrounding us to understand the “why” of our actions. There are things larger than any one of us at work in this world the results of millions and billions of decisions by as many people, but even those decisions are made within the context of the historical moment in which they find themselves and all of its attendant opportunities and barriers thereto.
~By Brandon
Letter on the Recent History of Gender
Thanks to Tom (Tet) for this guest column on a very interesting and pertinent topic.
I’m going to knock off some quick commentary on this question. It may or may not be followed later by some further thoughts.
First of all, in order to make any sense out of what I’m going to be saying, you have to accept my basic premise, which is this: Humans are a sexually dimorphic mammalian species. This means that due to evolutionary pressures during the Ice Age (and the massive die-off at about 75,000 BC or so–keep in mind all Western Europeans are descended from one of only five mothers) men and women are wired differently in their brains, have different distribution of body muscle, have different pain thresholds, and so forth.
In other words, the genders are not necessarily unequal, but they are much more different than anyone would lead you to believe in this society. (This was a fact so well understood up until about 1965 or so that no one ever needed to question it.)
I’ve actually had extensive discussions with Allie about this question, to tell the truth. I believe that women and men have different desires in life and that those desires push them in certain directions that impact on politics.
I believe that men desire freedom above all and women desire security. This is above and beyond the “prime directive” of our DNA, which is sex, of course.
Now, prior to the ’60s, this didn’t really present a problem. Men were free, to a large extent, to pursue the things that they wished (assuming that they were white in America–black men *could* pursue to a certain extent, but were limited to areas that were not in competition with whites.) Women were protected and provided for by their men. Prior to ‘46, there were large extended families in towns which enabled the men and women to receive these two things that they desired without doing any damage to society at all.
Technological change–The Pill. Prior to this tech, the feminist movement was seen as the folks who were back there in time with the WCTU–people whose time had passed when women received the vote in 1919. What the pill did was change gender roles–women could now have sex and be predatory the same as men could. The concepts of Hefner from the 50s could now be extended across gender lines.
Feminism suddenly got a massive boost. The early feminists managed two major and very destructive things: First of all, they cut the safety net out from under women in America completely. This had been already damaged by the introduction of the superhighways and the spreading out of families over the last generation and the creation of the “nuclear family”, which hadn’t existed before. Now, with the idea that women could reproduce without regard to having a protective man, the net was gone.
Secondly, it set individual men as the enemy. They were the exploiters, the rapists, the oppressors. All of the problems that women had and the reason that they had not reached equality in the military, in corporate life, in politics were due not to the fact they were built or wired differently, but because the MAN had kept them down.
Now, the results of this were then twofold. A campaign was launched to restrict male freedom, since they were the enemy. Guns needed to be outlawed, since they were symbols of the old hunter culture. Rape was redefined over and over again until even discomfort during or next-morning regrets were classified as “date-rape”. Men were wussified in culture and ridiculed on television in sitcoms. In the business and academic worlds, men’s language was restricted to make sure that any possibility of power or freedom was removed.
Now, without the males to protect women, they found themselves in real trouble. Their wired-in desire for security was not being fulfilled. Their fathers were gone, or for the second generation, simply not there. “What to do?”
Their solution? Turn to government.
If you look at the history of many of the regulatory movement of the last third of the twentieth century, you’ll find that the major backers were invariably female. (Ralph Nader stands out as a major exception to this, but you’ll also notice that he began his work *before* most of these changes had taken place–Nadar’s really an engineer-type with a conscience.)
The government stepped in to regulate virtually everything in life as far as safety and effacity went–gun control, seat belts, baby car seats, smoking in public places, the educational system, spanking children, vaccinations, ritalin for boys who act like boys, trans-fats…..you get the drift?
The result is the situation that you have today, with the genders in a state of mistrust, a divorce rate of 50%, the family structure shattered and a declining birthrate among native-born Americans.
So, to sum up my opinion on this, men are wired to be libertarians, women are wired to be fascists.
If you still have any doubt of the correctness of my argument, I’d suggest doing a bit of research on the approval ratings of Hitler and Mussolini and the disparity on that between the two genders.
Hope this helps. If you use this for anything ambitious, I expect 10% of what you get.
Peace,
Tom (Tet)
The Black Wave of Democracy?
Barack Obama is expected to announce whether he will run for President in the first week of the New Year. I expect that he will run for President given the number of people encouraging him to do so and because he knows that every extra day he spends in the Senate is an extra point of attack for his opponent. Despite the Senate appearing to be the perfect stepping stone, John F. Kennedy was the last Senator to become President, likely because Senators have clearly defined voting records that are difficult for candidates to evade and contort (i.e. artful lying).
While I would love to see an Obama v. McCain or Giuliani matchup because it would be the first time since Eisenhower v. Stevenson in 1952 and 1956 when the voters will have a choice between two legitimately great people, two people who genuinely deserve to be the single person with the most influence on how our path is carved. While I am still uncertain whether Obama has a genuine heart and a decent character, I at least have the audacity to hope that he is one of a few politicians who possesses those traits. It is rumored that behind the scenes he is essentially an arrogant, uncaring Harvardvark. You might be more willing to believe this if you trust McCain’s ability to judge character, given the infamous spat the two Senators had in early 2006.
Despite my hope for a clash of titans in the general election, I don’t think that Obama is capable of beating
However, Obama’s skin, the same trivial aesthetic that will inspire many racist votes, will inspire the black vote. It is conceivable that Obama and the black leadership will be able to register millions of potential black voters. After all, Obama did run a successful black voter registration drive a few years ago in
To correspond with this possibility, Brian originally summoned the idea of calculating the increased percentage of black voters needed to put the Southern states “in play” for Obama. Brian collected the data, but his Political Science degree couldn’t enable him to do the calculations (love you Brian baby), so he wisely recruited me. I am somewhat confident they are correct calculations, but I think they can be simplified. I used the “Solver” function, which is an “add-in,” which is found in the “Tools” menu. It’s a powerful Excel feature which allows you to essentially set the parameters of what kind of number you want and then return that number to you, in this case that meant returning the percentage of black turnout needed to put the Southern states “in play,” which we decided would be a margin of 8% since Brian found that 8% was approximately the value needed for the Democrats to invest money into a state in an attempt to win its electoral votes. The graph below shows the results, but you can critique my Excel work by downloading the spreadsheet, please do tell me if I made any mistakes or if the calculations can be done without solver or more efficiently. Of course, these calculations do not account for the increased “racist” vote, so these numbers could be worthless, but they are fun to ponder nonetheless. Enjoy.
