🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm writing a book. You might like to help me.

This book is born of 3 questions with which I have been grappling for
a while:

- The dynamics of social change
- Did the hippies of the 60's become the yuppies of the 80's ?
- How can we learn from the back-to-the-earth and soft/alternative
  technology efforts of the early 70's ?

The first question emerges from a growing conviction that those who
argue for changes in our society have an obligation to explain both:

    - How our current socio-economic system developed 
      in the way it did.

    - How the behaviours, trends and social structures that are
      ill-thought of today would not reemerge in a new system.

( I prefer answers to the first that avoid conspiracy, and by answers
  to the second that avoid optimism. )

These ideas interweave to a considerable extent. The idea that the
hippies became the yuppies is a common one, and if correct, it
describes a process of social change that is not well understood in
terms other than the cynical. There were many attempts during the 60's
& 70's to (re)discover new/old models for social organization and
personal practice; the extent to which these were long-lived, and the
processes by which they developed, possibly into the very models they
sought to avoid, appears to me fascinating and compelling question for
those who believe that our society must change. The practical
experiences of these years may also contain substantive lessons about
what is possible, socially and technologically, as well as how change
occurs.

To research this book, I would very much like to talk or correspond
with people who were engaged in attempts to change their own lives
during the late 60's and early 70s onward. I have little or no
interest in activities that were primarily *protests* - much as I
value the efforts made to forge a "New Left" from the Civil Rights and
Vietnam War issues, there are already many books that look to this
period as a time of protest, rather than a source of possible.
solutions. I am much more interested in efforts to try to homestead,
developing solar and other "soft" technologies and organizing new (or
old) communities, for example.

Those who were or are involved in projects like the following are
particularly sought-after:

   The Briarpatch Network
   Libre, Drop City, Twin Oaks and other intentional communities
   The Whole Earth Catalog & Coevolution Quarterly
   McGill's alternative energy research
   The New Alchemy Institute (especially the Ark projects)
   Pacific High School
   the Domebooks, and Shelter I and II

Food coops, alternative medical institutions, and other economic
experiments are also very relevant. I may well start out looking at
the development of a local consumer co-op, Puget Consumer's
Cooperative, which has blossomed from a small food buying group into
an organization superficially very similar to local supermarkets.

Anyone with obscure literature (manifestos, newsletters, small-run
books, communal trivia) from this period that they are willing to send
(originals or copies) would be very welcome.

Suggestions for other works on this area are welcome - I hope that I
have already read many of them, but your ideas are welcome.

Finally, your own thoughts on the experiments and efforts of the
period (but not on the protests - this is well covered already) are
requested. I can't promise direct attribution, but acknowledgements
and thanks will be forthcoming.

Send any e-mail to:

	pauld@cs.washington.edu

and anything else to:

	4131 42nd Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98118

-- with thanks
   Paul Barton-Davis

ps. In case you're wondering about my background - I'm a 28 year old
    who, despite just scraping by the 1964 cutoff-date for baby
    boomers, only became aware of this stuff a bit after the fact. I'm
    closer to the so-called Generation X, stuck between the optimism
    of the boomers, and the cynicism and world-weariness of the
    children of the 70's, Reagan & Thatcher.
-- 
"Been there, done that
 Been there, don't wanna go back"
				John Cale & Brian Eno, "Wrong Way up"