Comment

Comment by Jason on May 4, 2009 at 8:08am

Happy Beltane! Mayday!

Comment by Susan on April 5, 2009 at 10:44pm

Hey Farmies, I just saw some of you on "Visions of Utopia 2"! Great stuff, not that I needed any more inspiration to visit....see you this summer!

Comment by Alan Graf on March 26, 2009 at 4:19am

The De-Evolution of Idealism

My mom and dad lived through World War II. Dad went off the fight
in the war and like many Gis, when he came home, he was focused on
raising a family and making it financially–the American dream.
Many of our mom and dads were obsessed with the financial success
of their kids. They badly wanted them to be doctors, lawyers,
and/or nuclear physicists. They wanted more than ever to live
vicariously through the success of the next generation-to make up
for the deficiencies and hard times of the War generation.

And some of us, as the next geners and baby boomers, didn’t buy
into the plan. Instead we became idealistic hippies, ready to give
up the pleasures of materialism for something more elusive and
less self-centered. Many of us saw the fundamental flaw in the
plan which centered on ME and instead we believed that a vision of
idealism which centered on the greater good, was the path that we
should journey on in our life’s quest.

Some of those idealists started or later joined the Farm in
Summertown, Tennessee with the hope of putting together a model
community based on the highest of ideals. Many of us hoped that
our example could be a beacon and flag ship for humanity as it
struggled with its own deficiencies, collective illusions and ego.

Fast forward thirty years into the future–the now. Did those
ideals and idealists survive? I remember for years my mom would
not tell any of her friends that I lived in a commune in
Tennessee. But as soon as I went to law school, she was literally
giving out my business cards on the corner in Flushing, NY,
bragging about her son the lawyer.

Hmm, did I finally see the light, and give up far fetched notion
of idealism for pragmatism? What about my other fellow idealists?

I lived for a few years in Guatemala. In Guatemala in the
eighties, the plantation owners sons and daughters were in the
streets and in the hills fighting and protesting against the
oppression of the landowners against the indigenous population.
When those sons and daughters reached the age of thirty or older,
many of them would return to the plantation, to join their parents
and become the next generation of oppressors. Is idealism a mere
spark in the lifeline of a human being, to become extinguished by
old age?

Here on the Farm, there are some of us idealists who have become
what they would term pragmatists. As we get older, it seems that
the non-extended family unit becomes more important and essential
to our life and sometimes livelihood. We circle up the wagons and
gather our immediate family together who we can depend upon for
their loyalty and for their long-term understanding of our own
imperfections and faults. In other words, in many cases, despite
our misgivings, we can depend upon the inner family’s love and
support particularly through hard times. So, we focus and put
value on our “own” while putting less value into the extended
family–e.g. humanity as a whole.

The idealists see humanity as one big family where there are no
smaller family lines drawn. In other words, racism, has no place
in the idealistic view.

Does age destroy or extinguish idealism–the view that we are one
family on this earth? Is young and unfettered idealism simply an
illusion of immature youth or is it the seed of humanity’s only
hope for long term sustainable existence?

The experiment is still in process. The results are not yet in.
Stay tuned.