Changing Society

“I have therefore come to the opinion that the most reasonable recourse for the humanization of society and its institutions is to abandon them and begin again to build a society with a just, equitable and compassionate economy with justice, equality, and reverence for all life insured by the goals and forms of all its institutions.”   -Manitonquat

In order to have a truly happy life we probably need to address three areas, at least, that affect our well-being. We need to feel good about ourselves, about our relationships, and about our society.

We need to feel good about ourselves first, to believe we are living our lives to the fullest, using all our potential talents and creativity toward some worth-while purpose balanced with fun, learning, and growth – a sense of always becoming more than we were.

We also need closeness with other human beings, relationships that are supportive and caring, in which we continue to learn and grow and expand our horizons. For myself, I discovered twenty-five years ago that the tool of co-counseling contained all I needed to work both on myself and on my relationships. It has also been easy to teach others and perfectly fits my world view of a being Creation in which all of us can learn to live in a good way.

We also need to have a pride in our organized society, which exerts powerful influence over our lives and fortunes. The majority of people believe they have very little control over the organization of that society, and they just try to get along in it without calling attention or injury to themselves.

I want to tell you about my way to change the society.

What’s wrong with society, in my view, is that it is organized as a pyramid, with power coming from the top down and the fuel that makes it function is fear. We who were raised in this society do not find that remarkable. Like goldfish raised in a bowl, we cannot imagine another possibility. The bowl gives them order, definition, safety. Anything beyond is unknowable, hazardous and threatening.

A society without a hierarchical power structure conjures chaos to our minds. Without an executive authority and a military or police to enforce that authority, we would live in continual fear of encroachment by others, of the loss of possessions and even of life or limb. But throughout history and before it, and down to this present moment, there have been innumerable cultures and societies that lived and live now in freedom, equality, and safety. Our problem has been a 10,000 year history of violence and greed that informs all our culture, our public and private institutions, our education, and tells us our only options are conformity or ostracism and isolation. So we escape into the culture’s diversions, into reading, viewing films and television, playing electronic games, drugs, shopping, isolating ourselves further.  We even go on vacations alone, or with only our nuclear family, never really getting close to other people.

But human beings are tribal by nature. People need closeness to other people. The greatest crime of our culture is to make us suspicious and fearful of each other. The importance of human beings in our lives is reduced to what goods or services we can buy or sell each other.

I saw that the society of my ancestors was fundamentally different from that of the dominant culture of today. It was a more human society. Its basis was in respect. Respect for life, for the earth, for all the earth’s dependents including the family of humankind. Native American society was rooted in the family and in our relationship to all beings. The extended family was the heart of the tribe and its attitude of respect and caring for all.

Most importantly, I saw that this tribal society based on respect which supported the family and all its members was a society that worked. It was a system that worked well for over a million years, whereas the civilization of today, only a few thousand years old, was clearly not working. It was coming down around our ears in violence and alienation.

The reasons for this became quite clear to me.  They were centered in the concepts of fear and domination that characterize the motivating forces of this society. Societies that worked well for all people were societies based on trust and mutual respect. The dominant culture of the world, whether capitalist or socialist, is dominant because it dominates. I don’t know which came first, the fear or the domination, but they feed each other. The institutions of society protect the domination of the earth and its resources by a few people. Every social ill we suffer is a result of that fundamental fact.

If we are going to fulfill our potential for love we must at the very least put an end to every form of human beings harming human beings. We must agree and be omitted to a simple, obvious moral necessity – that every child born to woman is entitled to a fair and equal access to the resources of the planet we all share.

These goals are what I have derived from the teaching of my elders about the Original Instructions for human beings, to live respectfully in a circle of equals and devote ourselves to the care of our children, our elders, and all people of earth, including our plant and animal relatives, our Mother Earth, and all the coming generations.

By grouping together in cooperative, sharing communities people can satisfy all their basic human needs with a fraction of the income it takes to survive individually,  and these communities can be further strengthened by bio-regional networking and trading. The more self-sufficient we become the less we contribute to the military and prison industrial complexes and to the oppressive economic injustice of obscene wealth and wretched poverty and the destruction of the environment by our consumerism.

The notion of living together in more communal closeness has been growing in the past decades, after a temporary revulsion from the chaotic confusions and dissolution of many of the communes of the 60s.  New, consciously designed communities are flourishing. Ecovillages are appearing everywhere.  Networks of communication among all these are broadening.

This is the area I feel has the most promise for changing the world. Unless society changes utterly from its foundation in power over, in punishment, violence, in the amassing of hegemony through the wealth of the few in the oppression of the many, unless we can breathe freedom, equality and fellowship in every breath we take, we will not be all that we long to be in human creativity, love, and joy.

I have therefore come to the opinion that the most reasonable recourse for the humanization of society and its institutions is to abandon them and begin again to build a society with a just, equitable and compassionate economy with justice, equality, and reverence for all life insured by the goals and forms of all its institutions.

Human beings stay human in their relationships to the extent they are close and know one another, which possible only in groups small enough for each individual to be heard and known to all members. Such groups, agreeing to respect and equality for each member, will be sure to look out for the welfare and happiness of all.

The way for large groups in society to provide for the welfare and happiness of all individuals is for those groups to consist of active small groups which have the power to safeguard their own interests. For a city that would mean many small neighborhoods consisting of even smaller circles, like the circles we call clans in this village vision, which would meet often and actively address the concerns of its members. A circle of representatives of these clans would oversee the governance of the neighborhood, and a circle of representatives from the neighborhoods would oversee the governance of the city. 

Many, probably most of the responsibilities of municipal government could also be handled within the neighborhoods, which would be like small villages. Education, recreation,  sanitation, health, law enforcement, and all the other functions that villages manage could be largely managed within those neighborhoods, with municipal departments facilitating cooperation among the neighborhoods and handling matters beyond their scope.

The important thing is to keep as much of the ordering and decision-making as possible in the smallest units where power is vested directly in the people. But more important even than the functional organization is the coming together of the people to open and follow their hearts together. In this way I believe even cities may become human and friendly, free from fear, corruption and injustice – really still villages that are concentrated together sharing resources and culture.

My book Changing the World is a vision of a village of the future, functioning tribally,  where each person of any age is a member of a smaller circle, or clan, which guides the whole and in which every voice is equal. Basic human needs of food and shelter and fuel and health care, as well  education and creativity, are supplied self-sufficiently within the community. 

For many years we have been making summer camps which  explore and function under this “Circle Way” system, and the response has been uniformly positive. The common comment at the end of camp is, “this is how human beings are meant to live together, how can we live this way for the rest of our lives?” 

We need to get closer. You and I – all of us. We need to take back control of our lives, our society, our earth. We need to communicate and open our hearts and minds to each other.  We need places on the earth where we can get closer to each other, to our families, our children, to be safe, to relax and slow down and get away from stress, to live simply without harm to others or to the earth, to play, have fun, create, get close to the natural world.  Without having to join any religious or political movement, follow any particular tradition or creed, but allow and respect and appreciate all the diverse ways that others engage in. It is such a beautiful world we have been given, we are endowed with such fantastic capabilities, and every baby born is a miracle, a delight, a shining star of hope for the future.

We have begun to approach the next step. We are having conferences in Europe now to begin to build our first Circle Way Village. (Contact us at circleway.org).

So I daydream now of this first Circle Way Village, and then of another and another and another, proliferating throughout Europe and spreading to other continents, around the world.  I dream of a network of Circle Way Villages that will communicate and learn from each other, help and trade with each other. There are already networks of various kinds of communities, spiritual communities, egalitarian communities, ecovillages, for instance, and I would like to see our Circle Way Villages join with them and bring all networks together to broaden and strengthen the tribal movement.

What is special about the Circle Way is how it helps us get closer to each other, to deal with emotions of all kinds, to encourage and appreciate the best in all of us, to listen to each one and work together to solve our problems, and to keep our children free from more of the patterns that oppressed us when we were young. I would like, as we have in the past, for people from our villages to be available to teach the Circle Way, to any group or community that requests it.

Here is an excerpt from my book Changing the World:

“This is certainly nice,” another of the group says, “But part of your vision here is to be a model for the world of peaceful cooperative living. You are only a thousand here, and there are, what – another thousand villages like it around the world?”
“Some are larger now, but none larger than 3,000.”

So maybe they could amount to three million or so in a while.”

“We have more visitors all the time, and more villages keep sprouting up.”
Say more villages might grow the number to six million eventually. But there are ten billion people in the world today - and growing.”

“Our idea is that when people notice how happy, how relaxed and safe we are here, and how much fun we have, creating instead of consuming, they will want to give up all the stress of the rat race and join us. With all the villages in every part of the world having more and more visitors, we figure the growth will be exponential at some point in the future and transform all of society’s notions. But we need to be growing slowly in order to learn and make it right. A lot of society’s problems have come from moving too fast and not seeing where we were going.”

“So the Circle Way grew quite slowly?”

“Naturally it didn’t happen overnight. We started from nothing but a dream and figured it out as we went along. Building homes, planting and harvesting, creating businesses for everything we need little by little. Slow growth – but that’s the easy part. Human beings are builders. It was the excitement of creating our own world as we want it that carried us over the lean hears. By sharing everything and inviting people to come and help we got by and it just kept getting better and better. Because we kept too the circle, stayed close to each other, kept on listening and caring and helping each other.

“And to the children. You know, when ever your energy gets a bit frayed, whenever you may feel a bit low, discouraged, wondering if it’s worth it, all you need to do is go hang out at the playground. Watch the little ones and restore your faith in the human race. Then join them, let them teach you to let go of your seriousness and just play. You will get your hope refill. And then you’ll be able to lose yourself in creativity and find your purpose again. We need the children to remind us who we are.”

Climbing onto the wagon we could hear the shouts and laughter from the playgrounds and the sport fields. We are all quiet. Thinking perhaps about when we might come back or visit another Circle Way Village, perhaps even join one and change our lives. Change the world. A whole society of fun and play and creativity, of closeness, friendliness and love”

As we pass under the gate and look back one more time we notice another sign with a quote from Manitonquat who long ago had a vision of a Circle Way Village:

TOGETHER THERE IS NOTHING WE CANNOT DO

Year End Report 2011

New and good: we’re back! I’ll be here in Europe just two weeks, Ellika will stay a month to visit family in Sweden. New and good to just rest and read and think and write, and hang out in Ellika’s sweet house in Christiania - no classes, workshops, camps to teach. I’m tired from the travel, but looking forward also to being with my boys in Berlin (it’s my grandson’s 8th birthday!) and seeing our circle family there too.

Important happenings: Cathrin and Stefan have a new son on Maui (we will visit them in March), Sonja and Tom are expecting in Berlin any day now, and dear Katrin and her Martin will bring a new circle member to the world in Sweden in March. Ah, babies! That’s what it’s all about! And mothers. And fathers. And family – all of us. A new seeker writes us, Susi, in Austria, mother of 10 year old son Io, reading about the circle and wanting to live that way, she’s ready to connect and be welcomed.

So my new book I’m writing is very timely – for them, for the world.

The working title is JOYOUS CHILD-CARING.

Or? maybe CHILD-CARING IN THE CIRCLE WAY. The material coalesced from a camp we did for our friend, the Montessori child psychologist Elena Balsamo. Her editor was there and suggested I do a book about what we were teaching.

Now I am into it I begin to realize this is the most important subject, work and book of my life. I guess one should hope that one’s latest work is the best. But I am now finding that this book I have embarked upon is taking me to my own Treasure Island. The map to this destination is being revealed to me piece by piece, day by day, as I ponder the wake behind me, the play of the dolphins and the waves around me, the journey of the stars above me, and the call of the horizon beyond.

It is not my dream alone, but that of humankind, which is being plotted and urged by these charts and daily log entries. Where we all must go, and how we must go. The voyage is not just the most important and central one of my life, its unfolding is the dream and destiny of this precious speck, the beloved tiny satellite we call home.

I hope to finish it by summer – if I can ruthlessly excise all distractions.

My health holds up. I play tennis three times a week (though I take more rests than I used to) work out with weights, do steam room, hot tub and sauna. My right eye is still full of blood and is scarred, gets shots in the eyeball every four weeks, but doubt is stirring whether it will ever be clear. I had a hearing test, qualify for a hearing aid, and hopefully also for financial assistance for it or else I won’t get one. You will just have to speak slower, louder, clearer! I am more tired and slower than I would like, but still have more energy than many younger men.


What else?

People ask, “How are you?” You say, “Fine.”

But sometimes they really want to know, and if you want to stay close sometimes you have to tell them all you are really thinking and feeling. So coming to the end of another year this is my report to those of you who really want to know.

New and good – waking this morning to see winter’s magic, a light coating of snow covering the earth and decorating every branch and twig on the trees. A white fairyland.

What is the situation for us here in New Hampshire? We returned from Europe to find our beloved Birch Cottage unlivable – mold in the bedroom walls, roof leaking, wiring rotten, our things all packed in boxes and stacked high in the other rooms. I don’t go out there except to find something, and then I must sit and weep again because we no longer have the community or money to restore our home.

So we have a nice room in the old main house – the room I lived in when we moved here thirty years ago. And I am concentrating on the only thing I can do by myself: writing my next book.

Our situation is that we have been trying to do this alone. When we had a crisis a few years ago many of you helped us with donations to save the place. I was so grateful, because for 30 years I have been able to keep my promise to be the caretaker of this beautiful land and keep it from falling into commercial hands. Our partner Donna did all the work to fight off the banks in the courts, as well as to reclaim four bedrooms, three bathrooms, the kitchen and living room of the main house, after the water damage of over $60,000.00 The rest of the house is unfinished still from the old fire in the nineties, and of course in these grave economic times that we are all facing (99%) it is far too much for us to restore by ourselves.

What could save it? People and money. Either one or both. With financial help we could restore the main house and our cottage. Then we could utilize the Great Hall for conferences and have about five more bedrooms plus a third floor dormitory. Then the place would be ready for the Nature School’s International Headquarters and Teacher Training Facility where we can teach, offer lectures and workshops as well.


It is amazing that we have held out this long, certainly with so much gratitude, it is due to all that have come to our aid in the past. Donna also operates “StressBusters” which is a small business working in the healing arts, and provides financial support to upkeep and maintain the place, and I add to that as a counselor for personal growth (Ellika and I each contribute what we have that supports us as long as we have a place to live) and we can continue of course to donate all our summer income to the Nature School and the prison programs that are based here. My new book Have You Lost Your Tribe? is out, available on circleway.org, amazon.com, and through bookstores, but I need to promote it, do readings, get reviews in papers and journals. If we can afford the publicity we might be able to garner enough interest in the public to save our dreams for this place. I can see it being a model of a Circle Way of life, of sustainable living, solar and wind energy, organic gardening (Donna has a quarter acre of organic garlic growing now) with nature trails through our woods for the public as well the Nature School, a model of a woodland Indian village, a museum and gift shop for tourists, and of course our conferences: Home Birth, Child Care, Home Schooling, Permaculture, Forest Management, Community Farm Sharing, Bio –Regional Cooperatives, Community Land Trusts, and Healing Arts.

It will be quite a while before we will be able to begin events to bring income in. Cynthia plans to seek grant money, which will also be quite a while in the future. For now we are set up as a non-profit corporation with the state so we can reach out for donations through Mettanokit, and every amount we receive will be welcome and well used to secure our dream here.

At the end of the year we have been hearing from so many of you how happy and thankful people are for our work both here and in Europe, and from many new circles and communities that have just begun together in our Circle Way. Halleluia!

I have a button on my cap that says “No one of us is as smart as all of us.” The corollary being that the more of us that think together the smarter we are.

There is a lot of stuff I know about. And I’m in pretty fair shape – with luck I can keep up writing and teaching for quite a number of years. I see how much my friend Pete Seeger, 10 years older than I, is staying close to home these days (he did go out to support Occupy Wall Street!), and I know I will start slowing down soon myself. But Ellika and I would still like to spend our winters in our woods with our wild animal friends and a fire in our wood stove and my thousands of books on the shelves around us (a big consideration for me if I ever have to move completely away!).

I want to keep traveling and helping folks get together in circles, to help each other build better lives, better relationships, make it better and better for our children, and I want to have a place still in America where I am close to my tribe, where ex-prisoners can come, where a small community could grow, where visitors could come and learn how to support each other and care for their children and add to the global network of those who are building a new world.

Our 2012 schedule so far is on circleway.org. I will update it now and then.

Happy New Year!
Manitonquat

New Book: Have You Lost Your Tribe?

Manitonquat's latest book Have You Lost You Tribe? is now available to order.

Description (from the back of the book):
Paradise on earth - your own idea of the very best life for you and your family. Is it possible or only a dream? This book shows it is not only possible but actually happening now all over the world in communities where thousands are now actively engaged in creating the life of their dreams. Manitonquat, a Wampanoag elder, storyteller, philosopher, poet and communitarian, shares his perspective as a tribal person that we are all tribal people. Human beings became human when they came together for mutual support and protection. For a hundred thousand years we evolved the best social system - the circle of equals, where all were respected, honored and supported. Most people today have little hope to affect a culture where a few own and control the resources of the world and its governments and are now destroying the environment through a global economy that makes the rich richer, the poor poorer, and all of us mere consumers and spectators. Quietly a few people have begun to leave that system and create free societies of people supporting each other and living sustainably close to the Earth, taking responsibility for making the best life for their children. As you read this book you may long for that too, and you will learn how you can do it. We can do it. Together there is nothing we cannot do. It is time.

It is time for us to settle and find our place on this Earth.

It is time to make a safe, free and loving home for our children.

It is time for a new world of compassion, peace and beauty.

It is time for a new vision of humankind.

It is time for the Age of Flowers.


Other books by Manitonquat are available here.

The Dark of Winter

We have passed the solstice, the longest night of the year, so we know the days are supposed to be getting longer, but in mid-January we don’t notice it yet. It still feels like the dark of winter.  A mysterious time, I go to bed early and sleep long, with many strong and strange dreams. Snow has fallen through the night and continues through this day. The air is full of it. The gusts of wind swirling about the windows are white. Little birds flit out of the woods to our feeder and disappear again.

A comforting flame dances behind the glass of my woodstove. It is time for rumination and introspection. It can be a sad time because in winter many lives give over the struggle, and they are taken from us. In Mashpee two elders have departed only last week. I was with an old friend on the tennis court of our fitness club on Thursday when he got tired, sat down on the bench and collapsed. He was rushed to the hospital but never recovered. The hardest loss, to me, was that of our old and devoted friend in Germany, Hubert – a victim to cancer. He was such a shining light, spreading his kindness and caring all around him. It was a joy to watch him playing in a circle with his two sweet little boys. At camp he would spend a lot of his time giving attention to all the children. I would tell others if they wanted to know how to relate to children: just watch Hubert.  It’s sad to think of his wife and sons now without him, but I know their lives and the lives of all of us who were close to him were touched and made larger and stronger because of Hubert Hüttinger.

So in the dark of winter our thoughts may turn on death and loss. At my age the thought of death is never far away. Not that I dwell on it for myself. But I have lost so many by now, not just elders, but most friends my age and many much younger than I. And I think, why? Why am I so fortunate to still be running around the tennis court, playing in my rock band, going into the prisons and traveling all over to be with so many who come to be with me and my wonderful wife. I can’t avoid the thought that the Creation has something more in mind for me to do and keeps me around to get at it. People ask what is my secret. And I don’t know. I say what Satchel Paige said, keep moving.  But I suspect it is really love. The love of my dear dear Ellika, my family, everyone I meet on the journey, and the journey itself, the world and all I do.  When I think of my own death it’s only in relation to all I want to do and have not finished. So much I still want to accomplish, to learn, to write – especially to write. I see the misery and confusion in the world, and I see the hope, and the dream of how it can be.  And I know how to build it. Like Rev. King I know I won’t be here to see the dream realized, but I want to leave sufficient notes of all I have learned and discovered for those who seek to build a truly human society.

So I dream in the dark – but another spring is coming soon.

Here We Go Into 2011!

Wishing each other a Happy New Year. We deserve it. You deserve it. It is not wrong to be happy. Your happy expression gives everyone a lift. If they are a bit depressed your happiness provides a contrast that helps them discharge. And you an sympathetic. Because you are happy.

There is a lot of misery in the world, but your being miserable wont help that at all. Being happy, you are balanced, calm, confident and clear to do things that help reduce human misery: oppression injustice, violence, for starters. Being happy you have a lot of love to give. Which, as we know, is “what the world needs now.”

Hope is reborn with the New Year. With good reason. The world has had a couple of wake-up jolts in the past decade. The terrible tragedies in New York and Washington in 2001 woke us to world-wide terrorism, affecting us still, how we live and how we travel. Our response has caused death and destruction to thousands without reducing the threat – in fact, spreading it wider.

And the unchecked greed in our system caused an economic crash that has thrown millions out of work and made thousands lose their homes, causing global suffering, anger and confusion

Now more and more people are aware that things are wrong and are looking for reasons and answers. And more people are communicating through the Internet and the media.  Information, facts and opinions fly further and faster than ever before in our evolution.

There’s lots of discussion. Lots of argument. And that’s good. But perhaps why we need most is to focus on our areas of agreement. And there we have great reason to hope. Because fundamentally all human beings want the same things. Everyone wants peace. Freedom. Security. Basic human needs – to be warm and dry and rested and nourished and healthy, and to have these things for our children and loved ones.


We only differ in how to achieve thee. But since everyone wants them it would make sense to support each other and help each other.

Jesus said, love your enemy. I say listen to your enemy and you both will discover you are not enemies.

Meanwhile let us just refuse to be enemies.

Windows of Hope: Climate Change in Copenhagen

YOU IDIOTS! Shouts the cover of Rolling Stone magazine for January 21, 2010. In blazing red filling a black background, with subtitles: “Meet the Planet’s Worst Enemies – Inside the Battle over Global Warming.” Heartening to see, as this journal is one voice of a generation not yet entrenched and calcified, a generation that announced a revolt from the status quo with new music and new values. I’m not sure how much impact this issue will have, as I had to drive 20 miles to buy it at a book store chain. But I wish millions would also find it, read it, tear off the cover or copy it and send it to Obama and everyone in the Congress.

The article describes how the right wing and big oil and coal producers spread misinformation and outright lies about the situation and spent vast amounts of money to make sure the US would do nothing to curtail CO2. They name the 17 worst polluters and deniers who do the most to derail all efforts to curb global warming.

I more or less knew all that, in general, but in reading the details I got so angry I had to chill and recall my wonderful experience in Copenhagen during the COP15 climate conference. So I guess I better tell you about that.

In the cold and the dark of December of 2009 the United Nations gathered a conference to plan how to counteract the growing threats to the planet. Most specifically the emissions by human activities of carbon dioxide which has unleashed the fastest chain of global warming in the story of life on Earth. There have been other periods of warming, but they happened slowly, gradually, through eons of time. The speed and intensity of this heating up is shocking, outstripping the direst predictions of the past forty years. It is caused by a now well-known and documented “greenhouse effect” of the sun’s rays penetrating a growing ceiling of CO2 that envelops the planet.

Around the world much hope was vested in this COP 15 conference, as it was dubbed. Knowledgeable people wanted solutions and action from the leaders of the nations. A hundred thousand people marched in the street to urge agreements from the conferees to save our planet before it is too late. Many of the Non-Governmental Organizations, who were turned away from the conference at the Bella Center, formed an alternative conference downtown.

It quickly became apparent that the conference would confound all our high hopes. There would be no cooperation, no compromising of the extreme differences between the rich and the poor nations. The developing nations want to develop and believe the wealthy nations should make greater sacrifices than those who are not creating the problem and are only trying to survive. Certainly the rich could afford sacrifices better than the poor countries.

Some of the young people from our European circles came to demonstrate, and marched to the Bella Center to try and stage a People’s Assembly to “give a voice to those who are not being heard.” The police informed them that the center was closed off, and when the crowd did not disperse the police chose to break up the demonstration even though the activists had signaled that they would not try to enter the venue after all but stage a gathering outside. Demonstrators were then pepper-sprayed and beaten with batons. One delegate shouted “We said we would be peaceful and you’ve reacted with violence. Shame on you.”

When a few of the crowd at the end of the march began throwing stones through business and government windows, the police surrounded and arrested the last 900 people, including our people and the Hari Krishnas! Linda and Rabea, our young women, had their hands manacled behind their backs and had to sit hours on the freezing ground before being carried to cages in a warehouse that had been acquired by the city for this event. All but three were released the next day.

It was not all failure. The day before the end the conference was deadlocked, and the discouragement was leaking out all over the city. Then Obama flew in and insisted that they go back and work harder, find some place to agree to something so it wouldn’t be a total disaster. And they did. They managed a tree-planting program that all nations could sign on to, and they agreed to meet again in a year in Mexico. The hope is that the people of the world will be so disappointed and disgusted and ashamed of the politics and economics of the status quo, that in a year there could be a new dedication, stirring cooperation and the will to sacrifice to meet the common threat to us all.

But there is a greater hope that I found emerging from Copenhagen during the conference – not from the COP15 meeting of the big guys at the top, but from the bottom, the little guys – us. In Christiania we organized an alternative meeting which we called “Windows of Hope.” Christiania, as perhaps you know, is a free haven of around 800 adults and perhaps 150 children that in 1971 was squatted by street people in an abandoned military base in the Copenhagen district known as Christianshaven. Eventually the then socialist government allowed the squatters to remain and called it a social experiment. That community has thrived for over 38 years now, and a whole generation has been born and grown and begun new families there. Ellika has lived there since 1979, and we have based our European travels from her house there since 1984.

In Christiania’s “Peace Meadow” we set up a circus tent, three tipis and 3 yurts, plus a heating system, indoor toilet trailer and a sauna. Several hundred people attended during the two-week period. I opened every day’s sessions with our traditional thanksgiving around a fire outside. Every day we had people from ecovillages and environmental groups, and from scientists and technologists who are actually addressing and doing something about the CO2 problem, and from many spiritual leaders. I learned so much every day that in spite of the failure of the COP15 it gave me hope for the world.

Ross Jackson, chairman of the Gaia Trust, started out with the warning that the COP15 would fail to make any meaningful agreements because, as Albert Einstein observed, you can’t solve a problem using the same thinking that created it.

The representatives of both the developed and the developing nations are still motivated by the same national and corporate greed that put us where we are now. The same selfishness and competitiveness and narrow thinking. For those who think in the modes of competition and domination there is no possibility of the cooperative thinking that is needed to save civilization for our grandchildren. They have not been taught by their elders to consider the unborn generations before themselves.

So the hope of the future falls on us, folks. It is up to us to educate everyone about the extent of the threat of global warming, the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic that will inundate major cities and obliterate many island and coastal nations, the disappearance of glaciers that are the main source of water in many countries, the warm-weather insects that will proliferate, with species invasions into new areas, eating up forest and field (such as the Asian tiger mosquito that carries diseases like Dengue fever and malaria) and bringing more disease and epidemics, the ever stronger and more frequent hurricanes such as devastated Haiti and New Orleans, the droughts which are already deadly in many places getting longer, and the wildfires, turning into infernos, wiping out habitats as well as trees and plant life that hold the topsoil, which is disappearing at an increasing rate. And the massive loss of trees speeds the warming ever faster, increasing the greenhouse cloud of CO2. The speed of the warming now is surprising the scientists that predicted it decades ago. The combination of these effects and its unpredictability makes the situation scarier and comprehensive action now more urgent.

And with all that, which any school child can plainly see, “those idiots” are trying to tell us that global warming is all a hoax of the tree-hugging environmentalists, there is no threat, and we can continue to exploit nature and people, burn up the fossil fuels and spew out carbon dioxide without restraint. Of course theirs is the noble motive of making themselves wealthy while the “tree huggers” have the strange and fuzzy motive of preserving life on this planet!

While the delegates to the COP15 were deadlocked in their mode of competition and narrow self-interests, corporate interests, and national interests, they allowed no input from the NGOs that held their own conference downtown. Even there, I was told, there was not so much clarity as confusion, and more competition than cooperation.

We drew fewer numbers to the bottom meeting, but those who came were sincerely interested to learn and solve the problems, to listen to each other and to give and serve, rather than to take and dictate. Some people came every day and a sense of community and comradeship in a shared purpose grew and nourished all who were there.

I offered circles informing about our work in communities, in ecovillages, in the Nature School, and in our prison programs, and was part of several panels of elders, including one of indigenous people.

I have long held the belief that the best hope for humankind is presented by the ecovillage movement, where people are empowering themselves to create alternative sustainable societies and reduce their carbon footprints by using alternative energies such as wind and solar, growing their own food organically, and by conservation, simple living, and recycling everything to the point of zero waste. I have been closely connected with a number of these communities, and have visited, learned from, and assisted many others. Right now there are thousands of communities all over the world that are developing their own ecological styles of sustainable living.

It was with immense pleasure that I reconnected with representatives from some of the ecovillages I have connected with over the years. With Findhorn, with which I was connected through Peter Caddy in 1974, with Albert Bates from The Farm in Tennessee where for the birth of our first son Emmy and I stayed and worked for two months in 1976, with Twin Oaks in Virginia, with whom our Mettanokit Community shared in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities in the 1980s and 90s, with Auroville in India, with which our community communicated by video mail and provided gatherings for their supporters at our conference center, with ZEGG, where I have been a close friend and supporter since 1992 and of which I am an honorary member, and Sieben Linden also in Germany, with Dyssekilde in Denmark and Tamera in Portugal, where I have made many circles and workshops over the years, and with Solborg in Norway and Damanhur in Italy where I have visited and was enchanted and delighted by their work and gifts to the world, and of course with Christiania, my summer home for 25 years.

There were others new to me, giving fascinating and inspiring accounts of their achievements: Krishna EcoValley in Hungary, the Valley of Flowers in Estonia, Brama Kumaris in India, the Sarvodaya movement of ecovillages in Sri Lanka, the Amsterdam Balloon Company, a city tribe, in Denmark Friland, Hertha Hjortshøj, Thy, Mors, and Tor Jordbo on the island of Fyn, the Ecovillage Network Ghana, Ecovillage Clareado of Brazil, the Brazilian Ecovillage Network, Wongsamit Ashram in Thailand, the Mali Peoples Center, and the Senegal Network of Ecovillages. We heard from many organizations such as the Global Ecovillage Network, Gaia Education, Ecovillage Design Education, Scrap Heap Mountain, The Green City, Earth Restoration Corps, the Nordic Folkecenter, the Global Peace Initiative of Women.

We learned about Transition Towns, Eco Agriculture, Permaculture, Biodymanics, Cradle to Cradle – making everything biodegradable or recyclable so there is zero waste. We learned about horse culture, about natural medicine and health provision, and about the living sea.

We learned about restructuring the global economy in the face of ecosystem overload, global warming, overpopulation, increasing inequalities, peak oil – all results of a dysfunctional political system with no global governance. We learned about a pluralistic perspective on money, about local currencies and mutual credit unions in ecovillages, and how we might establish a more sound and societally oriented financial system.

We heard about Forum that is used in several communities, and I gave a workshop to inform about the use of Co- counseling, which was fundamental to our Mettanokit Community and to our International Family Camps in tribal living. We had a panel on Conflict Resolution, and spoke of non-violence, civil disobedience, theater action, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Another strong contribution to our “Windows of Hope” was made by representatives of the Pachamama Alliance of South America. This global organization came about when elders of the Achuar tribe of Ecuador realized how threatened their lands and their very existence had become when the oil industry began to move in on them. They decided to reach out to the civilization that was portending their doom, and in 1995 some people responded to their plea. Together they built this alliance, Pachamama (Achuar for Mother Earth), to reach out to the people of the world.

olunteers like those who came to Copenhagen are now presenting symposia in man countries to inform the public of what is really going on, the effects of our materialist economy on ecology and the climate, on social injustice in the world, and on our personal happiness and spiritual well-being. I wish their program and also their film “Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream” could be seen by all people on Earth.

We addressed the issue of how we strengthen the economics in and between communities (ecovillages, transition towns, cooperatives, companies and cultural/political/religious groups in the city) in and across bioregions, through liberating local creativity.

We had ecumenical panels of representatives from many and various religious and spiritual groups, such as Andrew Harvey, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, Swamini Pramananda Saraswati, Dr. Dharmakosajarn, Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, Ven. Chan Wen, Sarko Andrecevic, Michael Kagan, Sheikh Saliou Mbecke, and Prachar Hutanuwatr and others. It was very encouraging to hear the unanimity of all these various religious traditions in coming together to act passionately to save our beloved planet. We could feel that spirituality may bind us, not separate us, to work together with mutual respect and love for the Earth.

Volunteer organizations from Holland and Germany came and fed the people good vegetarian fare every day for a small donation. Such a noble service – to feed the people! Hearing from some of the speakers about food issues I almost decided to become fully vegan. Almost. I decided it would be a major and more possible step for me to commit to organically and locally grown foods and animal products like dairy only from animals that were well treated and fed without chemical or fossil fertilizers. But I learned that the livestock sector contributes at least 51% of human caused greenhouse gas amd is responsible for more of that gas than all the world’s transport combined. That the world’s population of farmed animals will double in 50 years which would negate emission reductions from all other sectors. That a shift to plant-based diets would increase health and quality of life, reduce soil erosion and deforestation, reduce air and water pollution and loss of biodiversity, hunger and thirst, and animal abuses. So I can report to you that I am now eating and buying food much more consciously and carefully than before.

The actions of a small group of people who use black clothing to identify themselves and who travel to many events in various countries to protest the actions and systems of the rich nations produced continuing counter-actions by the police, who had been expanded for the occasion. I was glad that our house could be a haven for a number of young visitors fleeing the sweeping attacks of law enforcement. After the setting of fires in the street one night the police invaded Christiania and tear-gassed the conference site, the tent and the grounds around it, and a group of young Finns took refuge in our kitchen.

The acts of vandalism against the system by our beloved comrades, our brothers and sisters and children, are very understandable in the light of our frustration with the system, the injustices and inequality, the elitist disregard and exploitation of people, and the unremitting, unrepentant destruction of the home that belongs to all of us, to all life, our Mother Earth.

But these actions of violence, be they only against property, are counter-productive to the real and practical goals of making needed change and creating a truly human society that works for everyone and all life.

All violent acts are demonstrations of powerlessness. And we are not powerless!
We have the intelligence, the creativity, the stamina and the courage to achieve our goals when we get together. Together there is nothing we cannot do.

But violence by our allies makes it harder, distracts us from full concentration on our goals. Violence diminishes our effectiveness. That is hard to see, because it is violence that keeps the dominating systems in place. But I wish I could get all the proponents of violence into a history class. That includes terrorists and national political and military leaders.

The history of civilization is a history of violence which is anti-human and anti-life. I’m not going to go through the class here, but a study of history will show that violence has always and will always only create more violence. Whatever example of war, revolution, or domination you submit I can show you how the human objectives would have been reached more quickly without violence.

We can and we will surmount the hurdles that are created by the violence of our fringes, but we will reach our objective of a more human system faster when all of us are pulling together.

The violent actions of the few are a perfect example of internalized oppression, something that we native and indigenous people know a lot about, that keeps us distracted and fighting each other. The indigenous people’s representatives at Windows of Hope showed that their teachings provide a model for the world. There are over four hundred million indigenous people around the world who are attempting to continue their traditional ways that have helped them survive by harmony with nature and the spirit of cooperation, relatedness and responsibility for all Creation. We heard from natives of western Brazil who are working to preserve the forests of the Amazon, and from leaders of Andean tribes actively pursuing sustainable and spiritual relations with the Earth and all life. In most of Latin America the main contribution to climate change comes from destruction of the forests. Any plan to alter global warming has to include sustainable forest management. Burning to convert the land to agriculture and new settlement on indigenous territory must be stopped. The forests cannot be protected without the cooperation of the people living there and they represent the solution if their territorial rights are recognized and respected. The ones who understand best the way to preserve the environment are those who have lived there in balance with it for countless millennia.

One concrete result of the climate bottom meeting was the initiation of an international and inter-cultural network furthering the Pachamama Alliance. This will be a new kind of cooperation with indigenous peoples as a basis.

It is essential for all of us to encourage a fulfillment of the universal declaration of the human rights and the collective rights of indigenous peoples around the world, as well as respect and reverence for the Earth.

So it seemed completely appropriate that the final words and ceremony of the two weeks of Windows of Hope be given by Carlos Prado, indigenous leader from Bolivia, as well as Antonio Gonzales, director of the American Indian Movement for the west coast, and myself from the Wampanoag Nation of the east coast of Turtle Island (North America). The harmony among us and with the conference and all the international representatives felt good and important for the world.

Another result of this event was to give me further support in my belief that the clearest shortest route to changing all society to one that is just, equitable, compassionate, and which delivers the highest quality of life, is found in the ecovillage movement. It increases my resolve to work further in support of individual ecovillages and with the global ecovillage network, to complete the book of my experiences and insights in the world of conscious community building, and to speak and write more in encouragement of creating our own ecovillage based on those insights and experiences.

So now. Who is ready for a Circle Way Village?

Together there is nothing we cannot do.

Who wants to live together with Ellika and me?

Welcome Home!

Unstuck

I have a problem I wrestle with everyday. My vision is complete and clear. I know how every one of us might be able to live the lives we all long for instead of making the best of a badly formed society. And I can see the steps we could be taking right now to get started quickly in that direction. All I have been doing for the past forty years has led the way. But now I am stuck. I can’t take the next needed steps alone.

What we need is the kind of organization that the gurus were able to build in the last century. Remember? The organizing power of Meher Baba, Sai Baba, Yogi Bhajan, Maharishi, even Sri Aurobindo, and especially Osho. The trouble is, I am an anti-guru! The only one who spoke to my heart and mind was that other anti-guru, Krishna Murti, who refused the role of spiritual leader that was offered him. No one has offered that to me, well, a few do try now and then, but I refuse anyway.

Krishnamurti was a teacher, of course, as was Gurdjieff?, as is Thich Nhat Hanh, and they all managed to inspire organizations to continue teaching. I guess we have achieved that in a small way, due to the many of you have been organizing workshops and camps for Ellika and me every summer for 25 years. I am so appreciative of all that each one of you have done. I love you and I love our life of learning circles with you. But, I want more. I want to change the way we live. I want to live together and show the world, to lead the world to a better life for our children and enhance human evolution in the direction of all our hearts.

There are a few who are ready right now, have been for a long time, ready to go anywhere as long as we are together to build community the way we build our camps. There are communities that have invited Ellika and me to join, and I love them, but I want to start from scratch, as we do at camp, and have us in clans, listening and dreaming and planning and working and playing together in the Circle Way.

I have been thinking I need more time, need to write a few more books to explain how and why it works, and to promote them widely. Everywhere I am asked to speak now, all the people are excited and enthused to hear what we are thinking and doing. If we had a place we would start gathering people.

But it’s hard for me to write and to take care of all the business here. I don’t have a secretary or assistant anymore. We need an organization. People to organize the travels, the publicity, the promotion, the office work: accounting, paying bills, filing. We have a lot of potential here: a beautiful big old house that has ten living spaces, a large great hall for events, and an attic space that was a dormitory or could be small rooms, a big kitchen and another large room – all in need of work. We have ten acres of woods, a big backfield, camping area, garden, and a sweat lodge.

I have dreams for the land. In the past, we had many conferences, workshops, and camps here. We could again. I want to build an old Indian village for the Nature School and as an attraction to tourists. I want a gift shop, bookshop, art gallery. A restaurant. I want to make a nature trail with plaques describing the flora and fauna of the area. A small community could live here again. Down the road the Nature School has nine plots of land for building ecological homes and places for the homeowners families to come together and be a circle way ecovillage.

How could we get unstuck? Hmmmm. Well, in Europe if we had land somewhere suitable for camps where a small group could begin to live and work together and there was room for others to come and build, a few could start living and working on this together organizing camps and expanding with people who decide to stay and help build. ZEGG was fortunate to find a place ready to accommodate many people at once, when East Germany opened to the West. Tamera was fortunate to find a large piece of land in Portugal where they have been energetically building for over a decade. The stories go on for all the grand ecovillages, The Farm, Auroville Damanhur, Sieben Linden and so on – but all of those had a committed group of people ready.

Another start could be if one person came here to live with us and take some of the burden that Ellika, Donna and I now struggle with alone, we could make room for more people to come and build organization and community from here.