Bill Coperthwaite: Yurt Builder Extraordinaire

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PLOWBOY: And what's your criterion for "better"?

COPERTHWAITE: A good society is one that enables every member to attain optimal growth. I hope we can evolve a culture in which everyone can be intensely involved in his own development: to do meaningful work, to use his capabilities, to feel self-confidence and self-esteem.

At the Yurt Foundation, we're trying to help our civilization move in that direction by encouraging the process I call social design: a process in which every person makes himself responsible for examining a variety of cultural elements and putting them together in a pattern, that fits his own needs. The contribution the foundation can make is raw materials . . . a reservoir of alternatives from which the individual can choose.

Our options for social design come not only from other cultures, of course, but from within our own. We've got to be able to look at our relationships with people, with animals, with objects, with books, with the movies . . . and reevaluate these relationships and put them together in different combinations.

Everyone's pattern will be different, of course. For myself, I'm excited about living close to the land because contact with the primary forces of nature is the best way I know to build a more stable life. However, the Yurt Foundation will be collecting knowledge that can make possible all kinds of lifestyles . . . not just those that appeal to me personally. Each person can use the raw data to fit his own needs.

PLOWBOY: You've had intensive exposure to other cultures, of course, with all the traveling you've done. Did the idea for the Yurt Foundation grow directly out of that experience?

COPERTHWAITE: Not really. The foundation developed from an earlier plan of mine for a school-centered community here at Bucks Harbor . . . that's what I bought the land for. At that time I thought early education was the key to social change . . . I wanted to provide a learning atmosphere that would help children grow into adults who were capable of sound economic, social, political and moral decisions.

Then I began to have doubts about the school project, and about the whole child-centered approach. It struck me that the one thing a child growing up today lacks most is the opportunity to listen to serious adult conversation. There are times when kids should be seen and not heard. Group life that revolves around a child — with everyone sitting and listening to him all the time — doesn't necessarily help him to grow.

Many adults (including teachers) are spending a lot of time as professional baby sitters, taking care of children instead of being concerned with our own growth. I believe, though, that a youngster who grows up among people who are excited about their own creativity and intellectual development has one of the best learning environments imaginable.

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