An idea for mother's Research center
Mother offers suggestions and improvements for proposed center.
I agree with Dr. Borsodi (MOTHER NO. 26) and other people you have interviewed about the urgency of the world situation. Many of us can see that the whole social, industrial and bureaucratic order must be changed if we are to survive . . . and it appears to me that those who see this necessity should be doing something about it.
I think your project for a research center is a fine idea but doesn't go far enough. For me, it's essential that such an establishment should be a demonstration of rural, democratic, decentralized, ecological, organic living. This country is in great need of proof that "utopian" groups can make it (and, in fact, are not utopian at all in the usual sense of the word).
I propose that—instead of just carrying on research and continuing the publication of THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS ® —you get together a decent number of people (say up to 5,000) and show that it's possible to live and produce one's needs in a sane and responsible way. This could be done by having 1,000 families invest $10,000 each and move gradually to the place selected, so as not to overburden it. If any person or family refused to work, stole or disrupted the community, the group could vote the troublemaker out and refund the money in some manner previously agreed upon.
I believe that there are a sufficient number of people who would be willing to invest their money, skills and hard work in such a venture. My wife and I, and our son, are among them, and we'd work like the devil to make it happen. The alternative for folks like us is to go it alone, or maybe with a few friends or people we contact through MOTHER. Many seem to be taking this course, isolating as it is. Self-sufficiency on this level is a satisfactory way of life for us . . . but if things are really as serious as I think they are, we should be making a maximum effort to put our ideas into action on a larger scale.