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When Upton Gerry and Diotima Mason decided to build a commonwealth community there were at that time 18.6 million homes in America standing empty, the highest number in U.S. history.
The criminal cabal that had seized control of America in the early decades of the twentieth century had looted $3 trillion from US taxpayers from war profiteering wars and over $9 trillion in bailouts of criminal financial enterprises. Banks and mortgage companies had defrauded workers of $10 to $15 trillion in mortgage payments and the value of their repossessed homes, but the workers were being palmed off with $300 "relief" payments.
In America at that moment in time--because of the capitalist "system:"
- Every 2 minutes a baby was born into poverty.
- Every 7 minutes a baby was born at low birth weight.
- Every 15 minutes a baby was born to a mother who received late or no prenatal care.
- Every hour a baby died before turning one.
Diotima and Upton were among the few Americans who realized that the U.S. had become a totalitarian police state, debased into a militaristic aggressor nation, and its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq pretexts for war profiteering and world economic conquest. America had fallen to the status of a global destroyer and American Constitutional freedoms were being decimated on an ongoing basis.
From their contining study of the world situation, Upton and Diotima understood that capitalism is a totally failed, unfixable system which is rapidly destroying the world through murder and corruption. People worldwide, they discerned, must arrive at the awareness that fascist capitalism is no longer an acceptable or viable economic system--that we must replace it with a new commonwealth order.
So this retired American couple decided to do something to try to save America from devastation by predatory capitalism.
They knew that it would be impossible to transform, in a single step, the entire nation from production-for-profit capitalism into a production-for-use commonwealth system, because the cabal would never relinquish their total control of U.S. economic and political power. Most American people, they realized, are so conditioned by capitalist principles of greed, corruption, and unbridled competition, that they lack the values and skills required for a cooperative society. The only way to move toward a commonwealth would be to create a series of successful small cooperative communities and gradually leaven the larger society.
That Has Such People In It! They understood that the majority of Americans had been debased into mental morons by the cabal's destruction of the entire American educational system and their brainwashing and propaganda. So they didn't suffer from the naive delusion that the workers of the world would suddenly, somehow miraculously, come awake to their devastation by global
capitalism and seize the reins of political and economic power, spontaneously creating a beneficent Brave New World.
Diotima and Upton agreed with Erich Fromm that "a new society is possible only if, in the process of developing it, a new human being also develops . . . if a fundamental change occurs in contemporary Man's character structure."
Both Upton and Diotima had been involved in small experimental communities in the 1970s so they knew from personal experience that building a genuine cooperative group requires screening and training. Only the appropriate kind of person could participate effectively in a cooperative community, so persons would need to be screened and then successfully complete a carefully-designed training program. What had wrecked all the American nineteenth and twentieth century small community experiments had been untrained, presumptuous, egomaniacal participants who believed they knew enough without needing any prior training.
Their previous experience in small communities had also convinced them that only competent, successful persons are capable of effective participation in cooperative ventures. Engaging in their accustomed mode of dialectical interchange in considering this question, Diotima and Upton concluded that a person or a couple would need to have exceptional reasoning capabilities and substantial net holdings to be involved in the commonwealth community they were building, sufficient to be willing to invest $50,000 in the enterprise. They didn't want to be forced to deal with irrational, incompetent persons who had not been intelligent and resourceful enough to attain a high degree of personal development and success--hence the screening test and training program.
Looking Forward The best way for them to develop a new community, Upton and Diotima decided, was to move to a small town, announce the community on the Internet, screen and train applicants, create the structure for the cooperative, and gradually take control of the town, transforming it into a commonwealth community. There wouldn't be anything underhanded about this procedure. As members were screened, trained, and admitted to the cooperative, they would unostentatiously buy homes and businesses or professions in the town, becoming residents and active citizens.
Diotima and Upton were then living in La Mesa,
a small city just west of San Diego. The municipal Web site described La Mesa as"the "Jewel of the Hills." But La Mesa's population was 58,000 and Diotima and Upton wanted to start their cooperative community in a small town of not over 3,000 population.
They decided they wanted to remain in California--they'd both grown up in the Mid-West and had had enough of cold, bleak weather for a lifetime. After extensive search on the Internet for the ideal small town in California, they narrowed their choices to three locations: one in Humboldt county, one in Sonoma county, and the third in San Luis Obispo county. They visited each town, remaining for several days in a local motel to get the feel of the population and the locale.
They finally selected the small town of Outlook in San Luis Obispo county, because its population was just under 3,000, the people seemed pleasant and friendly, and a citizens' group in the town had recently succeeded in forcing the repurchase of its municipal water system from a European corporation that had bought it in 2002 during a state-wide privatization mania.
They placed the cooperative community announcement on their Internet blog site even while they were beginning their move from La Mesa to Outlook.
Somewhere In reply to their announcement, Diotima and Upton received the kind of responses they'd anticipated. The screening test linked to the Cooperative Community announcement appeared to work as planned. Using Internet document hit counters, they determined that about the same number who read the announcement went on to take the screening test, but less than half of the people who took the screening test passed it and went on to apply for the training program. Several irate persons emailed to call them communists, elitists, or fascists; another declaimed that she was not in need of any training in anything, since she was a member of Mensa, thank you very much! The negative responses convinced Upton and Diotima even more of the need for a screening and training process.
During the first week they received a score of serious replies from persons who appeared to understand what Upton and Diotima were doing, and they kept pouring in.
Over a dozen applicants proceeded through the screening and training procedures, bringing them to the next phase: being invited for a personal interview. A few persons failed in the training program, retaining their delusion that freedom meant believing whatever they felt like believing, repudiating the need for proof or evidence for their ideas.
Emily Blake was the first person who passed the screening and training process and whom Diotima and Upton invited for an interview; she had been living in Santa Rosa, California. Emily was a real estate specialist and she had been a college literature and music teacher. Upton and Diotima interviewed Emily while they were still living in a motel in Outlook, speaking with her while the three of them lounged on a lofty aerie perched on a mile-high ridge not far from Outlook that Diotima and Upton had discovered during their hiking trips.
Emily had never before experienced dialectical interchange, but she proved to be extraordinarily perceptive and discerning, and after completing the training program was tentatively admitted into the cooperative. Diotima and Upton had chosen her specifically for her skill in real estate and teaching because they wanted her to either join a local real estate firm or form one of her own, to assist the other applicants as they arrived to buy homes in Outlook.
Being single, Emily was able to relocate immediately. She joined a small real estate office in Outlook and began to assist Upton and Diotima to find a suitable home.
They traded their costlier home in La Mesa for a larger-size, smaller-priced foreclosed home in excellent condition in Outlook. The home included some acreage, sitting back from the road, with trees surrounding it, and bordering a small creek.
Two of the required features of the property they bought was that it have its own spring with potable water and solar panels on the house roof providing most of the electricity for personal use. Upton and Diotima realized that the cabal ruling America could at any time provoke a total economic-political breakdown, so they planned for their personal and community survival.
Patrick and Julia Mercer were the first couple to be invited for an interview. They were living in Athens, Georgia and drove to Outlook in the latter part of July. They stayed in a local motel and joined in extended dialectical interchange with Diotima and Upton in their home and while the two couples sat on the mountain aerie. Julia was a high school science and mathematics teacher and Patrick was an information systems technician with an Athens telecommunications firm.
This was the first time Julia and Patrick had ever experienced dialectical interchange, and they were fascinated by how the process created an atmosphere of extraordinarily open, honest communication while generating an enigmatic joining of psyches in a type of mystical oneness. Upton and Diotima explained that they employed dialectical interchange during the online chat part of the training program and would be using the same process to interview and train all applicants for the cooperative community, since it allowed them to discern a person's essence.
Julia and Patrick were excited about the prospect of joining Diotima and Upton in the enterprise and asked what would be their next step. They had enough money saved to carry them through the transition phase, so they could begin the process of selling their home in Athens while preparing for the move to Outlook. Julia decided that before returning to Athens she would apply for a full- or part-time teaching position in the local high school. The company Patrick worked for had a nearby branch and he applied for and received confirmation of a transfer.
Patrick and Julia looked at a number of homes, using Emily as their real estate agent, and found just the right home for their--and the cooperative's--needs.
Over a period of six months, Diotima and Upton interviewed and trained nineteen persons, accepting thirteen of the nineteen: five couples and three individuals. They selected applicants based on their specific skills and their attitudes toward cooperative living. The list of applicants continued to grow, but they decided to complete the relocation of the persons already tentatively admitted. The relocation and initial participation in forming the cooperative would constitute a further evaluation process. It had been made clear to all persons that they had been tentatively accepted but that final admission would occur when the cooperative had been formed and all members had voted them into full membership.
All persons tentatively admitted to the cooperative agreed to proceed on that basis and within another six months they had all relocated to Outlook. Upton and Diotima began meeting regularly with these thirteen people to define, plan, and create the commonwealth cooperative. One of the prerequisite readings for this process was Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward.
To Chapter Two
