Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Utopia (part ii)

Episode Date: December 20, 2017

Our series continues with ToE’s Andrew Callaway reporting from an off the grid fully sustainable little piece of heaven called Earthaven. Plus Will Wilkinson on Libertopia and the limits of Ideal Theory. **********************Click on image for more links and information******************  

You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. At Radiotopia, we now have a select group of amazing supporters that help us make all our shows possible. If you would like to have your company or product sponsor this podcast, then get in touch. Drop a line to sponsor at radiotopia.fm. Thanks. episode. Why is there something called influencer voice? What's the deal with the TikTok shop? What is posting disease and do you have it? Why can it be so scary and yet feel so great to block someone on social media? The Neverpost team wonders why the internet and the world because of the internet is the way it is. They talk to artists, lawyers, linguists, content creators, sociologists, historians, and more about our current tech and media moment. From PRX's Radiotopia, Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet.

Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called Utopia, Part 2. I was working as a tour guide at Joseph Smith's house in Nauvoo, Illinois, giving tours to Mormons. And I lost my religion that summer while I was reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. And I ended up getting really interested in libertarian philosophy. Ayn Rand may have robbed Will Wilkinson of his religion, but she provided him with something new to believe in, libertopia. During those early years when I was sort of captivated by a pretty radical idea of libertarian political theory,

there was this vision of a perfectly free society. Will's devotion to Libertopia led to years of university. First he got an M.A. in philosophy, and then he enrolled in a Ph.D. program. This is when his attention turned to John Rawls and ideal theory. Rawls has been the kind of dominant liberal political philosopher of the 20th century. His method became kind of the standard thing, that you have to start out doing ideal theory. You have to create a vision of perfect justice so that you can see where you're headed, so that you have something to aim toward. Instead of focusing on the problems and shortcomings of our political systems as they are, ideal theory allows you to envision what the world could be or what the world should be. One of the intuitive things about ideal theory is you don't want to bake

the level of selfishness and self-dealing and racism and sexism. You just don't want to like bake it into your idea of what people can do because that's going to constrain what you're, you know, what you think you can get to. And I got really interested in those questions. Like, what is the best people can do? Like, what is the best you can expect? As Will was toiling away on his dissertation, the political blogosphere exploded.

The internet, he happily discovered, was a much more satisfying venue to present his ideas about Libertopia. And so when the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, offered him a job, he decided to leave academia. The Cato Institute is famous for its Freedom Index, a ranking of countries according to principles of liberty and personal freedom. But working on these rankings put Will's commitment to ideal theory to the test. Our pool of data about how systems work comes from history. It comes from just contemporary experience. So all the empirical data we have about what works and how social systems work comes from systems that have existed.

And if you're positing some system that has never been tried, and it's actually quite a bit different from any system that has been tried, you are not going to be well justified in your conviction that it's better than other systems. You can't be doing anything more than just guessing. As Will's dedication to ideal theory began to wane, he started seeing the world as it is differently. You know, the United States of America looks awful in libertarian terms relative to Libertopia, right? Like, but you don't have any reason to believe

Libertopia would actually leave anybody freer. But when you get rid of the ideal theories, Right? Like, but you don't have any reason to believe Libertopia would actually leave anybody freer. But when you get rid of the ideal theories, if you get rid of those visions of perfection that you're using as, you know, the standard, you start to see that, well, actually, things are pretty good. People are, you know, freer than they have been. Will Wilkinson is no longer a passionate advocate for Libertopia, but he hasn't lost his passion for his beliefs and values. In fact, now that he's moved on from ideal theory, he sees more that can be done now, today, in the service of those values.

I don't think that giving up on ideal theory means giving up on moral passion. Be passionate about the bad shit that's actually happening, right? Like be passionate about correcting those injustices. You know, if Ayn Rand gets to you first, you might become really sensitized to issues of liberty. But like you can throw away all of it and still care just as much about liberty. And you can care just as much about people having their freedom trespassed against.

Like I still get outraged by like, you know, like eminent domain or something. Somebody just gets their house taken away so like some rich guy can build like a shopping mall or like civil forfeiture where the cops just come along and just like take all the money out of your car because they suspected you of being a drug dealer. But then you weren't. But then you can't get your money back. That is just like the government stealing from you. And you can do something about it. Like I get mad about like occupational licensing requirements, which are little cartels that keep less privileged people out of labor markets. My sort of like – my libertarian conditioning gets expressed in all sorts of issues. But I'm not really relying on some kind of like big picture theory to tell me

what those things are. Will Wilkinson is a writer and the vice president for policy at the Niskanen Center. So when I first decided to do this series on utopia, my original plan was to do nothing but ideal theory. Because, well, the world as it is, is pretty terrible. And let's face it, even if you do believe that we're better off today, more free, more equal, well, you also have to acknowledge that the folks in charge

are hell-bent on reversing course as fast as possible. This is why I can't help myself. I can't help but drift towards the ideal. Of course, I know Will Wilkinson is right. It is pretty much all over for ideal theory. We're never going to get anywhere building anything based on how the world could be. I mean, just look at all the online communities we've built over the past decade. Places built using rules of how things should or could work. The folks responsible for these places refused to take into account that people would be tripping over themselves to game the whole system. And I'm not just talking about the strong financial incentive to commit ad fraud.

These communities are cesspools because the folks who built them were in denial about what kind of people we are. So, okay, we'll refrain from doing any more ideal theory for the rest of this miniseries. But the idea of the retreat? I'm not ready to let that one go. And it's why TOE producer Andrew Calloway is still traversing the country. And for this installment, he reports on his visit to Earth Haven, an intentional community just outside of Asheville, North Carolina.

This is the hydro. All it is is water that is caught in a creek. I'm at Earth Haven an eco village carved into 329 acres of forest Linden my tour guide is showing me their new micro hydro starts with a four inch pipe Goes down to a two inch pipe Earth Haven psyched about this new hydro because now they don't have to be as careful about using up all their electricity from the solar panels at nighttime or on cloudy days. And water hitting from both sides of the turbine spins, makes electricity, makes 12 amps roughly to 15 amps. Unlike the farm

with their no solar power and no farm, Earth Haven's got all the stuff Utopia's supposed to have. That's why Lyndon's here. I chose Earth Haven because it was full-featured, it was off-grid electricity, and it was off-grid with water. Those two are massively big for my decision. Right now, Earth Haven has over 50 people living across seven housing settlement neighborhoods. We're going to come up on our housing neighborhood.

The final plan calls for 150 members living in 14 neighborhoods. These are all the little huts, and they're bigger huts. Earth Haven's an ambitious project, also a big draw for Lyndon. That's a lot of culture, and that's a lot of economic opportunity. There are already a number of businesses on site, like the Yellow Root Farm, which sells eggs and produce. Corn, squash, basil. And the place where Lyndon works, the useful plants nursery.

You won't find anything in here that is a tulip from Holland, for instance. Ain't got none of that. You know, we got things that are useful and mostly edible in some ways. Every piece of earth haven serves a purpose. The whole place was designed to work like the wilderness did before humans messed it all up, even down to the very path we were walking on. This is the old path. We're finally getting it right. The old path went straight down the hill. The new one follows the natural shape of the land. This path honors some of the principles of permaculture. Permaculture is the philosophy that holds Earth Haven together. The term was coined in the late

70s by two white guys studying the permanent agricultural systems of indigenous people. They're curving it, right? Any water that comes, it's caught by all this brush and sucks it into the ground. Permaculture means working with nature instead of fighting against it. The new path, Linden pointed out, curves like a mountain road in order to prevent erosion. It's funny the word erosion is similar to the word road, because a lot of roads erode. Hi, Andrew, Courtney, nice to meet you. Further on down the path, we ran into Courtney, who was harvesting okra. We're the same age, but she's been studying ecovillages all over the world for years. For her, permaculture means permanent culture. Because it's not just about working with the ecosystem.

It's about making every part of their culture function like one. Tending land is a mission, you know? To grow enough food to sustain yourself is a mission. And in order for a group of people to be together working side by side in an altruistic way, it's like we have to revamp the way we're interacting socially. And there's a whole branch now called social permaculture that's looking mostly at people.

Social permaculture turns to nature for clues on how society should operate. Nothing in the ecosystem has paid off its debts. When you look into the forest, it's like some plants are feeding the birds and some plants are giving them a home and some plants are holding the soil down. And imagine if one little tree was trying to do all that by itself. Every single thing is dependent on something else. And that's how the humans at Earth Haven are. Mutual indebtedness. But the old way of doing things is hard to shake off. We get trained by institution all of our life to be competitive so that it fuels the consumer economy.

My roommate said to me the other day, like, how about we get a cow? And I was like, no, no, because somebody here already has cows and I buy milk from them. In order to build a new interdependent society, Earth Haven needs people who are able to walk the edge between the new culture, cooperative culture, sustainable culture, and this dominator culture that we find ourselves in. Patricia is one of Earth Haven's first settlers. And she told me edges are central to permaculture. For example, at the edge of a creek where it overlaps with the land, you get a wide variety of species. And in an ecosystem, diversity is key to productivity. But the wrong kind of edge can totally destroy an interdependent system.

Obviously, when you put out the word, the vibration out there that you want edge critters, you get the edges you're looking for and you get some other, in my opinion, rather dysfunctional edges. Earth Haven turns away a lot of edges. Like the elderly homeless population looking for a place to retire. I want to live in community because I'm going to be dying and I need somebody to take care of me and I have a social security check. And single parents. Here, here's my kids. Take care of them. We do want to take care of your kid and heal you of all your traumas, but unfortunately, we can't. I learned I'm a bad edge, too.

The utopia seekers, the folks who think that we've already got utopia here and they're just ready to move in. It's like, where'd I put my hammock, you know? At Earth Haven, they want people who are capable and ready to do the hard work of building utopia. Oh, there's an ugly expression, but I'm going to go ahead and say it anyway. You know, the pioneers, when they were heading west, they did not throw the cripples onto the back of the wagon. If they had to, they'd drug old grandma on her deathbed across the prairie. But basically, this is a pioneer deal, and we need incredibly emotionally mature, strong people. When Benjamin sent me out on this road trip, my assignment was to find us a utopia.

Not necessarily a place to just put up our hammocks, but definitely a place we could escape to. That kind of thinking doesn't fly at Earthaven. Utopia is a distraction from the deeper purpose of life. It's actually what got us in this trouble in the first place, the pursuit of a perfect world. Chuck Marsh is one of the founders, and he really doesn't like it when people come to Earthaven in search of utopia. Utopianism is about creating an ideal, you know, the Garden of Eden.

We can't live in the Garden of Eden. Obviously, it was too much for Eve and Adam to handle it. Perfection is not what we're after here. It's a selfish imperative. We have to get down into the grit of life. And that means loving life back where the web of life has been ripped asunder. Searching for utopia, Chuck told me, means giving up on what we already have. Permaculture is about maintaining it. A house that's not maintained, a life that's not maintained,

a culture that's not maintained, will squander and fail. We need to learn to value maintenance again, because maintenance is love. At Earth Haven, everyone seems to have their own definition of permaculture. But Chuck got me to see its full potential. Permaculture could save the world. We have to take charge of designing our way out of this existential dilemma that we find ourselves in here in the 21st century, facing the extermination of humanity. It's going to require deep vision driven by design.

This is why the permaculture design community has so many gifts to offer us. Like it's just basically this one big world that you get to live in. It's not like the regular world. It's a world inside of the world. That's Aiden, one of the many kids I met when I was wandering around Earth Haven. She grew up here and likes it way more than the outside world. I don't know, it's not so repressive. Like, if you really need to go to the bathroom, you can go in the middle of the woods. You know what I mean? In fact, she loves it so much, she's planning really long term. This is an amazing place, and I totally want to raise my kids here.

My mom's going to give her house to me until I build my own house, and then we'll have our houses next to each other on the land. And then when she dies, I get both of the houses, and then I get the land. Everyone at Earth Haven has a 99-year lease. But there are some questions about the validity of these leases in the eyes of North Carolina law. So there might be a problem with Aiden's dream. When somebody's not happy and they want their money back, Earth Haven's very vulnerable. That's Jeffrey, an officer at Earth Haven. This vulnerability that he's talking about

is why the community has set out to do a restructuring. At Earth Haven's weekly potluck dinner, he explained it to me and a Danish guy who was also visiting. I find it really refreshing, that set up where you can pass it on to your children if

that agreement was consistent with North Carolina law I would agree with you it is not what's the legal issue is it the 99 years thing is it more complicated than that so let me back up there's a deed and there's a lease. Two different legal documents. I got something that looks like a deed, therefore you own it. Ah, but you only have a lease, you don't own it. Earth Haven owns it. And that's our current problem,

and we've been working on fixing it for the past six years. We haven't been able to take a member for six years. No new members. We're floundering here. For Patricia, the restructuring is putting everything Earth Haven's worked for at risk. Because in order to complete their plan of interdependence and self-sustainability, they need another hundred members. Nobody can build a home.

They can live here as a guest, a renter. But they want a homestead and get their gardens and their perennials and their chickens. And, you know, some people have left to go someplace where they could go and plant their perennials next month. The restructuring should be over soon, Patricia told me. But she is crestfallen about all the time and energy wasted on bureaucracy and lawyers. We've invested way too much energies in our governance. So has Chuck. You know, we spent a huge amount of times in

decision-making and committees and sucked energy away from actually getting stuff done. So don't get caught in that pit. It seems to me like Aiden's already got something way more valuable than a deed or lease. Just from growing up at Earth Haven. It's like this sort of paradise where you're just like Donald Trump and like and everything like that is like outside and you're just like talking about primitive skills and they're talking about who's gonna run the world. She's got permaculture in her blood. Get to know your neighbors and like talk to them and then

maybe you should work together instead of like being like okay this is my house this is your house this is my property line of my land this is your property line of your land and don't go on my land or I'll sue you. Maybe you should combine and then you get more

like more like land if you're together you know what i mean earth haven feels like a paradise in so many ways but there are a few things that make it a particularly perfect place for benjamin and i to. The internet is super slow, and there's no cell reception. Everyone has a house phone. I gave up on reading the news while I was there. Talk about self-care.

And there's a whole interdependent system to draw from when you need a little extra care. For example, Chuck was sick when I was visiting, so all the young people were helping him out with his garden. It just seems so easy to eat, work, live, when the whole community has your back. But according to Chuck, easy is not the right word. It's hard soul work to stick with this in the cauldron that we call Earth Haven. I hate that name, by the way. Too hippy-dippy for me by far. This is not a haven for the Earth.

It's, you know, my actual personal name for this place is Heartbreak Ridge. Heartbreak Ridge? Yes. It's where you come to have your heart broken again and again and again in the transformative process. If you're not willing to courageously allow yourself to be broken open and have your heart broken again and again and again, there's no point even beginning that journey. It's like an alchemical process in which the dross of our lives is thrown into the cauldron of an endeavor like this.

And out of it, that which is not essential is burned away, leaving us with the core, the core of what it really means to be a human and alive in these times. As I was putting this together, I found out Chuck died of cancer shortly after my visit. He was buried on the land. It makes him kind of like Moses. He did all this work and didn't live to see Earth Haven realize its destiny. But you know, Chuck was thinking way beyond just getting himself to the promised land. Your mission needs to be bigger than you can even hope to accomplish in a lifetime.

If it's anything smaller than that, it's not big enough and you need to re-examine it. For many of us, we knew that we may never realize the benefits of the work that we did. We were really doing this work for those yet born, for future generations. It has always been an intergenerational transfer project. If we don't reweave our functional interdependence, if we continue to fall back on independent thinking and our independence, then we'll fall short of the mark. That's not what's called for. That's what got us into this. It's too much independence, you know, too much false attraction to freedom, you know, and things like that. That's not true freedom. Freedom is not found there. Freedom lies at the end of a well-lived life.

Even though life at Earth Haven isn't easy, it's definitely a place to live a well-lived life. Maybe I should stay. The future of Earth Haven does depend on more people like me coming but Chuck made me see that the future of the world depends on all of us

doing the work of repairing rebuilding and maintaining the communities and places we come from when I hear young people saying oh I was drawn to move to Earth Haven I want to say the communities and places we come from. When I hear young people saying,

oh, I was drawn to move to Earth, I want to say, well, I hope you don't plan on staying. Because if all the conscious people gathered in a few safe places with those people they're comfortable with, then we're lost. Don't go to those sweet, comfortable places. Go there on vacation. Go there for a sabbatical. Learn what you need to take to begin and go out into all those 3,000 counties that are hurting all over America, where towns are dying, where economies are failing failing where despair is rampant. We need to get to the places where the need is the deepest.

Go there and help your fellow human beings find themselves and their way back to health and wholeness. And take part in those communities. And start building the alternative nation where you live and where you choose to settle today. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called Utopia, Part 2. Benjamin Walker with Andrew Calloway. It featured Will Wilkinson and a ton of folks from Earthhaven. You can find more information on this incredible place as well as links to all the stuff

we're doing in this Utopia series at toe.prx.org. The Theory of Everything is a proud member of Radiotopia, home to some of the world's best podcasts. Find them all at radiotopia.fm.