Earth Community Living Experiments in Cultural Transformation

Susan Campbell is most recently a"corporate trainer and relationship coach"; but at the time she wrote this book in 1983, she was living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area, and heavily involved with "intentional community living." In her Foreward, Ms. Campbell states the need for a vision "of how the human family can create one Earth in practice," and suggests that "When it comes, it will build upon experiments like those described in this book, which is about groups of individuals who are helping us evolve toward a viable global society. By sensing the emerging global vision and by making it concrete in their daily lives, these groups are providing 'living experiments in cultural transformation.'" She divides the book into three parts: I: "The Context for Cultural Transformation" (e.g., "A Study of Intentional Communities"); II: "Issues Every Community Must Face" (e.g., "Leadership - the Sharing of Power"; "Right Relationship with the Earth"); III: "Resources: Taking the Next Step." Relationships are a particular point of emphasis in the book; e.g., "A more spacious view on relationships was being pioneered in the Earth Community groups I visited. Spaciousness was revelaled in an increased emphasis on the importance of friendship; a declining of sexual possessiveness; an increased respect for individual differences and uniqueness; and in a tendency to include in one's sense of family people ... other than one's blood relatives." "the Earth Community encourages a wide variety of family and couple lifestyles." Campbell remains optimistic: "As I poured over these accounts of utopians dreams gone sour, I wondered to myself, 'Even with our broadening perspective and expanded consciousness, are conditions in the society today any more conducive to the integraton of cooperative, communal values than they were a century ago?' There is much evidence that they may be. The earlier experiments may have represented lower rungs of Humanity's climb toward Heaven on Earth, helping to open the way for later more integrated and holistic efforts." This book will be of interest to those interested in intentional communities, communes, utopian societies, ecovillages, and similar experiments in living.