Subject: THE GLOBAL VISION

From: [email-masked] (Doctress Neutopia)
Date: 13 Aug 1995 01:33:12 GMT

I slept on the issue of how to cure the world and what the Prez
should do in order to be an instrument of progressive change and lo
and behold I woke up with morning with a dream about it!

The dream went like this:  

I don't know how I got to be where I was, but it was outside in
some public square surround by big cement buildings in a downtown
area of some huge depersonalized American city.  In the background
was Paolo Soleri's Arconsanti with the curved and elegant
structures outside of Scottsdale, Arizona. We were in a dismal
situation witnessing the cities collapse. Mental illness and
dysfunctional families could be found in even the most 
privileged neighborhoods.

As I was sitting on some concrete bench outside of city hall,
Hillary Clinton walks up to me.  I could tell by her benevolent
aura that she was hurting every much from being in a position of
power, but not really being able to cure the social ills.  Since
their term in office, they hadn't witness a Renaissance in America,
but an attitude of hatred and greed had grown vicious against the
poor.

She asks me what I thought of living in America.  I look over my
shoulder, over the highways and highways of car exhaust, mile after
mile of suburban square houses, shopping malls with McDonalds and
Kentucky Fried Chicken on every block in THE WORLD and say, "This
is an ugly world.  Does this world represent your soul, Hillary? 
It doesn't represent mine.  Deep down I know I should be living in
a world of beauty and love, a world where all our human rights are
cared for, a place where people are happy and creative."

She replies, "But how do we do it? I can't stand looking at the
suffering people any more!  I have to DO something about it. What
do you think is the worst problem in the city?"

I say, "All the problems are interrelated. The automobile is
definitely one of the worse inventions which has destroyed the
quality of life.  Look over to your left. There in the desert you
can see that Soleri has designed cities without automobiles.  If we
are to evolve and, therefore, to survive our species must reshape
the city into an ecocity or else we will parish.  As long as there
is poverty and material inequality, no one is safe from crime.
Today in the _Boston Globe_ there was an article entitled, "State,
federal prisons reach record 1 million inmate level." The article
quoted Jenni Gainsborough of the Civil Liberties Union's National
Prison Project who said even with the tougher sentencing for drug
offenders public safety had not increased.  She said, "We keep
putting more and more people in prison, and it's not doing any good
at all."  It is time to stop building prisons and begin building
ecocities!

Another man about my age starts to read a definition of arcology in
a book he has with him. He says, "An arcology is a word combining
architecture and ecology, ecological architecture."  That was a
helpful note in our conversation, but then he started trying to
steal the conversation and talk to Hillary about some points which
were off the topic.

I look at Hillary and say, "Isn't that just like a man.  Here we
are engaged in an intelligent conversation about the problems of
the world and some guy is trying to get us off the topic!  We can't
allow ourselves to get sidetracked!  Hillary, the key to the future
is to focus on architecture on how to provide shelter which is
ecological sustainable for the 4 billion people on this planet.
There are no ecocities any where on the planet and it is our moral
responsibility to create one."

Hillary nods her head.

She continues with me, "I thought universal health care would be
the issue which would bring about a more humane social order, but
apparently that was not the issue to cause the necessary social
transformation.  I thought that universal health care would be a
bipartisan issue which all Americans would support. Dealing with
the issues of housing and education are the hot issues because they
deal so heavily with the govererning ideology and family values.  
We didn't dare tackle those controversial issues!"

The guy was feeling hurt that we had pointed out how he had
interrupted us, so Hillary call him forth and gave him a 
pat on the knee.

I reply, "There is no way to avoid these issues. We absolutely
have to build a neu edifice.  In order to do this, we have to
restructure the educational vision for the 21 Century so that it
usesadvance technology to liberate the human spirit.  We must begin to
think as futurists in a humane way, not in the way that Newt
Gingrich thinks of in terms of business, profits, and international
markets.  We will never design ecocities if we continue to compete
with ourselves.  It will only come about if we start to cooperate. 
The message of educators should be on how to educate the youth with
the skills, talent, and genius they need to build a sustainable
ecocity. This means that we have to embrace an ideology of social
liberation. Hillary, what scares you most:  Being a social
liberatrix or having the right-wing gain the power to enact their 
fascist plans?" 

Hillary exclaims, "Well, I don't know if I would go to the extreme
of calling them fascists!"

Neutopia asks, "Didn't they call you a feminazi? Any people who
don't want to provide health care to their people in my opinion has
a fascist mentality. They are out to eliminate the poor, not by
designing a world without poverty, but by genocidal tactics such as
not allowing certain people access to health care and everything
else that goes along with mental health."
 
"So," Hillary sighs, "What do we do?"

"Your campaign strategy for the next election should be one of 
"Rebuilding the Edifice of Education." Now listen closely.  We are
seeking a cultural change of lifestyle. We are moving from the
Industrial Age of Material Productivity which scarred the landscape
with mansions and slums to an Age of Leisure and Learning, an Age of
Arcology, what can be termed as the Age of the Information
Lovolution. In Neutopia, robots will do most of the labor so that
humans are free to discover and develop the true powers of the
Self.
 
You must get beyond your own personal ego and lust for power if we
are going to gain the consciousness to save the Earth for human
beings.  In other words, you must use the next election time to
forward the work of the visionaries and inventors who have been
working for centuries to evolve the social architecture of society. 
The purpose of the election campaign should be focus on the 

       "Neu Purpose of Education, Building a Network of Ecocities"

Clinton's "National Homeownership Strategy" to "create 8 million
more US homeowners by 2000" is steering us down the road of
oblivion.  His plan of developing more single-family housing for
private ownership is NOT what the people need.  It is what the
world of capital and profit need to keep us isolated and keep us
slaves to home mortgage payments. In fact, what keeps this economy
going is the housing industry and the military.  Both of these
institutions are bankrupt concepts which must be transfigured if we
are going to find the wisdom to save the world.
  
Also, the nuclear family is breaking up. No longer do we need
houses which makes us into consumers of everything, but we need to
develop a plan which brings us back together to share resources and
child care.  The model of an ecocity is a place of communal
facilities where healthcare workers, therapists, sociologists,
educators, etc. are living daily with the people they are called to
serve.  Most of all, we need to create a society which doesn't
commute. All these problems can be solved if we start thinking in
terms of developing a neu public housing plan based on Ecocity
lines.

The role of the United States of America in this global
transformation is to set the example for 21th Century development
for the rest of the world. We are moving from the American Dream of
homeownership and the nuclear family, to a dream of a collective
spirit building a world of arcologies on the various bioregions
throughout the planet. The task of the US is to lead the way using
advanced technology to re-design the built environment to exist in
balance with nature. 

This experiment in a revolutionary urban design is meant to not
only serve as a prototypal model of development for the first
world, but also for the third world.  We will *need* scholars,
engineers, scientists, artists, anthropologists from around the
world to help construct this Neu vision.  To gather together the
best minds of the planet to work on this noble project is your job,
Hillary."

Hillary ponders for a few moments and replies, "You are talking
about changing the labor force to begin to move in an entirely new
direction. The American way of life would be destroyed and so would
our currency."

Neutopia grins and says, "Yes, dearest First Lady, isn't it time we
move beyond the slavery of money and begin focusing our precious
energy on building a world of our dreams?  We can find radical
economist who can invent a neu form of currency which guarantees
everyone on the planet a safely net.  We will do this by embracing
the idea of electronic currency and a common wealth accounting
system were all our resources both visible and invisible are put
into an Earth Bank.  This means the end of the PAYtriarchy and the
beginning of a solar energy currency.  

As far as the American way of life, we consume most of the world's
wealth in non-renewable ways. This is a disgrace when most of the
world's population doesn't even have adequate shelter.  What is
needed is not an American way of life to be exported around the
planet, but a way of life which eradicates poverty and all the
social diseases which go along with it. An ecocity design can do this."

Hillary says, "Yes, I am beginning to understand your vision.  But
there is a long road to travel before an arcology is built.  Where
do we start?"

Neutopia answers, "Wow! And idea just popped into my head!  Why not
start a position of architect or architectress laureate?  We could
initiate it this year. We shall award the great architectural 
genius Paolo Soleri the honor. In conjunction, we shall have the
public educational system devise a curriculum around the mission of
building an arcology and the steps that must be taken to create
such a worldview.  We could get the software companies to create
programs in all fields of study which could solve the necessary
problems which might come up as we begin building a network of
arcologies.  All the roads on the information highway shall merge
on the greening of our present cities using the techniques of John
Todd at Ocean Arcs International and the long-term building of
arcology."

"Neutopia," Hillary says, "What you are talking about is a very
political move. I don't think the American people are ready to
adopt such a radical way of looking at the crisis.  They still want
their house with a white picket fence with a two car garage."

Neutopia exclaims, "Hillary, its time that we stop playing
masculine politics! How many women want to come home at night, do
the grocery shopping, do the laundry, fix dinner for the kids,
clean up, and then have to set on the face of the King of the house
or set in front of the TV with him waiting the Monday night
football game? What kind of life is that? Is the middle class
nightmare what true love is all about? If it is, then no wonder
women don't want it anymore and are filing for divorce!

The job of the futurist is to change our dreams so that we can
begin to regain our lives.  Arch means "to rule" and architecture
is absolutely a reflection of the ruling ideology which for 
thousands of years has been anti-woman and anti-community. Do you
want to be dominated by Bill's homeowership plan which is sure to
increase the global environmental holocaust and only puts women in
"their place" back in the kitchen baking cookies?  Or will you
start to rule over the Prez with divine love and work for the
creation of Ecocities?

To conclude, not only should your election campaign be focused
on "The Neu Edifice for Education: the Curriculum for Arcology" but
you and the Prez should run as Co-Presidents. In order to make this
neu world come about, requires that a neu power relationship
between the sexes is manifested.  Running as Co-Presidents 
would give you the power you need to make a neu dream come true. 

Finally, to make your ecocity proposal real to the American people
and the world, you should begin to turn military bases into
emergency shelter for the poor, homeless, and unemployed PhD's,
artists, and teachers. In Gov. Bill Clinton & Sen. Al Gore's book
_Putting People First:  How We Can Change America_ please recall
their words under the heading FIGHT HOMELESSNESS. It reads, "Use
the housing available at closed military bases to house the
homeless."  They continue, "Hold a HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS SUMMIT
with urban leaders and mayors to create a new consensus for poverty
programs funding levels, and federal assistance for innovative
housing crisis solutions."  

YES, YES -- but the speakers *must* be the leaders of innovative
housing plans who espouse building megastructural architecture, or
what Soleri calls the miniaturization of the city.  We need to find
the people from around the world who are working on building
ecological cities and the social architecture to support the neu
social structures of world love and peace.  I recommend that you
get a copy of the new video entitled "Ecological Design: Inventing
the Future," a video about "integrating nature, technology, and
humanity." [order it from: The Ecological Design Project\611
Jefferson Street\Cape May, NJ  08204\ phone: 800-698-1992.] I can
also recommend feminist architectural theories--like myself--who
would add the necessary ingredient to the Summit. 

The purpose of the Summit is to analyze the situation of the chaos
of modern cities, deconstruct it, and then rebuild an entirely neu
world based on social justice, love, and beauty.  The Summit should
be broadcast throughout the entire world on every medium available
to us.  This would be the climax of your re-election campaign."

I wake up, go over to my computer and begin typing in the dream
for the entire Internet to read!

Doctress Neutopia

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