IF: Building a New Society
Dissatisfaction and Despair
Many years ago, I was feeling depressed and dissatisfied with my own life. My feeling was akin to the times when I turned on the television set and looked forward to watching a good program. I switch channels and look at station after station. There is no lack of choices—there are as many as 50—but all seem equally empty. I even go through each channel again thinking that I may have missed something the first time; maybe a good program was being interrupted by a commercial. But no. It is true. There are many choices, but they are all plastic.
That was the feeling I had about my life. There were choices, but none of them seemed life-giving. There were jobs available, but they were not appealing. In the supermarket, the products on display began to look the same—all equally processed with large numbers of chemical additives. The fruits and vegetables, though marvelous to look at, were sprayed with pesticides and were increasingly hybridized for shelf life and appearance, not taste. I felt depressed about life's choices—as if I were becoming part of the living dead.
Somewhere, deep within, there was a dream of something different, but it was not clear what that “something different” was. All that was clear was dissatisfaction with what was all around me.
I made one basic decision—not to spend my life doing things I did not want to do just because it was the best of a bad lot. I avoided taking a job that did not make any sense. I began following hints and suggestions—possibilities that were in no sense what I ultimately wanted, but which led me to further steps, which opened out further possibilities. The name IF ultimately arose out of this experience of probing possibilities. What if? If only … We don't always have the opportunity to do exactly what we want, but we always do have possibilities. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy's motto fits in well with this sort of responsive stance toward life: “I respond, even though I will be changed.”
Little by little I began to put together a different way of living. I slowly left a dead story behind and became part of a story through which life and spirit could flow. I arrived at places that I would not have been able to imagine when I started out.
Frederick and Claske Franck helped with that vision. Frederick had been a dental surgeon who went to help Albert Schweitzer in Africa. He became an artist and he and Claske built a center in upstate New York named Pacem in Terris. Their work there was an inspiration to me. I had a recurrent dream of a place where new possibilities could be pursued. That dream led me to look for land, and I eventually found a piece of land with redwoods overlooking Lake Freedom. Organic gardens were planted, solar panels installed, and recycled materials used for building.
The Beginnings of IF
It was then that some friends and I started the non-profit corporation called IF. I chose a modest name deliberately. I knew we could not save the world (much less understand it), but I also knew that we had possibilities to pursue that could make a contribution. Opening out alternatives has meant a number of different activities over the years: helping seniors and the disabled plant their own gardens; bringing people together for seminars and celebrations; pursuing alternative energy; finding work and housing for refugees from Central America; supporting people who are working with the very poor in Peru and working with groups in Nicaragua and Guatemala. We began to connect with circles of people who were giving life and hope to each other—and hope to us!
We found that once we had pursued some possibilities, other possibilities opened out. Little circles of hope touched other circles and formed links with them, not according to some master plan, but simply and naturally. All we needed was the belief that if we took some steps, other steps would emerge. When I began groping along trying to create a new story, I found I had something to live for. I was participating in a birth. And as we went along, we were nourished by what was being built up around us. The path itself became life-giving.
We have been taught that the past and the present create the future—that trends and statistical projections tell us where the world is going. But that simply is not true. The future is created by people who go against trends and projections and begin to form creative circles—by people who begin to live out a new story before that story becomes history.