This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 20, Issue 4, from 2010.
Last year I spent two months inside a Camphill Community along with other volunteers of various ages from around the world, eager to help others and better myself. I was drawn to communal life, but more importantly I was put off by the society in which I grew up.
As a teenage atheist and leftist in the United States I was appalled by the vast increase of religious fervor in public life and by our startling move to the Far Right even during my lifetime. Like so many Americans I was laden with a painful sense of hopelessness. I could only watch television, drink or get high to distract myself. Retreat in one form or another seemed to be the only suitable option.
I was quite enamored with British culture, as well, and wanted nothing more than to see the land which had produced so many of my favorite authors, comedians, rock stars and TV shows. The UK almost seemed (to my naïve self) to be a totally different, more civilized world. So it was that I decided to find someplace in Britain where I could work for food and lodging. In truth I only chose to ‘volunteer’ at the Mount Camphill Community, a school for young adults with special needs in the South-East of England, because it offered the best benefits. In addition to organic food and lovely surroundings, it offers a weekly stipend of fifty pounds, weekend outings and ample time off.
When I arrived I was shocked at how religious the place was. Granted, this was partly my own fault for not looking into it well enough, but their website gives little indication of just how much their beliefs influence most everything they do. There are blessings before and after almost every meal, a strange service on Sundays, and songs and recitations almost every morning. I was berated for not participating in religious rituals and, from even the first meeting I had to sit through about it, the message was clearly join in or leave. In my last meeting I was apologized to for having been given a false impression, and offered airfare home. I declined at first, but subsequently accepted.
When I was encouraged to leave, I was told that even if I sang and recited and smiled during services, ostensibly participating to a full extent, it would still not work because I would be “disapproving on the inside,” whether I knew it or not. There is simply no place for an atheist there. This means that irreligious Brits are funding an institution which would discriminate against them. I was told by the head gardener, whom I worked under, that almost all of their money comes from the government. He also said that I was a cause of concern for some of the “senior co-workers.” The whole place was terribly gossipy and quite often I worried about my words being repeated.
For all these reasons and more I would never want to work at a Camphill Community ever again. The most important reason, however, is that there is no real escape from the alienation of modern life. We literally cannot retreat, and we divert our attention with drugs and other distractions at our peril. The things that give us solace now merely console us to our conditions. They cannot change the fact that, almost a century after Bertrand Russell penned the words, it is still true that “almost all who work have no say in the direction of their work; throughout the hours of labour they are mere machines carrying out the will of a master.” Since then global economic inequality has gotten hideously worse.
Even the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who served as the chief economist of the World Bank, writes that the “growing divide between the haves and the have-nots has left increasing numbers in the Third World in dire poverty, living on less than a dollar a day”. UNICEF has reported that over thirty thousand children die every day due to poverty. That is almost eleven million children, every year. The only solution, in my view, is a world-wide revolution. It may not be likely but it is our only hope.
In 1961, the Situationist International said:
If it seems somewhat absurd to talk of revolution, this is obviously because the organized revolutionary movement has long since disappeared from the modern countries where the possibilities of a decisive social transformation are concentrated. But all the alternatives are even more absurd, since they imply accepting the existing order in one way or another.
Yet less than fifty years later there seem to be the beginnings of a new revolutionary movement in the most developed countries, including my own.
More than anywhere else, America is truly the place “where the possibilities of a decisive social transformation are concentrated.” That is why I am excited to be part of the new Students for a Democratic Society. We have thousands of members in hundreds of chapters, and we are not alone. All over the world informed and committed individuals are seeking to achieve direct democracy through direct action. Laid-off workers in Argentina have occupied factories and restarted production, to take only a single instance. We in the wealthy countries bear a great deal of the responsibility for the problems that we see in the world. We must try and help solve them.
The same impulse to lend a helping hand which led me to the Mount now leads me into activist organizations such as SDS, with the hope that it is not already too late. The world is still a brutal place, torn apart by class oppression, racism, sexism, homophobia and horrific violence unleashed by countries such as ours. I believe it will take drastic social change to reverse the environmental degradation that we have caused the earth, and heal the wounds that we have caused each other. I also believe that we have to make it happen, and so I strongly encourage everybody to do what they can to make this a better world, where we and future generations would rather live.
