Erotic Arcologies:
Bringing together the Green Party
and the Green Movement
by Doctress Neutopia
2001 Green Congress panel on Ecocities
Carbondale, IL
In the Spring/Summer issue of Green Politics an article entitled “To Renew Our Spirit, We Must Build a New Green Movement!” written by Walt Sheasby, Howie Hawkins and Joel Kovel, states that the Green Party should be supported by a radical green grass roots social movement. The authors write, “In this dialectic, the party is vitalized by the movement, while the movement is connected to the mainstream by the party.” I certainly agree with the statement; however to coordinate all the vital parts of the green movement, a vision of where we are moving towards needs to take shape.
Architect Eugene Tsui writes:
Architecture gives form to the invisible pulses and rhythms of life. It gives pattern to structure and structure to pattern. It is an elemental mystic power that is innate to all things. The physical manifestation of this power is a consequence of the desire for the invisible to be made visible. This desire, this great motivating force is essential to the life of a thing. It is a process which organizes and composes various interrelated forces into a unified whole. Architecture is the comprehensive expression of all science and art--the wellspring of interconnectedness and functional art.
We need to dig deep into the reasons why we have created a world overrun by the automobile and why urban sprawl continues to devour the country side necessary for our own survival as well as the survival of other plant and animal species. We must deconstruct our world based around the icon that is currently controlling corporate America’s worldview, the “American Dream” house. The task before us is to seek alternative models of both psychological and physical growth in order to move us into a new image of home. Through sustainable architectural design we can build a container for a new green philosophy, peace settlements for the Green movement. Arising for this line of reasoning is a social formula of a grass roots ecological community power base, or some might think of them as resistance communities, where we are exploring non-oppressive, non-patriarchal, non-capitalist, lifestyle practices using renewable technologies as a home for Green party politics.
The authors write, “If we are to succeed, we will be known for the vision that we believe in, not for what we reject.” How true is the proceeding sentence since without a new vision of the transformation of our polluted cities into ecocites, Green politicians become trapped in urban decay with no way out of the social chaos that has resulted from building centuries of unsustainable architecture. Without a vision and actually practicing what our vision is delivering--a necessary ingredient for exciting the public imagination-- then the promises of Green politicians become false promises of a Kingdom Come mentality like mainstream politicians who maintain the status quo rather than to “be the change you want to see in the world” to quote Gandhi.
Could it mean that the intentional communities movement working towards developing sustainable partnerships and renewable technologies and the Green Party are intrinsically entwined? The authors write, “Our measure of achievement must be the growth and advancement of the self-emancipation of our particular social groups and the unified community of liberation.” Could it be that the essential function of the Green Party is to deliver this new image of a “unified community of liberation” within an evolutionary social and physical architectural paradigm to the public?
If this is so, then our Green politicians become the embodiment of true lovers who bring about unification, examples of the liberated psychosexual self by turning theory into practice creating massgasms (ecstatic group awareness during periods of radical social change). Nothing could be more empowering to our social justice movement than to develop a network of communities of liberation who are consciously striving to put together a new image of development. Isn’t our ultimate task to find a way to re-house the billions of souls throughout the planet who are now either homeless or who are not living in sustainable solar powered communities of liberation?
After decades of utopian studies, world-travel to different ecovillages, co-housing models, and ecocities around the world, I am convinced that Paolo Soleri’s concept of arcology (ecological architecture), a car-free city, could well be the archetypal shift in architectural design that could convey one of our greatest symbols of wholeness. To look at the radical solutions to our problems for generations to come requires us adopting a new architectural model that corresponds with Green community values.
Soleri’s tragic flaw is that at his experimental “construction site,” Arcosanti, he has divided his evolutionary architecture idea from community development. Experimenting with an alternative power structure to patriarchal dictatorship is not welcomed at his project. Hence his architectural concept holds only part of the evolutionary vision. The intentional community movement also holds part of the vision since many communities have been experimenting with collective living using ecofeminist principles and non-hierarchal models of decision-making for decades.
On the other hand, the intentional communities movement lacks the architectural structure to re-house billions of people who are enslaved in toxic cities. Thus, neither the Arcosanti project nor the intentional communities movement has a holistic social vision necessary to create a lovolution; a non-violent worldwide revolution based around social, economic, environmental and sexual liberation. Ecovillages and cohousing units become more of a gated community concept for the lucky few that get accepted into the community rather than a social transformation program so that we can inspire the masses to want to move into the direction of creating a lifestyle in balance and harmony with each other and with nature.
This is not to say that cohousing/ecovillage/ecocity intentional community movement or the Arcosanti project has failed. It is only to point out that intentional communities and Arcosanti are working as acupuncture points on the Earth that helps to release the circulation of energy throughout the body politic. They should be seen more as social laboratories necessary for us to initiate a Green paradigm into our democratic process either in the struggle on the streets against the greed of transnational corporations or at the ballot box. This program, of course, is a millennium program, first reforming our present dysfunctional cities and countryside into ecocites and ecovillages while simultaneously implementing a radically new city design, arcologies of passionate love on Earth and in Outer Space.
Visualize the creation of a network of arcologies connected by mag-lev trains born into reality this way. When the power of the people who are devoted to Green principles finally take over the streets in capital cities around the world such as Washington, DC, the philosopheresses and philosophers of the global Green Movement/Party better have prepared a theory of conversion to refocus the revolutionary/evolutionary/lovolutionary energy of the mind, heart, and soul of individuals into a new creative pattern. Think of what we could manifest with people in touch with their cosmic selves, the Touch of Nature working within us!
Liberation, Ecstasy, Emancipation, Bliss!!!!!
The End of the History of WAR, my friends.
Communities of love circle the planet as
we become holons of orgasmic Eternal moments.