Voluntary Peasants Book One: Enlightenment - What's It Good For

Voluntary Peasants Book One: Enlightenment - What's It Good For Review

Voluntary Peasants Book One: Enlightenment - What's It Good For Overview

The first, comprehensive, inside story of a commune that won the “alternative Nobel Peace Prize,” the Right Livelihood Award, “...for caring, sharing and acting with and on behalf of those in need at home and abroad. This is the story of America’s largest commune—The Farm in Tennessee—a bold experiment in community and lifestyle, told by a UPI wire service reporter who lived the adventure from Day One and for thirteen years.

Voluntary Peasants reveals the inner workings of The Farm, alternative-lifestyle, experimental community—and how its efforts helped to defuse a dangerously explosive crisis in the United States in the early seventies, when the whole situation seemed to be spiraling out of control—here were people who shared a vision to live outside the box, outside the system, learn to be self-reliant friends who work together, share, take care of each other, make a difference and have a good time.

Imagine, as John Lennon sang, living life in peace. Now, imagine living and working with friends, close to nature, growing your family’s food and building your own town. Imagine, too, never thinking or worrying about money. This is the story of a very special place, a community that created a fully-functioning, eco-friendly, people-friendly, collective lifestyle and village in rural Tennessee—called simply—The Farm.

Voluntary Peasants is the first, behind-the-scenes comprehensive, inside report—by a founding member and thirteen-year resident of the community. Melvyn Stiriss is a former United Press International reporter, who shared the adventures—the life and work of thousands of idealistic, dedicated people, and honors their noble efforts. These are true stories about daring, good-hearted people who made and shared history; enjoyed life together, universal health care and virtually zero unemployment.

Voluntary peasants are every day people, from all walks of life, who choose to live together, close to the earth, self-reliant, growing food—for the sake of the planet, their families and their souls. Includes stories of the magical sixties and the search for enlightenment

After living thirteen years in what often seemed like another world, a better world—I feel like the character in the 1937 movie classic, Lost Horizon, based on James Hilton’s intriguing novel. After years of fantastic adventures while lost in a strange and wonderful land, a man returns to civilization and attempts to describe life in Shangri-La—a paradisiacal, telepathic lamasery, hidden high in the mountains of Tibet.

Also fantastic-sounding at times, Voluntary Peasants is all true. Though I am an experienced journalist, I never entered the hippie world with the idea of writing about it, nor was I just a fly-on-the-wall, unattached observer. I was in deep; sometimes over my head, but I was the only journalist there, so it is clearly my karma and duty to tell this story and to keep the spirit and information alive. It give me great pleasure to publish the history of a community of eclectic, nonsectarian, spiritual hippies who explored new possibilities in lifestyle together; shared heartwarming, mind-opening experiences and made remarkable discoveries.

In his book Boom!, Tom Brokaw wrote,
“In the sixties, I was a young, up-and-coming reporter, and I came right up to the edge of what was happening, and I backed away.”
At that same time, I too was “a young, up-and-coming reporter” and came up to the very same edge as Tom, but I went over—Wheeee! So began for me, what poet Robert Frost might call “the road less traveled;” what Joseph Campbell might call “the hero’s journey.” Voluntary Peasants is the story of a grand experiment involving thousands of people, and of my journey, focusing on thirteen years of living collectively with friends in community, working to make a difference in the world. Reporting this journey is clearly my karma.

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Jun 07, 2011 14:05:04