My first drive to Yellow Springs, Ohio to begin my Ph. D. is still vivid in my mind. My twin sons, along with my daughter were old enough for me to strike out on my own, a process that I began early in the morning of the Sunday that began the program. Living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania I was not more than four and half hours from Yellow Springs, so I awoke early on that morning and began driving west. Driving west out of the hills and valleys of western Pennsylvania, back into flat expanses and fields of corn of central Ohio. This landscape brought back memories of my undergraduate studies at Oberlin College in Ohio. I returned to the lands of reformist fervor that spawned Oberlin College in 1833 and Antioch in 1850. My connection to the second great awakening and the spirit of utopianism has been central to my experience throughout my childhood, my college years as well as my adult life.
I spent my youth in Northampton, Massachusetts as the son of a college professor and a pediatrician. Northampton has been identified by www.epodunk.comas the most liberal medium sized city in the United States.[1]Incidentally the 10thmost liberal large city on the list is Seattle, Washington, where I was born and the most liberal city in Ohio, where I attended college is Oberlin. The liberalism of these towns and cities is noteworthy, but does not tell the story that I am finding myself to be a part of as I am swept along in my reflection on my journey to this place at this time. In my reflection, the liberalism of these places is less important than the tendency towards utopianism. Northampton was home to the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, which, according to Northampton’s museum and education center, was “…a society in which the rights of all are equal without distinction of sex, color or condition, sect or religion.” The utopian impulse, both in ideal and in practice, is present in Oberlin and Antioch’s history as well. Both institutions were established during the second great awakening in an attempt to create institutions that could create a version of the present and of the future that exceeded the possibility of the present.
The tendency towards utopianism is deeply enmeshed in my own experience as a student, scholar and practitioner. I entered Oberlin College as a freshman with a score of 5 in Advanced Placement Biology, an award for outstanding science performance in high school, and a clear path towards a degree in the sciences. The schedule I selected for the fall of my freshman year of college reflected this path with my acceptance into a high-level neuroscience class. In the spring of my freshman year, still intending to major in biology, I had a space to fill in my schedule. I began flipping through the course book, and found a class entitled “Christian Utopias and Communitarian Movements.” Finding the description to be interesting, I enrolled and as soon as the class began I found myself immersed in utopian communities, such as those at Oneida, Harmony, Amana, as well as those communities such as the Amish, the Hutterites and the other Anabaptist groups who lived in multiple locations but possessed a common ethos.
I had a sudden change of direction and decided not to study science, but instead to dig deeply into the history and theology of those 1800s utopian movements. When I am truly honest with myself about the fuel that keeps my fire burning, that fuel is deeply utopian in nature. The places and the ideas that excite and inspire me are places like the Summerhill School[2], a democratic school in England, or the Highlander Folk School[3] , or Schumacher College[4]in England, and the historical but essential Black Mountain College[5]. These are all examples of places that believe that the world can be a better place, a fairer place that honors the totality of being.
Although, I did not fully realize it then, it was this utopian ethos that I embraced as I drove into Yellow Spring, Ohio on that humid day in August. That first week in Ohio as I began to know my fellow students and professors, reminded me that I was in the right place. Even the structure of the program models the utopian communities that have enticed me. Coming together in a created community, apart from our usual lived environment, with the goal of bettering the world, and ourselves each residency is a form of utopian practice.
The question that drives me now is how to create and sustain new communities of hope, wholeness and joy.
[1]http://www.epodunk.com/top10/liberal/
[2]http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/
[3]http://highlandercenter.org/
[4]http://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/