Ecotopia

From NYTimes article, "The Book That Foretold Portland" (of "Ecotopia" by Earnest Callenbach):

"Mr. Callenbach hopes the book will resonate among the greening edges of an evangelical movement. But the novel’s relatively free sex and liberal politics may limit that readership. Susanna Hecht, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, sees it as a counterpoint to Thoreau’s more austere “Walden.”

“ ‘Walden’ is very Protestant,” she said. “This is pagan, with a Zen relationship to nature.”

But to Mr. Callenbach and many of his fans, “Ecotopia” is a blueprint for the future.

“It is so hard to imagine anything fundamentally different from what we have now,” he said. “But without these alternate visions, we get stuck on dead center.”

“And we’d better get ready,” he added. “We need to know where we’d like to go.”

As a Eugene Native, I remember feeling that way about the Northwest, especially after reading this book and histories of our famiy before contact.  We do have a huge opportunity in front of us now that everything we thought was "true" is exposed for what it is, a simple experiment that we have to let play through and learn from.  Our major problem is that we do not learn well.  We may be forced to from now on, so my heart and mind is open to creating a place where we can go, is yours?