Page 15 - Core Beliefs For Intentional Community

From the International Communes Desk (ICD) Study Group

THOUGHTS ON COMMUNITY CALL 35 - Fall 2012

Excerpts from Rene Dubos, A GOD WITHIN, Scribners , 1972 (pp. 281 -290).
(Rene Dubos, French born American microbiologist, humanist and

environmentalist. Author of the maxim: “Think Globally, Act Locally.”)

“Correcting the damage done to nature by industrialization is probably within

our powers, but to formulate new positive values for modern life will be much
more difficult…

…In practice, the futures that we invent are
viable only if they are compatible with the

constraints imposed by our evolutionary past.
This does not mean that the most desirable
future is one which would take us back to

the pre-technological womb. But it does
mean that the unchangeable laws governing

human nature and external nature must be
kept in mind whenever plans are made to
change conditions of human life. To discover

these fundamental laws, we need to Rene Dubos (1901-1982)
recapture the direct experience of reality

out of which early man created concepts which remain basic to our own life
today…
…Our efforts have been focused not on reality but on the damage done to

nature…I shall not consider these problems of the external environment but
shall instead emphasize…the practical importance of some internal attributes

which the human species acquired during the Stone Age and which still operate
in our lives today. This emphasis is justified by the fact that the deterioration
of the psychological environment is as dangerous as environmental pollution but

less well understood…

…Modern cities are unfavorable to human relationships probably because they
are almost incompatible in their present form with needs created during social
evolution. Early man probably lived in bands of a fairly uniform size… Ten male

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