spring 1986 RAIN Page 35 The Elmwood Institute PO Box 5805 Berkeley, CA 94705 The Elmwood Institute, recently founded by Fritjof Capra (author of The Too of Physics and The Turning Point) and a circle of colleagues, bills itself as “a greenhouse for ecological visions.” It is a “think-and-do-tank” seeking to build a bridge between innovative thinkers, policy makers, and grassroots organizers, to facilitate the shift from mechanistic and patriarchical modes of thought and behavior to a more holistic and ecological approach. The insitute's policy-making board has several members whose names will be familiar to RAIN readers, such as Charlene Spretnak, Hazel Henderson, Ernest Callenbach, and Walter Truett Anderson. The list of “Elmwood Peers,” the advisory network of the institute, reads like a veritable Who's Who of the alternative movement. Elmwood has sponsored forums on holistic health. Green politics, science and ethics, and “new paradigm thinking.” With a $25/year membership you'll receive Elmwood's quarterly newsletter, containing reports on the institute's activities, book reviews, and other news of interest. By promoting the crossfertilization of ideas from such an impressive array of innovative thinkers, the Elmwood “greenhouse” should produce a bountiful harvest. —FLS Social Policy, quarterly, $20/year from: Social Policy 33 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036 Even though I regularly read or scan hundreds of periodicals in my job at RAIN, occasionally I make an exciting “new” discovery of a magazine that has actually been around quite a while, and I wonder how I ever got along without it before. Social Policy is such a magazine. Although in its 16th year of publication, I saw my first issue just a few months ago. I've now seen two issues and they've made me a convert. Being somewhat of a generalist myself. I'm pleased with the broad ground it covers. But mostly I'm pleased with the way the issues are covered. The perspective fits into no simple ideological pigeonhole. Intelligent without being ACCESS: Society stilted. Social Policy brings insight and innovative thinking to probe into difficult questions—often questions I hear few others asking. Though progressive in its concerns for social issues, you'll find few liberal pleas for increased government to solve our problems. Personal and community empowerment seems to be the ideal sought here, but ideals alone are no substitute for ideas and information, both of which you'll find in abundance. Here's a sampling of what I found in the 1985 Summer and Fall issues (the magazine seems a little behind schedule—we got our fall issue in February): articles on the “new populism” by Frank Riessman (editor of Social Policy), Harry Boyte (author of Community Is Possible and The Backyard Revolution), Robert Bellah (co-author of Habits of the Heart), and others; Barry Commoner on how to have both economic growth and environmental quality; John McKnight (author of “John Deere and the Bereavement Counselor” in RAIN XI:6) on meeting human needs while reducing the welfare state; and other insightful articles on education, health care, employment, and aging. First rate analysis throughout. —FLS The Future Is Not What It Used to Be: Returning to Traditional Values in an Age of Scarcity, by Warren Johnson, 1985, 246 pp., $16.95 (hardback) from: Dodd, Mead 79 Madison Avenue New York, NY The bad news, according to Warren Johnson, is that the affluence of modem industrial society is facing inevitable decline due to diminishing resources. The good news is that that affluence wasn't good for us anyway, and that in making the changes necessary to adapt to the decline, we can return to a healthier, more wholesome way of life. Johnson, who wrote Muddling Toward Frugality in the late seventies, seems to argue for planning for frugality in this book, which describes how we can leam to live with less, and recreate work life, family life. and community life. It's never quite clear in the book whether this new way of life is a moral imperative or a historical inevitability, but it does appear that we're better off anticipating the end of the industrial era and planning for life in a different kind of world. The message of the book seems to contradict the spirit of the times. Been to the gas station lately? See, we've got plenty of gas, and cheap, too. We've got America moving again! Johnson would argue that the recently restored faith in economic growth cannot be long sustained in the face of basic biophysical limits. Certainly he's right, but his vision of the future at times seems a bit too bucolic, kind of like grandfather talking about The Good Old Days, and has little to say about the impact of computers, robotics, and other significant innovative forces. (Just further manifestations of the Bad New Days?) However, if you are looking for some of the broader philosophical arguments to tie together various efforts to create a simpler, less wasteful, more community-based way of life, this is one place to find them. —FLS Declaration of a Heretic, by Jeremy Rifkin, 1985, 140 pp., $7.95 from: Routledge & Kegan Paul 9 Park Street Boston, MA 02108 Social critic Jeremy Rifkin, author of Algeny, Entropy, and other insightful works, has offered a brief synopsis of the position that all his thinking and research has led him to. This slim volume describes the two most significant scientific developments of the twentieth century: the split atom and the engineered gene. These two developments have unleashed powers, and dangers, unlike anything known in human history. But not content to decry the particulars of these two developments, Rifkin unleashes a feverish attack on the entire “scientific worldview” that spawned them. It is this rejection of the scientific worldview, developed for the purpose of controlling and exploiting the world, and his call for a new kind of “empathetic consciousness,” that marks him a true heretic. This impassioned declaration seeks to put into focus issues that are so big and so basic that we don't normally give them much thought. However, it's more of a summing-up than a groundbreaking new treatise. —FLS
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