Alternative organizational frameworks targeting key issues in human development

Being an anthropologist, I've adopted an experimental approach to human social organization, and to providing a wider range and latitude of human social process and action than normally permitted within the bounds and constraints of our increasingly conventional world.

Of course, this means as well that we must give up on ethnocentric and sacred collective representations and be willing to entertain the possibilities presented by different value orientations and life-styles. It is also important that we recognize what is transparent in ourselves, and the full teleological and behavioral implications of whatever values we do adopt in the world.

I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist about human nature or social character--humans are what they are, both good and bad. The object in my mind is to design a system that is as flexible as possible to accommodate the entire spectrum of human variation and to maximize freedom of choice, and at the same time to develop a system that minimizes the bad aspects of human nature and maximizes the good sides. Of course this is far easier said than done, and the trade-offs leading to optimization are many. Shall we sacrifice human freedom for the promise of increasing human security and productive efficiency? Is there not some satisficing strategy that can be adopted that allows us to make an unlimited range of choices without suffering the negative consequences of too much choice?

Fortunately, the human imagination conjures up all kinds of alternative modalities for living and behaving and for social organizational purposes.

Our interests have come to rest upon the following set of objectives in alternative organizational development:

1. Development of cooperative and profit sharing systems.

2. Development of non-profit self-sustaining frameworks that in particular address critical social problem areas.

3. Development of alternative capitalist structures of business organization that allow development and growth in a profitable but non-destructive manner.