My husband found this book in a charity shop. It was printed the year I was born with the help of a friend of my late mother’s called Nicholas Albery. He had a yard in London. He had a dream. He wanted everything to be free. Along with many others around this time he wanted information to be freely available to all. He was involved in helping set up something called b.i.t. A free information service for everyone. Take a look at the back cover…
£2.50. Hmmm...that’s quite expensive for 1975.
There’s Nicholas, on the RHS. Looking intense. Look at all those freaks and hippies sitting next to him and all around him. What a Brave New World. One or two of them look familiar. Hang a minute...
Those mischievous looking three are my siblings! Eldest brother has his tongue sticking out, eldest sister is right next to him and other brother is squished just underneath her grinning.
Let’s have a look inside shall we. I wonder if there’s something about Shrubb Farm in there...
Shrubb Family. That’s my family. My weird freaky family. But what kind of family were we? Perhaps another book will have the answer. A sociological anthropological one...
Ah here we are...
These are my people! But what kind of commune are we? Do we just hang out with goats all day, growing our hair long and looking groovy? Chapter 3 says we are a self-actualising commune. What the hell is “Self-Actualisation”?
Self-actualisation was a term coined by an American psychologist called Maslow. It’s something to do with self fulfilment. Fulfilling one’s potential. In Maslow’s words: “…the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”
Far out!
But don’t you need lots of time and space and no pressure to work in some mindless job earning money to pay the mortgage to do that?
Yes! That’s where the commune bit comes in. It’s cheap to live in a commune. Sharing everything means there are less bills to pay. There’s more time to pursue one’s interests, to do what you really want to do, to be who you really are, to self-actualise.
So here’s a question for you. Who are you? Really? If you had all the time in the world and very few money worries, what would you do? How would you self-actualise?