Lead us to Utopia

From March 2007, eminent scientist Dylan Evans will be inviting volunteers to join him in an experiment in creating a Utopia in the Scottish highlands. They will live together in a novel kind of community based on three main ideas:

1. It will be a LEARNING COMMUNITY – each member must have a distinctive skill or area of knowledge that they can teach to the others.

2. It will be a WORKING COMMUNITY – no money is required from the members, but all must contribute by working.

3. It will be strictly TIME-LIMITED. This is not an attempt to found an ongoing community. Members may stay for up to three months, but may also come for as little as two weeks.

You can apply via http://www.dylan.org.uk/utopia/utopia.html
(the story continues below the list of books by Dylan Evans – you can buy the books from Amazon by clicking on the titles (and off-grid gets a tiny percentage).

Emotion: The Science of Sentiment

Emotion, Evolution and Rationality

Emotion: A Very Short Introduction

University lecturer Dylan is looking for 200 volunteers to join him. So far, they include a former RAF training officer, a mother of five, a middle-aged hippy and a human rights lawyer, as well as Dylan’s new girlfriend and her two children.

They will sleep in single-sex dormitories, grow their own crops, bake their own bread and slaughter their own pigs and sheep. Water will be drawn from a nearby stream and heat will be provided by solar panels.

Dylan believes civilisation as we know it will collapse in 35 years due to climate change, spiralling oil prices and civil unrest. Millions will die of famine and disease and in violent disputes. The 39-year-old with gold-rimmed glasses and a beatific smile is convinced this will be around 2040

So Dylan has terminated his long-term relationship, sold his house and given away all his possessions save his books, his car and his cat. Next month he leaves his £30,000 post at Bristol’s University of West England, where he is an expert in robotics, to decamp full-time to his tent.

He believes that the few fortunate survivors will find true happiness. Freed from careers, televisions, microwaves and every other labour-saving luxury, they will revel in a primitive lifestyle that is nothing short of paradise.

To try it out, Dylan is opening the commune which he’s dubbed Utopia. It will run for 18 months, and fellow survivalists who will start arriving next March.