Odyssey of a Practical Visionary
by Belden Paulson. Thistlefield Books. 2009. 757 pages. $24.95.
In the mid-twentieth century, while communists and anticommunists across the world were locked in ideological warfare, futurist and community organizer Belden Paulson went about his own peaceful quest to change the world. Now he tells his story, with all the people who shared in it and the history he witnessed.
Paulson relates his post-college journey to Sardinia in 1950 as a work-camp humanitarian helping towns rebuild from the lingering damage of World War II. He then decided to stay and co-found Italy’s first settlement center and resettlement camp to help Sardinia’s war refugees join the neighboring towns as self-sufficient working citizens.
Paulson continued his community-building in Wisconsin, where he helped establish High Wind, a community powered by renewable energy and designed for maximum cooperation and closeness to nature among its residents. While at High Wind, he established the Plymouth Institute, a futurist think tank.
Paulson’s activism as a futurist led him to participate in the World Future Society’s 1980 globla conference in Toronto, an account of which is included in this memoir.
Through his lifelong “adventure,” as he calls it, Paulson has held fast to the conviction that anything is possible, and that all of us are bound by the ties of global interdependence. He challenges readers to rethink how they see the world and realize the opportunity that each of us has to commit to building a more perfect world.
Like us on Facebook
WorldFutureSoc on Twitter