The Search for a Trouble-Free Paradise
ALL we want to do is create a safe and perhaps old-fashioned lifestyle where people care for each other,” explained one British couple. They decided to seek out a tropical island paradise and there establish a community that would live peacefully together. You can no doubt understand their feelings. Who would not jump at the chance to live in a trouble-free paradise?
Is Isolation the Answer?
The idea of living on an island appeals to many paradise seekers, for the isolation offers a measure of security. Some choose islands off the Pacific Coast of Panama or islands in the Caribbean, such as those off Belize. Others turn their attention to idyllic locations in the Indian Ocean—the Seychelles, for example.
The logistics of establishing an isolated community stagger the imagination. Even if enough money is available, existing government legislation may restrict a quick land purchase. But suppose the ideal tropical island could be obtained, would you be happy there? Would your paradise be trouble free?
The remote islands around the coast of Britain now house a growing population. Their new inhabitants are mainly people seeking solitude and peace. One man who lives alone on the 250-acre [100 ha] island of Eorsa, off the west coast of Scotland, claims that he never feels lonely because he has so much to do caring for his flock of one hundred sheep. Others who have sought the seclusion of an island quickly become lonely. Some have reportedly attempted suicide and needed rescue.
Many people believe that an idyllic tropical isle would be paradise. Living in a balmy climate with few weather extremes appeals to them. But concern over possible global warming and a consequent rise in the sea level has caused alarm among many islanders. The inhabitants of the low-lying atolls that make up the territory of Tokelau in the Western Pacific as well as those of the scattered Maldives in the Indian Ocean, islands that rise no more than six feet above sea level at high tide, feel likewise threatened.
Nearly 40 different governments have joined together in the Small Island Developing States federation to lobby support for their plight. Though the inhabitants of small islands generally have a long life expectancy and their infant mortality is low, they continue to face serious environmental problems. Oil slicks and dirty seas undermine the economies of some islands. Others become the dumping grounds for toxic waste that larger nations wish to discard.
Even the islands’ very desirability as havens for paradise seekers poses a threat. How? Tourists who flock to the islands’ sunny shores cause serious overcrowding and depletion of meager resources. These visitors also aggravate the pollution problem. In the Caribbean, for example, only one tenth of the sewage produced by the 20 million visitors each year receives any kind of treatment.
Something similar occurs in other exotic locations. Take the case of Goa on the western coast of India. “Mass tourism ‘is poisoning a paradise,’” declared London’s Independent on Sunday. Official estimates show an increase from 10,000 tourists in 1972 to over a million in the early ’90’s. One group warns that Goa’s fragile ecology and unique culture are threatened by the greed of hotel owners eager to cash in on the influx of tourists. An Indian government report confirms that some hotels have illegally sprung up on the beach. Sand has been quarried, trees felled, and dunes leveled. Sewage is discharged onto the beach or leaks into nearby paddies, spreading contamination.
Crime Free?
The creeping inroads of crime tarnish the reputation of even the most peaceful of areas. From the tiny Caribbean island of Barbuda comes a report headlined “Slaughter in Paradise.” This detailed the grisly murders of four people aboard a luxury yacht that moored off the island’s coast. Incidents such as this heighten concern over the spread of crime throughout the region.
“Drugs Trigger Gang Wars in ‘Paradise’” headlined a report in The Sunday Times of London regarding one Central American country. A local editor bewailed the fact that peace had gone, commenting: “Now it’s common to wake up in the morning to find a 16-year-old kid lying in a pool of blood in the street.”
Those who aim to live in community paradise hope to appeal to people who will agree to live peaceably. But what is the reality? Disagreements quickly surfaced in the case of the British couple mentioned at the outset. Some of the applicants to join their venture clearly wished to make money out of the scheme. “We don’t want leaders,” declared the promoter. “The idea is to pool our resources to get everything moving. I call it a Utopian community.” This is by no means the first such project.—See the box “Paradise Community Experiments.”
Some other paradise seekers believe that they will achieve their goal by winning a lottery. But financial gain achieved in this way rarely brings happiness. In February 1995, The Sunday Times reported that the family of Britain’s biggest lottery winner to date suffered bitter infighting; winning brought them nothing but “resentment, feuding and disillusionment.” This is not unusual in such situations.
In a study of man’s quest for Utopia, journalist Bernard Levin comments on the “dream of instant riches,” and asserts: “Like so many dreams, nightmare is not far away. There are too many authenticated stories of instant riches leading to utter disaster (including suicides) to reject them as coincidence.”
What About Doomsday Sects?
Other paradise schemes have had more sinister overtones. Reporting the siege by government law-enforcement agents at Waco, Texas, on the compound of the Branch Davidians back in 1993, a newspaper commented on the “volatile mix of guns, mind control and a doomsday prophet” that led to the debacle. Sadly, this is not an isolated incident.
The followers of the late Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian spiritual leader, set up a community in Oregon but offended the moral sensibilities of their neighbors. Their leader’s opulence and the sexual experimentation they practiced undermined their claim to have established “a beautiful oasis.”
Many cults led by people with paradise hopes demand that their followers practice strange rites, which sometimes result in violent confrontations. Newspaper columnist Ian Brodie explains: “Cults offer a sanctuary and a structured society for those who feel they are living in a vacuum or who cannot cope with pressures of the real world.” Nevertheless, his words testify to the fact that many people would welcome living in a paradise.
A Paradise Free From Trouble
The list of troubles seems endless: pollution, crime, drug abuse, overcrowding, ethnic conflict, political upheaval—to say nothing of those troubles common to all humans, disease and death. The conclusion must be that nowhere on this planet is there a paradise entirely trouble free. As Bernard Levin acknowledges: “There is a black mark on humanity’s score-sheet, and it seems to have been there almost as long as humanity. It takes the form of an inability to live happily in close proximity with more than a very few other human beings.”
However, there will be a global paradise that will be truly trouble free. Its duration is guaranteed by a superhuman power. Indeed, over five million people are even now working toward that, and they already enjoy precious unity and a relatively trouble-free environment among themselves. Where can you find them? How can you share the same hope and benefits they now enjoy? And how long will that coming Paradise last?
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Paradise Community Experiments
In the early 19th century, French socialist Étienne Cabet (1788-1856) and 280 associates founded a communal settlement in Nauvoo, Illinois, based on his ideals. But within eight years such dissension arose in the community that it soon disbanded, as did similar groups in Iowa and California.
Another Frenchman, Charles Fourier (1772-1837), developed ideas for a cooperative agricultural community with shifting roles for all its members. Each individual was to receive remuneration based on the success of the group as a whole. But communities based on these lines in both France and the United States were short-lived.
At about the same time, Welsh social reformer Robert Owen (1771-1858) proposed cooperative villages where hundreds of people would live together with communal kitchen and dining areas. Individual families would live in their own apartments and care for their children until they reached the age of three. Thereafter, their care was to be taken over by the whole community. But Owen’s experiments failed, and he lost much of his personal fortune.
John Noyes (1811-1886) became the founder of what The New Encyclopædia Britannica calls “the most successful of the utopian socialist communities in the United States.” When his followers abandoned monogamous marriages and permitted sexual relations simply by mutual agreement among all, Noyes was arrested for adultery.
Laissez Faire City, a kind of “capitalist Utopia” in Central America, is a recent attempt to create such a Utopian community, reports The Sunday Times of London. The project sought investors. Lured by the prospect of living in “the miracle city of the 21st century,” paradise seekers were invited to send $5,000 and join in a form of pyramid selling, searching out like-minded people who would, in turn, invest their money. Reportedly, all that this sum of money does is pay for an airline ticket to view the project “should a country ever be persuaded to give it building space, and a small hotel be built there,” commented the newspaper. There is no realistic hope of any “paradise” being established there.
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An island appeals to many paradise seekers. But today crime tarnishes even the most peaceful areas