Since 1971: Johnny on Trust, Craft, and What Real Education Looks Like

Details

• Interviewee: Johnny
• Role: Community Member
• Community: Auroville
• Date: 2026-01-14
• Language: en

Summary

In this interview, Johnny discusses his journey of community building and education over the years at a defunct school he helped establish. He emphasizes the importance of hands-on learning, the sustainability of local crafts, and the emergence of alternative forms of education amidst traditional schooling. Johnny reflects on his life in a community of about 20 people, the values of collective living, and the skills necessary for successful communal life, stressing tolerance and understanding across diverse cultures.

Johnny shares his personal story of moving to Oroville in 1971, inspired by a desire for a new way of life, connecting with spirituality, and the creative freedom that comes with living in such an environment. He believes that true education extends beyond books and exams, focusing instead on lived experiences and the cultivation of trust within a community. His reflections also touch on the evolving dynamics of the community as it faces external influences and challenges.

Key quotes

Intelligence can also be in their hands... when you only had to go back 50 years and some of the most intelligent people on the planet were moving cathedrals... because they had the skills to do it.

I've always enjoyed that... understanding who the child is and what potential it has and encouraging it in that direction.

Trust is the basis of true human relations. If you know, we learn that we begin by trusting people.

It's a microcosmos... people still behave like people; there are no saints here.

Every year has a flavor that characterizes it, and there's definitely an evolution.

Transcript

**[Speaker 1]:** I'm going to look at what we call this okay. Can you just tell me your name? And where are we sitting right now?
**[Johnny]:** Okay, my name is Johnny. If the journey is what I'm known for here. And currently, actually we're sitting in a in the the grounds of a school or a defunct school, which I was a part of hope, no 15 years. And we we're holding now, here, our idea of what education should be, you know which is to break together together?
**[Johnny]:** Local artisans, both men and women. Who are often engaged in crafts that we feel won't exist in 10 or 20 years and I'm learning to a sustain of that culture, but also to encourage children to acknowledge that intelligence can also be in their hands. You know, I mean, they've come to be, we've managed to convince.
**[Johnny]:** Ourselves that intelligence is totally inside the head. And yet, when you, you only had to go back 50 years and some of the most intelligent people on the planet were moving cathedrals and up and and domestic schools in things in all different countries are engineering, which without simply because they had the skills to do it, stonemasons and iron masons and confidentist of these workers What's up? The turn, you know?
**[Johnny]:** And and and and argue, because my personal life has been enabled really by being able to do things with my hand I tried to, we've tried to enable other children to do I mean 1 in 10 children you sort of dealing with? Really, you know, and 10 children is you need one, you need children to be free enough to and unrestrained enough and unconditioned enough to be able to recognize that what we're offering to them is it? In liberation from the convention to the time.
**[Johnny]:** No, I'm sorry, that's a we do. We're this 6 time we do this, we do this just for 1 week every year and we gather together up to up to and we do within 200 children from the electoral schools and mostly in the local schools, and they also have children who don't participate in them and have non schooling and upschooling and up. Now unschooling, there's so many attempts to avoid the convention of schooling heat homeschooling.
**[Speaker 1]:** Can I ask you what what brought you to work?
**[Johnny]:** Do you want to argue? Yeah, well? I think I mean, if that always takes me right back to the 60s, you know, you got to you're gonna get actually physically what brought me to origo was with the fact that that I was married very young headed child's air fish charger young and and my wife ran away with their first child and I came looking for her here.
**[Johnny]:** That's the truth of it.
**[Speaker 1]:** And you found them, yeah.
**[Johnny]:** I found them here I came here. I can't even see if what sort of will come over to get and I was wilcome enough to say. And so, but it coincided with AI mean, I think one of the reasons that she came here was that she knew that this is exactly the sort of place that I would quite like to do.
**[Johnny]:** And we arrived here in a situation where there was a lot of purchase land. And you offered as much land as you've wanted, there's open and 4 or 5 other people we took on 100 acres of what was stencily sandy, not really does it, but sandy plane without any trees at all.
**[Speaker 1]:** And this is one of the communities today.
**[Johnny]:** Yeah, we talk community and and because we were located in terms of the town planning, what's called the green built, which is the sort of forest belt that is supposed to exist around the community to sort of filter the pants and and the local culture. You know, here was an opportunity to visit who knows a young. Hippie, I'm interested in an outdoor life and in the company of it.
**[Johnny]:** Good and crazy other people. It was an attractive place to live.
**[Speaker 1]:** So when was that?
**[Johnny]:** 1971. And I'm telling you, I decide in the beginning we're a community of maybe maybe 6 people and that's varied up-and-down and now we're a community of about 20 people living in a community within the community. But we still live our community life, you know, we shall have a Central kitchen and we all share at least one meal a day and we work at least 1 day a week altogether, usually maintaining the forest and we meet once a week and discuss our problems and raise money together.
**[Johnny]:** And so it's great like I'm a firm believer. In collective living frankly, you know, especially if you're raising children.
**[Speaker 1]:** What do you think that it really allows a person or like? What qualities do you think you have any or you needed to learn to stay connected to the community and to like nourish Flip4 me with the other one?
**[Johnny]:** Well, I mean you go to see that in order to be what you might call it success in this sort of environment you've got to, it's the incredibly tolerant of other people end of end of end of sort of cultures that you don't really understand or learn my job. But you've also gonna be a bit of a polymed, you know, you've got to the I mean, I'm always pointing out to the children is, the more you know about petting a tree. About fixing a bicycle or a metacycle, or even a car, if necessary about growing your own food, about surfacing solar panels and the alternative energy and living like that about recycling around waste and dry composting toilets and be using minimum materials.
**[Johnny]:** And uh and um, I mean, it's sort of it's very much just to do it yourself, sort of skill that was very vibrant alive in the 60s, you know? And it's sort of and then and then it died it died. I mean not died, but it's been warmly kept alive like the music from the 60s you know, it still lingers on, but it hasn't got that same vibrancy that it had in the 60s, but it's still, it's just as a subculture, and you know, so that's personally, there's some purchases are too I tried to live in
**[Speaker 1]:** What does it mean for you to be tolerant to other 2?
**[Johnny]:** The point of now, tolerant any means well, you can see that the basic skill, a tolerance really means that you don't. You know, people talk about, like-minded communities like minor communities don't exist. You know, they just think, as like-minded people that just means people who agree with you, you know so you're going to be able to to tolerate its interest cities and adversities in other people, in order to live with them?
**[Johnny]:** That's what I mean you know, and then, and when you've got mixed culture that can be quite extreme. You know because all different cultures have very different territorial imperatives to one thing, you know it Very many different cultural aberrations, you can easily insult a Frenchman, and doing something that wouldn't upset a Dutchman, or something you know, and things like that, the more you you're you're prepared to accept that people are who they are for whatever they are, the more likely you are to be.
**[Johnny]:** Able to live in a community, I mean, oreville began with small communities. You know, as it likeaburges very much like kibbutches. There were small communities and you had to be a community, really, because the situation demanded you, there was at least somebody had to be in charge of service that somebody be in charge of agriculture, somebody.
**[Johnny]:** If you had to be in charge of building somebody, we had to be in charge of raising money, somebody even tried to cook. From getting further and had to be at least teachers have been able to even begin until you have these small communities that existed and grew to be quite large in communities, you know, after a 150 people in some communities. And then slowly using the cookin, I mean, it's become more affluent.
**[Johnny]:** It's sort of slowly disseminated into a sort of a convenience of people, flooding venting themselves off and leading around in the separate lives and and collective kitchen surgery. Except there's one Central collective kitchen to the community, says. The community itself does exist as a community.
**[Johnny]:** You know this incident, it does have a Central eating place and meaning does hold many collective shared celebrations and countries. You know.
**[Speaker 1]:** I feel like personally. Did you need to learn so to let go of something in order to?
**[Johnny]:** State I mean, learning. It definitely what the whole thing's been about, you know what I've the amount I mean, like, for instance, just in the field of reform station and things like that, I don't underneath that, but yeah, you know when I consider how my life would have been how I came from. Australia, you know, so how my life would have been in Australia and Australia isn't unlikely.
**[Johnny]:** The most question of American cultures, you know, it's a, it's very, uh, I'm afraid of mostly any form of deviations from the norm. You know and say so they do their utmost to try and mitigate against you doing anything experiment or with children or experiment or with anything really. So the thing in tower.
**[Johnny]:** You know, and so here it's been a land of opportunity really for me, because also, because it's a very, uh, dynamic crossroads in boreville, independent of the community. And so the number of people like yourself, you come through here. Are they looking for trouble or looking for interest or looking for something or bringing new ideas, or you can imagine, like Alexandria would have been or something like that, you know, historically.
**[Johnny]:** A place where information gathers in collect and the, you know, for instance, of the information, the movies that we see the books that we read that you know, all these things have been slowly filtered by the conductor that we live within the why people passing through like yourself, you know that they bring bring with them. Some added growth, which means that the community grows according to 2000 experiences in tower. You know that we can world-class real class, musicians and performers and characters that come through here and they stay for a week or something, but they look at the Russian pop pop puppet master and a and a you know, a guy from 6 fil A.
**[Johnny]:** Call literally guys and then they're the people this day. You know, I mean, it's funny if you look around the people who stay who say here. Most people really take spiritual refuge in Oroville you know, like you wouldn't nobody's here for the money for instance, you know you wouldn't be here if you wanted to make money?
**[Johnny]:** If it's going to cost you money basically to leave you, you're going to find some other way to make money, really? You're going to be going to have some other support to leave in Oregon, like you've been a little bit of you know, and if you get a lot of trauma, people do start small industries that manager little bit, you know, and buy a car or something there's a huge luxury. You know, you.
**[Johnny]:** Know situation ladies but most of us have got some form of support coming in from somewhere else from, you know, I've quite a large family in Australia. And the other thing about living here is you don't need much money. You know, like you did you you leave?
**[Johnny]:** I mean, India has a very generous economical system. Really, what you can live on here is it virtually nothing in relative terms. You know, I was just recently in France and and there are some things that were costing 10 times as much in France.
**[Johnny]:** The same thing, kilting 10 times as much the same like a like a phone charger, for instance, you know a thing like that, which is a luxury hit by a phone charger, not you 10 times as much in Paris as I'm utter, maybe a little bit better in paralytino.
**[Speaker 1]:** And what what do you I feel like you gain from living here personally?
**[Johnny]:** Uh, well, I, I've, I've, II feel that we are a spiritual community, you know, like it's not obvious that this is, as people say, almost spiritual community, what's that spiritual about it, you know, it's a there, I think to begin with, there's a common understanding I don't think there's many people here who who haven't had A strong spiritual experience that it brought them here, sort of thing, you know, some, there's been something that that they've sense. Because you can when you get to India, you're aware that there isn't like there's a very thick spiritual cloud that hovers over this country, you know.
**[Johnny]:** I'm sorry, it's a, it's a it. It enables you to like, for instance, meditation, you know, to have discovered meditation like I've been a considerable amount of these things. Intense meditation courses.
**[Johnny]:** You know, because I know, but I would never have done meditation in any other country. I've learned all over yoga, for instance, you know, like Indian yoga, no Indian yoga people talk about going to the gym.
**[Johnny]:** You know, sort of thing going to the gym is like it's like it's so primitive compared to a science of something like yoga, which has been developed really over thousands of years.
**[Johnny]:** You know the consideration that goes into the whole body that when it's in a Yogi, compared to going and doing weightlifting, and this is a c*** where you're either building up your legs or your arms or your back, or you know, doesn't you know something? But this is a very signistic in its culture And and and the other thing that I've found immediately encouraging was the work ethic, you know, the Tamils are very hard-working people. They're wonderful people to work with, because they'd be easy people to work with, but they, I always say that a Tamil, he won't do something he doesn't like no matter how much you pay him, but if he's doing something that he likes, he doesn't care how much you pay you know.
**[Johnny]:** It's like that with this culture, these people, and you're so often in a situation with temples where you're so glad that you're working with a Tamil.
**[Johnny]:** You know, because they have incredible perseverance way past the point where you're so you go f****** tuckets, you know. They're in there, so no, no, Johnny, no, come on over now.
**[Speaker 1]:** But for you like do you feel like those You know, I'm really happy that I gained this Olivia.
**[Johnny]:** Absolutely. What did I gain? Yeah, I don't know, I think it's an undersecond.
**[Johnny]:** It's an understanding that I think that I probably wouldn't have got any real said that there are there is an alternative way of living. You know that you know, you don't have to be ruled heavily by by bureaucracy and administration and I've always had in my life. I've always had a lot of trouble with the word permission.
**[Johnny]:** You know, I've been twice in prison, actually in in in and due to big situations where I didn't have permission, you know, and so permission for me. And so here this isn't it isn't a, you know, I mean slowly creeps into the, you know, I mean now current struggle with permission is becoming and with bureaucracy.
**[Johnny]:** You know you can I mean, you now see clearly where bureaucracy comes from, you know?
**[Johnny]:** And the whole team cause that's coz, the community here was is still that the communiocst you're living is still based on trust.
**[Johnny]:** You know, trust means that you don't need permission, you can trust that a person knows what they're doing because they know what they're doing, but if you don't trust it and I know what they're doing, then you make them you go through, look like we performed this team here now for 5 years without asking anybody for permission.
**[Johnny]:** In order to do it this year, we had to have 8 different signatures.
**[Johnny]:** The people who all had the right to say, we couldn't do it, you know that's what bureaucracy is and what do you feel they feel that you're going to do something they don't like, you know, or you do gonna do something outrageous, or you're going to you're going to influence children in a direction they don't you think they should be influencer?
**[Speaker 1]:** And what do you feel that you've learned around crust?
**[Johnny]:** Trust yeah, I don't know. I think I think trust the impact is the basis of true human rations. If you know 2222, here we learn that we begin, but we begin by trusting people.
**[Johnny]:** I mean, trust is very intuitive. Isn't it, you know it's not logical or you know you can't. You can't give me a lot of good reasons that I should trust you.
**[Johnny]:** I will only trust you if I feel that I should trust you and I said. It is something which is and it's interesting to us.
**[Johnny]:** Because once a week and where we are in the commuter, we have an open day on Sundays where anybody can come, villagers can come and be, if anybody can come and we have as long as you bring a bit of food and and it's funny because II mean, I can.
**[Johnny]:** I can immediately I mean, my wife, she said she can dealt immediately whether somebody trusts with you or not. You know.
**[Johnny]:** But I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm a bit less, because offense, how many times I've been mistrustful?
**[Johnny]:** And realized that I've been a mistake.
**[Johnny]:** But I think trust is the basis of really a human community, you know, it was not based on trust, then it's based on fear and here is, is.
**[Johnny]:** It is an enemy you have trust and the enemy of life.
**[Johnny]:** Really you know.
**[Johnny]:** It's very much based untrust. In this word, vision is what project not at the third holding biggest page.
**[Johnny]:** Yeah, I mean, here we have our 200 children yield. If all of his parents trust that we will look after them and enable them and teach them something you know that I don't know, let's not here. They're running motive
**[Speaker 1]:** And what blocks you
**[Johnny]:** I think well, I think I was probably always interested in it. I mean having had children, you know and then I mean, I have AI just noticed when as soon as I was you know soon and my wife told me she was pregnant before we were married. So I was saying wow yeah, great, you know minutes of a child, you know, and so I very much enjoyed it.
**[Johnny]:** Teaching that child, the fish child and buildings with Yemen contragan had 3 more children, but you know, so right from the side of having children? And I think it's a mistake. I think you probably you know, wouldn't it's not a good idea to go to have your children if you don't enjoy education, really, because that's your And I don't mean sitting down with books and open numbers.
**[Johnny]:** You know, I mean really understanding who the child is and what potential it has and who it is and encouraging it. You know in that direction, I'm sorry that the and because I've always enjoyed that, but also I think because the lifestyle that we live. There, it's, it's, it's slightly chaotic.
**[Johnny]:** You know, look, we live in a bit of a junk pile in in photo. We collect, we have upcycling upcycling lab there in 7, so we have it, some sort of and that sort of world attracts children, you know, so children are attracted by chaos, actually, and so they come to us, really, so it's been much more a passion of the children coming to us and us, going to them.
**[Johnny]:** You know, like I had In the early days of Oracle, before there were any schools, I had 12 children come to me and say they wanted to start a school and I said, no, no, no, no school life is a school.
**[Johnny]:** You're not Johnny, we want to school. You know, we want a blackboard, we want desks and we want to, we want to do a school? Although the only way you can do that is you're going to have to build your disk and you're going to build the building, and you know you're going to do it all yourself, you know, and they did either school for 4 years.
**[Johnny]:** I have kids who who wanted to have a school and there's Orson and capturing and dueller and rutzy and Raju and ashaman and you know, like these kids here now they're never in their 40s.
**[Speaker 1]:** In the 50s, the first school buildings for the last school and no school in the way.
**[Johnny]:** This is all the fence girl. You can change is not expected?
**[Speaker 1]:** I have to screw it.
**[Johnny]:** I have a girl, okay, now. The mother intended, if you're if you're if you're not doing something in a review that you can't share with a child, you're not doing what you should be doing you know you should be able to like Einstein saying nothing, if you can't explain something in simple terms, then it doesn't matter what it is.
**[Johnny]:** You know, you've got to be able to reach children.
**[Johnny]:** And so we've always believed, and I mean, not believe always found that it's my children, that it's, it's, it was It's great fun The new things for children don't go on adventures with children. So that's been the basis of everything to read that like this this is a definition of premiere.
**[Speaker 1]:** What comes to your mind when you hear the world?
**[Johnny]:** Waterville, yeah, I know originally is a it's a dream, it's a, uh, it's an ideal but I think it's an ideal and like all ideals. It's slowly having to adjust its standards to deal with the with a with or with her under the world, that's totally changing all the time.
**[Johnny]:** I mean, we are, it's a, you know, fortress, really in its own way. Against the pictures of the of the world, but at the same time, it's a microcosmos.
**[Johnny]:** You know, cousin mitzer, it's very much a shadow of what goes on in the rest of the world, like people are still people here, people still behave like people there are no saints in order to you know?
**[Johnny]:** There's no. It's still a very human place in those terms, but it is a collective Hola bye hello, Goodbye one piece you haven't cooked for us when I have festival day on Sunday. Hey, Koreans are the world's most incredible cookies.
**[Speaker 1]:** So you were saying there's humans.
**[Johnny]:** Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean or to begin with we're always. I think you're always you think whoever you know to do is that what you've got you got as much land as you want you never had to buy these?
**[Johnny]:** You know, you got you got you know, with the opportunity that oreville represents, or has represented to me has been enormous, really, you know, and so there's never been As everything I've done here has been really are the weird people who admit, who are passing through or just through the amenities and availabilities of what exist. General is like there's an engineering workshop in Oregon, for instance, with, because if I know all the people in the workshop they do their they. Allow me to go there and use their tools.
**[Johnny]:** And they were a Trump, and that doesn't exist anywhere they're maybe much slowly do some of the world.
**[Johnny]:** You know, there's this, this community is good on you know, and a lot of common experience.
**[Johnny]:** You know, the people who've been here for more than 10 or 20 years, she having lived through cyclones and tsunamis and we're and and you know village wars and for quite extraordinary ordeal.
**[Johnny]:** It's really inside. It's a it's a compound experience that that no I think 1 day somebody will really be able to to put into a book. Maybe you know, if unless all these all the old Peter and I and if we pass on and don't and done, you have some experiences.
**[Johnny]:** But I think increasingly you know increasingly, we get anthropologists coming here and people I'm telling stories now that Weathers, now, I think from mouth supposed to the whole thing of old originally, and telling stories or the experiences of you know that sort of thing is what? But it is a it is a it is a subculture or a billionaire in the planetary.
**[Johnny]:** Sentine's have a little culture. But it's very young and and unpolished culture and it's not.
**[Johnny]:** It's not obvious. You know, I think you have to live here like people come in and pass by, but you have to leave here for at least 3 months. I think, do you even begin to Kevin the the widths and depths of origo, because you you have a, you have all extremes exist in this community and And you know they're pretty hard to dig out sometimes.
**[Speaker 1]:** And what comes to your mind when you hear the world, the shield in the
**[Johnny]:** Open down oh well, he was A. He was a he. They were too aspect to her be no, because he was here's appears to the incredible gratitude to the guy for having really concocted that it's impossible you know, but but mostly and I haven't read so much of oregono I mean, are you in the early days here you do when you first come here, you read quite a lot of oregono just out of curiosity, really.
**[Johnny]:** Don't know he's on about that, but he he writes do sort of the books she writes sort of history in philosophy books, but he also writes guidance to his, but he had a nurse regular and he had had astronites who who were in their own way endeavoring in spiritual practices.
**[Johnny]:** You know, and so they were all the time. Writing to him and and and and and telling him of their problem 17 he was so he does have books.
**[Johnny]:** Uh, we, he between he guides, spiritual, you know, Aspirin say and and you know like Prince and I at 1 point I was, I was trying to live like a hermit in Australia next year for a year and a 1/2 in 1989I tried to live in a tiny little forest hut as a hermit, and I gradually went insane. I thought you know, and there's gonna tease you to think to live as a habit, you know, but that I I've discovered in order to stay sane and I've had the same experience whether I come down in quite a bit of sailing at sea you know, and I have the same feeling that when I feel that I'm losing my mind, III all I need is a few is even A.
**[Johnny]:** Future pages of something of fuel of windows, and he totally transports me into a world where which is so much higher than my immediate concern here. That he saves me from like, I don't know if you've ever heard of it.
**[Johnny]:** But if you're sailing the sea can be so boring and simulating that you feel like jumping overboard in order to be stimulated, you know, like a fear and II, I, I've suffered this fear where you think of a pocket or just jump over and and you need to, it means that you need to be you need to get out of that state of mind you know, and that's sorry you can be terminated by mosquitoes.
**[Johnny]:** You notice how they don't touch me. They don't know like new blood.
**[Speaker 1]:** And what comes to your mind when you hear the world, the mother
**[Johnny]:** The mother well, I met her twice or 3 times thanks, really and and I don't know, I mean for me. She was just like a like a very wonderful and generous and benevolent, a grandmother sort of thing.
**[Johnny]:** You know, when I went to see it was like visiting your grandmother and uh, noting that, but she was, she was also But she she lived in a she's had in this big throne in in this one room for the last, I don't know how many years of her life and with the bathroom and everything, then she barely didn't leave this apartment, she never came to orego and and so.
**[Johnny]:** She would she, even people? There would be a constant chain of people coming to see her all day and people would come and ask for to for things like can I go to Madras or you know?
**[Johnny]:** But also they would bring it things to be blessed and things but many people came to her and simply gave him money and he would, and she would because whether they hear whether they use the Orville or water and the truth and witness The thing was and I think that I didn't know this perfect but underneath her chair, it was a large cardboard box and she'd put the money in.
**[Johnny]:** You know, and we had a well you know, sage, we, in the early days of Oracle, we had a, we had an third agent who would go. Who would assume, who would? Um, he would be a representative with the most of the mother and and so we would go to human say, look, we need money to buy a bullet cop or money to to put a pump down or something and he would go to see her.
**[Johnny]:** It's, you know, he's right down, how much of what Here we go to see her and you come back in the afternoon and leave a sham Sunda and he would then hand you the money and it sounds like having AA the benevolent old wealthy grandmother who is who'd given you, you know the land and the thing and his money and the Goodyear of it's like whoa, so the incentive to stay was very hot.
**[Speaker 1]:** Any specific thing that you feel like you've learned from her essence of teaching.
**[Johnny]:** Of the mother.
**[Johnny]:** I mean, I don't know if I I'm not meeting in, you know, if I'm, for instance, you've people dealing with kids, you know, and I'd like to know what her thoughts are about things like education about about, you know anything that achieves that, could you you know there are? Volumes She didn't write much or anything she spoke a lot, and it was recorded and transcribed, you know, and with that.
**[Johnny]:** Yeah, if you know, I think you're the strict woman in a run way.
**[Johnny]:** I think you know I think she she would have been a difficult mother with a maybe not 30 feel grandmother.
**[Johnny]:** You know, but no I think mostly it was just like gratitude to this wonderful woman who's who's I mean, she was very tolerant? Also, she had incredible tolerance.
**[Johnny]:** You know, she was she wasn't she wasn't what I would have called a moralist, you know, she, of course, she was aware of the rigors of modern life and the demands of In that life that she was, you know, she could see that everybody has to live there and she surrounded herself with the alcoholics and dead beats and Thebes and rubbers.
**[Johnny]:** And you know characters here it's used to say they said, what are your certainty said well, if they would with me? They'd be doing much worse things, you know, since I hear the innocent, a very generous and embracing soul.
**[Johnny]:** And you know, she I think she looked upon originally like her children really that she knew it was because if when I first came, there was a sort of an intrigue group in punditary, which with its 4 rather officious Indians and when we went to see them, they said, oh, because I'd studied.
**[Johnny]:** Architecture in Australia and said, oh, we have a good position for you in an architectural office. Here you know and I said no, no, no, I couldn't come here to live like that.
**[Johnny]:** I've come for a new way of life, you know and they said, oh if you don't want to do what we think is good for you. But then we have no pledge for you.
**[Johnny]:** And I said, well, that's okay with me on you know, I can come in my head to please, you sort of thing and then rinse.
**[Johnny]:** I want to go to a point that we finally moved to work or to help them, we know we always living in the beach, nothing to do the original.
**[Johnny]:** And then I was hoping these people be able to build houses in where we are now. I said, no, no I can't.
**[Johnny]:** I can't come and join the community because I went and so they said, I couldn't come, you know, because of this entry, this didn't matter it, I just ask the mama and so I regulated to the mother and I got back from this beautiful document.
**[Johnny]:** You know, I got this document back and said, Johnny and Dan and Jonas and stuff are welcome to oriel rudder and then hear the signed by the Mother and here's a little thing to wear around your neck with petrols in it from the astram and stuff.
**[Johnny]:** And suddenly they had this music had totally different understanding of what was going on here, you know.
**[Speaker 1]:** What comes to your mind when you think about 2025 in the coming year?
**[Johnny]:** But this year, this year, I mean, every year has AI think I keep it. I've kept a diary now for 45 years. I think every day.
**[Johnny]:** And so every year has a the flavor this is one thing that characterizes every year, and uh, you know, I mean like we're really just entering into it now, but but you know, there's definitely Like I'm pissing you wear of an evolution.
**[Johnny]:** And so 2 20 25 is, I mean, it's still a mystery to what's going to unfold. But but you know I'm sure it's going to be an adventure, it's very easy and this is a degree of adventure, I mean, at the stage, something like this, is it quite a quantum?
**[Johnny]:** You know, take 16 of us? I don't see. We've been meeting about the staking mission since November and raising the money and being the people in the school, dealing with the schools and dealing with the thing.
**[Johnny]:** So it's a, you know, it's a bit of I mean, Oracle, is it is in a very precarious position at the moment now because it's but you know, you and you could say that, I mean I've watched in the time I've been in Oregon, I've watched it. Go up-and-down in terms of temperament, like that, you know, and I can see that now it's gradually finding back at street from what the impact of of a you know a bit.
**[Johnny]:** It's a it's a you know cause what's happened now is the community is divided that that would never really existed before, you know, that means always been a joke that the that you had the they have the wild characters who live in the forest.
**[Johnny]:** And you have the sort of saint be people who live in the in the in the city. You know, sort of thing, and like the, you know, there's a, there's a, so there was a weave into the play where the the city mouse and the country mouse, you know the whole thing.
**[Johnny]:** But it was never taken very seriously, but now there's the sort of thing where people don't speak to each other and things like that, you know, simply because I know a family here, whether with a grandmother, no longer speaks to her children and grandchildren, because of what you might call a political change in political feelings and I think, wow, that's your, that's certainly not you know, but you know, I mean, I'm not complaining, I'm just, I'm just noticing that the impact to the planet on oreville is increasing we had.
**[Johnny]:** I think we had, I think what you might have called AI. Think we had a honeymoon period For about 50 years, frankly, and the honeymoon's over, you know, you're now going to buckle down and learn what it is to live with the Indian government and what the Indian government said.
**[Johnny]:** I've said you put people, especially be building a city and all you've done is plant a forest you know, we'll show you what it means to build a city.
**[Johnny]:** You first thing you aint gonna have a big road. You know, being all the peaceful in and blah blah blah, you go then?
**[Johnny]:** And and the thing is, like, you know how it is with governments.
**[Johnny]:** And no matter what they do, it's going to be, it's going to be you comparably inefficient. And so we can now go sit back and watch, you know, I mean the mistake that you make are thinking most governmental decisions is to assure that there's an intelligence There's not. It's not there's not.
**[Johnny]:** It's not a single-minded intelligence, you know, there might be a lot of people trying to sway to get it to make something go in one direction or other, but in general, there's not a, you know, I mean, but you would tell you the ideal form of government is benevolent a dictator really.
**[Johnny]:** Singapore lay Li Quan U Les 1U is a benevolent dictator and you know I mean people she'll love you? And he's true, is getting seriously getting his opinions of what's happening in the world things you know, he can tell you quite clearly what's happening on the planet, you know.
**[Speaker 1]:** And so so those who are going to read the text, oh sure, there's a lot of young people trying to business, yeah.
**[Johnny]:** I'm pull over the right and
**[Speaker 1]:** Do you have if you can have any
**[Johnny]:** Tips
**[Speaker 1]:** Oh, listen.
**[Johnny]:** Oh well, I don't know what I've of what I've been saying to kids here now is listen, you've got this like it's like. If you're if you're involved in education. For instance, do you prepare children for the world that you would like to happen or the world that you fear might happen, you know, and so I'm saying to children look Just fix on the horizon, the world that you want you want to happen.
**[Johnny]:** You know, and realize that you don't have enormous amount of energy and put all your energy into going there. You don't worry about the going in the other direction because you're going to waste energy worrying about him, you know the loss is just head for where you're going and make that your dream, you know, and if you and because people learn from example.
**[Johnny]:** They don't learn from reading or writing or education ready to learn from example and you look at children, they learn from respect if children respect you, they'll follow you and they'll act like you. Do you know and Rap for me is a guiding principle for everything I've observed here that that that I tried to be a model for children to follow to make a world that I want to happen.
**[Speaker 1]:** And what would you say about learning how to walk in a group?
**[Johnny]:** Well, I think you definitely do need in a group. You do need to some extent, a guide you know, you need you need an experience. You need an experienced person who's been through communities and knows a little bit what they're talking about, you know and the guide who is thick footage, but it doesn't mean it doesn't mean that they, in any way a dictator or a thing there, simply they simply are a wealth of experience or information that you will need in order to, if you're going to start a community and the more.
**[Johnny]:** Alternative is your community, the more likely it is to secede, in my terms, you know, I think the temporary it is, and the more it's based on, you know, on very simple living on small housing and everything.
**[Johnny]:** And and you you know I'm growing your own food and and as much as possible and autonomous hit up, and then the more likely you are to succeed, because you know there's no there's no real reason to be a community. Now there's no, you know, there's no it's much easier to not be a community.
**[Johnny]:** It's much easier to much more convenient to stay at home and have your own apartment and your own little thing in your own sound system, your own and your own, you know, and that's why kids now don't even want to get married.
**[Johnny]:** You know they don't want to get married and have children because that's going to addiction.
**[Johnny]:** And what do you mean? They're going to you know, take from this comfortable convenient, lock that they've got going for the sort of thing that you know I mean that it's always been my experience that if you get a group of people living together, especially now, as I get older, I mean, I.
**[Johnny]:** Notice that I have 20 people that live in our community.
**[Johnny]:** It still means that we can do incredible teams. We can just suddenly put up a huge workshop group, I could never do that on my own, you know. I was hiring a lot of paper, that's how real cooperate and physically they help each other do things.
**[Johnny]:** And the other thing is that if you have children and the children, the children within the community could shed parenting, you know, they're going to get their lid, you can say that what's happened in.
**[Johnny]:** Terms of families of people had less children to putting much more attention into these children as if you know.
**[Johnny]:** And the children themselves are just picking my time right this I drive like that, I don't want this and this pound's very good and order with you and I would like, it's become a thing with it.
**[Johnny]:** You get these incredibly demanding children because they've been so spoiled since I was not. Taught, you know, like I tell you in the community, a child gets a whole mixture of opinions.
**[Johnny]:** I can see quite clearly.
**[Johnny]:** You ask the children in the community, you know. Oh, that car is an old stonehedge.
**[Johnny]:** You know, that guy is you know, she's really good enough because they've got all sorted out.
**[Johnny]:** They're much better than any other has and so you know, I personally, I trust children, then to be my measure of uh, individuals and more.
**[Speaker 2]:** Peter, do you have any questions?
**[Speaker 3]:** Yeah.
**[Speaker 1]:** So, do you have any limitations on publishing your work or your image?
**[Johnny]:** Do you mean what you're likely to take poverty?
**[Speaker 1]:** I mean, if there's anything you want me not to
**[Johnny]:** Well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't like you to say anything if I mean, I mentioned a little bit. Indian governments evening government is very sensitive to whether mentioning them. You know or any public sorry, if I've said anything that you feel might be in any way we're country to the bureaucracy unit.
**[Johnny]:** I mean, but I've tried not to say.
**[Speaker 1]:** Yeah.
**[Johnny]:** Yeah, thing against no, no I know we're like, we've we do, it's open my son, we put on theater performances in oreville, and we do parodies, you know, and the last few parodies we've done, they've won, they've been And when they wouldn't let us perform in the major theater hall and we had to find a small as a hall to perform with him, but even when we give them the scripts and they read the script and they can't understand where the insinuations are ensure that what we're doing is trying to be subversive, you know, answer, and so I have to be a little bit careful.
**[Johnny]:** What are saying?
**[Speaker 1]:** And anything else I've done other than this anything other than that?
**[Johnny]:** No, no I don't haven't done.
**[Speaker 1]:** Peter, do you have something in your mind?
**[Speaker 3]:** Oh my God is coming from there and I'm really like blank. No words, I find it very interesting but because I didn't end a new only part of your story, Johnny interesting.
**[Speaker 3]:** Yes, we came nearly at the same time
**[Speaker 1]:** Both architects
**[Speaker 3]:** Yeah, Melissa.
**[Johnny]:** I can take this
**[Speaker 3]:** And both even interested, partly in similar, we want to say pattern languages, yeah, I would say.
**[Speaker 3]:** But you can employ in all skills of life not just architecture and not typical detected over.
**[Speaker 3]:** I would say, even though I made a few things here but it came on my lap. I didn't I didn't run after that note?
**[Speaker 3]:** It was not my main interest and conditions upon his own history and I choose to say more the urban kind of aspect from the beginning. No aspiration, but you choose to place here like around the oldest trees in the whole area, no. Did you start that?
**[Speaker 3]:** Okay, puntos, Mania know you're you?
**[Johnny]:** No, there's Josh by senator from Sydney.
**[Speaker 3]:** No, because there's a different background. Also different. I was here, not a prior to us, because I wanted to become the forest makes being as a young boy and only as the girls that pulled me out of the first idea to become more an evolutional or social person, in that sense, I find so beautiful to listen to Johnny Bauer with such a lot of experiences and also in the last Decades.
**[Speaker 3]:** Having been outside a lot. Now being all exposed to the word as this and also what can happen there partly and yeah, now, what else to say, uh, ultimately is in doctors feel, bring your mother is the anchor smoke, the moon, whether you feel more or less here.
**[Speaker 3]:** Similar landscape, each one has its own story, and this is, but it is a very important issue another issue, it's your very important energy which keeps you through all the madness again, because wildlife there are so many exterior witnesses to stay here. Unless what you said about India, I share with you the same thing. India from itself is an anchor which I can explain really fully whether it is like a home long ago or deep And you can call it screeczer, or has another dimension this what we can touch the rest at least.