65 Facts About Mark Satin

Mark Ivor Satin was born on November 16,1946 and is an American political theorist, writer, and newsletter publisher.

Mark Satin wrote the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, which sold nearly 100,000 copies.

Mark Satin spread his ideas by co-founding an American political organization, the New World Alliance, and by publishing an international political newsletter, New Options.

Mark Satin co-drafted the foundational statement of the US Green Party, "Ten Key Values".

Mark Satin has been described as "colorful" and "intense", and all his initiatives have been controversial.

At age 76, Mark Satin wrote a book seeking to draw lessons from his political and personal journey, Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics.

Many mid-1960s American radicals came from small cities in the Midwest and Southwest, as did Mark Satin: he grew up in Moorhead, Minnesota, and Wichita Falls, Texas.

Just before Mark Satin left for Canada, his father told him he was trying to destroy himself.

Mark Satin's mother told the Ladies' Home Journal she could not condone her son's actions.

Mark Satin says he arrived in Canada feeling bewildered and unsupported.

Mark Satin added that he was tired of talking to the press.

When Mark Satin was hired as director of the Programme in April 1967, he attempted to change its culture.

Mark Satin tried to change the attitude of the war resistance movement toward emigration.

Mark Satin's efforts continued after SUPA collapsed and he co-founded the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme, with largely the same board of directors, in October 1967.

Where the Programme once publicized the difficulties of immigration, Mark Satin emphasized the competence of his draft counseling operation, and even told of giving cash to immigrants who were without funds.

Finally, rather than expressing indifference to reporters, Mark Satin courted them, and many responded, beginning with a May 1967 article in The New York Times Magazine that included a large picture of Mark Satin counseling Vietnam War resisters in the refurbished office.

Mark Satin told one journalist he might have fought against Hitler.

Mark Satin was not necessarily opposed to the draft, telling reporters he would support it for a defensive army or to help eliminate poverty, illiteracy, and racial discrimination.

Mark Satin avoided the intellectual framework of traditional pacifism and socialism.

The results of Mark Satin's approach were noticeable: the Programme went from averaging fewer than three visitors, letters, and phone calls per day just before he arrived, to averaging 50 per day nine months later.

Many people did not want the Programme to encourage draft-eligible Americans to emigrate to Canada, and Mark Satin routinely denied that the Manual encouraged emigration.

Mark Satin was fired from the Programme soon after the appearance of the second edition of the Manual, which had a print run of 20,000.

Mark Satin's name was removed from the title page of most subsequent editions.

Roy MacSkimming, book editor of the Toronto Star, says Mark Satin portrayed himself as "idealistic" but troubled and uncertain, wanting to fit in yet longing to be unique.

Many years later, the Toronto Star reported that the publisher decided not to let Mark Satin do any publicity for the book, because of his potentially offensive views.

Mark Satin set out to write a book that would express the new politics in all its dimensions.

Mark Satin wrote, designed, typeset, and printed the first edition of New Age Politics himself, in 1976.

Since consciousness, according to Mark Satin, ultimately determines our institutions, prison consciousness is said to be ultimately responsible for "monolithic" institutions that offer us little in the way of freedom of choice or connection with others.

Many of the movements Mark Satin drew upon to construct his synthesis received it favorably, though some took exception to the title.

Theologians Tim LaHaye and Ron Rhodes are convinced Mark Satin wants a centralized and coercive world government.

Moral philosopher Douglas Groothuis says Mark Satin's vision is unsound because it lacks an absolute standard of good and evil.

Mark Satin's first talk received a standing ovation, and he wept.

Every talk seemed to lead to two or three more, and "the response at New Age gatherings, community events, fairs, bookstores, living rooms, and college campuses" kept Mark Satin going for two years.

Mark Satin wanted New Options to make the visionary perspective of New Age Politics seem pragmatic and realizable.

Mark Satin wanted New Options to spread the New Age political ideology more effectively than the New World Alliance had done.

Mark Satin himself turned out to be one of the newsletter's critics.

In 1984, Mark Satin was invited to the founding meeting of the US Green politics movement, and he became a founding member.

However, even after Mark Satin entered New York University School of Law in 1992, he expressed no desire to abandon his project of helping to construct a post-liberal, post-Marxist ideology.

Mark Satin did admit to being disillusioned with his approach.

Mark Satin did not dislike his work, but felt he was "sleepwalking" because he was not doing what he loved, writing about visionary politics.

Mark Satin attempted to embrace the promise but the balance implied by the term.

Until then, the only glimpse Mark Satin gave of his larger vision appeared in an article he wrote for an academic journal.

In 1987, culture critic Annie Gottlieb said Mark Satin was trying to prompt the New Age and New Left to evolve into a "New Center".

In New Age Politics, Mark Satin chooses not to focus on the details of public policy.

In Radical Middle Mark Satin develops a raft of policy proposals rooted in the Four Key Values.

In Radical Middle, Mark Satin calls on people of every political stripe to work from within for social change congruent with the Four Key Values.

Mark Satin argues that a draft could work in the United States if it applied to all young people, without exception, and if it gave everyone a choice in how they would serve.

Mark Satin proposes three service options: military, homeland security, and community care.

On Voice of America radio, Mark Satin presented his proposal as one drawing equally from the best of the left and the right.

For example, Robert Olson of the World Future Society warns Mark Satin against presenting the radical middle as a new ideology.

Life changed for Mark Satin after writing and publicizing his Radical Middle book.

In 2009 Mark Satin revealed he was losing his eyesight as a result of macular edema and diabetic retinopathy.

Mark Satin stopped producing Radical Middle Newsletter but expressed a desire to write a final political book.

Mark Satin has been a controversial public figure since the age of 20.

Marilyn Ferguson, author of The Aquarian Conspiracy, says that by engaging in a lifelong series of personal and political experiments with few resources, Mark Satin is playing the role of the holy "Fool" for his time.

Social scientists Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson, for example, argue that Mark Satin anticipated the perspectives of 21st century social movements better than nearly anyone.

Humanistic psychologist John Amodeo says Mark Satin is one of the few political theorists to grasp the connection between personal growth and constructive political change.

Ecofeminist Greta Gaard claims that Mark Satin "played a significant role in facilitating the articulation of Green political thought".

Novelist Dan Wakefield, writing in The Atlantic, says Mark Satin grew up in a small city in northern Minnesota like Bob Dylan but did not have a guitar to express himself with.

The major substantive criticisms of Mark Satin's work have remained constant over time.

Mark Satin's ideas are sometimes said to be superficial; they were characterized as childish in the 1960s, naive in the 1970s, poorly reasoned in the 1980s and 1990s, and overly simple in the 2000s.

Mark Satin's ideas have occasionally been seen as not politically serious, or as non-political in the sense of not being capable of challenging existing power structures.

Mark Satin's work is sometimes said to be largely borrowed from others, a charge that first surfaced with regard to his draft dodger manual, and was repeated to varying degree by critics of his books on New Age politics and radical centrism.

Mark Satin has long been faulted for mixing views from different parts of his political odyssey.

At 58, Mark Satin suggested his message could not be understood without appreciating all the strands of his personal and political journey:.