© 1998 by Mary Lou Seymour and Claire Wolfe. This is a work in progress. You may download it for your own use, but it is not yet for circulation. We welcome any comments, corrections or additions you care to offer.

RECRUITING MEMBERS

If you're the Gulch organizer, the first decision you need to make is, "What are my needs." Then you have two directions in which you can go: You can start designing a gulch to meet your own specifications and hope to attract others to it; or you can attract a group around the concept of gulching, then customize your gulch project to meet their stated needs.

Who might these interested people be, and where might you find them? And how do you find them without spreading the word too wide and compromising the privacy of your project before it even gets started?

Your first impulse might be simply to turn to the people within your circle of friends and philosophical allies. And yes, that might be a good place to begin. But that approach also has pitfalls ­ BIG ones. So let's step back and take a look at what makes a good gulcher, then talk about some ways to bring those people into your project.

Who is a good candidate for gulching?

Libertarians seem to talk the most about gulching, and have come up with a variety of often-fanciful free-living projects over the years, from countries on floating platforms or hidden African valleys to giant, self-contained ships as tall as skyscrapers.

The writers of this manual are libertarians. But we've come to the conclusion that libertarians aren't always the best candidates for building or living within gulches. Three reasons: 1) libertarians generally don't work well in groups; 2) a lot of us have great intellectual skills but darned few practical ones; and 3) too many libertarians are incapable of practicing confidentiality in anything they do. Natural lone wolves, yet paradoxically natural networkers, we prefer to "do our own thing" and blurt it (and our friends' plans and activities) to the world.

We don't mean to be stereotypical. We certainly don't mean to imply that all libertarians have the above drawbacks. (We clearly don't think we do, after all, and we know plenty of other libertarians who can lead a team, build an outhouse or keep secrets.) We're just pointing out that the mere fact that someone is an eager would-be gulcher with great theoretical and philosophical grounding doesn't mean she'll be of a darned bit of use where the proverbial rubber meets the clichéd road.

So, who does make a good gulcher?

Someone who values freedom and won't compromise it ­ yet who can make ordinary human compromises to get along with others. Someone who wants so deeply to be free that he'll sacrifice money, conveniences and pleasures and consider that he's gained in the trade. Someone who respects the interests, as well as the ideas, of others. Who can keep her mouth shut. Who has enough money to invest in the gulch lifestyle (which may cost a lot or very little.) Who can pitch in where needed. Someone who has skills and interests you don't have; someone who needs and will trade for the skills you have. Someone who's creative, adaptable and brimming with common sense.

So where to find these paragons?

Let's start with the easy part. Physically, you may find potential gulchers in:

• Your circle of friends
• Gun clubs
• Subscription lists of magazines like Backwoods Home that have an emphasis on independent living
• Internet discussion groups
• Survival goods stores
• Some church groups
• Libertarian and patriot political groups
• Investment clubs with a free-market orientation
• Militia groups
• Via subscription lists of contrarian investment newsletters
• Coin stores and gold dealers
• Via known and trusted associates

(The psychological part, and other qualifications, will be harder; we'll get to that in a minute.)

Every recruitment effort will be a balancing act. On one had, you need to get the word out fairly widely to attract a diverse group. On the other, the more people who know, the more dangerous to your security.

One compromise method may be to attract candidates by giving many people a general picture of the gulch you desire to create, then to let only the most interested and interesting prospects in on discussions about location and other specifics.

Very early in the process you, as the organizer, and your core group, should set criteria for the personal characteristics and qualifications you regard as being most important in your potential gulchers. This might include: amount of money they should have to invest, skills desired, personality traits, assets they must be willing to bring, family size ­ anything you think will be critical to the success of your gulch.

You should prepare to be flexible; if someone brings extraordinary skills, but has hardly any money, you might need to make an adjustment for that person. But please do have a criteria list. Otherwise you'll find yourself floundering and directionless. (We know. We once tried to put together a gulch group with an "anything goes" attitude. We can only say that "everything went" ­ rather quickly to pieces.)

Characteristics that make good gulchers

Here are some characteristics to examine, for starters. We think the best potential gulchers:

philosophically

• Value freedom enough to live free, rather than merely discuss freedom or posture about it.
• Tolerate different viewpoints, within a range of principles

personally

• Are willing to tolerate a variety of lifestyles and attitudes. (Not always necessary in a special-interest group, but still a good check on how well the person will get along with others.)
• Will compromise on all manner of everyday things, but never on fundamental principles.
• Roll with punches, rather than fall apart in a crisis.
• Work hard and willingly.
• Are dependable.
• Are honest about their own shortcomings ­ not know-it-alls or dreamers with completely pie-in-the-sky notions about their own skills or potential contributions to your project.
• Have even tempers.
• Understand that sometimes an individual's rational self interest is best served by taking care of the needs of the group.
• Has some outstanding skill or set of skills that complement those of others in the prospective community.
• Assume all communications are confidential, unless told otherwise.
• Are either healthy or prepared to manage their own basic health needs.
• Learn and adapt quickly.
• Are able to ask for advice when they need it.
• Willingly discuss alternatives; don't always need to have things their own way.
• Can be mobile, if necessary.
• Are able to act positively, quickly and without whining once a community decision has been made (sometimes even when this means going along with a plan they may originally have opposed)
• Are prepared to defend the community as needed.

financially

• Can make whatever commitment is necessary to buy into the gulch.
• Don't rely on government checks, and preferably not corporate checks.
• Handle money and financial commitments responsibly.
• Can afford whatever minimal lifestyle expense the gulch requires.
• Have either a financial cushion or strong skills they can use to carry themselves and their family through a financial crisis.
• Either can work independently or have an independent unearned income that has some chance of being sustainable in hard times.
• Are either able 1) to leave the gulch to earn their living 2) to work from the gulch (e.g. by telecommuting) or 3) to start an in-gulch industry or make their living employed by a gulch business.

"skillfully"

• Can do a variety of practical tasks; are generalists, more than specialists.
• Or, if they are specialists, have a specialty that's vital to the health and security of the community (e.g. self-defense and security; computer repair; machinery repair)

And, above all else, are adaptable.

But how do you tell?

But how do you tell if your potential gulch residents and investors meet these criteria (or any other criteria you select)? There is simply no way to tell anything for certain about we mercurial human beings.

There are, however, a variety of personality, lifestyle and aptitude tests that may help you winnow candidates. We're listing some of those below. And following that, Mary Lou has designed a model skills inventory for gulch residents.

Whatever else you do ­ whether you use written tests or not ­ we suggest you take candidate-gulchers into real-world situations that put both skills and personalities to the toughest test of all. For instance, you could take a group on a week-long wilderness camping expedition that required shooting food, building shelters, performing team activities and solving survival problems. Or (if yours is a big-bucks operation, enroll the whole potential gang in one of those corporate team-building exercises). Don't just do it once. Follow your wilderness week with an afternoon of practical shooting. Design and build a backyard shed from scratch. Require everyone to spend a week living on nothing but stored food and water, then evaluate their preparedness and attitude (and see if you can detect who cheats, who lies and who's honest enough to stick it through then admit to planning failures and "learning experiences").

This is difficult, and may be impossible if your potential candidates are far-flung. In the most desperate circumstances, you may simply find that a group of strangers thrown randomly together may survive well ­ simply because they have to. But the more you can know about your soon-to-be neighbors and allies, the better.

Personality and aptitude tests

Frankly, we think most personality inventories are voodoo ­ or perhaps they function as magic talismen to make corporate HR types feel better about their decisions. We don't know. But they're fascinating and slightly addictive. If you think they might be of use to your community building, here are some resources:

Books:

Please Understand Me, An Essay on Temperament Styles, by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates. Prometheus Nemesis Book Company, P.O. Box 2748, Del Mar, CA 92014 (619-632-1575).

Gifts Differing, Isabel Briggs-Myers (with Peter Myers). Consulting Psychologists Press, 1980.

NOTE: Please Understand Me includes a self test, similar to the famous Myers-Briggs Type Inventory. Gifts Differing doesn't contain a test, but is written by one of the developers of Myers-Briggs and might be considered the more authoritative book. Both methods use a similar 16-type personality scale

Online personality inventories:

The Keirsey Temperment Sorter http://www.keirsey.com/cgi-bin/keirsey/newkts.cgi
Dr. David Keirsey's test

Online Personality Tests http://www.northnet.com.au/~achamber/psychtests.html
This site contains dozens of links to personality tests, both serious and frivolous. The site isn't well maintained and several links are broken, but it's worth checking out.

Tests, Tests, Tests from the Body-Mind Queendom http://www.queendom.com/tests.html
"Cyberia Shrink" has written a number of personality, intelligence and attitude tests and also provides links to other online test sites.

If any of these sites fail you, just type "personality test" or "aptitude test" into any good Internet search engine.

We didn't find any serious online aptitude tests ­ that is, tests designed to determine what sort of work a candidate actually might be good at or drawn toward. It seemed as if most of those so far remain the province of various private testing agencies who want fees to conduct and/or score them.

However, you'll find some interesting self-inventories in Richard Nelson Bolle's famous book on job hunting, What Color is My Parachute?

Gulchers' Skills Inventory

Finally, here's our own model inventory, designed especially for people in your position. You'll probably need to modify this test, adding or subtracting items and finding satisfying ways to elaborate upon (and verify) information candidates provide.

Here it is to get you started: GULCHERS SKILLS INVENTORY CHECKLIST

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