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In Luz, knowledge about the world would have to extend from the very natural—the sun and plants—to the human and technical. His goal was not to abandon the interactions and technology of the world so much as integrate lives that had been atomized. “It is an underlying supposition of Luz that the ideal of man should once again be the universal being who now enjoys and utilizes the fruits of the industrial revolution for his benefit,” Goldman wrote. “The man which Luz foresees is master of his destiny and not a small inconsequential cog in the vast social-industrial machine.”20 To understand life, Goldman feels we need to learn it with our own hands at every level. So instead of getting our car repaired by a mechanic, the mechanic teaches us how to fix it ourselves. In Luz, a “garage is not viewed as a place to have one’s automobile repaired; rather it is a place which teaches the owner how to repair the car, providing the specialized tools and parts needed to accomplish the task.”21

This belief in fractal autonomy is where Goldman’s interest in solar power arose. Whereas fossil-fuel markets are global, hopelessly beyond the control of hands-on understanding, Luz’s energy systems are community run. Residents could learn how energy works, and in the small things they would be able to grasp the big things:

Confronted with the question, ‘how shall we heat our homes?’, we must search for completely different solutions than conventional wisdom would dictate. We must ask a different question. It is no longer, ‘how shall we heat our house?’ but rather ‘How can we heat our house and at the same time learn more about the unity of the world while maintaining control over our personal situation?22

There’s little doubt that Goldman’s ideas during this period were influenced by the kibbutzim movement at the time in Israel. During the 1970s thousands of volunteers flocked to small communities in Israel to participate in agricultural and artisan workshops. First set up as socialist communes in the early twentieth century, they had survived to see a social era that found them fascinating.23 While the 1970s were christened the Me-Decade in the United States, the social world of the Israeli communes was different.24 People living on kibbutzim were expected to put the community first in all things, but particularly their job performance. Work was expected to serve two purposes: first, the making of stuff, and second, the remaking of one’s self. “The instrumental aspect of work, where labour is seen as a source of livelihood and means for achieving material resources, is distinguished from the expressive aspect that relates to work as a part of one’s inner life, a moral obligation, a means for self-realization and regulation, and even a path for personal salvation,” one kibbutz scholar explained.25

But Goldman is not and was not soft-headed. He knew that the main purpose of a heater is to make up for the heat a home loses. Gas heaters and heat pumps could keep a place warm, but “these solutions remove us as observer and participant in the basic energy flow process, confirming our dependence on a complex energy distribution process totally out of our control.”26 Though his justifications might be philosophical, his solutions—modular prefab construction, better insulation, solar planning in the siting of the house for southern exposure, solar hot water heating, and a greenhouse attached to the home—were practical.

Goldman argued for energy autonomy, but only at the community level—not for individuals. Unlike some of his American counterparts, he welcomed the reliability that came with networking power sources together. But centralized power generation had to fit into the Luz framework. To accomplish this, a wall “composed of a long series of parabolas which focus light on an energy-absorption tube” would enclose the cities.27 Of course, no company existed to actually build such an energy conversion machine, so Goldman proposed the creation of International Solar Equipment Corp. The company