Ron Anastasia was an advisor to Paolo Soleri at Arcosanti in the early 2000s. During that time he worked with Michael Gosney and Tomaiki Tomura as co-directors organizing the Paradox Conferences at Arcosanti.
Ron was the major force during that time in setting up dialogues with Soleri called School of Thought discussions, in which Soleri would consider the organizing themes of the conferences and the overall paradox program and discuss them with Anastasia and others in the community and outside world who were interested in participating in these weekly discussions/salons. Later Soleri would evolve and expand SoT to consider various notions of sustainability and green thinking that was at the time rapidly being incorporated into mainstream thought.
Ron also was featured speaker at the April Green Century Salon in SF while I was there in 2004. He shared his experiences, insights and ideas from working with 3 major intentional communities: Arcosanti, Damanhur and Auroville. He has worked closely with Paolo Soleri at Arcosanti where he was Co-Director with Michael Gosney of the Paradox Program advising Soleri on the development intellectual content that might fit with the Program and the companion conferences. During this time Doctress Neutopia (aka Libby Hubbard) was also involved as onsite manager of the Paradox Team and I was one of the teammembers (2000-2001).
His time at Damahur included a chance to get to know the community there in 2006 and observe some of their spiritual rituals and practices. This included observing ceremonies inside the famous sacred space that they created inside a mountain which they believed was located within a vortex that was connected to a global network of vortexes via wha they termed as "planetary laylines".
Ron's academic background was in cognitive psychology (Berkeley & Harvard), physics (Berkeley). He also studied appropriate technology and system dynamics, which involved the computer modeling of complex systems (MIT). His Ph.D. was in Humanistic Sciences with a focus on the interactions between consciousness changing practices and the development of ecological values and lifestyles in the context of the world problematique1.
Ron founded several small high-tech companies during the 80s and early 90s in areas of personal computer training, holistic healthcare and appropriate technology. His ventures included the world's largest personal computer training center in the early 80s, a widely-used computerized holistic health blood analysis method during the middle 80s, and in the early 90s a photovoltaic R&D company which set a new world's record for solar cell efficiency using high-energy laser dopant implantation.
Ron passed away in 2009.
Notes & References
World Problematique is a concept created by the Club of Rome to describe the set of the crucial political, social, economic, technological, environmental, psychological and cultural problems facing humanity.) http://www.clubofrome.org/about/world_problematique.php
"In memoriam Ron Jon Anastasia d. October 20th 2009" http://www.debashishbanerji.com/sawiki/sciy/www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2009/10/22/4358910.html
Civil Rights Digital Library http://crdl.usg.edu/people/a/anastasia_ron/?Welcome
Letter from Michael Gosney about Ron's death https://arcosanti.org/node/8021
Ron helped establish the widely read (4 million views) online journal Science, Culture and Integral Yoga http://www.sciy.org/