Mark Sommer

Background

About Mark Sommer

Throughout my professional life I've pursued personal interests with a passionate social commitment, even when it has meant sacrificing income in favor of nonmaterial rewards. I never joined an organization or corporation, only fleetingly worked for anyone else, and for the first 25 years of my adulthood lived in remote locations up to an hour from my own mailbox. My wife and I built and maintained an independent organic homestead in the coastal mountains of Northern California for 20+ years, raising most of our food and generating our power from early solar panels and a waterwheel, while I made a modest living researching, speaking and writing about global security and sustainability. In the early eighties, I cofounded the Exploratory Project on the Conditions of Peace (ExPro), a group of academics and independent researchers seeking to define a new approach to global security based on the concept of a "peace system" to replace the prevailing war system. In the mid-nineties I launched the Mainstream Media Project, which together with the syndicated radio program,"A World of Possibilities," became my primary professional work for the remainder of my working life. This unorthodox path has sometimes been financially challenging but has never failed to provide more than ample returns in other ways. Pursuing an independent life and livelihood has never been an easy path, but given the increasing insecurity of the conventional job market, it may well be a rewarding way of life for some in an increasingly uncertain future.