Welcome to The Maholian Way.

My name is Dr Robert Salter and I am the author of this account of life in Maholia, a fictional country of nine million people located in the Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand.

Maholia has developed a uniquely successful society by focusing on building sound relationships between people in all the spheres of life in which they interact, such as the neighbourhood, the workplace, the market place, and relations between citizens and government.

Though Maholia is fictional, its successful features are in almost all cases based on real-life success stories from around the world. Real-world research, commentary and descriptions of policies and practices are cited and discussed in readily accessible notes.

I have chosen to use the device of locating these policies and practices in one country and ‘mainstreaming’ them in order to convey the combined impact this might have on a whole society.

Maholia’s history – as a European ‘settler’ society with an original indigenous population – makes it most similar to countries like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but the Maholian Way is just as relevant to other industrialised societies, and it also has lessons for the Third World.

To an unusual extent Maholians are happy and healthy, and there is a high level of equality and social connectedness. None are excluded from the good life the country offers, and as global citizens Maholians contribute substantially to the wider world. Maholia is an environmentally sustainable society, and in particular the challenge of climate change has been squarely met with an integrated set of solutions that are a natural part of the Maholian Way.

It will inevitably be classified as a ‘utopian’ account, but I have sought to avoid the pitfalls of this genre. Maholia is far from perfect; its development is an ongoing process; the solutions applied there are, I believe, entirely realistic; and it did not require as its starting point a citizenry more altruistic, rational or far-sighted than is the norm around the world.
 

An invitation to you

While the internet is a massive repository of information and opinion, much of it is of dubious quality and credibility. Accordingly, any sensible internet-user will approach something new with a background level of scepticism. Naturally, you will be approaching this site in this way.

So I invite you to just start reading, and to judge it on the soundness of the ideas and argument, and on the real-life evidence that I cite in notes (mainly in Part 4). If it doesn’t sound credible to you, just stop reading. If however you think it has merit, I hope you will read on.

If, after you’ve read it, you think it is worth sharing with others, please do so. This is the main way through which it will reach a wider audience. So I encourage you to circulate it within your networks of individuals, organisations and online sites.

I am also interested in feedback – your comments, disagreements, anecdotes, whatever you would like to say. I am particularly interested in cooperating with those of you who are working, or want to work, to see the kinds of values and ideas described in this account become more a part of the real world. In the final analysis The Maholian Way is intended as a tool for positive social change.

How To Use This Site

The text consists of five parts, and they are listed to the left. These broadly correspond to chapters of a book, though they are of quite different lengths. While the parts are in some respects self-contained, the whole account will make most sense if it is read sequentially. 
  • Part 1 is a brief introduction to the whole account.
  • Part 2 looks at two families in two communities and explains the Maholian Way through their lives and the changes that occur in them.
  • Part 3 gives a history of Maholia – the period before the changes that are the theme of this account, and then the emergence and development of the Maholian Way, the country’s ‘relationalist’ system.
  • Part 4 deals thematically with the different elements of life in Maholia: community life, the economy, education, health care, the environment, and so on.
  • Part 5 briefly addresses the question of how The Maholian Way adds to our understanding of the issues it deals with, as well as making some suggestions for follow-up action.
  • A map of Maholia is included to give you a spatial understanding of places mentioned in the text.
You can of course read this account of Maholia either on the screen or on hardcopy that you print off (either section by section or as an entire document). You can also send sections to others (see the envelope icon at the top right of the text).