Editing New World Alliance (section)

=== Internal critics ===
{{quote box|width=35%|quote="Belief that a social transformation is happening serves to keep it from happening.  Behaviors associated with the sandbox of political impotency include: pronouncement of actual or imminent success, confusion of goals and results, an acritical stance, hubris, an incapacitating dialect, pseudo holism, egalitarian blinders, and self-centeredness.  Upward growth to escape the Sandbox Syndrome is a necessary ingredient of any serious social change."|source=– Alliance GC member Michael Marien, "The Transformation as Sandbox Syndrome," 1983.<ref name=Marien>Michael Marien, "[https://web.archive.org/web/20051018115004/http://www.ghandchi.com/iranscope/Anthology/mm/sandbox.htm The Transformation as Sandbox Syndrome]," ''[[Journal of Humanistic Psychology]]'', vol. 23, no. 1, Winter 1983, p.&nbsp;7.</ref>|style=padding:8px}}

Both before and after the Alliance dissolved, GC members publicly criticized the Alliance.  In 1987, former GC member Marc Sarkady told an interviewer that the Alliance was too immersed in the [[Counterculture of the 1960s|counter-culture]].<ref name=Gottlieb />  In 1983, writing in a feminist quarterly, GCer Bethe Hagens said that – despite all the high-minded rhetoric and processes – the male GCers had been dismissive of the female GCers.<ref name=Hagens>Bethe Hagens, "[https://archive.org/details/creativewoman641983unse  The Goddess in the New World Alliance],"  ''The Creative Woman Quarterly'', vol. 6, no. 4, Fall 1983, p. 19.  A publication of [[Governors State University]].  The author is identified as an anthropologist.  Retrieved August 7, 2016.</ref>  In 1982, [[Mark Satin]] complained to an audience of 400 that the Alliance could not decide on its mission.<ref>Stein, ''Seeds'', pp.&nbsp;136-37 (quoting Satin).</ref>{{refn|GC members had disparate visions for the organization.  Some GCers wanted the Alliance to be or become a political party,<ref>Bob Dunsmore, ''I Am: A Journey Through Times and Spaces'', iUniverse Publishing, 2011, p.&nbsp;65.  {{ISBN|978-1-4620-2432-2}}.</ref> Satin wanted the Alliance to model itself on grassroots mobilization and lobbying groups such as [[Moral Majority]],<ref name=Kelly>Mark Satin and [[Kevin Kelly (editor)|Kevin Kelly]], interviewer, "[https://archive.org/details/sim_whole-earth_whole-earth-review_winter-1988_61/page/106/mode/2up Mark Satin]," ''[[Whole Earth Review]]'', issue no. 61, Winter 1988, p.&nbsp;107.</ref> and others – ultimately a majority – wanted the Alliance to play a less assertive, clearinghouse role.<ref>Stein, ''Seeds'', p.&nbsp;138.</ref>|group=nb}}  Later that decade Satin referred to his former colleagues as "beautiful losers,"<ref name=Kelly /> and even in the 2000s he was writing about what he saw as the Alliance's "ineptness" and its failure to understand and seize the moment.<ref name=Ivor />

A more systemic critique by a GC member was Michael Marien's essay "The Transformation as Sandbox Syndrome," published in the ''[[Journal of Humanistic Psychology]]'' in 1983.<ref>Marien, "The Transformation," cited above.</ref> While Marien aimed his critique at transformational political organizations (and activists) in general, the introduction discusses Marien's involvement in just one such organization – the Alliance.<ref name=Marien />  His targets in the essay include mistaking lofty goals for political significance, loving-kindness for effective action, and good intentions for actual results.<ref>Marien, "The Transformation," pp.&nbsp;7–10.</ref>

Toward the end of its existence, Alliance chair Bob Olson wrote – in a spirit of acceptance rather than blame – that the GC did not have the "personalities and skills" to create the kind of dynamic mass-membership organization that had originally been envisioned.<ref>Melton, ''Encyclopedia'', p.&nbsp;324 (quoting Olson).</ref>