Reclaiming the Commons

In 1968, Garrett Hardin wrote an often cited paper for Science magazine, called “The Tragedy of the Commons”.  He claimed that any common property “remorselessly generates tragedy” since it’s to the advantage of each individual to use as much of this common thing that they share (called by those who deal with this stuff, “The Commons”) and thus deplete it to the point no one could use it.  While this might make some theoretical sense, many writers since (most notably Elinor Ostrum--who I talked about in my post on Original Virtue, 9/14/08) have pointed out that tribal societies have managed the commons without difficulty for generations and generations.

The book, Whose Common Future? by the staff of the magazine The Ecologist (subtitle “Reclaiming the Commons”), is an in depth look at the use and misuse of the commons.  They begin by citing several examples from around the world where local folks carefully manage their common assets.  They point out that tribes, neighborhoods, and societies have developed checks and balances so that no one takes a lot more than their share and resources are sustained rather than depleted.

Then they look at the enclosure movement, which was the end of common property and the beginning of almost all property being private. (For more on this see my post on Land, 5/28/09, where I reference Whose Common Future?)  The book goes into great detail about globalization and privatization, how power elites want to manage the commons and profit from it.

In their final chapter, called “Reclaiming the Commons”, the writers return to examples of how people can take back common resources and how they can collectively manage it.  They finish with “A Concluding Remark” where they are careful point out that they have no policy recommendations.  First, because policy recommendations assume that there’s some policy-makers that they want to appeal to, which is once again giving power to the elites.  And, most importantly, it implies that there are global, overall solutions where their point is that the commons need to be managed by local communities and in each case, the community itself will find a way that works for that specific community.  Local solutions are diverse solutions.

Quote of the Day:  “One cannot legislate the commons into existence; nor can the commons be reclaimed simply by adopting ‘green techniques’ such as organic agriculture, alternative energy strategies or better public transport--necessary and desirable though such strategies often are.  Rather, commons regimes emerge through ordinary people’s day-to-day resistance to enclosure, and their efforts to regain the mutual support, responsibility and trust that sustain the commons.” - The Ecologist

It's alive! And communal!

So, just to make my life more complicated, I am taking on one more blog.  In addition to this blog, and my very silly blog about a fictional commune in an unnamed Green Mountain State (which may give you some idea about how silly the blog is), I will be part of a crew that will start a blog focusing on egalitarian income sharing communities, called Commune Life.  I am going to be one of the main editors.

The scope of the blog is on anything about living in income sharing communities.  The structure of the blog is that we will have a new article focusing on communal living every Monday, a photo essay featuring an income sharing community every Wednesday, and a previously published article (from various blogs--including mine) every Friday.

If you follow the link above and go to the blog now (like anytime in April, 2016), you will find a note saying “NOTHING FOUND”  (their caps).  The blog doesn’t start until May 2nd.  But please come over and check us out in May.  Here’s your chance to learn all about communal living.  And there will be pictures.

Quote of the Day:  “Communards are not immune to the range of human experience of birth, death, love, loss and the like. People have still ended up hurt, sad, and lonely. We are far from perfect. It is important to remember that perfection is not the goal. Progress is.” - Cel Free Farm

Dealing with Alpha Males

Continuing on with my exploration of ways we can deal with aggressive males--human males in this case--short of poisoning them all.  (See the end of my last post, Baboons and Culture Change, for an explanation of this this statement.)

My question is whether we can channel this aggressive male energy so that it can be used for something other than domination.  Like the baboons in my last post, can we create a culture that supports a less hierarchical way of being?

In his novel, Island, Aldous Huxley talks about how his utopian paradise deals with what he calls “Muscle Men”; “...why don’t they turn into Stalins… or at the least into domestic tyrants?  First of all, our social arrangements offer them very few opportunities for bullying their families, and our political arrangements make it practically impossible to domineer on any larger scale.  Second, we train the Muscle Men to be aware and sensitive, we teach them to enjoy the commonplaces of everyday existence.  That means they have an alternative--innumerable alternatives--to the pleasure of being the boss.  And finally, we work directly with this love of power and domination that goes with this kind of physique in almost all its variations.  We canalize this love of power and we deflect it--turn it away from people and onto things.  We give them all kinds of difficult tasks to perform--strenuous and violent tasks that exercise their muscles and satisfy their cravings for domination--but satisfy it at nobody’s expense and in ways that are harmless or positively useful.”

One important thing to remember (at least for me) is that this kind of strength and power is useful, if used in good ways.  I think we should train the more aggressive males (sometimes referred to as Alpha Males) to use their strengths to support a more egalitarian and cooperative culture, rather than for domination.  We should praise and support those men who use their power and privilege for constructive purposes.

For example, I’d say that my colleague and comrade, Paxus, is pretty much an alpha male.  He was raised in an upper middle class culture and groomed to climb the corporate hierarchy.  Yet he turned his back on it.  Still, he doesn’t farm or meditate or act quiet or shy.  He can be quite charismatic if he wants to be.  What he does is to use his strength and skills to help support social change and create community.  He could be in a position of dominance, but instead he is using his power against the very system that gave it to him.

I want to be part of creating a society that has a place for everybody.  And I think we should support the ‘alpha males’ in supporting an alternative culture.  Rather than poisoning them, we should value them--while encouraging them to use their strength for change. (Personal note: I am a cis-man, but hardly what anyone would call an alpha male.  I was a victim of male aggression as a kid.)

Quote of the Day: “Macho doesn't prove mucho.” - Zsa Zsa Gabor

Baboons and Culture Change

In my last post I summarized the differences between chimpanzees and bonobos as “chimpanzees are hierarchical, patriarchal, competitive, and violent, whereas bonobos tend to be more egalitarian, matriarchal, cooperative, and much less violent. “  It’s a generality, but there’s a bunch of truth in it.  Unfortunately most other primate groups (except for humans) seem to be more like the chimps than the bonobos.  (I think that human beings have the potential to be like either--or both.)

We often see biology as a certain kind of destiny.  While humans have the freedom to change, it sometimes seems like we are fighting our biology.  And most animals (unless trained by humans) seem to be locked into a social/behavioral styles.

However, one study of baboons found something interesting.  Baboons, as I said, tend toward a patriarchal, hierarchal culture.  The scientists in this study were observing a troop (their term) of baboons that were near a tourist lodge and foraged in their garbage dump.  More importantly, it was only the most aggressive males that were able to forage in this dump and when some meat in the dump was infected with tuberculosis, it was all the most aggressive males in the troop  that died.

This totally changed the culture of the group.  There were now more females than males and the males that were left were less aggressive toward less dominant males (although apparently not toward their peers) and toward females.  

For some reason, the researchers lost interest in this troop that they were studying, and they began studying another baboon troop--although they kept informal tabs on the first troop (which they called the Forest troop).  The deaths of the dominant males happened between 1982 and 1986.  Observations of the group stopped around 1986.  In 1993, the researchers began studying the Forest troop again and were surprised to find out that the less aggressive culture persisted.  This was surprising to them because male baboons, as they age, leave the troop they were with and bond with females in another troop.  By 1993 there were no adult males that had been with the troop in 1986, yet the behavior change that happened with the death of the aggressive males persisted.

As the researchers put it: “A decade after the deaths of the more aggressive males in the troop, Forest Troop preserved a distinct social milieu accompanied by distinct physiological correlates. Critically, as noted, no adult males …  had been troop members at the end of the tuberculosis outbreak. Instead, these males had subsequently transferred in as adolescents, adopting the local social style. A number of investigators have emphasized how a tolerant and gregarious social setting facilitates social transmission…”  The more tolerant and less aggressive culture persisted as incoming males adopted or were socialized to the new culture.

In some ways it’s as if the baboons shifted from a ‘chimp-like’ way of relating to a ‘bonobo-like’ way of relating and that difference persisted through a complete shift in the male members of the troop.  I wonder what that says about ways we can change human society--short of poisoning all the aggressive males.

Quote of the Day:  “In summary, we have observed circumstances that produced a distinctive set of behaviors and physiological correlates in a troop of wild baboons. Moreover, these behaviors were taken on by new troop members...

“Finally, these findings raise the issue of their applicability to understanding human social behavior and its transmission. Human history is filled with examples of the selective loss of demographic subsets of societies... The present data suggest that demographic skews may have long-term, even multigenerational consequences, including significant changes in the quality of life in a social group.” - Robert Sapolsky and Lisa Share

Some ‘Software’ Tools

In my last post, I talked about the need for communities to deal with the ‘software’ (people and relationships) as well as the hardware.  I still hear a lot of people who are planning community worrying about things like money and property more than how they will find and keep community members.  But I think that many communities never succeed because they don’t have the people power.  In my last post I also mentioned a community attempt that had all sorts of great stuff, but basically consisted of two people, a couple.  I personally know of at least two other situations just like this, where a ‘community’ with great ideas was basically a heterosexual couple and having difficulty growing beyond this.  My sense is that there are hundreds of situations like this, where there is either one person or a couple (and I know of at least one situation where it was a gay male couple).  Lots of them have great ideas and even the know-how to do the hardware.  But how do you go from ideas to community?

I’ve recently been reading a book on Twin Oaks, Living the Dream, by Ingrid Komar--one of three books on the community and the only one not written by Kat Kinkade (a founder).  While this isn’t my favorite book on the subject, I did notice that Ingrid Komar devoted a chapter to ‘The Many Support Systems of Twin Oaks’.  One reason that I think Twin Oaks (and other long term communities) do well is that they provide support for their members, ‘software tools’ so to speak.

Twin Oaks has lots of support systems, as does Acorn (especially their clearnesses but they also use transparency tools and parties and games) and Ganas (which focuses on ‘feedback learning’ but also has lots of birthday parties and the occasional NVC or transparency tools group) and Dancing Rabbit (where they talk about ‘inner sustainability’ and have women’s groups and men’s groups among other things).  I will focus on tools used at Twin Oaks, Acorn, Ganas, and Dancing Rabbit because these are all places I’ve spent some time at and all of them have been running 20+ years and all seem to be going strong.  And they all use some of these tools.

Here’s a list of some tools.  This list isn’t comprehensive but it should give folks who are interested in building communities some idea of what’s available to help with people and relationships. Take this as a beginning, and know that there’s lots more stuff available.  Remember: you can’t build community without people.  It sounds obvious, but I have seen so many places where folks were worried about everything else.  And then they wondered why no community was happening.  Maybe the most important thing is to support and encourage people and to have fun.  If you’re dour and intense and discouraging, I don’t think you’re going to succeed.

• Listening  I think this is the first and most important tool.  I believe even that if you only are able to listen well to each other, it will take you a long way.

• The Clearness Process  I’m referring to the Acorn version where people check in with each other to make sure that things are okay between them.  Simple but very useful.

• NonViolent Communication   It’s more than the four step process that many people learn first and it begins with the desire to really understand and connect with another.

• Re-evaluation Counseling This is a good basic tool for peer counseling, although the organization behind it is rather strict about how you do it.  There are also alternatives.

    

• Twelve Step Groups  Again, a peer approach, this one primarily useful with addiction and dependency issues, but really looking at the human condition.  (Like it or not we are all more powerless than we care to admit.)

    

• The Seven Habits  I’ve written in extensively in this blog about the Seven Habits, ending with the posts Synergize!, 9/15/11, and Sharpening the Saw,  2/21/12.

• Transparency Tools  This is a collection of techniques for getting to know people better.  It may simplistic, but often it’s more revealing than expected.

 

• ZEGG Forum This comes from the ZEGG community in Germany and is a process that has influenced many communities, including Ganas and the Network For a New Culture.

• Conflict Resolution Not a tool but a variety of processes to work through conflict, including mediation, NonViolent Communication, Restorative justice, and Restorative Circles

• Parties/Dances  Having fun is important.  Parties, dances, etc, let people relax and interact--often to great music.  Why would you join a community where no one has fun?

• Games  Another way to have fun.  Games played as a group--both competitive and cooperative--can help build community.  These can include team sports, board games, and role-playing games.  Ultimate frisbee is popular at Twin Oaks and Magic and Dungeons and Dragons are often played at Acorn.  I think the game Pandemic is a great community building game.

• Team Building  Games (as above) but also specific exercises and particularly the experience of working on a project together can be very community building.

• Women’s Groups/Men’s Groups  They have these at Dancing Rabbit and Twin Oaks and are helpful building safety as well as cohesion.

• Other Identity Groups  Particularly for social category that’s a minority within a community (queer folks, people of color, etc) having a group restricted to folks in that category can, again, build safety and cohesion.  You want to avoid an us vs them mentality but use the groups to build strength to work within the community.  Sometimes fishbowls are helpful to help others outside the group learn what it’s like for people within the group.

• Spiritual Practices These include prayer, meditation, chanting, Sufi dancing, Jewish and Pagan Rituals, Quaker and church meetings and services, and even humanist/agnostic gatherings.

• Discussions  Acorn has two meetings a week, the business meeting, and an evening discussion where they pick a single topic and discuss it but make no decisions.  Ganas has had some success with a Residents Dinner where folks ask questions and the group tries to answer it.  What’s important is that these aren’t business meetings.   People just get to hear each other talk about things they think are important.

• Intentional Community Organizations  There are a bunch of these including the FIC, FEC, the Cohousing Network, GEN, NASCO, and Point A.  I’ve also written about the phenomena of Communities of Communities, 6/9/12.  Because even communities need social networking.

• Group Works  A deck of cards with each card giving info on a different group process.  You can use them systematically to learn a whole lot of group techniques or randomly for inspiration.

As I said, this is far from all of the possibilities.  Perhaps it’s only a beginning.  But I’m hoping it’s a good place to start, particularly if you have a group focused on all the ‘hardware’ of community building and ignoring the ‘software’.  

Quote of the Day: “The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation -- or a relationship.” - Deborah Tannen

‘Hardware’ vs ‘Software’

One night at Ganas, we had a discussion about sustainability and someone started talking about the difference between what he called the 'hardware' and the 'software'. (Obviously he was a computer person, but we all started using the terminology.)  The hardware, in this case, is all those cool eco-things: solar panels and gardens and greywater systems and ... (the list is very long).  The software is the people and relationships (and community).

Twin Oaks doesn't focus much on sustainability. They have a few solar panels and (as I mentioned) one half of one house that's off the grid. But when someone did an energy audit on them, they found that TO produces almost 80% less carbon emissions than what the average American produces--and that's because they share so much. On the other hand, I recently went on a tour of a 'community' that had tons of amazing 'eco-groovy' stuff. I was pretty impressed with all of it and learned about a bunch of things I didn't know. But I noticed that, other than the folks on the tour, there was no one there. Someone asked about how many full time members there were and the tour guide admitted there were two, him and his wife. Obviously they weren't doing well with the 'software'.

So communities that succeed, are communities that get the software right.

One of my interests in communities is as laboratories for social change.  In a sense, you could look at the whole Soviet Union as a social change experiment that demonstrated that communism doesn't work--at least if it's done from the top down. On the other hand, communism seems to be working very well at Twin Oaks (and Acorn, etc). Someone wrote a comment in an article about Twin Oaks (that they didn't seem to have read very well) that Twin Oaks wasn't going to work. But this kind of communism been working at TO for nearly fifty years
and they're going strong. It works there and Twin Oaks works.

I think of intentional communities as small enough experiments so that if something doesn't work, the community simply comes apart, people move on, hopefully we learn something, and few people are hurt. (Contrast that with what happened with the USSR.)

This is why I see community building as my social change work. I want to be part of creating working alternatives--to see what works and what doesn't and to create those simple systems (communities) out of which we can grow a new society.   But one thing I do know, getting the ‘software’ (the people and relationships) working is as important (if not more important) than getting the hardware to work.  The best designed community won’t work if it doesn’t attract and take care of people.

Next: Some ‘software’ tools.

Quote of the Day:  “Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.”  - Margaret Wheatley

Population Explosion

I’m currently temporarily staying at the Acorn Community, having just attended the Community Conference (my fourth in a row--see Update 1: The Twin Oaks Community Conference, 9/9/12, Circling Around to the Communities Conference,  9/5/13, and Where's Weirdo?, 9/22/14 for my previous adventures).  The big discussion here at Acorn is about children and families.  Acorn just got two new kids living here and there are a couple of other families applying.  Twin Oaks has had children and families for a while but there haven’t been a lot of children or families at Acorn up until now.  So this is a very alive issue at Acorn at the moment.

But the real population explosion that I want to blog about is about all the new communities starting up recently, many of which want to be income-sharing egalitarian communities.  There’s one in Vermont, one right on Staten Island (where I’m now living), one in Baltimore, one in DC, one in Richmond, one in Louisa (which would make Cambia the fifth egalitarian community in Louisa County--after Twin Oaks, Acorn, Living Energy Farm, and Sapling), and one folks are trying to start in southern Virginia near the Appalachian Trail (not even mentioned in the article Pax wrote).  Most of these communities had folks at the conference.

This is great news for the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (see Egalitarian Communities, 10/22/08), which according to their current website,  only has six member communities and three Communities-in-Dialogue.  (Two of them, Sapling and The Mothership, also had representatives at the conference.  Last year they were brand-new--now they’ve been upstaged by all these new forming communities.)

So this is an exciting time for the egalitarian communities movement  I’ll be interested to see where all of this new community building energy goes.  Even if only a little over half of the newly starting communities make it, that would still be four new communities for the FEC.  And I still want to work on growing another one in New York, and maybe some in other places (like the Boston area) as well.  Maybe I’ll be part of one of the new ones next year.

Quote of the Day:  “If a community is seeking FEC membership …  that community may apply for Community-in-Dialogue (CID) status. For a community to be accepted as a CID, the Assembly need only be convinced that the community is actively working toward meeting the membership criteria, and that there exists a mutual desire for cooperation between the community and the FEC.

“...by becoming a member of the FEC, your community joins a group of like minded yet diverse communities that work together to try to make a better world.” - from the FEC website

Food Chain!

One of the many cool things that they do at Ganas is to organize a chain of people to get stuff up from the truck on the street that they use to get food to the pantry (or other places) in the houses way above.  (Since Ganas is on a hillside, you need to go up a long flight of stairs to get from the street to the houses.)  It’s sort of like one of those old fashioned bucket brigades.

Someone yells, “Food chain!” at dinner and anyone who feels strong and abled bodied goes out and helps.  Groceries are passed from one person to the next on their way to the pantry.  

I was watching the behavior of the chain with a systems theorist’s eye.  It was amusing seeing the people bunch up on one end and then on the other.  The whole thing reminded me of a slinky stretching back and forth in waves.

Fortunately, most folks are in a good mood while doing it and it really does make what could be a difficult task fairly easy and fun.  As a result, the whole thing works very well.  And then it’s done before you know it--and folks go back to dinner.  And all the food is now up the hill and in the pantry.

It’s pretty amazing what you can accomplish with a little co-operation.

Quote of the Day: “Obedience may have its uses, but it is no substitute for willing, uncoerced co-operation.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

Addiction and Connection

I've just read a pretty interesting article online. I'll admit that I'm skeptical about it, but the premise is intriguing.  It's all about the question of what causes addiction.  The basic idea (and the author backs it up with a bunch of studies) is rather than chemical dependency being involved, he claims that the cause of addiction is isolation and disconnection. 

Johann Hari makes at least two major points from this.  The first is that the war on drugs doesn't stop drug addiction.  He thinks, and uses the example of what's been done successfully in Portugal, that drugs should be decriminalized and addicts should be given social supports.  This is not only more humane but works a lot better. 

More important to my thinking is his second point.  We also need to deal with the social isolation and lack of connection that this society fosters.  As he put it, "We need now to talk about social recovery -- how we all recover, together, from the sickness of isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog."

I think (no surprise to anyone who reads this blog) that community is one of the main antidotes to isolation and that we need to rebuild this society so that it's based on human connection (as well as our connections to the earth and the ecosystem) rather than selling products and controlling people.  This is real social alchemy.


Quote of the Day: "...the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection. ...
"Human beings are bonding animals. We need to connect and love." - Johann Hari

Ecology as a Bridge

Last year, as some few followers of this blog may remember, I spent much of the year reading a textbook on biology--and posted some of what I learned, including posts on cells (Biology 101: Cells, 5/3/12), Cellular Respiration (5/10/12), and Photosynthesis (5/17/12).  In spite of the fact that I wrapped up the series early, I read through almost all of the book--almost everything except for the last section which was on ecology.  That was ironic because ecology was one of the things I was most interested in.  This year, as I was traveling--and up to the present, the book has been in a sealed box in a friend's basement.

However, as the last bunch of posts indicate, as I've been resting from my community travels, I've been going on a science reading jag.  I got very excited when I found a classic book on ecology and ecosystems at the co-op next to where I'm living.  The book is Ecology: A Bridge Between Science and Society, by Eugene P Odum.

This is a great introductory text.  It covers almost all the basics including Levels of Organization, emergent properties, The Ecosystem, biotic communities, the Gaia hypothesis, Energetics (which I'll write a bit more on later), various cycles (hydrological, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and carbon), soil as a resource (see my post on Soil Science, 7/20/13), Population and Community Ecology (including things like r- and K-Selection, carrying capacity, commensalism,  cooperation, mutualism, and a whole section on the lichens),  successional theory, and Major Ecosystem Types of the World.  Eugene Odum ends the book with a chapter focused on how the human race can become sustainable, which he calls The Transition from Youth to Maturity.  The book is written simply but with lots of clear information. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to get a basic understanding of ecology and ecosystems.

Eugene Odum's brother, Howard T Odum  was also an ecologist. I was able to get one of his books (Environment, Power, and Society) out from the library.  This book is focused on energetics and is a lot more technical and detailed than his brother's Ecology book.  I can imagine it would be useful if you wanted to study ecological energetics in depth, but I decided that it was too technical for what I was currently looking for.

If you are interested in permaculture or understanding how ecosystems work or even the biological and ecological understandings of today's multiple crises, I think that Eugene Odum's Ecology: A Bridge Between Science and Society is a great place to start exploring the concepts you need to understand.

Quote of the Day: "These scenerios are not predictions, since, as we have already stressed, no one (and no computer) can really predict the future; they are more like weather forecasts that have a certain probability of being right or wrong.
"...The logical consequences of placing value only on the individual are continued rapid expansion of world population and degraded life-support ecosystems.  Together these will lead to a less than satisfactory life for all but perhaps a few very rich people, since air, food, and water will be increasingly poor in quality and short in supply.
"The alternate scenerio ... is based on the assumption that we will turn more and more to the long-term view, with value placed on species (ours and all the others) and on maintaining healthy ecosystems worldwide. The logical consequences ... are reduced population growth (with stabilization in the next century) and healthy life-support systems, leading to favorable survival for all people and all life." - Eugene Odum

Nine Communities, Many Thoughts

As of the moment, I feel like I'm done my community touring for a while.  I started off, as you might remember, at the Communities Conference at the beginning of last September.  I went right to the Acorn community after the conference, to begin a three week visit.

Now, ten months later, while I still intend to end the year with another Communities Conference, I feel like I'm done otherwise.  At this point, I've checked out nine different communities, two of which are barely up and running (the community I visited in Pennsylvania and Living Energy Farm), one of which had just ended before I got there (Skyhouse), and six up and functioning communities (from the six year old Still Waters Sanctuary/Possibility Alliance to the forty-six year old Twin Oaks--not to mention Acorn, Dancing Rabbit, Red Earth Farms, and Sandhill).

I did three-week visits at Acorn and Dancing Rabbit and two three-week visits at Twin Oaks. I spent nearly five weeks in Pennsylvania with the couple trying to build a community there and I've done three work days at Living Energy Farm.  I've done tours of Sandhill, Red Earth Farms, and the Still Waters Sanctuary, and I talked with three different people involved with Skyhouse about it (and ate several meals in the building, which is still around).

What have I learned from all this?  First, that community comes in all sizes and flavors--from the hundred folks at Twin Oaks and the seventy at Dancing Rabbit, to midsized communities like thirty-person Acorn, to smaller communities like Red Earth Farms, the Still Waters Sanctuary, and Sandhill.  However, small communities can have it rough--the community in Pennsylvania hasn't really started because it's just the couple that are starting it and Living Energy Farm hasn't really got going because it was also mostly two people (with a bunch of interns).  Similarly, a good part of why Skyhouse fell apart was because it shrank away.

Most of the communities that I visited were rural communities but I have a soft place in my heart for urban communities like the one in Pennsylvania.  (In the nineties I started an urban community that lasted five years.  It also fell apart partly because of the small number of people involved.)  Twin Oaks, Acorn, and Sandhill are all income-sharing communities, as was Skyhouse and hopefully Living Energy Farm will be.  The Still Waters Sanctuary runs on a 'gift economy', Dancing Rabbit has various forms of entrepreneurship (or, as I put it, reinvented capitalism), and Red Earth Farms is homesteads that all run individually.  The folks I visited in Pennsylvania were also trying to do things on the gift economy.

Each community had it's own tale to tell and lessons to be learned from it.  From Twin Oaks I learned if you grow a community large enough, it can last fifty years or more. (At this point I'm sure it will be going strong for its fiftieth anniversary.  It could fall apart--as could anything--but I think it would take a while if it did.)  I also learned that over that time systems will evolve in their own way and may not turn out as anyone would have intended--but may work very well anyway.  From Acorn I learned the importance of persistence (they were down to a couple of folks at one point, but one of them--Ira Wallace--wasn't willing to give up) and the importance of community support (the other thing that got them through was having Twin Oaks nearby).  From Sandhill I learned that persistence can pay off unexpectedly.  After hanging in as a very small community for over twenty years, they persuaded Dancing Rabbit to build an ecovillage near them--and eventually they had a community of communities grow around them.  Likewise, from Dancing Rabbit I learned the importance of building where there was already a community, and Red Earth Farms is even stronger for having two communities nearby. Living Energy Farm is also benefitting (as they struggle to build) from having two large, well functioning communities nearby.  (In spite of their problems, I'd be surprised if they didn't succeed with Twin Oaks and Acorn supporting them.)  The location far from any other communities is one of the difficulties that the crew in Pennsylvania is struggling with, and I'm not clear whether the Still Waters Sanctuary is close enough to the Rutledge communities to really benefit from them.  On the other hand, Skyhouse had Dancing Rabbit all around it, but without the internal connections that wasn't enough.  (In fact, Dancing Rabbit ended up taking energy away from Skyhouse.)

The biggest lesson I've learned is that there's many different kinds of communities out there and communities can be quite different and still function very well.  There's also many wonderful people in those communities and I'm glad that I got to know some of them.  (These were in the communities that I did three week visits at--Acorn, TO, and DR--and obviously not the ones I had just had brief tours of.)

I'm glad I visited these nine communities.  Now I want to live in a community.


Quote of the Day:  "...as long as I can remember I've had a desire to make some difference in the world.  But the world is one great, big, hard place to make a difference.  Community is a small enough chunk that you can make a difference.  And it also is a good place from which you can, from time to time, try to make a difference in some bigger subset of the world." - Ira Wallace

Issues in Community: Decision Making

The Spring 2013 issue of Communities magazine has a very interesting article by Diana Leafe Christian entitled "Consensus and the Burden of Added Process: Are There Easier Ways to Make Decisions?"  This is part three in a series that she has been writing on the problems with consensus and alternatives to it.  What I find interesting about it is that with previous articles she focused on her issues with 'consensus-with-unanimity', here she seems to realize that it actually does work for some communities.

In this article, she seems to be saying what I've been thinking for a while.  For certain communities it seems to work (she suggests these are communities formed in the eighties or earlier, but Acorn is one of the communities I know where it seems to work and Acorn was founded in 1993--I also know several co-op households, founded in this millennium, where consensus seems to work as well), whereas for others ('founded after the 1980s' and she specifically cites cohousing and ecovillages) it often becomes a burden and can "lead to disharmony, distrust, lower morale, and dwindling meeting attendance".  The whole article is worth reading--even multiple times.  (In fact, the whole series, including various people's replies to the articles, can give you quite an education in the nuances of consensus and other forms of decision making.) Here I'm simply focusing on which communities consensus works for.

I think she's absolutely right on why this type of consensus doesn't work for most cohousing and many ecovillage-type communities.  A large, very diverse group will probably need something more structured and less open to what she (and others) refer to as 'tyranny of the minority'.  She points out that not everyone is willing to go through the intense processing that this type of consensus can require. On the other hand, it's been my experience that many smaller households and communities (regardless of when they were founded), especially if they share common core values, are willing to do the work of building closeness with each other by working through conflict.

I want to be clear--I don't think that one situation is superior to the other. Diana has a sidebar to this article listing the reasons that 'Cohousers and Ecovillagers Join Community', and I can really understand them. Many of them become impatient with endless processing, especially if building the closeness and trust that comes with this isn't one of their priorities.  I don't believe in 'one size fits all' when it comes to community. In one of the earliest posts on this blog (Looking for The Answer?, 6/28/08) I wrote that I didn't think there was any one solution to our problems.  Like anything else, consensus is just one of the tools in the decision-making toolbox.  It's quite useful, but I know that it won't work for all communities.  I'm glad that Diana has pushed us to look at this, and I'm glad she's realized that this can vary from community to community.  The moral here is that as you're building community, think about what kind of community you want, and then explore what decision-making tools can help build that.


Quote of the Day: "I agree that some people do join communities mostly to experience deeper relationships and are willing to put in the time required.  But I don't think most people join for this reason.  Most cohousers and ecovillagers that I know seem to have other reasons for living in community." - Diana Leafe Christian