an Intentional Community meeting-place in Colorado
Well,
clearly I haven't been able to articulate the argument to support my
instinctive belief that model intentional communities (MICs), to be
effective, need to be polyamorous. I've read all your comments, and
thank you for them. I remain convinced of the benefits of polyamorism
to the social health of a community, but what's more important is that
we start identifying and creating MICs that work, both for the benefit
of our present civilization and for possible use by the generations
that will grow up after civilization's fall. So I'm not going to say
any more about polyamorism*, at least not for a while.
I have
been delighted at how many of my readers, and those I have spoken to
about it face-to-face and in Second Life, agree that it would be more
fruitful to create MICs, better working models of how to live, than to
try to fight to reform the existing political, economic, social and
educational systems. Just to reiterate, those MICs will need to agree
on both essential capacities and operating principles for their
members. My first crack at as possible list of each:
Natural Capacities: deep capacity for love,
passion for the community's shared purpose/intention, trust, emotional
strength, sensitivity/openness/perceptiveness, good instincts,
self-sufficiency, honesty, intelligence/critical thinking ability,
curiosity, imagination, creativity, responsibility, expressiveness,
flexibility, and tolerance.
Responsible and Sustainable Operating Principles: stop at one child per woman, practice
radical simplicity, pledge to buy local, leave the Earth as you found
it, practice bioregionalism & permaculture, cooperate &
collaborate, practice consensus democracy, value everyone's time
equally, pay attention to nature, be self-sufficient, incur no debts,
be generous, organic and responsible, and understand and use the power of
relationships.
Each
MIC will of course have to develop its own list, but as I work to
create MICs both in Second Life and, later, in Real Life, these are the
ones I would propose to start with. The idea would be to have an
association, an alliance, of MICs, helping each other out with lessons
learned, success stories, etc. Each MIC would be a circle within a
circle, the larger circle being Gaia, the community of
all-life-on-Earth.
In fact, I'm beginning to think of Natural
Enterprises, the concept I outline in my book to be published in the
Spring, as a specialized type of MIC. Natural Enterprises also require
the above natural capacities and responsible, sustainable operating
principles.
MICs are, by their socio-ecological nature, inherently complex
networks. Dave Snowden suggests that, because the evolution of such
networks is unpredictable, they cannot be planned or directed. What can
be done, however, is influence their "initial conditions" -- using
attractors and barriers to 'steer' behaviour in ways favourable to
obtaining and retaining members with the necessary capacities and who
share the beliefs underlying the operating principles. That means the
membership has to be self-selected and 'discriminatory' -- diverse yet
picky. This is a tough balancing act. The Natural Enterprises I know
that 'work' the best have an almost ideal makeup of people --
respectful, loving partners whose business capacities ('Gifts') are
mutually exclusive and collectively sufficient to achieve the
enterprise's shared Purpose. Usually, I confess, the selection of
members has been serendipitous and fortunate, rather than deliberate.
Nevertheless, it's the people in a Natural Enterprise who make or break it.
Same
thing applies to MICs of people who want to live together. You want
diversity, because MICs only work when their members are so interesting
and lovable that they cohere -- the members want to spend as much time
with each other as possible, learning, loving, discovering,
collaborating, innovating, making it work.
This is so unlike modern disconnected neighbourhoods who are usually
only physically together out of convenience. Because they lack
cohesion, they acquiesce to the imposition of top-down, indifferent,
modern hierarchical political and economic and social and educational
systems on them, and ultimately, because their neighbourhood is
incapable of self-sufficiency, become dependent on these hierarchical,
irresponsible, unsustainable systems.
To be self-sufficient,
responsible and sustainable, the MIC needs to have everything (the
capacities, the space, the time, and the resources) to be independent.
While I don't know of any modern examples of this, my pioneer ancestors
in the early 1800s were, of necessity (they were completely isolated),
completely self-sufficient. Seventeen families (about 150 people in
total) including Joshua Pollard's family moved into 8000 acres in the
lower Peel region of Canada together -- no electricity, no
communications -- and thrived together as an intentional community.
They lived in harmony with another IC -- the Mississagua Indians -- who
sold the land away from the rivers to these new settlers. The two ICs
lived completely different lifestyles, but both were self-sufficient,
responsible and sustainable, and extremely comfortable, joyful
communities (my ancestors, I'm told, loved to dance and sing, and
opened the region's first school and a subsistence tavern). Other than
their large families, they adhered to the above principles and, from
what I can piece together, had the above natural capacities. They were
ultimately undone by overpopulation and, as their community became
interconnected with other Ontario communities over the ensuing century,
by a switch from self-sufficient permaculture to commercial
monoculture, which proved disastrous when the economic recessions of
the 1880s and 1890s hit and trade virtually ceased.
Modern ICs
have had to try to work under modern constraints -- a shortage of land,
horrific overpopulation everywhere, depleted soils, an utterly
interdependent, fragile, technology-dependent and resource-constrained
economy, and the loss of knowledge of how to live self-sufficiently.
Because most of them have not been very 'discriminatory' in their
membership, and many have lacked commitment, capacity and/or
principles, most have stayed small or disappeared, and have not had
responsibility or sustainability as principles, so they are not useful
models (if you know first-hand of any modern MICs that I could profile
here, please let me know). Some of these constraints (shortage of land,
depleted soils) will be hard for any MIC to overcome, but most require
nothing more than re-learning what has been forgotten, and applying
some sustainable, responsible modern knowledge and technologies.
And then just learning from trying, from experimentation, from collaboration, from innovation, what works and what doesn't.
And just being a model.
Time to get started.
* I will be responding directly but briefly to comments on my Dec. 19, 20 and 24 articles soon, in the comments threads.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
