Starting from Scratch 2

by Raven

2: Founding vs Joining

(Note: this is the second in a series I am writing about my attempts to start a new commune. Here’s a link to my first essay.)

Here I am, sitting in Boston, thinking about creating a new community, and wondering how crazy I am.

I know that there are many folks who have ideas about wanting to start a community–there are all sorts of attempts listed on ic.org and my post on How to Start a Commune is by far the most popular thing on this site.   Creating communities is something I believe in and something that I want to encourage folks to do (since I think the world needs more communities), but I often discourage folks from doing it as well (because it’s a lot harder to do than it might seem).

I should point out that founding a community is quite different from joining a community.  I think that at least Diana Leafe Christian must understand this, since she has written two separate books on communities, one about starting communities (Creating a Life Together) and a different one about how to join a community (Finding Community).  

The skill set for founding a community is quite different from joining one.  I often say that long running communities are WYSIWYG (pronounced “Wizzy Wig”), a computer term that literally means “What You See Is What You Get”.  If you visit an established community, you can get a pretty good sense of what’s involved in a short period of time.  But when you are creating a community, it’s not always clear what is going to evolve.

People sometimes talk about Founder’s Syndrome.  This is because often community founders can become unhappy with the resulting community–especially if it begins to evolve in ways the founders didn’t expect.  Sometimes, in these cases, the founders take charge and keep trying to push it back to what they wanted.  This often either kills the community or greatly stunts it.  Other founders just decide that it’s time to move on as the community changes.  This was true of Kat Kinkade (one of the main founders of the Twin Oaks Community) and Mildred Gordon (one of the founders of the Ganas Community).  Both of them left their communities when they didn’t like the way it changed and, ironically, both came back to their communities to die.

Kat

In many ways, Kat Kinkade is one of my idols.  She helped found three different communities (Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Acorn) and they are all still around–after fifty-five, forty-nine, and twenty-nine years respectively.  As someone who has tried to help start many communities, none of which are now around, I often wonder what Kat Kinkade knew.

I do know a few things that she knew.  One was to grow communities fast–because small communities are fragile.  Another is to leave and let go, when the community isn’t going the way you want.  (See above.  Kat left Twin Oaks to start East Wind, left East Wind to live in Boston, returned to Twin Oaks, helped start Acorn–I don’t know that she ever lived there, left Twin Oaks to live on her own, and came back to Twin Oaks to die.)

So what do I know about starting communities?  I often joke that I know more about what not to do than what to do–much of this learned through hard lessons.  Two things that I do know are that small communities are vulnerable and can fall apart simply by having three or four folks leave, and that what holds small communities (and even some large communities) together are relationships.   

All of this is important, but it’s not enough to build a community with. And quite frankly, I’m not sure that I have the skill set for community building.  I have done very well in already formed communities and I have a fairly poor track record for starting them.  At this point, I have helped start at least ten different group living attempts.  I’ve counted.  And none of them are still around (although a few of them lasted over ten years–even though they didn’t become what I wanted).  

Honestly, if there was an income-sharing community somewhere that was easily reachable to Boston, where family and friends who are important to me live, I would be there. I would certainly rather join a community than start one.  Starting a new community is a lot of work.

I’ve heard it said that you might think you are not the person to do something because you don’t have the skills to do it but, if you are the only person willing to do it, then you are the one that needs to do it.  That seems to be where I am now.  If an income sharing community pops up in New England, believe me, I will try to join it, but if nothing emerges, like it or not, it looks like I will need to create it.