More Than Human

by Raven

Recently, one of the folks in my new community came up to me and handed me a copy of More Than Human and said I should read it.  They said that this book had been a major influence on their thinking about community.

More Than Human is a book by Theodore Sturgeon about a small group of what seem to be quite limited people who also have “psychic” powers, including telepathy,  telekinesis, and teleportation.  One of them also functions as a sort of supercomputer and is sometimes called ‘the brain’ although the baby who houses it looks like he is extremely disabled and seems incapable of speech but communicates telepathically.  In fact, everyone in this group has what seem to be severe disabilities but because they all work together, they find themselves capable of doing just about anything.  As they become more and more enmeshed with each other, they appear to become what is referred to in the book as “Homo Gestalt”, the interconnected being.  Sturgeon seems to be theorizing that this could be the next step in human evolution.

Theodore Sturgeon

Honestly, I can see why my communard wanted me to read this book.  In some ways everyone in this community has some serious flaws (including me).  But together we are able to do many things that we would not be able to accomplish individually.  I have talked about the notion of communities as living organisms and I think this is in many ways true of every community I’ve been part of or visited.  We are able to do a lot more collectively, or as Helen Keller said, “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”

Reading this book also made me think a lot about the idea of chosen family.  “Family” seems to be one of the more divisive words in the communal world.  I know many people who think of communes and communities as family and I also know people who hate the idea.  I know that I yearn for family (and feel like I may have found it here) but I had a lovely family life growing up and I am well aware that for many folks, family has been a source of trauma.

In the book More Than Human the characters seem to see themselves as a family before they “blesh” (Sturgeon’s word in the story, a combination of blending and meshing) into Homo Gestalt.  For many of us, family is where we find it, where we finally find ourselves fitting in (again this is clearly happening in the novel).  Thus the term “chosen family” speaks to many of us–a family we have chosen for ourselves, rather than being born into.

I think that communes, with the more intense sharing and reliance on each other, can really be a chosen family for those who want it.  I don’t think that we will develop psychic powers, but I do think that, like the Gestalt in the book, we together are a lot more than the sum of our parts.