Theresa from Glomus Commune mulls on whether living communally was really a “choice” for her.
Finding Community
The Shadow Side of Community, Part Two
by Raven Glomus
This is the second and final part of a deep look at communal “dirty laundry”. The first part focused on oppressions or what some folks call “isms”. In this installment, I want to look at instances of addiction and abuse.
Don’t get me wrong. I love community, especially the income sharing type. That’s why I manage this blog and our Facebook feed. I truly believe, warts and all, that communes are a significant improvement on mainstream living. However, I also don’t want anyone to think that I believe that communities are anywhere near perfect or even close to achieving utopia. I am always advocating for communes and communities, but I want folks to decide to join or start community with their eyes open, not expecting that all the problems in society will disappear once you enter community.
I will start by looking at addictions, which are a common, if somewhat invisible, phenomena in mainstream society. According to the US National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics (yes, apparently there’s an agency to keep statistics on these things) over 60% of Americans over the age of twelve have abused drugs (if alcohol and tobacco are included) within the past thirty days.
One recovery center lists their “Top 10 Addictions in Modern Society”: coffee, tobacco and nicotine, alcohol, sex addiction, illegal and prescription drugs, gambling, internet and modern technology, video games, food, and work. All of these addictions are found in the communes, some more than others. Most communities want to respect the individual liberties of their members so many addictions are tolerated unless or until they interfere with the workings of the community or the liberties of the other members.
Let’s start with coffee. American society runs on coffee and that’s also true for many folks in the communes. Camino Recovery (the folks that published this top ten list) claims that the “safe zone” is five cups of coffee or less. I suspect that there are folks in the communes that drink more, but I don’t think this is a major problem in the communes. At Twin Oaks, coffee is (or was the last time I checked) a “luxury item”, something that the community didn’t provide (except at the hammock shop, where it was an incentive for folks to weave hammocks). What I do know is that herbal teas and coffee alternatives are very prevalent in the communes, perhaps more than in society at large, as an alternative to so much caffeine. I suspect that coffee addiction isn’t a large problem in the communes.
Tobacco, however, is certainly prevalent in many of the communes. I’m not sure if the percentage of folks using it is higher than in society at large, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Many of the communes have a small but visible smoker subculture. To protect folks who don’t smoke, several communities have created special places for smoking and, weirdly enough to me, these places have become the cool spots to hang out. I know of several farming communities that are actually growing tobacco, reasoning that this is a cheaper way for smokers to get their nicotine fix and they know that they will be getting an unadulterated product (as opposed to whatever commercial brands add to their tobacco).
Alcoholism is a serious problem in the communes, as it is in society at large, and it tends to be more prevalent in some communities than others. This is one place in particular where the question is the degree and the effect it has on the community. Alcohol use, even excessive alcohol use, is tolerated as long as it doesn’t affect work and productivity and the person doesn’t behave in abusive ways to others when they are drunk. Members have been asked to leave or outright expelled for drunken misbehavior or inability to work. I would like to say that communities have encouraged or even assisted members and ex-members in getting treatment, and I’m sure that has been true in some cases, but I think the communes could do better with this.
Sexual addictions are harder to see in the communes. Certainly there is a lot of sexual behavior and much of it more visible than in the mainstream, but I am not sure whether any of it translates to addictive behavior. I’m sure some does, but because sex is more available and acceptable, I suspect that there is less addictive behavior, since it’s not such a forbidden activity. For similar reasons, I suspect there is less porn addiction. Why peruse pictures of naked people, when there are regularly folks walking around (or swimming or hot tubbing, etc) nude not far from you? Again, this doesn’t mean these things are absent on the communes and because they are less visible it’s pretty hard to tell.
The next category that the Camino Recovery folks list is “Illegal and prescription drugs”. This is quite a spectrum, particularly in the communities where I would say there is less prescription drug abuse and less use of narcotic drugs such as heroin than in the larger society, and more use of “illegal drugs” in the psychedelic, euphoric, and empathic categories–including acid, mushrooms, ecstasy, etc.–plus marijuana, etc, which are no longer illegal in many places. The criteria here is the same. Does it interfere with the person’s work or make them difficult to live with?
Gambling might be a problem for some folks in the communes, but I haven’t seen it. For one thing, commune members generally don’t have enough money to gamble with–and if you are interested in getting more money, I doubt you would move into an income sharing community to begin with.
Internet and technology addictions I’m sure affect some folks in the communes, but I believe it’s much less than average. In fact, there are definitely folks who join the rural communes to get away from technology. Twin Oaks actually bans cell phone use in public areas except in certain designated places. (Much like they deal with tobacco use–which gives you some idea how they view it.) Also, it turns out that in many of the communes the internet service isn’t actually good enough to allow anyone to get addicted. This may be a case where the communes are doing better than the mainstream for reasons some communards wish were different.
I suspect that the same is true of video games–or at least online video games. While there may be some folks in the communes addicted to these games, it’s probably a lot less than average.
I think food addiction may be more of a problem than internet, technology, or video game addictions but I haven’t seen a lot of it. Communards often work hard and, from what I’ve seen, often look thinner than many in the mainstream. Of course, there are eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia that result in very thin folks and while I suspect there are some folks also dealing with these, I would guess it’s either about the same or less than the larger society. It’s not something I’ve seen or heard much about.
Finally, workaholism. I think this could be a serious problem for some of the more motivated folks in the communes. I’ve written about this as a problem with our inner bosses.
Beyond addiction, the other area I want to look at is what I will lump under the title of abuse. This includes partner abuse, bullying, child abuse, sexual harassment and misconduct, and sexual assault. Unfortunately, I think that you could find all of these in the communes, although most communities will take a stance against them.
Partner abuse is often not obvious, but it definitely happens. Moreover, it happens as often in same sex couples as heterosexual couples and even happens in polyamorous relationships. When it does become obvious the abusive partner can be expelled, or sometimes both parties if they antagonize the community enough.
We try to raise our children well, but bullying does occur. When there are lots of children raised together there is sometimes more oversight and domineering behavior is often picked up and dealt with. Children are encouraged and guided in dealing with one another in these settings in ways that I think are better than in school systems and other places on the outside.
Child abuse, including child sexual abuse, unfortunately sometimes does happen in the communities. Occasionally, there are abusive parents but more often, especially with sexual abuse, it could be a caretaker that seemed okay. There was a time when this seemed more prevalent because folks trusted other members but here is an area I think that many of the communities have learned from some horribly unfortunate instances. There is very little tolerance for anything like this when it is discovered and usually the perpetrator is quickly expelled.
Unfortunately, also sexual misconduct and sexual harassment occurs in the communities as well. This is an area where the communities, especially with their relatively free sexuality, try hard to make sure that it doesn’t happen. Unfortunately it still does, and trying to achieve accountability for this is something the communities are still struggling with.
Worse is when sexual assault occurs. Many of the communes are offering or even mandating training in consent. Consent culture is more and more a part of communal living and this is much more prevalent and accepted than in the mainstream. However, assaults still occur and it’s often difficult to be sure who to believe and, again, accountability often doesn’t occur or is ineffective when it does. I doubt that things are much better in the mainstream–however, what makes things more difficult in the communes is the reluctance on most occasions to pursue legal actions. We know that there must be better ways to deal with injustices, including sexual assault, without involving the court and prison systems. We still haven’t figured out what they are, although some communities are exploring restorative justice.
I’m sure that there are a few more nasty things that happen in the communes that I haven’t thought of (and yes, there have been a few cases of arson and dramatic violence, but they have been very rare). I will close by saying, again, I am not listing all these things to make a case against the communes but, first, to make sure people enter them without utopian preconceptions, and second, to make it clear how far we need to go. It’s important that the communes are beginning to directly address some of these problems. I hope some more of them will be addressed as people try to design better working communities and as some of the older communes look at themselves.
The Shadow Side of Community, Part One
by Raven Glomus
This post and the next will be difficult to write (and probably read) because I intend to air as much of the dirty laundry of community living as I can think of. This can be seen as a follow up to my post called Lower Your Expectations. While I am all about communal living, I want to be honest here. I don’t want folks getting into communal living with illusions of how wonderful it’s going to be. Communes and communities are far from perfect—and sometimes very far from perfect.
In these two posts, I intend to point out all the nasty things that I know about communal living, all the things I (and many other folks) wish were different, where communities fall down and where they are making some headway on all this. I have to say that with everything that’s bad about communities, I still think that they are an improvement on mainstream life—and many of these problems are things that some communities are really trying to work on. So I will also report on improvement attempts and where I see successes.
In this first part I am going to focus on what we used to call, oppression issues or “isms”.
Let’s start with the most commonly commented on problem in communal life: racism. Yes, there is a lot of racism in the communities and it’s something that is being talked about and worked on. While there is definitely some overt racism in some of the communities, the more common problems have to do with what I would refer to as structural (or institutional) racism: things like microaggressions, cultural blindnesses, and, above all, communities that are structured to accommodate middle class white folks. This is racism that well meaning white folks practice, usually unintentionally. The result is that most communities are uncomfortable for many BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and the communities are left wondering why they are so white.
I do have to say that this is a problem that is actively being addressed by the communities movement. Right now, the Foundation for Intentional Communities is running trainings and panels actively talking about how to take on this issue. Unfortunately, you need to do more than simply take the training and thus movement on really dealing with racism is still very slow. My hope is that BIPOC led communities such as the Serenity Community for Justice and Peace will make a difference in changing this dynamic.
Similar to racism, but much less currently addressed, is classism. Most of the communes and communities are filled with middle class and upper middle class folks and this often makes it uncomfortable for people who grew up working class or poor. I think that an exception to this is the East Wind Community which has a lot of working class folks and more of a working class flavor to it. Unfortunately, instead of this being celebrated, East Wind often gets a bad reputation. This has been particularly true around racism—and there have been more incidents of overt racism there but, as several people I know have pointed out, most of the problems at East Wind are the same problems that have been found at all the communities and folks of color have had the same difficulties at Twin Oaks and Acorn, but because they aren’t as articulate, East Wind has often been singled out. Something that really bothered me at the 2018 FEC Assembly was watching upper middle class white folks lecturing East Winders on racism using jargon and academic terms. It felt quite condescending. Of course, the difficult intersections of race and class are rampant in the society at large and are not being dealt with well at all (look at Trump’s appeal to white working class folks), but I would need a whole piece to talk about this and it would take us far from communal living.
Going down the oppressions, I want to look at sexism and misogyny next. Here’s a place that I think the communes are doing quite a bit better. It’s not as if sexism has been banished or there’s no misogyny in the communities, but there seems to be a lot more freedom for women, a lot more respect for women, and a lot more female leadership in the communes than in mainstream society. In fact I know of several communities that are practically matriarchies—and Twin Oaks views itself as having a “feminist culture”. Again, there’s still quite a few pockets of sexism in the communes but I think that it’s being dealt with a lot better than in society at large. (Note: I am not talking about the awful problems of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault here. I will deal with these things later, in Part Two.)
On sexual orientation issues and homophobia, I also think that the communes are doing better than the mainstream world. Again, it’s not that you can’t run into homophobia in the communes; it’s just a lot less prevalent. I know at least one small commune that’s probably two thirds queer folks—and that’s not to mention the Tennessee queer communities. Twin Oaks also sponsors a Queer Gathering that is a lovely place for GLBTQ(etc) folks in community or wanting to be in community to gather.
Unfortunately, on trans and nonbinary issues, the communities don’t do quite as well. I think overall they are a lot safer and welcoming place than the mainstream, but there is still a lot more transphobia than I wish there was. Some of this is generational, with older lesbians and feminists being uncomfortable with transwomen declaring themselves women. Again, this is a difficulty being played out in the society at large and it seems somewhat less prevalent in the communes, but it’s far from being fully dealt with.
Finally, looking at the “isms”, comes ableism. This, too, is a place where the communes don’t do nearly enough. Most of the rural communes have few accessibility accommodations and are not particularly welcoming to the disabled. The one place that communes do provide accommodations is when someone who is already a member becomes disabled.
This brings me to something that is true of many situations within the communes and many other communities. Once you are there and have become an important part of the place, they will do whatever they can to help it work better for you, but they are not as willing to accommodate someone that they don’t already know. This applies to handicap accessibility, but also explains many racial issues and the problems the communes have with families (more on this in Part Two). It also explains why the communes do better on some gender and sexuality issues.
There have been women as part of most of the communes since the beginning. To the degree they were able to advocate for themselves (and, since a lot of the men were heterosexual, they didn’t want communities that would be all or mostly men), they got the changes that they wanted and needed. In fact, Twin Oaks made it policy to that they needed to have at least a 60:40 ratio between the genders (this was a time when folks only thought of two genders), so they actively recruited women and those women pushed for the leadership of women. Likewise, once there were a number of queer folks in a community, they worked to create an environment which would be welcoming to LGBTQ folks. I am convinced that the only way racial issues can really be dealt with in the communities is when there is a significant BIPOC presence. Twin Oaks did talk about trying to become as much as 40% folks of color, but that hasn’t gone anywhere. As I said, I think that the Serenity Community, as BIPOC led and majority BIPOC, has a better chance of making a difference.
In the next part (next week) I will look at a bunch of other problems in the communes. Again, with all their problems, I think that they’re better than mainstream living. But they’re sure not perfect.
Lower Your Expectations
by Raven Glomus
When I lived at the Ganas Community, I heard someone tell this story: Two new folks join the community about the same time. One is someone who says, “Wow, this community is amazing. It’s what I’ve been searching for all my life. I want to stay here forever.” The other one says,”This place is okay. I think I’ll try it out and maybe I’ll stay a year or so.” The person telling the story (a long time member of Ganas) goes on to say that usually, the first person ends up staying a few weeks before they become disillusioned and leave, and the second one often ends up staying for years.
One of the problems with folks wanting to join a community is that they bring all these expectations with them. When someone begins the visitor program at Twin Oaks Community, they are given a little guide about life at Twin Oaks entitled, “Not Utopia Yet”. This is a bit of a warning. No community is even near utopia. It says right in the guide: “We don’t pretend that this is paradise, or utopia, and if that is what you really want you will have to look elsewhere…” Except that I don’t think that there is an elsewhere.
Most communities have all the problems of the larger society, because they constantly have people coming and going. I have written about this before in a piece on this blog entitled “Aspirational Egalitarianism”, which, while not as popular as the pieces we have on starting communes, still tends to show up in the top twenty-five posts even though I wrote it three years ago. The difficulty is that, because communities often aim higher, new members think they should be better than they are. This leads to disenchantment and departure.
Some folks assume that the problem is with the community they tried first and they go on to keep trying out communities. If they go into the new community with the same expectations, they are going to leave with the same disappointment. Eventually, one of two things usually happens. Most often, eventually they realize that there are no communities that are as wonderful as they want them to be, and they give up–and sometimes begin denouncing all the communes as ‘frauds’. But sometimes, someone realizes that there just aren’t any perfect communities, and that they can live with that, and they find one to call their home because it fits within some reasonable expectation.
I intend to write a piece soon on what I will call The Shadow Side of Community and look at all the stuff no one wants to talk about that exists in communities. Basically, as I said, communities have almost all the ills that the larger society has (and most people don’t want to talk about these things in the larger society either). So, why join a commune if it’s going to have the same problems as the mainstream? One reason is that the communes often aim higher and at least want to be better than they are. And, I think that they really are better than the mainstream in many ways. People share more and work together and think and talk about all these issues in ways that you won’t find in your average setting. I think that communes and communities offer quite a bit (that’s why I have lived in them all these years). You can actually get a lot out of communal living. You just need to lower your expectations.
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Thanks for reading! This post was made possible by our patrons on Patreon. The Commune Life team works hard to bring you these stories about our lives in community, and that work couldn’t happen without support from our audience. So if you liked this article, and want to help us make more like it, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/communelife to join us!
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- Kathleen Brooks
- Lynette Shaw
- Magda schonfeld
- Michael Hobson
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- Nance & Jack Williford
- NorthernSoul Truelove
- Oesten Nelson
- Paxus Calta
- Peter Chinman
- Raines Cohen
- Sasha Daucus
- Suzi Tortora
- Tobin Moore
- Warren Kunce
- William Croft
- William Kadish
- William Scarborough
Thanks!
Jules on Getting into Twin Oaks
This is Jules who has been involved with Commune Life for a while and lives at Twin Oaks. They have a TikTok channel and here they explain how you can join Twin Oaks.
The Importance of the Right Allies–Serenity Community
by Paxus Calta
from Your Passport to Complaining
When the nation was exploding in protests over the murder of George Floyd, some skeptics, perhaps tired of the nations inability to hold Trump for any of his many crimes, said “these protests won’t change anything”. They were wrong.
Viewers of mainstream news could be forgiven for thinking the big effects were removal of confederate statues and the confederate symbol from the flag of Mississippi and NASCAR races. And i fear the biggest effect of the Trump presidency is that many news sources now focus more on telling us what we will get upset about, rather than what is actually important.
However this short list misses most critical reforms and changes, many of which took place shortly after Floyd was murdered. Some terrible laws were cancelled, including A 50 in New York which protected criminal bad cops by hiding their disciplinary records and complaints filed against them. Colorado stripped cops of qualified immunity. LA cut over $150 million from the police budget and redirected it to other community services. Over a dozen police chiefs were forced to resign, including in large cities like Atlanta, Tucson, Richmond and Louisville. Police chiefs almost never resign suddenly or are fired. Letitia James, the Attorney General of NY State made history by being the first AG to sue their own police department for use of excessive force. At one point, i started to track all the things which had actually changed because of this uprising, it ended up being overwhelming by it and i quit.
The communes also changed. There were disruptive internal protests at these intentional communities about systemic racism and there was a lot of education of white communards about how despite their best intentions they were maintaining racist systems. And in part because of these internal protests POC members of communes started more seriously considering options which had only been discussed before. Importantly, a number of BIPOC community members realized there was a need for a BIPOC led income sharing community near the cluster of communes in Louisa county. And so Serenity Community was born.
While Serenity (taken for the name for the starship in the Firefly TV series) is still forming, it is already making good things happen. One of the things we are especially excited about is that Serenity has taken on the difficult task of dispersing scholarship (discount) tickets for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folks who need economic assistance to come to QuinkFair. Recently, has also agreed to take on the granting of scholarship tickets to other economically disadvantaged participants.
And while they have been actively dispersing scholarship tickets, there are still more people who want to come to this event than can afford it. If you could help grow these scholarship funds it would be quite helpful. If you are on Facebook, you can donate at this fundraiser or you can venmo 541-505-0803, be sure to include a note “QuinkFair Scholarships”
George Floyds death forced America to admit it had a systemic racism problem and while these important changes are to be lauded, we know the real work lies in front of us, but i am glad and excited to have the talented and energetic Serenity folks help in crafting a more fair and equitable world.
Dealing with Debt
by Raven Glomus
Last week I talked about how the older communes didn’t seem to have thought about the fact that most people don’t stay forever in communities and that you wouldn’t want it to be hard to leave an income sharing community–and the problems that caused, and how the newer communes created Exit Agreements to deal with that. This week I want to talk about another issue that the older communes didn’t want to deal with: Debt.
In my made up story to illustrate the need for exit agreements, I said that the homeless man had no money but no debt. That would be an unusual situation. Actually, a lot of folks come to the communes with a little money and a lot of debt. Twin Oaks’ solution to this is to say that folks either have to not pay the debt (ie, default on it or declare bankruptcy) or not move into the community. At one of the newer communities, at least in one case, the solution was to actually pay off all of the debt for one of the members.
This is a more expensive solution and probably wouldn’t work in one of the larger communities. It also probably wouldn’t work if the community had a lot of folks with lots of debts. But it does illustrate a more radical solution to the debt problem.
The problem is that our current society runs on debt. Student loans alone constitute an enormous amount of debt. It turns out that this past year, US students owed nearly $1.6 trillion in debt. Furthermore, nearly 12 million student loan borrowers were in either loan deferment, loan forbearance, or loan default.
And then there is credit card debt. The outstanding total US personal debt, most of which was credit card debt, reached $998.4 billion in July 2021. There was a $5,525 average balance on credit cards over this year. Once you are in debt, it’s hard to get out of it. Defaulting on loans when you enter a commune is one solution (and it makes sense as a way of just getting out of an horrible system), but when you figure a lot of communards are going to leave the commune at some point, starting over could be very difficult with bill collectors on your back.
Again, I realize that simply paying off debt for every member with it probably wouldn’t work in the long run. But, just like the new communes needed to come up with new policies to deal with folks leaving, such as Exit Agreements, we need to figure out more possible solutions to folks in debt–because there’s a lot of them out there and, if communities are going to offer real alternatives, dealing with debt is something, especially for those who are trying to start new communities and find folks, that is going to have to be built into the new community’s policies.
Thanks for reading! This post was made possible by our patrons on Patreon. The Commune Life team works hard to bring you these stories about our lives in community, and that work couldn’t happen without support from our audience. So if you liked this article, and want to help us make more like it, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/communelife to join us!
Deep gratitude to all of our patron communards:
Aaron Michels
Brenda Thompson
Cathy Loyd
Colby Baez
Heather
Janey Amend-Bombara
Jenn Morgan
Joseph A Klatt
Kai Koru
Kate McGuire
Kathleen Brooks
Lynette Shaw
Magda schonfeld
Michael Hobson
Montana Goodman
Nance & Jack Williford
NorthernSoul Truelove
Oesten Nelson
Paxus Calta
Peter Chinman
Raines Cohen
Sasha Daucus
Suzi Tortora
Tobin Moore
Warren Kunce
William Croft
William Kadish
William Scarborough
Thanks!
Turnover
by Raven Glomus
I’m surprised that I haven’t written on this before. In fact, I don’t think that we’ve published anything directly about it on this blog. (And WordPress informs me that this is our 700th post!)
Very often, when I talk about my communal experiences, I talk about Common Threads, the income-sharing community that I helped start in the 1990s, and how much I have learned since then. One thing I share with folks that are talking about starting a community is how often we thought that we were failing because every year of Common Threads’ five year existence, we had a somewhat different crew of folks. Our core (Susan, Robert, and I) remained the same, but people kept moving in and out. We couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t hold onto members.
Since that time, I’ve lived in three or four co-op houses, a couple of different communes, and one large, complicated community. I’ve also visited a bunch of communities and keep decent tabs on several. All of them experienced (and, if they are still around, still experience) regular significant changes in their membership. As they say in the computer world, “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”
How it works is that many folks think that they would like to live in a commune or some other type of community. However, when they actually try living in one, they often find it’s not what they expected. Other folks may know what they want but find that a particular community doesn’t meet their needs (after they’ve tried it for a while) and decide to move on. Still other people live happily in a community for quite some time and then they change. They decide that they want to do something that they can’t do in the community or it no longer meets their needs. Whatever the reason, the majority of folks who join a community decide to leave at some point. (There certainly those who join long lasting communities that live in them until they die. That’s really just a different way of leaving.)
The result is that almost any community has people regularly leaving. If they are good at recruitment, they will also have new folks coming in and, hopefully, the number coming in balances the number leaving, in which case the community is more or less stable. All this is to say that turnover is just a part of community living.
Many of the newer communities have started to plan for their members leaving at some point and design exit agreements (which I plan to write about in the near future).
Right now, many communities are still recovering from the pandemic where they lost a lot of folks and had problems and concerns about bringing in new folks, with the result that they have fairly low membership. Now they are actively seeking folks.
I knew that both Twin Oaks and Acorn were looking for people, but I was surprised when Paxus published an article on doing a Meet the Communities at the next Quink Fest. There were eight Louisa County communities listed—-nine if you consider Magnolia separate from Living Energy Farm–and they are all looking for people. (For those unfamiliar with Virginia geography, Louisa County includes Louisa, Mineral, and Cuckoo.) All in all, there are sixteen communities listed as presenting at this event–plus the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (representing the secular income-sharing communities of North America) and the Foundation for Intentional Community (which includes over a thousand communities, most of them in North America or Europe).
If you are interested in joining a community, this is exciting news. Take a look at Paxus’ piece. This might be the time to make turnover work in your favor.
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Thanks for reading! This post was made possible by our patrons on Patreon. The Commune Life team works hard to bring you these stories about our lives in community, and that work couldn’t happen without support from our audience. So if you liked this article, and want to help us make more like it, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/communelife to join us!
Deep gratitude to all of our patron communards:
- Aaron Michels
- Brenda Thompson
- Cathy Loyd
- Colby Baez
- Heather
- Janey Amend-Bombara
- Jenn Morgan
- Joseph A Klatt
- Kai Koru
- Kate McGuire
- Kathleen Brooks
- Lynette Shaw
- Magda schonfeld
- Michael Hobson
- Montana Goodman
- Nance & Jack Williford
- NorthernSoul Truelove
- Oesten Nelson
- Paxus Calta
- Peter Chinman
- Raines Cohen
- Sasha Daucus
- Suzi Tortora
- Tobin Moore
- Warren Kunce
- William Croft
- William Kadish
- William Scarborough
Thanks!
Meet the Communities – An evolutionally stable design
by Paxus
from Your Passport to Complaining
Evolutionarily Stable Design
There are some evolutionary marvels out there. Designs so stable that they make the dinosaurs look like the new kids on the block. I am speaking specifically of dragonflies, jellyfish and cow sharks.
Say you have an event where you have brought together 200 participants and perhaps 100 of them are hunting for a new community (the others are from communities or are just community-curious). Let’s say there are 40 communities represented. How do you get the key information to the right hunters so they can make good choices?
I don’t know exactly who developed the Meet the Communities format that the Twin Oaks Communities Conference has used for decades, but it is an evolutionarily stable format, because it works so well.
You could say it is basically formatted around the controversial propagandist axiom “there is no such thing as a long story”. You line up all your communities and say “you have 1 minute to present yourself and then people who like you will come for more personal and longer talks after all the communities present themselves”. Yes, the communities movement basically invented speed dating.
After these introductions community presenters spread out to picnic tables and put up their signs and hunters who were intrigued at the short presentation come and have a longer, more personal and more focused conversation.
There are some organizational pieces you have to include to make it work. You need someone who is watching the clock and when people hit their 1 minute mark gently moves them off the stage. Ira did this for many years. [Which resulted in Pat Therrian intentionally running over her time so Ira would have to grab her, which Pat quite liked.] And you have to explain to the sustainability network guy how, while his project is important, he can not get up and present himself as a place based residential community.
Another proof of evolutionary stability is imitation. The West Coast Communities Conference (when it was happening before the pandemic) also used this format as does the QuinkFair event happening Oct 1, 2, 3, and 4 in Mineral Virginia. These are the communities who have been invited to present themselves during MtC (most of whom have confirmed and/or said they are likely to attend) on October 2 in the morning.
| Acorn | Mineral |
| Abrams Creek/CFNC | Storm Mountain WV |
| Baltimore Free Farm | Baltimore |
| Cambia | Louisa |
| Community of Peace | Louisa |
| Cosmic Honey | San Francisco Bay a |
| Cuckoo Compound | Cuckoo VA |
| Cville Ecovillage | Cville VA |
| Federation of Egalitarian Communities | US |
| Foundation for Intentional Community | North America |
| Glow House | DC |
| Hawks Crest | Richmond |
| Living Energy Farm (LEF) | Louisa |
| Little Flower | Louisa |
| Magnolia (LEF affiliate) | Louisa |
| Open Circle | Etlan VA |
| Serenity (forming) | Louisa |
| Twin Oaks | Louisa |
Sadly, there is no Twin Oaks Communities Conference (TOCC) this year and QuinkFair is quite a different type of event. Nevertheless, this long held tradition will be repeated in an undisclosed location in Mineral VA on October 2.
Communal Living–Real and Otherwise
by Raven Glomus
The New Yorker just ran an article on “Communal Living”. Unfortunately, almost all of the places that they referenced seemed like high-end situations and not what I usually think of as the usual intentional communities, let alone communes.
The article features a place called Treehouse that looks a lot more luxurious than most of the communities I know of. It and most of the other places they reference seem to be of the new ‘co-living’ ilk. I am very skeptical of co-living experiments. While it seemed like many of the people benefited from living at Treehouse, it also seemed to be a high end, somewhat profit making venture–which was true of most of the situations mentioned in the article.
I fear that this is just another case of capitalism trying to figure out how to make money from people’s loneliness. There was a mention of the communes of the sixties in the article. I always point out Twin Oaks as an example of a commune that has not disappeared, has not sold out, as an example of bottom up, voluntary communism that works and has worked there for 54 years and continues to work.
Sky Blue, former Twin Oaker and community consultant, has a webpage and I want to add this quote from a post that he wrote that highlights the difference between “co-living” experiments and more ground up built communities.(I have previously published three different pieces from Sky. I really feel in line with what he writes.)
“I think there’s a place for developer driven intentional communities. But I think the kind of community I want to be part of has to come from a group.
“This is where I look more to distinctive communities like The Farm, Twin Oaks, Dancing Rabbit, Earthaven, Arcosanti, Lost Valley, Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, TLC Farm, Songaia, Mount Madonna, Lama Foundation, Ganas, Sirius, Ithaca Ecovillage. I could go on. They all have unique, fascinating stories of a group coming together with a common vision.”
I also would add East Wind, Acorn, Sandhill, Red Earth Farms, the LA Ecovillage, the Tennessee queer communities, and, of course, Glomus Commune. And if you want to look beyond the US, Kommune Niederkaufungen, Christiania, ZEGG, Tamera, Damanhur, and Gaviotas, and, of course, the original kibbutzim. For many of these, as Sky says, “one way or another a committed and passionate group comes together to do the impossible and succeeds.” These are not all income sharing communities by any means, but they are very organic and alternative.
I am glad that co-living and these other ventures exist because people need alternatives and for many folks these are closer to what they have than the more organic communities–hopefully, for others, these ventures are a stepping stone, only a first taste of what is possible. Maybe, for a few, these could be the first steps on a path that will lead them to real communal living.
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