Transcribed by Anne Ennis
I'm Diana Leaf Christian. I'm sixty-three. I travel around and promote eco-villages, do workshops in intentional communities, how to start them, how to thrive in them, how to help people have more trust and connection and reduce conflict. And, I speak at conferences, I've written two books and I have an online newsletter that I love called Eco-Villages and I do an eco-village slide show all over the place.
From my point of view, what a person would gain from living in an intentional community, an eco-village, a co-housing community -- any kind of intentional community, are a number of benefits that certainly exist outside of community but more intensely in community, you will have a lower ecological footprint because you are sharing resources with others. Here at Earth Haven for example, we have a tractor, not many tractors, just one. You can co-own large items because you don't need it all the time and you can share it.
If you eat food together, you get a volume discount in buying food in bulk which of course reduces your food bill. There's all kinds of ways that also reduces your impact on the planet because you might be growing a lot of your own food, cooking once for all these people; so there's a lot of ways that it's ecological more sustainable. Here at Earth Haven, for example, we're off the grid, we live in passive solar homes that we've built ourselves without bank loans. We all have roofwater catchment and we use water from streams, not from streams but springs, and we have a well. We grow much, not much but starting to grow more and more of our own food here at Earth Haven. We have composting toilets; we do all kinds of things to lessen our impact on the planet and increase our happiness and our well being and basically put our ecological lifestyle values where our mouth is; put our values where our lifestyle is pretty much. So, that's one benefit. Not everyone lives in eco-village but almost anyone who shares resources is having a lighter impact on the planet, so that's one benefit to living in community.
Another benefit is that it's safer to live with a bunch of people who know you. This is particularly true for children, for old folks, and for women. I can walk anywhere on this property in the middle of the night and the scariest thing I have to think about is bears, which is not so scary because they're little and they run away, especially if you take your jacket and raise it up. And the bears thinks, oh that's not lunch, that's something bigger than me but anyway, the point is there's not this fear of other folks. But living in communities it's not quite the same, you live with a bunch of people who know you, you're not a stranger. You know your neighbour and friend, they're there for you, "there's many eyes on the street", to quote a city planner, Jane Jacobs, right. So this is beneficial, particularly older people thrive in communities. For children, if you've got agreements that the cars are parked over there and not in the way, and they drive slowly, then there's safety for children playing as a herd of kids roaming the whole community in safety. All of the parents can see who the the kids are outside the window, they'll know all the kids. There's many aunts and uncles as it were looking out for the kids, so it's got safety. So it's healthier.
There's all kinds of studies that show that daily frequent interactions withother people -- your immune system is healthier, really, it's true. And you tend to be living in a higher state of health than you'd live if you were living in a tiny apartment in a giant city in skyscraper and you didn't know your neighbors, you didn't know the people that you take the subway to work with. And you don't know a lot of people except when you have specific social interactions with your friends. Living in community, you're connected with folks, you're part of that web of trust and support and connection that we're genetically programmed for, I think, being herd animals, as a species. I don't mean herd, maybe flock, school of fish, school of humans; we are supposed to be with other humans and so it's particularly good for older people because older people tend to live longer, healthier more functional lives in community, or in connection with other people.
Okay, another benefit, you grow as a person, you get to know what you are like more than if you didn't have all those other sources of feedback, who are willing to give you feedback. Oh boy, are they! So you get to know what you shine at, what you're really good at. You get appreciation, you get acknowledgement, you get thanks. You get to find out, Oh, I didn't realize that I was so good at X skill or Y characteristic, but I am, and I can help the community, and people thank me. You also get critical feedback. If your mom and dad tell you, "Ah, you know, you do this behavior, we don't like it, would you change it?" You can go, "Ah, mom". If your partner, your love partner, says, "Ah you know, you do this behavior, ugh, don't like it, would you change it?" You could go, "Really, that's just your issue, now would you please get over it?" But if seven people over time give you the same feedback, then you go, "Hmmm, maybe I ought to take a look at that". So what I think is feedback in community is helpful, painful, and free. You can pay all kinds of money to a life coach to get to your goals and what you should focus on. You can pay all kinds of money to a psychotherapist, a body work therapist, a healer to get at your issues or you can listen to the feedback in community that's perfectly free and probably dead-on. So, that's another benefit.
You can also learn new skills in the same category of growing as a person. I have a friend at Twin Oaks, who's a woman friend who drives a back hoe, a tractor. She can split wood, split kindling, fell trees, haul around logs; she can do all kinds of things. She can cook for 80 people, all kinds of skills that she didn't have before she lived in Twin Oaks. I myself can design a home site according to permaculture principles. Work with rebar and concrete. I know how to screed concrete -- what the heck does "screed" mean? Well now I know. I can plaster a wall with earthen plaster, read the trimetric meter on my photovoltec system; I know amps from volts, what are the batteries? I know all kinds of things; I can facilitate a meeting, draft up a proposal, take minutes for a meeting, conduct a mediation between my friends, experience mediation when I am the one who's called to have a mediation, because I did something. I know how to do stuff I didn't know how to do.
You feel a sense of support and connection with like minded friends, you and they are engaged in the same activity for the purpose of your community. What's our common purpose? Why are we doing this? Going in the same direction, doing the same thing with folks who have the same values, interests, lifestyle pretty much as ourselves; if the community's been well organized to start with, and they have a common purpose (which I hope they do), and then, that feels good. It feels like a sense of "we", you know, Taoist leadership, "We did it!". It feels wonderful and you feel a sense of trust and support and connection, ideally, when things are working well. You feel like you can call upon your neighbors, you can call upon your friends, "Do you need a ride to the airport?" Do they need you to come get them from the airport? Do you need a certain kind of double walled polycarbonate? My friend down the road's going to give me his, which I actually gave back to my other neighbor, which gave to him and now myself and another neighbor needs some so it's coming back around. There's this field of support and I feel like I am living with a bunch of brothers and sisters and cousins and I haven't gotten many hugs per week in my life and this is a good thing.
And lastly, it's way more fun than living on your own somewhere or with your nuclear family which is nice in a suburban place; driving in your car to the mall, or soccer practice, to your job, taking the kids to school, driving back to your house in suburbia. I think this is a lot more fun: movies, tai chi, chi gong, non-violent communication study group (which I am going to tonight), spontaneous ultimate frisbee, soccer, all kinds of fun things that you and the group can do together. We all watched the election results, we don't actually have a TV, we had to do it online, and we were all laughing and crying and cheering together, it's more fun.
So those are some reasons why someone would want to live in community.
Well, I would say there are challenges living in community. Not necessarily negative, because they tend to have lots of growth potential for you as an individual and for you as a group. I think that people who join communities have an opportunity to finally grow up, if they haven't already completed that process. They can be doing it kicking and screaming and having a difficult time dealing with requests to take care of this issue and that issue, and please don't do that anymore and, "Hey, you are really good at this, why don't you develop that", so it can be challenging for your psyche but I believe that's a good thing, really.
Other things that are individually challenging, I'd say for the individual living in community is the dynamic tension between how much time do I devote to work parties, social events here in the community, committee work; going to meetings, drafting proposals, working on community business, because I, as a citizen here, as part of our "We did it" self-governance, well, my time is required to do that, and how much time do I get for my own self? Gosh, I've got to get to cleaning off the porch. Gosh, I have not been in that closet in awhile, I wonder what's in there? Do I need to remove six pairs of old rotting shoes? For example. When do I get time for my life? How much time do I get for myself? When do I just get down time, thank you very much, shut the door, come in here, I need time for me. So how do you balance the dynamic tension between the obligations of the community and your personal life?
Other challenges are interpersonal and in terms of the community governance, and that's where I think communities are living organisms like children that go through developmental stages and in communities, in the aggregate of the individual members, can learn things. Here's a learning that I see communities learn, Oh yeah, we've got this problem person but I don't want to say that, it's not right to identify that person as a problem, really, I'll just think that it's my issue. Some time goes by, Oh it looks like sixteen of us all have the same issue. That is to say that this person is triggering many of us to be upset, and rather frequently, by doing that behavior, I'll call it X behavior. "Oh, what are we going to do about it, but we can't do anything about it, well, we don't want to hurt their feelings." So we don't say anything. A little time goes by, a lot of mumbling, mumbling and muttering and resentment and upset between us, are we talking to this person? No. We should be, shouldn't we? No. Somebody among us will go talk to this person, "Oh, Reginald, would you please not do that, this is what happens to me when you do that, this is the affect that it has on me, would you please not. And I believe this is not very good for the group".
Well, that person is not very effective at some point, we might have to, as a group, have a small committee of folks that goes and talks to Reginald. Do we have the gumption to do that, or are we feeling, Oh no, it will hurt Reginald's feelings, or are we feeling like this, I'm up to here with Reginald, I'm not so interested in his feelings, I want to tell him, please stop that. Or are we doing this, let's get a open heart, speak with compassion, yet clarity, to Reginald, and ask him to please not do that". When more time goes by, when do we get to the point where we say, Okay, we as a group are going to officially, as an official body, going to write a little letter and deliver it, "Reginald, this behavior tends to influence the community in these negative ways, it impacts us in these these ways, will you please stop doing this?" Well, I think that it takes awhile for a group to get up the whatever it takes the gumption, the energy, the will, the cajones to do this and finally a group will, set limits, set boundaries, my hope is that they do it with as much kindness and compassion as possible, and not let how fed up with anger they might be influence how they speak to Reginald.
However, I would like to tell you a thing I've observed in community, that by the time the group gets up the gumption to do this, and asks Reginald, will you please make some changes, either Reginald -- and this is rare -- will say, "Okay, thank you, I get it. Sorry it took so much time of the group's effort, yeah, I'll look at this, I'll do some changing, I'll get some help for this issue of mine." That doesn't happen very often, but it could, I've seen it happen a few times. What usually happens is Reginald packs his bags and leaves the community so the community benefits because that behavior is not still present in their midst, and it's so painful for Reginald, usually, that he leaves. This is not the group's intent, they just want him to not do X. Anyway, so, some of the challenges of community can be what I might call a challenging group member who tends to trigger upset in a whole lot of people consistently over time, "if it was just me and Reginald I would just think that it is just my issue or his", we're having shrapnel in the aura that's getting tangled up or something, but if it's a whole bunch of us I might think, Hmmm, maybe Reginald is doing something, really objectively doing something.
Other challenges can be how long it takes to accomplish something, because we might be making decision in a participatory fair way, where we all have input and voice into the process, either through consensus decision making, or any of it's small variations, or through the sociocracy method, or some other method where it's fair and participatory. And we're hearing all voices and we're thinking about it, we're sleeping on it ,and then we're having another meeting, we're dealing with yet other objections and concerns, and we're trying tore-craft the proposal to make it something we can all live with and using group intelligence, co-intelligence, to co-create this proposal into a better one. Okay, well, that's going to take awhile which can be exceedingly frustrating for people who've entered community recently from the world of business where they were the CEO, or they were the owner of their own small business, or they were in a small non-profit but they were the executive director, or a marine drill sargeant, or -- which is not likely to enter a community -- but someone's who's used to saying, "Alright, you do this, you do this, you do this, we'll get the job done". Or maybe who's not even the boss, somebody who in a small group will go, "We'll do this, this, this and this, okay, we've got this figured out, alright go, we're gonna do it!". In community, it can just take awhile, you know. So, a person has to sort of develop a slower pace in order to deal with that.
Other challenges can be, living in community, why do we have so many piles of stacked salvaged goods that we might need later, and projects that are only partially completed because we're waiting for more labor or more money or more time. Because when we're not feeling charitable we can say, "What the heck is all these half done, never finished projects, and all these unsightly piles of junk, why don't we clean this place up?!" So visitors to community can say, they can come to Earthaven, for example, and say, This is just wonderful, this is like eco-paradise, look at all these tiny little apricot colored, mud plaster huts, it's just like a Third world country, a Third world village, it's so lovely". And other people can come into the gate say, "Ugh! look at all these little earth plaster red huts, it's just like a Third world country, I'm outta here!" You know, so sometimes the challenge in community is aesthetic and, "Could you please finish that project, that's been three years". "Yeah, well, we have to build this bridge." "Well, let's finish this first", that kind of thing.
Oh, another challenge could be, the new person entering community (and I write about this in my book, Finding Community), is used to a certain amount of filter and boundary around them relative to feedback, about themselves, relative to others expressing their emotions, or being completely honest and transparent, more than we're used to, in meetings. Or, lots of emotion or emotional processing, "I feel this when you do that and I don't want you to hurt, can we talk about this?" Gasp! Emotions and tears and anger and the kinds of things that can be drawn from and used in community meetings to get at what are we dealing with here in terms of the proposal. Or, special meetings, talking sticks, sharing stick, heart shares, wisdom circles, whatever we might want to call it; people coming into community might not be used to that and they might find it just a little bit frightening. Particularly if they are in their older years as compared to the younger years and one gender rather than the other tends to have more trouble with that. The gender with whiskers tends to have just a bit more *clear throat* about the damn touchy-feely stuff, but not always, of course.
So, my view of what makes helpful characteristics for someone who wants to join a community, and I write about this in my book Finding Community, and I'm not trying to tell you, "I will tell you what is so!", this is just my opinion. So the person coming to community, first of all, what I would hope for them is that they have an attitude that says, "I love what you're doing here, how can I help you?", sort of a "How can I help?" attitude, rather than, "What can you give me? I'm entitled. I want this, this and this and a paid vacation, and my own hot tub". The attitude of "You owe me" which some people have doesn't go over real well in community, I have found. So, first of all and attitude of Hello, roll up sleeves, How can I help.
Another attitude is an attitude of, humility is the word I think of, though I don't think of Uriah Heap, in Dickens. I don't mean a lack of self esteem, I don't mean low personal self-confidence, I just mean a sense of, Let me learn your community culture first before I suggest things to change. Let me understand your agreements and abide by them before I make a proposal to change some of them. Let me, and I am going to quote Steven Covey, who wrote that book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, whatever the title was. One of the seven habits that's good for effective people is "Let me seek first to understand before I will seek to be understood", so let me understand your point of view and your community I'm learning about, before I want you to understand me. That's what I mean by humility.
I at the same time would want the person entering community to have self confidence, and those aren't contradictory. Self-confident, meaning, I feel trust for the world, and myself, and for you, other people. There's things that I know I can do, that I can help. A feeling of, I'm alright, I'm fine. As compared to, feelings of painful inadequacy, or feelings of deep shame, or feelings of, I'm no good. That kind of an inner interior emotional landscape tends to be really hard on the person entering the community, and it tends to be hard on the community itself. This is hard to talk about because it's exceedingly politically incorrect, so let's talk about it.
Somebody who doesn't feel very good about themselves before entering the community. And maybe they haven't done any personal healing work before they enter the community door, they tend to take offence, be upset, get into conflicts with folks, feel harmed or victimized when in fact they're not, to the point where it takes group time and group energy; having mediations, or whole group conversations dealing with this person's upset feelings. I'm not saying that people who don't feel too happy aren't good folks, I do think they're good folks. I'm just talking about characteristics that work well in a group process. So I will want someone's who's having a real hard time in life to get some healing and help, and some self confidence, and some inner emotional strength before entering this thing called living in community, at least that's my personal little bias.
I've seen people enter community with an energy that says, I really like what you're doing, how can I help? These are the skills that I have", and when somebody asks them to do X, Y or Z, they don't feel like, "How dare you ask me to do that?", they say, "Oh sure", and I feel that takes confidence. I want to quote my friend Zev Pace, who is a co-housing activist who says, of co-housing, but I want to say it of community in general, all community: "The longest, most expensive personal growth workshop you will ever take." So this is fine if you have the confidence to take the slings and arrows of outrageous feedback you might get when you are in community, and you will. And if it causes you to rail with shock, pain and ugh!,it may just be too hard for you at that time. Do something, work, and then come back.
Oh, another one. Another quality that I would hope people have before entering community, both for their sake and for the community's sake; that they're willing to work and they are self disciplined, that they are willing to say, "Hey, give me those work gloves, how can I help you to carry this load of fire wood? Here, give me those rubber gloves, let me do these dishes, here let me cook this meal. You need some childcare? Here, let me have some fun reading this story to the kids. Oh, I know how to redesign a whole and complete solar system, give me those pliers, I'll work on your solar system"; people who have an energy for working and contributing.
Here's another quality that I would hope people in community would have, a sense of responsibility. Or to put it in blatant terms, they're a grown-up. That is to say, they pay their bills, when they say they will do something, they do it, abide by the agreements the community has, they do abide by them, they don't play their music really loud after the quiet-hour time, which may be 10 o'clock or something, they don't park there where we should not park, they curb their kids, cats, dogs, or their behavior. They learn to live within the community's agreed upon framework of agreements. If there are dues and fees, they pay them. If there are work requirements, they show up cheerful to do the work, as compared to people who might be resisting paying, working, following agreements, who might have a little bit of an entitlement energy, you know, I shouldn't have to have to do that, that shouldn't apply to me. That kind of energy does not work well for the person or community. So I am looking for responsibility, ability to work, self-confidence, humility, what are your agreements, I will follow them. And, willingness to contribute.
I also have some thoughts about characteristics that are good for founders of community, people who wanted to get the ball rolling. I would want them to have all the same characteristics that I hope for in a person that joins a community which is: a willingness to contribute, humility -- What can I learn here, confidence -- Yep, I can help, responsibility and willingness to work. In addition, I would want founders of community to be people who know that they need to have a variety of kinds of skills and practices to get the place going. So, not one person necessarily has all of these qualities, but I would like them to respect and want these qualites and skills in the group. So, left-brain skills, budgets, strategic planning, cash flow projection, contracts, agreements, How do we work with lawyers, How do we work with realtors, How do we work with zoning officials, city planners, or county supervisors? Now how do we learn what is needed to pull off something of this magnitude? How do we work with money and finance? How do we work with real estate lawyers? Escrow title companies? And, yada yada, yada.
Now, right-brain, heart things. How do we have trust and connection? What do we do to build trust and connection? How are we at our communications skills? Have we learned non-violent communication process, for example? Are we practicing fair, shared participatory decision making such as consensus, or its many modifications? Or sociocracy? The ways that we all have input into the decision. Are we really clear about what a well running organization functions? Do we have clear agreements about who is a visitor to the group, when are they a member of the group with decision making rights and privileges, what are our criteria and qualifications for becoming a member of our forming community group? Have we thought about that, should we? Yes, we should. So they know how an organization functions well. Well, I think this is more left-brain, come to think of it, but in terms of vision, together, share from the heart to be more open, transparent and self revealing -- this is who I am. This takes all kinds of training, I'd say, and willingness. And, it's not always present in people who want to live in community, but it's very very helpful. Left-brain and right-brain; head and heart skills are needed.
A common mission and purpose if that's important, a quality that is a requirement for the group. Shared mission and purpose so we know why we're doing this community, who we are, what we are going to do, why we're doing it. We're all on the same page going down the same road to the same destination. If our mission and purpose statement is vague, flowery, overly new age or spiritually pretentious, it's not as likely going to succeed because we need something more concrete and realistic, and clear so that we know, yep, that's where we're going. So it helps to have confidence as a founder. It helps to be a visionary. Here's what I mean by visionary, I can see a thing that's not there, but I can see it. I know it's there, it's just not physically present yet; it's our future community. And I am willing and able to share this picture of community with others to the point where they are able to see it, too, and together we co-create it. Sort of like, making an astral soup with our many astral vegetables that aren't in existence yet but we can taste them and so, we're making reality happen by how we're co-creationing and visioning. So that's important for a founder.
Another thing that's important is patience and persistence. I've hardly ever known of a group that didn't have set backs, frightening, scary things happen, sort of cliff-hanging tipping points, you might say, to mix metaphors. And they had to go, *huge inhale* This is hard, okay, let's keep going -- patience and persistence. When you're joining a community, that's been done, so you don't have to have so much patience-- well, you have to have patience to be in community, that's for sure, well, yeah, you have to have persistence, too, to hang in there when it get rough, but to start one would take more of it, I would say.
It also takes money. And that can be, together we can raise money; together we have money. One of our members serves as the financier and purchases the property. And then we have individual promissory notes to payback that person with the money. So it takes willingness to work with money and to be comfortable to use money as a tool and resource to make this thing happen.
There have been people that have said to me, "I'm going to start a community and it's going to be like this, this and this, and I'd like to come to your workshop but I can't afford your workshop". And I'd say okay, the workshop's $200, if that's what the host venue is charging, which is common for a weekend workshop. And you're saying that's out of your range, and they'll say, yeah. And I'll say, "Well, you know it takes from a couple hundred thousand dollars, to a couple of million depending on where you purchase property, where the land values of that city or town, or countryside are, in your part of the country. And then there's the development cost, permitting cost, legal costs, well, why don't you get my book?" "Well, I can't afford it". "Well, you can get it from the library".
I mean, people need to get realistic that it takes money, unless, you're going to rent a big house somewhere and share it. Community in a few weeks does not cost a lot, just first and last month's rent and a security deposit, together we can raise that. So, it need not be expensive, but if you want to buy land, it is a land-based community in the city or in the country, it takes money. It takes willingness to know what it is to deal with it.
Okay, other characteristics of founders: good process and communication skills. Willingness to make process and communication, and sharing, and connecting, and dealing with conflict, and having a conflict resolution policy in place early on, before you have conflict, like children in the schools do fire drill when there is no fire, so that if there ever was one, they'd know where to go. It takes willingness to pay attention and care about that. So in a forming community group, some people might know a lot and be skilled at communication and process. And other people might think, what the heck is that? But, they know a whole lot about legal and financial, but these folks here that know a lot about communication and process skills, they may not know about that. So that's where we're a group, we share the resources of our characteristics. We're keeping each other encouraged. We keep each other buoyed up and aimed toward that vision and together, we go create that community.
So, in terms of what I would suggest to people who want to join in community, where do they start? where do they join? What do they look for? The first thing that I would do is ask the person to ask themselves, do I want income sharing or independent income? What part of the country am I in, do I want to live in? In terms of accessibility to airports, or higher education, or my family, or distance from my family, if that's the case. What kind of topography do I like? A lot of mountainous areas, a plains is what I am used to, I like big skies. I like humid weather, mmmm, love it. Can't stand the humid weather, I want the desert. No hot desert please,lots trees and not the Arctic, please, oh, I love the winter and snow, I love winter sports -- whatever it is, you need to get yourself a geographical location. And sort of try to triangulate here, what communities exist there already, which have the kind of economic system that I want, income-sharing, independent-income (of which most communities are independent-income), in the part of the country with the kind of weather and topography that I want.
And, what are my interests? What are my values? What's my lifestyle? What kind of people, doing what kind of activities do I want to live with? What's my mission for the community I'm in? My mission and purpose, and what's their mission and purpose, do they match?
And, cause this is multifaceted, can I afford it? What's their joining fee? And their site list fee? And membership fee? How's that, is that on their website? Let's hope it is. Can I afford to live there? This is subtle, it's way out in the country, let's say and I want to live a country life, and we the community have annual dues and fees for our on-going development for paying our mortgage, for paying our property taxes and our insurance, liability insurance, our repairs and maintenance. Plus, we're building a community, we have capital improvements. How can I afford to pay my annual dues and fees in this community and my daily living expenses and my food, shelter and anything else I need, health insurance, whatever?
How am I going to make a living there? Can I bring my living with me and telecommute? Do I have a mail order business, and can do it from there? Do they have UPS service, so that I can get these things out in the... you know. In terms of telecommuting, do they even have internet there? If I have a job that's a specific kind of job, but have to do it somewhere that I can apply that trade, do they have it? I am an emergency room physician, do they have hospitals near there? I'm a baker, an expert baker, do they have bakeries right near there? Or whatever.
So, there is a bunch of variables there, my variables: geographical area, mission and purpose of the community, is it what I want? Which really goes along with their values and lifestyle. Living in the country, can I afford it? Is it the kind of financial arrangement internally that I want? So we need to get a fit here, rather than something that does not fit at all. How to do that? Get clear on that first, go online: directory.ic.org. It's a wonderful website run by the Fellowship For Intentional Community, the FIC. And at this website you go to the directory and you can look up communities around the world, and in North America, by geographic location and by their name. You might have heard of a community, you know its name, you look it up. Or you are just looking at all of the communities in a particular region or state, or province.
And so, you read their websites, and then you read through their websites. Is their website "airy fairy"? And flaky? And filled with language that's pretentious or flowery, or extremely spiritually idealistic, or extremely politically idealistic? And you're thinking, Ah, that sounds great; what I'd like to know is are they actually doing this, or they talking about what they hope to do? How many people are there? Do they have any land? How long have they been there? If they have seven or eight people, or they've been there awhile and they have land, then they probably actually exist as a community. If it's one or two people and they don't have their land yet, Ah, they are in the forming stages. If there's one or two people and they've got land, but there's only two, how long have they been there? A month, Ah, okay, they are in the forming stages. ten years? How come they haven't been getting members? See, you need to read through the website. Is the website well designed? The links broken? The in the photos look good? The people look happy?
It might be worth it to call them, e-mail them, after you call and e-mail them, do they answer you? Do they respond to you or do you never hear back? How well organized are they? Do they have a clear-cut membership policy? It's very beneficial if they do, it means that they are thinking and very well-organized. If they have a rigorous membership policy where they screen you, this is beneficial for you because that means, if you are there as a member, if you join them, they're going to screen other people, and so Jack the Ripper is probably not going to join, they've screened out Jack. Okay, so online research.
Visiting communities, visiting as many as you conveniently can in a row, on an itinerary, on a schedule or weekend trips, however you can do it, because every time you visit a community you get more information about, these are the things that I really like, these are things I don't think I'd want -- you have to become informed. Read books about communities. Watch videos about communities. The FIC has two excellent videos by Jeff Kozeny, about communities. Some wonderful education right on your computer screen.
Visit communities. Some communities have programs, like Twin Oaks, has a three week visitor program where you can learn a lot. Many communities have "Visitor Experience Week", something like that, "Community Experience Week", where you can go and immerse, sort of like a total immersion learning. Visit communities you don't necessarily want to join, they're not your kind of community, they don't have the right what you want; might be the wrong part of the country, or a different kind of financial arrangement, but you're still learning.
So then, when you do go to visit the communities that you're interested in, you need to be a good guest. So, bring your work gloves, I recommend leather work gloves. Bring a really good attitude. Do not bring illegal substances or your dog, your ferret, your cat, your rat, or your pet tarantula, or your ant farm - don't bring those. Be prepared to, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Follow their agreements. If they say, don't burn candles after 3 pm, for some reason, don't do it. Follow their rules.
When you want to ask questions about the community, ask, "Is this a good time to ask you a question about the community?" Here, I'll model the visitor behavior, "Is this a good time to ask you a question about the community?" "Oh, that's so thoughtful, so respectful". Or the person might say, "Oh, not right now, as you can see, I'm feeding my child and getting ready to go to work, but the person may say, "After dinner tonight, I'll meet you in the lounge", or the person might say, "Well, it's not a good time for me, but we are going to have a visitor orientation later on today, and Susie here will help you". In other words, be respectful of the fact you are in people's homes, and they might be busy. Getting in somebody's face, kind of a lot and saying, "Why don't you have more vegetarian food?" is not conducive to them thinking well of you, so it's a good idea to be really really respectful of people's time. Also, to consider the whole entire property their home. The parking lot, the trails, where you walk, everywhere is their home. Follow their rules and agreements, treat it respectfully. You probably know this already of course, but some people have to be reminded.
Okay, visiting communities, what to ask: you have to find out stuff. Either they'll have an orientation, or they'll hand you out a handout packet, or they'll have a tour and they'll explain it, but then there's things you want to know, maybe they did not cover it: Who owns the land? How do you make decisions? What are the goals of the community? What is the mission and purpose? What are your hopes for the community? What are some of the things you love most about living here? When you know them well enough, and you've established some rapport, and you and they feel good about each other, What are some of the challenges of living here? What are some of the conflicts you have had to deal with, are they resolved? How did you resolve them? What's the turnover like here? Are people leaving and going? The last folks that left, what was their reason for leaving? This is getting a little personal, right? When you know them well enough. How do families fare here if you have children? Talk to parents if you have children, How's it here with kids? Do you like living here? Do your kids like living here? What is their dog policy? Because, you might want to bring your best friend, Rover, and they may have a policy that Rover would be unhappy with, or that you and Rover would be unhappy with. You need to find out things like that. What does it cost to join? of course. Are there annual dues and fees, quarterly, or monthly? What are the work requirements? What kind of requirements are there and so on. You need to ask questions but of course in that patient, friendly, good will way, ask, "Is this a good time to ask?"
So then, you need toassess the communities that you have visited that you like. How do you assess them? Is it a match in values and lifestyle? Is it a match in vibes? Do I and they even like each other? Does it have a mission and purpose that's what mine is? Please, I beg of you, don't join a community where you like the architecture or the landscape or the people but you don't like their mission and purpose, "But when I join, I'll just try to get them to change it, heh heh heh", No! Don't do that, please.This can result in all kinds of horrible conflict. Do not mess with their minds when you're joining a community. Really do support, and understand, and go for, and want to do their mission and purpose, or else please don't join, you can always be their friend and visit, you don't have to give them up, just don't join them if they're doing something in their mission and purpose that's not what you want to do, because then you'll be at crossed purposes when it comes to shared decisions aboutresources of money, time and labour. You don't want to be at cross purposes with your new community.
Then let's say you found your community, and you want to join them, how do you do that? Well, I would suggest that you follow the rules impeccably as to what they want from new members. If they want you to do this many hours of labor, do it uncomplainingly and cheerfully. If they say we need you to have mediations with members if you and they don't get along, go do it. If there's somebody that you think doesn't like you too much, and you don't like them too much, make an effort to go meet with them, at a convenient time, and talk about it with them. It's incumbent upon you to straighten it out, if you need to. I suggest the same kind of qualities that I suggest for what makes a good community member: please have an attitude of How can I help? How can I contribute? Work gloves, remember, work gloves. Please don't be so certain that these fools need to be straightened out and that you have a 12-point program for how you can straighten them out in the first few months of your being there. Keep that one to yourself for awhile till you get to know them better, a little humility, I suggest humility. And willingness to pitch in.
Assertiveness, which is not the opposite of humility. We had some folks come to Earthaven one time, when we didn't have all the minutes over our past meetings all in one place, and the woman who was brand new, a provisional member, she wasn't a full member yet, said, "Let me go find all the minutes and put them all together in notebooks by year, and make an index by topic and by date". And she did. The community vastly benefited within; it took hera couple months to do it, as soon as she did it, the community was better off having an organized system of what they had already decided. And that was a brand new person. Various members have won our hearts by what they've done. One new member who's name is golden here at Earthaven, came in here and immediately began doing the most onerous tasks and learning all kinds of research and then working with things having to do with water quality and sanitation. We joked when she joined that she had already fulfilled her lifetime labor requirements for the community before she ever joined because she had already done so much good things for us. The quiet member who follows the rules, and pitches in and helps, is like gold. It doesn't have to be a ra-dada-dada, fabulous, Here, I'll do this, I'll do this, I'll do this member who offers all kinds of new and amazing things to somebody who's quiet, patient, and is also really valuable.
I like to jokingly suggest that the person entering community like a wolf who enters a wolf pack, meaning, that they don't rush in howling and snarling and growling and telling those other wolves what they ought to do different. The way a wolf enters the wolf pack, as I understand it, is that they let the other wolves sniff him and hear him in the neighborhood of the wolves for awhile before they crawl in with their ears saying in wolf body language, Hello, I'd just like to play. And, they flip over onto their backs and expose their vulnerable neck and belly to the other wolves who come around and ritually growl and sniff and snarl over that wolf and basically they're saying in wolf language, the one that's entering into the wolf patch there with their neck out is saying, "Hello, I know I have no status here and you all are the alpha and beta, and delta. I'm at the bottom of the pecking order of the pack. And I don't know anything yet and I'm new," and the other wolves are reinforcing this by snarling and growling, in wolf body language they're saying, "You don't know anything, you're brand new, you gotta follow the rules, don't rock the boat, just kinda don'tmess around with us, we're the boss." And after they are done with this ritualistic growling, and grovelling, they get up and play and then after awhile, that new wolf is integrated into the wolf pack. Well this is an exaggeration, and we're not wolves, however, it does help to enter with an air of, I'd be so happy to learn how you do things before I suggest doing them differently. I'd be so happy to help in every way you need before I help organize a whole complete new project that takes labour away from the projects you already have, let me first learn your culture before I try to change it; that's really what I'm asking from new people in the community.
Looking at income-sharing communities in the United States, which is what I am familiar with, and independent-income communities, I went first to find them. Independent-income communities, which are the most numerous by far, 90% maybe, 95, I don't know. You join the community, you pay your joining fee, usually there is one. You buy in pretty much, and you have maybe, quarterly, or monthly, or annual dues and fees. And your personal money that you earn, and the way you earn is yours, and you can send it, spend it, save it, invest it, you can use it however you want; it's not the community's business and your assests are your own. Income-sharing communities, which is what the word, "commune" means literally, and that's an economic term. Income-sharing communities, if we're rural, might have one or more community businesses, we all work for those community businesses, plus we work doing services for the community: cooking, cleaning, childcare, the garden, the laundry, fixing the cars, whatever it is -- and there's no joining fee. And when we join, we get jobs that we can do, and we get a room to live in, a room, and we get food; live and board. At Twin Oaks, for example, in Virginia, they're a large, famous, old, big community, each member gets a stipened. At Sandhill Farm, large in terms of size but not large in terms of members, 35 year old community, I think, we don't get a stipened but we write cheques for what we need and then we as a group know what we are doing and so we get our needs met.
Some income-sharing communities particularly Christian ones and Christian Anabaptist ones, you put your assests into the community when you join, there's not a joining fee but what you've got in the bank and your investments and anything else, the community gets it. I don't know very many communities like that, and so I don't know much but to the income-sharing communities that I know of: Sandhill Farm, East Wind, Acorn, Twin Oaks, they're not asset sharing, they're just income sharing. Alpha Farm in Oregon is asset-sharing and income-sharing and when you leave, if you leave, you get your assets back. Anabaptist Christians, Anabaptists communities and Protestant Christian communities who are asset-sharing, usually you don't get your assets back if you leave, but I'm not real familiar with them, so I'm just going to talk about income-sharing where it's just income-sharing, not asset-sharing or independent-income.
Now, if it is a rural income-sharing community, probably we have a couple community businesses: Acorn in Virginia, they have a seed-saving business. At Twin Oaks, they have a hammock-making, tofu-making and a book indexing business. At Sandhill, they have food and value-added products, plus one of the members travels and does consultations and workshops, and his income goes into the common pot, that's a rural community. In an urban income-sharing community, I go out and do my job as an accountant, you go out and do your job as the person who parks cars for the restaurant as a valet parker, and this person goes out and does his jobs as a computer analyst, and this person goes out and does their job as a school teacher, and we all put our salaries, widely differing amounts of money, into the common pot, and then in this urban community or in this rural income-sharing community, we all get room and board, and maybe a stipend, or maybe we just get what we need out of the group's joint money.
So advantages and disadvantages, income-sharing and independent-income. The people who live in income-sharing communities, or who have lived in them, and told me the advantages; they say it's wonderful to have how much money you make or what your status in the world is based on how much money you make or do, wiped out, off the table, not important. Instead, everyone's time, energy and labour is valued the same, and this feels wonderful. It also makes you on intimate relationships with everyone, because, and they don't use this phrase, this is my phrase, you're financially in bed together, that is to say, what I am doing with my financial habits affects you, and you and you; and we might even have to talk about it in meetings, my financial habits, my issues with debt or spending or saving or how good of a couch do I want to get; I want to get a new couch for our living room couch, no, I want to get a used one from the used furniture store or, I want to get one out of the dumpster; different people will have different values, so we need to discuss it.
Some of the people who have lived in income-sharing communities who tell me why they like it is that it creates a level of intimacy, and trust, and connection deeper than in an independent-income community, because we're talking about such personal issues such as our group money. If someone works harder, or longer, or with more discipline, or with more skill than with someone else at a joint project we're all doing here, we're all doing together, and someone works in a way where they come late and leave early and they don't do such a good job, and they have an attitude while they're working, this is fodder for group conversation and potential conflict, which can sometimes be characterized as the workaholics versus the slackers, which is of course exaggeration, but this is how it can be.
There can be conflicts, there can be opportunity for conflict more in shared-income than in independent-income community, but also more opportunity for connection, and trust and deep sharing, so it will appeal to people for whom that potential is rich and juicy and worthy of attention, people who would really enjoy that and think this is going to be very growth-worthy, it's going to change me, and heal me, and develop me as a human being. Or, it is very good for people who have strong economic and political ideology or set of beliefs and values that says: "Work should be valued the same, valuing work at different amounts of money depending on what this society says or how much education you had to invest to learn to be that doctor, or lawyer, or whatever, that doesn't matter here, this is the kind of culture and community I want to create here, and the world I want to live in. You could be an ardent, heartful, economic activist, and living in this community is your statement to the world and your model to the world of what you're doing that can change the world. I know people at Twin Oaks who are basically economic activists and they're modeling the lifestyle that is important to them, they want the world to see and they want the world to come to see it, so that's another advantage.
Another advantage of income-sharing communities is you can learn fabulous new skills that you didn't know before and you don't have to worry at all about, Can you pay the bills? You don't have to worry at all about, Can I even afford this medical insurance? You don't have to worry about stuff, you're just living in community. It's also a real advantage to young people or people without assets who want to live in community. When I meet people who come to Earthaven who say, "I really want to live in community, but why are you all about money? Why does it cost money to join here?" And I say, "Ah, let me introduce you to Twin Oaks or any of the other income sharing communities." I say, "Well, we cost money because it cost our founders money to buy the land and develop it". Which is a concept that for some people, they don't think of at first, until you point it out. So young folks and people who live outside the mainstream economy, or a social justice activist all their life, and now they are middle aged, and even in their older years, income-sharing communities would be ideal, no joining fee. I know one independent-income community that has no joining fee and that's Dancing Rabbit in Missouri, just to be clear.
So advantages of income-sharing; disadvantages of income-sharing, in my opinion: if you wanted to build equity in a community, so that if you left, all those years of working would provide you with some money you could take out, so that when you are 50, or 70, or however old you are when left the community, you'd have something to start your new life with, you'd be able to. Like I say in workshops, when you join an income-sharing community, you join with the shirt on your back. And when you leave, you leave with the shirt on your back, you didn't build some equity there. You might've had a fabulous time, and now you can repair a truck, you're a dairy farmer expert, and a fabulous cook and baker; you've learned all these skills in community, you had a wonderful time, but you don't actually have cash.
Another disadvantage is, if you are a highly disciplined, focused, responsible, hard-working person, for example, that's your lot in life (in this incarnation), and you think, "Let'smake this thing efficient, and effective and functional, we've got this community business,I know how we can market it; we can get production up, and we can keep the inventory in balance with the demand, so that we're not, you know, don't have too much money stocked in inventory. You're thinking of this stuff, and you go there trying to help, and people might be saying to you,
Person 2: "Enough! Stop already! We don't care about that stuff, we didn't come here to work for The Man."
Person 1: "I'm not about The Man, I just want business to thrive, because if the business thrives, then we can build a sauna and a hot tub and the things that you really like to have."
Person 2: "We don't care about this money crap, don't talk to us about it."
Person 1: "I just want us to be effective and productive and functional and by the way, would you please come to work on time."
Person 2: "I didn't come to community to have a damn alarm clock and work for The Man, don't tell me what to do."
Conflict.
Another potential conflict is, we're doing okay, I'm the manager, and I'm about productivity, proficiency, and making the business flow better, and having this, we'll havea good time selling our product, whatever it is, and I feel a certain amount of: Good! We're doing well! And people say to me,
Person 2: "Don't think that you get any special privilege cause you're the manager! Don't think you know anything just cause you get to decide stuff about the business! You're not better than other people!"
Person 1: "I didn't say I was better, I just feel really good about what we're doing."
Person 2: "Don't think..."
So that what the Australians would call the Tall Poppy Syndrome, field of poppies, poppie that goes higher, you cut it off! Somebody shines, they thrive, they are doing really well, knock 'em down! It's an attitude you can find, sometimes, in the income-sharing communities; so my friends that have lived in them have told me. So that's not necessarily expected or common but it could happen, so I've been told.
Okay, income-sharing communities, benefits and then downsides, I mean independent-income, I am trying to talk about independent-income. Benefits: your money is your own, that level of potential intimacy and conflict isn't there. You just pay your joining fee, you pay your dues and fees, and if you want to go to Antartica or Timbuktu on your vacation, you can. If you want to get braces you can. If you want to send your child off to college, and you can afford it, you can, it's not a community issue. If you want to have a baby, and you're going to do the prenatal, postnatal birth costs, and the education of that child, you don't have to go to the child board to ask them, "Can I have a baby? I'm thinking November", just have your baby. So you have a more personal freedom. My friends in income-sharing communities would say, "Well, you lose the opportunity for lots of intimate sharing", and you might say, "One of the advantages is don't have to deal with all that intimate sharing, I've got things to do already. Enough with too many meetings." So, that's an advantage, if that's how you look at it.
Another advantage is you can work as hard or as lightly as you want in your own life, and it's nobody's business. Nobody's giving you some feedback about your work style, if it's in your own life and in your own job, only when you are at a work party in the community might somebody havesomething to say about it. Or, if you're doing a job for the community might somebody have to say something about it, otherwise, you've got more space, more freedom, more personal freedom.
And if you want to raise money for a particular project for your own life, you can do so much more easily. Also, if you want to be in community for awhile but you are not going to be certain that you'll be there forever because things can change in your life, something in your family of origin, something in your grown children, somebody else may need you to go somewhere else and live there for awhile or for good; you might want to leave. So you want to take what you put in it out again in the form of equity, so that when you start up again, you're 40 or 70, you've got some money to do it, so that's an advantage also.
Disadvantage:you have got to have some assets to join. Or if it's a community like Earthaven, where you can pay it off over time, you have to be able to continually have an income source, so that you keep paying off your joining fee. And at Earthaven for example, your Site Lease Fee or whatever community that's an independent-income community, you have to be able to continuously pay until you're done. And then, of course, you have your daily life expenses. You don't have the community taking care of you; you've got to pay for your own health insurance. If you get sick, what you've got is your own health insurance, your own heath care providers that you might go to. Plus the goodwill of your neighbors who might drive you there and give you chicken soup, and care for you in your home, but, it's based on your community social connections, you can't compel anyone to do it; there's not a community project to do it necessarily. There might be, but it's not an income-sharing community that will take care of you from cradle to grave; independent-income community, you're on your own.
So people often ask me, "What about medical resources for people in community? What about when you get sick?" Because they're not distinguishing between the two kinds, and they've kind of got it in their mind, like it's some big thing, like it's income-sharing. Well, if it's independent-income community, you just do what you do now, if you get sick, you go to your health practitioner and you get the herbs or the remedies you're going to use, and in community, you do have the benefit of people coming over to help you but you can't compel, only if they like you and you are friends; your social capital means a lot in independent income community.
I can't think of anymore at hand; advantages and disadvantage of both. Except I would say that what the average person who thinks about community in the United States or Canada,who doesn't know much about it, probably thinks of income-sharing, because that is what they have seen in the media, but they are the least common kind.
When I was a beginning to look at what seemed to be what made some communities succeed and other communities fail, which was in the 1990's, I was noticing that about ninety per cent of the communities that were trying to get started in the 90's failed. Ninety per cent! And only about ten per cent succeeded, and I wanted to know why. I was very curious, and also, I was upset, because sometime the community that would fail, sometimes they would fail on a mutual good-will parting like, "Ah, we can't afford this, let's not do this" or, "Well, every time we go try to buy land, the developer comes in and gets the land so we can't get the land" or, "Geez, we're trying to raise our small children, and we can't meet often enough to pull this off, we've got too many family obligations".
But much more often, people failed because of horrible conflict; sometimes even with lawsuits. So there would be these people in court duking it out with their hired gladiator lawyers, and they had started out with ideals of friendship, connection, harmony, shared resources, making the world a better place, making their lives a better life, and there they are in court, and this was breaking my heart. So I wanted to know, Okay, the communities that are succeeding, what are they doing and not doing? And those that are failing, what are they doing and not doing? Were they different but opposite things? And they were. It was so interesting. It was like being a permaculture designer, and observing the landscape to see if there are any patterns here. And there were totally very obvious patterns, and I thought, "Oh my God, somebody ought to write this down".
So, what were the things the communities that succeeded doing; they weren't all doing these things, but most of them things were doing most of them, and some of them were doing all of them. So here they are: common mission and purpose, were going in this direction here, who we are, what we're doing, why we're doing it, that's our future, we're on the same page, we're going down the same road. Extremely important, perhaps the most important thing.
A fair participatory decision making method, not some sloppy, haphazard thing like, "I think maybe we should do that consensus thing, how do you do it, yeah, you all have to agree". No no no no, if it's going to be consensus, get formal training in consensus! How does it work? Specifically, how do you do this thing. Don't try it on your own at home, learn how to do it. But whatever the method, make it fair and participatory, so everyone in the group, the group members that you've agreed to -- group members who are making decisions, not the visitor who just arrived, but the people in the group -- are having a decision-making method where we all have input and influence the outcome, we make proposals, agree on the proposals as we may change and modify them, and then we implement our proposals. Fair, participatory decision making method.
P.S. If it's consensus, get training in it first. P.P.S. Have new group members get trained in consensus, if that's what you're using, before they have blocking privileges. Have them learn how to use this wonderful, big, significant, beautiful thing known as consensus before, Joe, new person, can block everything the rest of you want -- get that fellow trained first. Make it a requirement of your membership, I would suggest. This means that you learn how to do consensus, if you are using consensus, get somebody in the group trained to train the new people. Offer trainings two times a year, or however often you need to do because of how many new people are coming in. Seems to be common sense to make sure you're on the same page before entering, What is our decision making method and how do we use it? I could say more about consensus, I hope that you'll ask me to, because I have lots to say about it, information that might be helpful.
Okay, moving on, we make process and communication skills and focus something important to our group early on, we don't put it off till later, "Oh yeah, we'll think about that touchy-feely stuff later", no, we get good at it now. We have a conflict resolution method in place for when we might ever have conflict. Will we ever have conflict? Yes, we will, being humans and probably not yet enlightened; who knows, a group of Bodhisattvas could get together to create community in which case this wouldn't apply. But unless you are in a Bodhisattva community, please get a conflict resolution process in place early on.
And what do I mean by process? How we talk to each about how we're feeling and working out issues where at least one of us might disagree or have an emotional charge on how we're disagreeing? We could not agree on something, "Oh I think we should paint it red", "No I think we should paint it blue" but we are kinda easy about it, no charge, but as soon as one of us has a charge about it, on what we're are going to paint that barn door (or whatever), that's a little bit of conflict. We need to have ways to deal with this; good communications skills, please make it important early in the group's life, okay.
I have to flag Frog Song Co-housing in Sonoma County, they made process in communication important right from the get go. They had money in their budget to hire consultants to come in and talk with them and teach them about various things, and they got really skilled as a group early on, which pays off for them now, so I recommend this.
We honor both head skills and heart skills. As I say often, we know how to do budgets, strategic plans, cash flow projections. We know how to work with lawyers, accountants, CPA's, realtors, contracts, agreements, we know how to do that world, because we're starting an organization. We also have the right brain skills; the heart skills. We can share what we are feeling, be open and honest and transparent, "Hello, this is who I am, take a look, I'll be real with you." We can vision together and co-create what it is we are going to do together. We can play together, we can have a good time together. You can build comraderie, and trust and connection and support by what we do.
Another one here: we do things specifically to build trust and connection, we don't automatically assume that it is going to happen. We do things that create a sense of knowing each other, and getting to know each other better. What could this be? Well, playing together: sports outside, singing, playing music, dancing (dance is a universal piece, it's a good one), story telling evenings, which doesn't have to be in the evening, we go around and tell significant events from our lives that moved us or scared us, or touched us or grew us, or spiritually inspired us, we tell each other deep, important, personal things, or we put several people in the centre of the circle in little row chairs, and they tell each other hugely significant things and we sit, and witness and connect. Eating together, creating meals together, cleaning up together, work parties.
Steiner, Rudolph Steiner says, "You create connection on a spiritual level if you move the limbs; arms and legs, and vocal cords, so, talking, sharing, singing, dancing, working, eating, cleaning up, things we do that moves our bodies, or voice. Good Old Rudolph Steiner can't be wrong, too wrong. He invented all these things like Camp Hill communities and, Camp Hill Education, Waldorf Schools and biodynamic agriculture. I listen to Rudolph, when he says something, I listen.
A method to help each other to stay accountable to the group. Don't assume that when we're joining this community that everyone will join and leave their emotional baggage, like a bunch of suitcases, at the door and then they come in, all pristine and clean, like a whole new person who never will bring their issues in... Heck, no, they'll bring them right in. And no only that, they'll be magnified because we're all in this little crucible together, and some people may not do what they say they are going do, which affects me because I'm downstream from them and our committee, and they needed to call the county before I could do this thing, and they didn't call and get that information, so now I can't do what I need to do. So now we all go back to our next committee meeting, 'I haven't done what I'm going to do because you didn't do what were going to do'.
So how do we help ourselves stay accountable to our agreements? Not just like things in the community, but things like work requirements, and financial requirements, and following our agreements. We don't have dogs here in this community but you brought Rover and Fido, and their mom, come on, you brought 3 dogs here, we've got to deal with this. So, how do you help people to remain accountable to their agreements? I talk about this in my workshops and in my book, "Creating a Life Together" and, 'whatever method the group has, I want you to address it', says I to forming groups.
What do we do with somebody who consistently and persistently continues to violate agreements or actually does something kind of horrific. We have a graduated series of consequences for that kind of behaviour. Consequences is a word that can make a peron's blood run cold because in mainstream culture what that means is jails and fines and punishment. And if it was in some ancient empire in the ancient world it would mean off with your head, or off with your right hand or something terrible. No, no, that's not what I mean, I mean: gentle, no shame, no blame, peer pressure, to gradually induce a person to come back to compliance with our agreements and ultimately, if they don't, adios. Just having a graduated series of consequence in the community's agreement field is enough to help people be just a little bit more responsible, because they know it exists.
This is not true in communities such as co-housing communities, in which we all have a deed to our housing unit, or a deed to our lot, which is recorded with a county and a state, in which property regulation supercede any community agreements, so it can't really be kicked out. But in communities that don't have, that you own your own whatever it is by a deed, you can be kicked out, and that's something to keep in mind when we're trying to keep our agreements with each others.
Membership: what I want and I request most ardently on my knees to every community that is forming, they have very clear, rigorous, well-organized membership policy, so that if you're a group of people meeting in the living room in order to start a community, what is your agreements and requirements for when a visitor comes and sits in on your meetings, what are their criteria for becoming a full group member? Do they have to have attended so many meetings? How many? Do they have to have put up some unrefundable amount of money into the community pot, so that you can continue to purchase the things you need as a forming community group; and it's not refundable so that they are not frivolously joining, they know that it's unrefundable. What, is it $100? $250? $500? Some amount that says, Yeah, I'm serious.
Do you have a common mission and purpose? And they need to understand and support it. And, how can you tell, to get to know them, that they really do understand what is our mission and purpose; this is who we are, what we're doing and where we are going, is that what you are? Are you going there too? Different groups have different requirements or criteria, if you will, for that. Do you need to take, this is what your Aunt Diana would suggest you do, do you need to take our consensus training before you have full decision making rights, and I would say, "Yes, yes, please". So then this person is a member of our forming community group, "Bless you, thank you for joining our community group, this is great, now we have one more person (or two more people).
If the community is already up and running, and they're existing on their property, and they're living there, it's a little bit more elaborate of a membership process in my view, which is that, they need to live their for awhile, or at least visit a lot, take part in work parties, sit in on meetings, and committees, perhaps even take part in committees, do tasks for committees -- learn the culture, learn the culture, learn the culture. Yes, I would have that incoming person take the consensus training, yes, I would have them agree to the agreements we've already agreed to, "Yep, I will abide by these agreement. I will learn your decision making method before I can do it".
But back to the community forming group, what else? And in this membership policy, somebody wants to join your group, if that person tends to trigger a lot of upset with a lot of folks, or seems to be wanting a different thing than what y'all want, or perhaps raises red flags, or seems to maybe be emotionally in a state that tends to take up a lot of group time, I would respectfully request this new forming group to say, "No, thank you" to that person's entering the group. *Gasp* "Oh no, we can't do that, it would be hurting that person's feelings, oh my god, I don't want to be the one to do it, oh my gosh, that's not kind. You're supposed to say yes to people who join a community otherwise it's not community."
Not true. Please say no now, it's easier than kicking them out later, which is wrenching, agonizing and hurtful for everyone, and in fact may bust up the community, which has happened before. Say no thank you to Reginald or Hildegarde who might be bringing with them some behaviours, or energies, or red flag situations. They're a criminal, have a criminal history, no thank you, they're on the lamb from the law and want to hide out in a community, no thank you. They have tendencies like Jack the Ripper or Attila the Hun, no thank you. They may have a substance abuse problem that would, ouch, would get in the way of your functioning as a community, ah, no thank you.
So, one of the things that I've observed in community is some interesting, what you might call, dynamic tension between two different views of community. This is interesting to me because it affects harmony and tension, trust and conflict. So one of them I see as a relational dynamic, and the other I see as a developmental dynamic. So let's see if I can characterize this in a way that makes sense:
Let's say there's folks in community whose way of being in community is from the heart out, and from the How do we relate to each other? That's the thing; do I like you, do you like me? How are you doing? Are you doing okay emotionally? Do you have any personal upset? How can I support you? How can I nurture you? How can I give you helpful feedback? It's about how we get along together. It's about the ever-changing flux or dance of interpersonal relations between all of us. Are we looking out for each other?
And I'm painting this in kind of in a polarity way, one-sided, but it's not really that way and I am going to go (swoosh) to the other side. Are we accomplishing our goals? What did we come here to do? I have an idea for how we can do this actually, a group of us wants to do this, here. And here's our proposal through the governance office, and here's our budget and this is what we would like to do. Since our community exists to do this, and this and this, for this and this reason, and this project here would help us with our goals and develop the community. We need a community building. We need a road and a bridge over there. And we need to develop this agricultural parcel. We need to create this program and physical space for our children. Or, we need to create this kitchen addition, we need to repair this whatever. And we're looking at physical infrastructure and project infrastructure that creates jobs, and/or creates demonstration models for others, if that's what we're doing or creates what we need to make our goals more sustainable because we installed these solar panels, micro-hydro unit, and we are focused on that.
Now, are we also interested in the well-being of people? Oh sure. Are we also interested in how do I feel and how do you feel and, are we getting along? Sure, yes. And over here, us relational folks, are we interested in us meeting our goals? Well sure, of course. But let's put us all together in a decision making circle, where we're using, say, pure consensus, and any of us can stop a proposal that's in the centre. And let's say, a whole lot of us want a particular proposal, but some of us a coming mostly from a strategic direction, mostly from the relational direction, and that proposal violates what we think we are about, so we want to stop it, or modify it or change it or, reduce it, or say, "Not at this time", or, "Gee I am not willing to make that decision now", or "No, no, no, no!" And we can get into a conflict about how do we use our resources of time, labour and money.
Or here's another example of how this can come into play in community: So and so there is very, very upset about this proposal that we're going to implement, we're gonna build that bridge there. And this person here is very upset. And a bunch of us relational people go to this upset person and nurture them, because we don't want them to be upset and we feel responsible for how upset they are, because we're in community, and the way that we see community is about: I am my brother's and sister's keeper.
And the folks over here that are strategic are saying, "Oh for God's sakes, get over it. We already agreed to do this." And others are saying: "Oh no, no, no! We can't be building that bridge because this person is upset." And these people are saying, "Now is when we have the labour, now is when we have the time, now is when we have the community agreement. C'mon, we've got to follow the governance that we have and do it. Please can this person just deal with their issues themselves, we're not responsible for them.
Group 1: Oh, you heartless, cruel bastards!
Group 2: Well, you touchy-feely people aren't thinking!
Group 1: You're not being the right kind of person in community, that's not community!
Group 2: You aren't allowing us to meet our goals to create the kind of community we agreed to, that's not community!
Boom!
Meanwhile, this person who's upset is the trigger point, but the real issue isn't really this person who's upset or that bridge, the issue is our differing point on what community is about. So these folks would say: If you're not willing to deal with the real life things that come up in the real emotional lives of our community, then you don't really get what community is. And these people are saying things like: You think we are responsible for the interior emotional landscape of people who get upset about things then you're doing therapy, not community, and that's not what we signed up for, have that person grow the hell up.
So where do you suppose I am on this dichotomy? Let's see, where would I be? I'm over here, that's where I am. I am always looking at the will of being together in the long run. I ask, "Why do they want to be together?" What are you doing? Why did you agree to do this? What is it that you hope to accomplish and for what purpose? Are you there for your own comfort? Which, for some people, they might be, and for some communities, that might be a big goal, which is fine. Or, are you there to affect change in the world, which is the community I'm in, that's what we're trying to do, so I would really like if I could have some say in this, "Oh I this is really what I think they should do."
The two groups talk openly about their viewpoints about community and help the other group get a sense of perspective. Instead of this being fights under the surface with issues that no one's talking about because it's too subterranean for people to know, bring it up to the light of day and talk about it, and say How can we be very clear, while we are being very compassionate, and then we have both clarity and compassion... Can we meet our goals, move forward towards our goals, nurture and be kind to the people who are upset, but not have the upset people stop us, unless the person brings a proposal through the governance that we already have and that we've already agreed on, then we discuss the bearance of the proposal, and then we pass it or not. So, it's coming through the channel of our governance, our proposals and discussion within the group rather than through the channel of my upset will trump our decisions which I have seen in some communities sometimes.
There's another dichotomy, dynamic tension thing that I can see happening in communities that I think is subconscious or subterranean, and it's like this: "Oh, we view the community (maybe subconsciously) as an entity that we're creating and growing, and nurturing and bringing along through time. We started it, it needs this and this and this, whew, now we've gotten to this stage, now it's like a toddler. And now we are bringing it along, at this stage it is like a small child, sometimes it needs more money, sometimes it needs more time, sometimes it needs more labour. We have to repair the roof, oh, we have to get this kind of insurance, we didn't think about that. Oh, here's a hole in our process we never thought of, let's create an agreement about when someone wants to marry someone who's not a member, can they live here. We come up with a policy to help it work out well for all of us. We keep nurturing, and rearing, and raising the community, and developing it. We have a developmental model subconsciously we see ourselves as the parents and it's our child, and we are raising it.
Compare this to another view point, which is like this: the community is bigger than me, and we are it's children; we are the recipients of the largess. I am having trouble and I need some help, the community should help me, the community owes me. The community is like a mother and we're the children. And I don't make enough money here, I need the community to pay me for my community tasks. Really it should pay me, because I need this, Mom, I need this. I am having difficulty and the community should put in its time, energy and resources to help me with this thing I'm in because basically, the community is my mom and it should take care of me. Now I would say that is real subconscious and if you ask the person they'd be insulted. "I certainly don't see the community as my mother and me as a child", but look at what they want, what they ask for, what they feel entitled to.
So if there are two groups of people in the community, and course this is not so black and white and cut and dry, people have different degrees of this feeling and perhaps, different degrees at different times. But there it is, way too subterranean for anyone to talk about it and they are trying to decide how to allocate resources, time, labour or money. And, they've got some conflict and some people think community ought to ... for us. And other people are thinking, you ought to do that yourself but what we need this money for, is for the community to reach its goals like this. Conflict. Interesting, huh?
I think that in terms of how to create a community's vision document, or what I might call vision and purpose documents, is a process that involves many weeks or months, sometimes even longer, of the group finding out what are their common values, what do these values lead to in terms of a mission and purpose, and what activities and goals will this then lead to. This is kind of a bigger subject than a smaller one. I devote two chapters to this in my book, Creating a Life Together, and the first chapter is about why this is important, and the second chapter is, Here's some methods some groups have used. Since I've written that, I have come to more understanding and additional things to say about it.
So, first of all, where do mission and purpose statements, documents appear? In a brochure that you might hand out to people, or a flyer when you're attracting people to your community and you have a little exhibit space at a fair or a conference or something, on your website, mission and purpose. What would these include? It might include a short statement that says, we are a group of families and households devoted to biodynamic gardening and farming, and we want to revive food self-reliance with really healthy food in this part of our province, I'm thinking of a particular community right now. Or, it might say, we are a group of social justice activists who want to provide a haven for social justice and environmental activists in New York City to come to our country place and recharge their energies and rest and take part in our life, I'm thinking of another community in mind. So there can be very specific reasons why communities exists.
So, if you look at a community's website, and I would hope that they have a website, so you and I and anyone who wants to learn about them, can go learn at our leisure, and it doesn't take up a lot of their time; that they've got their mission and purpose, it might be a short sentence, they might have further paragraphs that describe what they mean. Dancing Rabbit does something pretty terrific on their website, they say their mission and purpose and they mention that they are about sustainability with an asterisk and then down below, they have paragraphs, this is what we mean by sustainability, and they have two or three paragraphs, a precise scientific kind of description of what they mean by sustainability: We don't use up more energy than the body this and that, for we're expending... It's very very clear, I can't remember it, I'm not that good at this, but it's so clear you get what they mean by it.
The website could also have some goals. Of course goals will change, because you might decide that you don't want to do that, or you might meet that goal and have new goals. Or it might have some strategy, I think of mission and purpose as who we are, what we're doing, why we're doing it. And I think of strategy as where we're going to do it, when we're going to do it, how we're going to do it. The strategy can change and the mission and purpose probably gets revisited, maybe every few years, but isn't radically changed very often. I think of vision as like, What kind of world do we want to see that is better and different than this world? and mission and purpose is, What is our group going to do to create that world that we want to see. That's just my way of looking at it.
Okay so, I envision this tree metaphor where the roots are the different values that the people in the group share: honesty, transparency (I am making little roots go under the tree), sustainability (however we define it), being a model demonstration site for others, education, inspiration, whatever our values are. And then here's this trunk of the tree, well, this would be our mission and purpose here in the trunk. And then we have the branches of the tree, well, these are our activities and our goals because out of our mission and purpose comes where we're building our school building, we're starting to garden over there, we're creating this educational program. So, what's the fruits? Off the tree comes the fruits, lands on the ground. I think that's the completion of goals and the satisfaction that you get when you see, Ah, we are living out our mission and purpose. And what do fruits that fall on the ground do? Well, of course, they nourish the ground which nourishes the roots which nourishes the values. So the way I see it, the values gets expressed through our activities, and then they bear the fruit of, We completed it, and that nourishes the values that we have, which is why we are here.
So, I would suggest that groups start from their values. So, what is the best friend of a forming community who wants to do visioning? Big Post-It notes and thick magic markers, or low order magic markers, and places on the wall with big easel papers to post their notes, so that there's this whole set of methods that groups can do to write each individual person's values, they put them on these papers. The logical folks in the group cluster the values and look to see if we have similar values, Do enough of us share the same values? Here's some questions to ask, are there two communities in the room right now, or three? Are there some of us that want completely different things than others of us want? Do some of us value completely different things? Also, this is the time to notice the difference between values and specific activities or specific building styles, or specific diets, or specific whatever.
I was once in this forming community group, and I asked this question, What is the group's shared values or mission and purpose? In the beginning, I didn't know anything about community, and it was a long time ago, and some people said, I see domesā some one said, I see mushrooms (meaning shittake mushrooms). And I thought, well that's a building style and the other a food source but that is not the same thing as values though it is good for the group to get clear on, these are interests, let's write them down here. Yep, we'll do composting, but that's not really a value, that is an activity, we'll just capture all these things and add it to the easel paper that we keep on the wall, but over here we will put our values. It's better to find out now if there's two communities in the room, better to find out now than later, when we've bought the land and put our heart and soul, mission and purpose, blood, sweat and tears into this, and then we find out that we want different things. Okay, who's supposed to leave? Who should leave? You should leave, no I should leave, ugh! Now what do we do? Better to find this out now.
Do you lose your friendships with people who are not going to be in your community just because they want different things? No, not at all! You get to keep them as your friend. They can come over for dinner any time, you might just not want to create the same community.
So you have values clustered on the wall on different easels, papers, and this begins a process, if you want to do it this way, of crafting some phrases, and then sentences, out of what it is that you value. And then I would suggest going back and forth between whole group meetings and small group meetings. The small groups are wordsmiths, really logical people and good process folks, and send them off to craft a statement based on our shared values. And then they come back and they show us with great big letters with lots of space in between it that we can put up on the wall and all look at and we try, What if we change this word to this, and what if we change this word to this, and how about taking that out, and re-arranging, and change these, and then we do some of that, and then this group goes back and tries again, and then we bring it back. So, that's one way of doing it.
I'd like to describe my favourite decision making method; the one that has most impressed me, and one variation of it. So, first I'd like to describe a problem that often occurs in communities. Let's say the group feels devoted to consensus decision-making as it's decision-making method, and the people in the community believe we all have equal voice in our decisions, we can all make a proposal, or perhaps through a committee, make a proposal, discuss the proposal, modify the proposal with our discussion. We all, when it comes to the decision-making time, have the right to support it, to stand aside from it, or to block it.
And let's say that the community is not all on the same page with their mission and purpose. Some people want to do X with the community time, money and energy. Other people want to do Y, or maybe they have a mission and purpose that is so vague, and so what do we mean by that? That people interpret it different ways. Maybe it has the word "sustainability" in it and some people say it means that but these other people say, no it means this. So here we are duking it out in our meetings because we don't agree on something so basic. So there's a proposal to do X and people say, No, it violates our mission and purpose and other people say, No, it fulfills our mission and purpose; so here we have this conflict.
Now let's say that the majority of the people in this community want to do X, but some people are interpreting the mission purpose in a particular way which seems reasonable and right to them; and out of loyalty to the Earth, and out of personal courage they want to stop the community from making a big mistake, so they block it. And then another proposal comes up and most of the people want it, because they're interpreting the mission and purpose that way but this person or persons is interpreting it another way and out of personal courage, this is a hero person, protecting Mother Gaia, say in the case that they are interpreting sustainability in a different way, they block it.
Well after awhile, this person will make a proposal which seems out of line to other people and then they'll block it, so what we get is a Mexican Standoff, all due respect to the country of Mexico, which is that we can't go anywhere, so we have a certain low morale in the group; people stop coming to the meetings, people start feeling kind of wretched about the community, because we can never move forward on anything because someone is always going to stop something, so we're really not moving forward, and we're starting to feel like a bunch of sludge because we can't exactly flow, a horrible situation which is so demoralizing to the community.
So, I went and visited N Street Co-Housing in Davis, California, who has a decision-making method that made me sort fall off of my chair and go: "Ah, I worship you, decision-making method", and here is their method: They use consensus, introduce proposals, discuss proposals. If somebody, they might, you know, discuss it for several meetings until they get the proposal refined and re-crafted to a point where most people can support it. But let's say somebody or two, or three block the proposal, their method is to say: "Ok, you folks who have blocked the proposal" -- and everybody knows this in advance, so they don't just tell them this thing, it's just part of their process -- "needs to meet in small groups with a few proponents of the proposal, not the same proponents in every meeting but different ones for up to six meetings within a three month time period, which could be a meeting every two weeks. They don't have to have that many meetings, they just get that many if they needed it. To create a new proposal that the blocking people can live with,that the people who supported the old proposal can live with, that addresses the same issue that the former proposal addressed.
So, the blocking person has ample time and opportunities both formally in these meetings and informally over breakfast, over lunch, in the garden to convince other people that was a bad idea, but here's an idea that may work better. It's very respectful of the people blocking, because people are persons. Because it gives them an opportunity to convince, to persuade, to marshall their evidence, to share data, to be convincing. It also does not marginalize them, they are invited, required to be part of the solution. If after six meetings, or three months, whichever comes first, they don't come up with a solution, the old proposal comes back to their meeting and they decide on it with a seventy-five per cent super-majority vote, which is very respectful to the people who supported the proposal. All is not lost, they can just wait and get a new proposal that's better than the last one, or they'll get the chance to get the thing they want; unless more than 26% of whoever's at that meeting didn't want it.
Now, N Street Co-housing has been doing this process for twenty years, how many times do you suppose they have had to do this? Twice. How many meetings have they ever gone through in a series, before they came up with a new proposal they then brought to their next meeting that they passed? Twice. So, two times they've done it with two meetings each, that's four small group meetings in twenty years. So when I tell this to people, they go: "Oh, six meetings is too much". Oh, well will it ever get to six meetings, I don't think so.
Now why does this work? Because it exists, even if you never employ it, somebody's who is about to say: "I'll block, I'll block that won't work for me", which is personable... something you're not supposed to do anyway, that person is going to think twice before they are going to commit themselves to all these meetings, or these potentials for meetings. In other words,a person who doesn't want this proposal when most of us do, please take responsibility for co-creating a new one that's better.
So then I heard about Manzanita Co-housing in Arizona, and what they do is, you cannot block unless you very specifically tie your block to the mission and purpose of the community, and why the proposal violates it. But if you do manage to convince, and you have blocked it, then you need to meet the proponents of the proposal for up to three times -- it's similar but shorter -- up to three times, come up with a new proposal, and then go back to a voting fallback of a super-majority like seventy-five per cent.
And the reason I really like these methods is because they are a deterrent to personal blocking, and to frivilous blocking, and too frequent blocking. They're a deterrent to the kind of low morale a group can get if they keep getting stopped. Why I like these two methods is because they are respectful to the person or persons blocking, and they are respectful to the people who are proponents of the original proposal. Respect, we know from Aretha, that's what we all want. And what we really want is community who can have the joy of moving forward towards their goals. So that's why I love that method.
