intentional communities

I grew up in a 'community' and didn't even know it.

I'm reading 'Creating A Life Together' by Diana Leafe Christian. It's a book that thoroughly covers the details and the real-world things to do when you're starting an intentional community. It focuses on mostly sustainable ecosystem communities, although my own focus is what you might call 'sustainable economy' communities. It isn't so much the physical ecosystem, but the financial system that I'm interested in - what kind of money we use, and how we survive the recurring economic collapses as they gradually destroy the quality of life in the mainstream world over a period of decades.

Anyway, the book mentioned Homeowners Associations as one of the possible ways people can govern the community. I suddenly realized that when I lived in WV, my neighborhood was actually a private development with a Homeowners Association. The neighbors all knew each other, there was a relatively small number of houses, outside cars had no reason to drive up our dead-end road, and we sometimes did group activities together.

My mom noticed that things changed over time. In the beginning, we had gravel roads, and in the wintertime we would get trucks full of fly ash taken from local factories (or something, I forget where they got the fly ash) and put it on the roads to give traction on the ice. We would all do this together, riding in the back of the trucks and everyone shoveling fly ash onto the roads.

But we paved the roads, and eventually we no longer had those fly ash 'parties.'

We also used to have a picnic. But it was only once a year. And gradually, fewer people attended the picnics. They were busy with their own lives and didn't really feel that a yearly picnic was that important.

There were no other group activities except for the Homeowners Association meetings, but those weren't a 'fun' activity or a shared work activity, and the children didn't go to them. For a variety of reasons, the community gradually felt less and less like a community, and more like a bunch of random people who don't know each other very well - just like it feels out here in the 'outside world.' It wasn't just the fly ash parties and the picnics - there were lots of reasons.

Diana Leafe Christian talks about how shared activities and shared meals are the most basic things that make some place feel like a community - the more often you do those things, the more strongly you bond with the community. I loved going to the dining hall in college (even though it made me get fat) because I sat with the same group of people and saw familiar faces every day, at my relatively small college.

So during my adolescence I lived in a place where people trusted each other and knew each other, and I felt that it was a healthy place to grow up.

I recognized some of what Christian is writing about. She talks about how when the intentional community finally chooses a particular piece of real estate to live on, a lot of people almost inevitably break out of the group. When I think of the Free State Project in New Hampshire, I remember that in the beginning, they didn't know which state they would choose. When they finally chose New Hampshire, I felt disappointed, although I wasn't actually signed up for the project. I was hoping for someplace that I had visited and loved - I had been to Colorado once in middle school, and I loved the Rocky Mountains. So I was hoping for something out there. But since I wasn't even signed up, it didn't make much difference anyway. And now I've gotten used to it, and I don't mind that it's in New Hampshire. I've decided that you can potentially build a community in lots of places, not just one 'official' place.

I think that the New Hampshire Free State Project is still a good idea - it would be a good place for 'sustainable economies' to make intentional communities. Those communities would not directly connect with the FSP itself, but would simply go there because it would be overall a less hostile environment. Even if the FSP failed to get enough votes to make much change in New Hampshire, it would still be a place where people were more familiar with independent economies and the types of people who want that.

That is something that can be done even BEFORE the FSP becomes official. It can be done by individual initiative.