This blog began with noticing, and writing about, patterns of community. The phrase is derived from Christopher Alexander’s “pattern language.” These patterns were much on my mind then because I believed — and believe it still — that “true community” is fundamentally outside of Babylon.
Here is the listing, so far. If any others pop up, I will add them here. At the moment, I am not thinking of any more, but rather through this list aim to finish one of the blog’s series, so I can concentrate on the other emergent threads — power (hoarded and shared), alternatives to resistance, what the heck happened way back when to saddle us with domination-civ, land care, the emergent wisdom process, and of course, tapping into the underground railroad out of Babylon.
- Start with relationships
- Put main energies into people, not property, institutions or procedures
- DIY with others
- The band as a basic human unit
- Community emerges from specific acts of caring
- By their fruits ye shall know your true kin (awareness – resilience – trustworthiness)
- Embodied action is what counts
- Common outlook yes, ideology and believism no
- Pro-social cooperation (feeding energy to pro-social people and withdrawing it from anti-socials)
- Power-sharing
- Vision (what are we hoping for?)
- ‘Dozen or under’ small “affinity cluster” as the basic component of communities
- Hiving off keeps communities within optimal size
- Healthy group boundaries as important as healthy personal boundaries
- Groovin’ together; having fun
- Nestedness of social structures
- Wisdom process and emergent intelligence to guide communities
- Mutual aid (helping each other off the treadmill and into real livelihoods)
- Creative patterns of gender-relations that please both
- Spiritual practice as community glue
- Community labor?
upcoming
Leaving Babylon 
August 2, 2012 at 6:27 am
This all makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the reality, that I live in a community on a ridge in WV, which, far from needing to “hive to remain within optimum size,” is having trouble finding people for our last two leaseholds. If we had houses already built I guess there’d be takers, but as it is…
August 2, 2012 at 7:17 am
Mary, could it be that in these economic times, many fewer people can afford the cohousing/private-slice-of-land model where you have to buy or build a sizable dwelling? Even in Earthaven — where too you have to buy a (small but not cheap) slice of land — many people cannot afford to, and so Earthaven created the Hut Hamlet where you can build a tiny dwelling and the land the hamlet is built on is held in common. This drew a lot of young people there.
I think the economic aspects of ICs have not been discussed enough… and I am not knowledgeable enough of those intricacies to write about it. At Dancing Rabbit, I saw an ominous trend, where a tiny house with no bathroom was trying to sell for 35,000 and people are now building bigger houses with more amenities…
I know that Jan’s community in B.C. was having the same problem drawing people… I hope he will add some good thoughts when he returns from Europe. Anyone else?
August 7, 2012 at 12:06 am
Yes, Leavergirl; we are having problems drawing people. We are in an expensive (but ideal and beautiful) area, and so need a lot from people — but a lot less than if they’d go on their own. Most people are tied up in illiquidity — they can’t put money into here until they sell a house first.
We’re trying something new, in-line with “start with relationships.” We have two mostly-empty houses, so we’re renting out rooms and starting a hostel. That way, many more people will be exposed to the wonderful land here, and perhaps some of them will stick.
I think times are not yet hard enough for people to give up the perceived advantages of independence. That word — “independent” — sounds good to most ears, but it also implies lack of inter-dependence, which sounds lonely and sad.
(BTW: I’m wondering about your moniker: do you “leave” things often, or do you pull “levers,” or something else? 🙂
August 7, 2012 at 12:16 am
BTW: when are you going to come up for a visit? Or a stay?
I think part of the “not enough people” problem is that too many people are trying to start communities, rather than joining existing ones.
August 7, 2012 at 8:37 am
Thank you, I will definitely consider visiting! I am doing the Dancing Rabbit dance this fall.
My name was inspired by Ishmael. The Leavers and the Takers, remember? I am done with takerism… looking to join up with latter-day Leavers. 🙂
I would much prefer to join an existing one. Why do you suppose that people are insisting on doing it their own way? Is ideology getting in the way?
August 7, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Ishmael! Of course!
I hadn’t thought of that, probably because I’ve just been “left” and so have a recent painful association with that word.
I’d say we’re striving to be “leavers,” although it is difficult to attain absolutely. I do think we’re a net carbon sink, although none of the models account for the things we do.
December 17, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Hello,
leavegirl wrote: “Even in Earthaven — where too you have to buy a (small but not cheap) slice of land — many people cannot afford to, and so Earthaven created the Hut Hamlet where you can build a tiny dwelling and the land the hamlet is built on is held in common. This drew a lot of young people there.”
While I’m interested in your overall point, you’ve got some misinformation about Earthaven. People at Earthaven don’t buy land; they (used to) pay lease fee to lease homesites. This is in transition now, but that would have been what you saw when you were here, rather than land purchases. Also, the Hut Hamlet was not built so people with little funds could live there in tiny dwellings. Rather, it was built first, as a “base camp” for incoming residents, with an agreement to build only tiny dwellings, so they could get on the land first before choosing their homesite in one of the 12 neighborhoods and then building there. What Earthaven _did_ do to accommodate incoming members with few funds was several things, including creating half-sized homesites, several payment plan ways to pay the (former) lease fee, encouraging members to join with others in co-leasing a homesite, and “Associate Membership,” where the person does not pay any major fees, can rent a cabin or room or other accommodation and has almost, but not all, full membership rights. While it’s true that in the Hut Hamlet all land is held in common, that’s true of the entire property too, so what you wrote is a bit misleading.
I live at Earthaven, and research intentional communities too, and write about them and do workshops on starting successful new ones. I’m glad my friend Jan Steinman suggested your blog.
December 18, 2012 at 9:49 am
Diana! Welcome, it is a pleasure to have you with us.
I got careless and said “buy” when I meant purchasing a long term lease. Sorry.
Yes, nothing I said was meant to indicate that the land itself was not held in common. It’s a land trust, right? Thank you for all the other clarifications.
So the land sites will not longer be leased? I would love to hear more.
December 18, 2012 at 10:27 am
Hello, Thanks! It’s not a land trust. The community is currently deciding what new legal structures and new financial arrangements it will have. So there may or may not be leased sites; we’re not sure yet.
Two other questions. Do you plan to include a “Search” feature in the future, so readers can search your site? I couldn’t find one. Also, I was looking up where you wrote about Earthaven in the Archives but couldn’t tell what I was seeing, as the titles don’t appear to be grouped by topic. Do you have a topic called “community visits”? Or could you create one I’m especially interested in your impressions of communities you visited.
Also, I tried Googling “Escaping Babylon Earthaven” to see if I could find it that way. I found a Google entry that said “Earthaven’s cat-hostility” or something like that. When I looked at your blog entry Google sent me to I didn’t find it. I’d like to read it. (By the way, I’ve never heard of us having any hostility to cats. We do have a pet policy and visitors aren’t allowed to bring pets when they visit, which is pretty common for communities (wildlife, domestic animals like cows & chickens. A barking dog or a loose dog can scare cows enough they reduce their milk yield, and can get chickens off their laying. So to protect our members who’ve invested their life savings in farm projects here, and to protect ground-nesting birds, we say No Thanks to visitors’ pets and Yes to members’ pets, however with some restrictions. Currently one member has two elderly cats, and two members have well-behaved dogs. )
December 18, 2012 at 10:40 am
I see. Sounds like a big re-think!
Mmm… search. I’ll think about it. There will be a few mentions in the comments on Earthaven, and my memories of it, but not a whole lot. I don’t have a topic for “visiting communities” because I don’t expect that to be a large feature of the site. What other communities I’ve visited are too many years ago. I am writing another large post on the Possibility Alliance, so stay tuned. Coming out this Saturday.
As for pets… when I was at Earthaven, I was told, absolutely no cats or dogs, the policy that had been hammered out with much contention did not allow any. You told me then, that I could get involved in changing it, but it sounded like opening up a can of worms, and in any case, I did not feel it would be right to join a community already trying to change what they had decided. I’ll see if I can fish out the pertinent comment. (At that time, March 06, there was only a grandfathered dog at A&A.)
I just did a search, and the Earthaven comments are in two posts — Doing splits (about cars), and Four weapons (about cats and mice).
There is also a mention of Earthaven in the post titled Group intelligence emergent, on consensus and conflicts around forest cutting.
December 18, 2012 at 11:24 am
Hello again. Thanks for the additional info, and I’ll read the other posts about Earthaven, and your upcoming Possibility Alliance post, as I’m especially curious about them. Re Earthaven and pets, whomever told you this must have either been mistaken (perhaps a Work Exchanger who didn’t really know our policies?), or someone speaking only of visitors’ pets (which can’t be brought here with their visitor-owners) as compared to community members’ pets, of which there are several.
I’ll look up the Four Weapons post. I forgot to say the folks in the Hut Hamlet got a cat specifically to be a mouser for the kitchen.
I’d also like to ask about one thing you wrote, when you say “You told me then, that I could get involved in changing it.” By “you” do you mean the Earthaven person you talked to, or do you mean me personally? We met? Please remind me if so.
Also, please know that in intentional communities it’s always the case that various people are changing what they already have in order to create something better, which they learn by experience. So re “can of worms” and it not being right to try to change what a community “already has,” well, doesn’t make sense to an experienced communitarian and community researcher like me. Just about any community you visit will have some folks who’d like to change something, and the healthy way to do that is for them to make a proposal to change it from X to Y. And just because some issues are sometimes controversial, well, that’s OK. That’s just the stuff of community life.
Again, thanks for doing this interesting blog! Diana
December 18, 2012 at 11:36 am
Yes, indeed, we met. 🙂 I stayed at A&A first, where my two kitties hunted in the rafters of that sprawling house full of mice. Then I stayed for a while in the Hobbit House with Rod. I was there at the same time that Sabine from Germany stayed there, perhaps you’ll recall.
I discussed the cat issue with many people, including Pat, you, Sue (who wanted a cat herself) and Rod. I remember people said that the crackdown on pets was occasioned by someone in the Hut Hamlet moving in with a cat without permission, and people were upset it was hunting chipmunks and birds. Mouse droppings were everywhere at that time — the community kitchens, the community bathrooms… and at A&A we found a drowned mouse in the kitchen almost every morning.
Yes, if I knew what I know now, I think I would be inclined to challenge that pet policy, which in any case (obviously) did not last. Still, it is a daunting thing, to stand alone in the face of a community… 🙂
December 18, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Thanks for the info, and a belated thanks for helping with the mouse problem back then. 😉 It appears to be fixed now.
Not to belabor a point, but I think we already had our current pet policy in 2006, and I’m sorry people gave you misinformation, including perhaps myself. People were angry at the guy in the Hut Hamlet with the two “grandfathered in” cats, and he wasn’t a new member that just moved in, but a founder. So the adamant statements you might have heard may have been because of frustration. But for a long time now, visitors can’t bring pets, and people can only have pets in their neighborhoods based on what they and their neighbors work out in that particular neighborhood. It’s a Catch-22 to have a cat here (though not a dog), because if you keep your cat inside it’s cruel to this natural hunter who loves the outdoors and loves to stalk things, including catching some of the wildlife we value and wish to protect. But if you let your cat go outside, it will soon be eaten by hawks, owls, coyotes, or even, rarely . . bobcats! Which seems like a cruel way to go, via another animals talons, beaks, or fangs. Which is why I don’t have a cat though I’d love one. By the way, pet policies are often the most controversial of policies in intentional communities.