"Interesting article. I'm not sure I absorbed all of it, but it had some good ideas.
As with your other writing, I think more specificity would help. I gather from your post that ICs are not doing as well as you think they should. I assume - though its not totally clear from the text - that the problem is that not enough people are joining or forming them, and the ones that do form struggle with internal governance and are not providing the kind of life that they should be. And I guess Sky Blue and you are both trying to fix those problems."
Only superficially is that "the problem", and the conflicts are not just about governance. Upstream of that is that they (the communards) don't really need each other, given the intrusion of the global economy into their lives, which has only gotten worse with the internet. I guess I failed to convey that.
"But you are describing all these problems in abstract ways. What does a community where "passive-aggressive conflict-avoidant behavior prevail" look like? Passive-aggressive covers a lot of ground. X tells me I'm being passive aggressive when I ask politely what she wants to do when she feels that really I mean I want her to do something in particular but I'm not coming out and saying it. Similarly getting "stuck in a polarized dynamic". That could be anything from having long community meetings over controversies to people refusing to talk to each other because they disagree about whether to buy out-of-season vegetables or whatever. "
Those were coming from Sky, not from me, and I didn't know the specifics, nor did I want to distract the reader with them, because ultimately the specifics don't matter! Or maybe they matter the same way the underlying dynamics of a gas matter for thermodynamics, in some average way.
"If the problems are described more clearly, it will help guide you in explaining how the principles you are advocating will help solve them. "
If there is no higher level to an individual (human or not), there are an infinite number of conflicts that can arise. If there is a higher level, then internal conflict will be selected against in an infinite number of ways. That is the understanding (one might say dogma) of multi-level-selection. The only refinement I offer is the generalized Dunbar number, that the number of parts at each level matters, there is an optimum for fitness (and maybe other utility functions when the levels are not evolutionary). And the only other new thing is that capitalism tends to dissolve those levels, specifically their "membranes" that keep their parts interdependent on each other more than on external sources.
"There does seem to be a fundamental tension about the size of a community that one lives in. As you point out, humans seem to be evolved to deal with around one or two hundred other humans. If you live in a medieval village, that's your community. But the basis of your connection is just proximity and the fact that you build up trust with them and depend on them. As you mention, that can be enforced by authoritarian customs (Do what your elders say). Modern society gives you other options which are very attractive. Your 100-200 people consist of your extended family, your neighbors, your coworkers, maybe your spouse's coworkers, people who share some common interest via religion or a hobby or a sport, etc. It's hard to find all those people in your village, because the village isn't going to necessarily have many people interested in (for example) theoretical physics or whatever sport you happen to fancy. Or, if you use the collective of villages you mention (or larger collection of collectives) to find the people whose interests intersect yours, we are back to weakening the bonds with your local community because you are putting energy into these other synthetic communities."
Yes. That is a tension/dialectic between the human need for variety and choice (liberal), and the human need for stability and strength in one's connections (conservative). In a way, ICs were supposed to solve/synthesize that tension by choosing whom your connections are and becoming more strongly dependent on them, but they failed mostly in the latter, and partially the failure was due to capitalism and their strongly liberal nature (the conservative ones do better). I think there is more to the stability of a medieval village than authority, proximity and trust. Trust is built because people depend on each other for basic needs, and those villages that survive are those where that interdependence (and hence trust) is strong.
"Again, if there is no choice, and you have a bunch of people who are not especially interested in expressing their individuality, then you play whatever sport the village plays, go to whatever church the village has, and think about what the other villagers think about. But I'm guessing that the kind of people who are going to go looking for an IC in 21st century USA are going to tend to be noncomformnists who will have pretty specific ideas about the kind of people they want to invest energy into. "
Yes. And still, without the glue of strong interdependence, conflict will arise even with those people. Can that interdependence be created without an evolutionary pressure on the IC? I am not sure if our foresight and understanding is strong enough to create it, without an evolutionary pressure.
"I went to a high school with 160 students (40 per grade). It was such a relief to go to MIT (4000 undergrads), both because it was already selecting for rare characteristics in the people and because such a large group could accommodate multiple different groups (Next House & Senior House, physicists and electrical engineers and linguists). "
I enjoyed our alma mater partially for that reason too. And yet, that was such a transitory experience. You and Lew and Larry (whom I know from high school) are my only friends whom I keep in touch with from that time.
An interesting analysis. Some very good points I agree with and also a bit brain twisty for me personally. Other than economic or legal problems, the lack of fundamental shared values seems to me the number one destroyer of intentional communities. By shared values I am not talking mission statements or larger than life visions we can all get excited about and get behind. I am talking collectively agreed upon understandings of what actually is a clean bathroom for instance. When you take a group of folks from widely divergent backgrounds and expect them to somehow magically live together harmoniously day in and day out, well it approaches the miraculous for that be long term successful imo. Again I am not talking differences in religious belief or even differences in world view, I am talking differences in basic standard of living stuff. The things we all make baseline assumptions about and unconsciously assume that others must also share. Yes rampant out of control capitalism plays a role in making the economics of intentional community living very difficult, but I think most IC's are just way way overpriced for most ordinary folks. My husband and I can live significantly cheaper on our own than in any IC we have explored. This seems quite backwards to me since I look at community living as an evolutionary human survival mechanism, meaning it evolved to make basic survival for BOTH the individuals and the group easier not harder! So from my perspective instead of saying that the messed up world makes IC living hard, I would say that IC's really need to look at the reality of what individual members need to actually survive in a falling apart world. So basically I guess I am opposed to the inherent ideology of IC's being a social experiment/example of how to create a better world. If IC's are to work they need to get over themselves imo. Lots of entitlement attitude and trust funds going on with IC's and average folks are just turned off and/or cannot afford that. Sorry but starting an IC should not be a 'holy mission' imo, it should be first and foremost about basic survival. Fine to have a larger vision/purpose but that should not supercede practicality.
Differences in values around a clean bathroom or kitchen make no difference if the community is organized with families which do NOT share a household with other families (except to invite them to their houses as guests sometimes). That is the main idea of nested levels of organization. Our own organs and psychological parts share much more within our bodies/minds that with other individuals. And there should be much more sharing within a family than between families. And there should be much more sharing within a community than out of it. Capitalism has changed this natural order of things...
The overpricing of ICs I agree with. But we still need money to get going, since we're lacking social capital, environmental capital, and local tech, and land, tools and building materials are not free. So funding is another option, but how do we inspire fundors?
And this brings us to your other objection, that we should forget about world changing ideologies and focus on basic survival and affordability. That is fine when people can survive better in an IC than in the mainstream world, or when the mainstream world is just fine so that an IC can just incorporate it. Neither of these scenarios is currently the case. We want to inspire not just donors, but ordinary humans to do something DIFFERENT, which requires a world changing ideology or vision. At some point, we might be able to have a networld of ICs that is obviously a nicer place to live for most people, which includes affordability. But until then we need a vision that inspires, and that is also practical (as in the theory of change, requiring strategies and tactics to get from where we are to where our vision wants us to be).
At the risk of offending, I will hazard a guess, that you might be allergic to visions, after the disaster of the Ghost Dance and Ghost Shirts, even though you are not of Lakota ancestry. We of European descent have similar disastrous visions that inspired people but ultimately backfired, like Marxism, or some of the utopian socialist visions like Fourrierism. It makes sense to be skeptical of grand visions after these histories. However, humans still need that when trying to do something different. It doesn't mean we can't also be practical, but there is an "activation barrier"--we need more people, more money and more time to make things appealing to most people for which vision by itself is not too compelling.
All good points again. I used differences in clean bathroom standards as an analogy but really it can apply to all communal endeavors even with separate residences but shared resources. Like how clean do the garden tools have to be and what is an acceptable amount of weeding, where and how should shared things be kept etc etc. In both communal living as in any relationship, the small stuff can really matter sometimes more than the big stuff. I think I have become allergic to ideological visions in the IC's because there is such an underlying thread of elitism in many of them. It doesn't have to be that way and visions are of course fine and obviously positive social change is to be promoted, but that insidious thread of 'specialness' that seems to infect so many ideologies these days really creeps me out. The Ghost Dance was a completely and totally different thing than what I see happening with woke and IC ideologies. The former was spirit posession /survival driven and the latter is very much intellectual/ political/ideological based.
Maybe keep communal stuff to a minimum at first, until more trust can be built, and more common values. But that's not the same as the status quo either, because I am proposing a strong interdependence due to producing stuff and services for and using stuff and services primarily from the community, or enough to become inter-dependent.
Sure the Ghost dance was survival driven, but it led to disaster, because the ghost shirts were not bullet proof. That was a false ideology/belief.
We'll just have to disagree about the ghost dance as it would take pages to explain my perspective on that. There was a history of seemingly effecitve 'bulletproofness' medicine practices amongst many native tribes, so not really that far out there and not a false ideology at all in regards to spiritual survival/revival. I am sure there are many good folks involved with IC's and more power to them, I just don't think they are going to 'take off' unless the larger global picture falls apart a whole lot more, which could of course happen quite quickly. Communal living is hard. Tribal members historically gave up a lot of individuality in order to be part of the group. It was a fair trade off when individual survival completely and obviously depended upon group cohesion. Now we have generations of the promotion of '' individuality' in western culture and the techno advantages to 'go it alone'. Good things have come from that, but also there is a great longing to belong to a tribe again while at the same time an unwillingness to sacrifice individualness in order to do so. I think an extreme survival scenario is the only way we are realistically going to overcome our determined individual independence in order to form close knit interdependent communities again. For cripes sake alot of folks cannot even figure out how to stay married or in good relations with their own families anymore. It's been too easy for folks to just move on and start over somewhere else and remain estranged from each other. So what is going to keep folks connected and committed to a specific community unless outside circumstances force them to learn to get along.
You make good points about individualism and the need to sacrifice some individuality in order to get the benefits of family and tribe. Most people won't do it, but a few could, and those are the ones we appeal to, even though some of them are currently seduced by money and comfort. And if they can grow their villages/tribes in federations, it could eventually appeal to people who would need some training to get out of the cult of individualism. Waiting for things to totally collapse might backfire and lead to times ruled by warlords and constant strife between tribes, and even oppression of women and creative people within tribes. Times of "might makes right" with the biggest and strongest men ruling over everyone else. Do you think there is nothing good that came out of the European Enlightenment?
I agree about the potential warlord scenario following societal breakdown. Very scary to contemplate. I thought I was clear in my comment that obviously many good things have come out of the drive for individualism in western civilization. But just like with everything, there are both good and bad effects.
A very timely topic. I just read Sky Blue's article. At the outset he makes the assumption that ICs are -- in contrast to the mainstream world -- more sustainable and just. They are not, in my experience. Earthaven has had a pretty devastating impact on the beautiful creeks running through it, and to a lesser extent on the surrounding forest and land. The contingencies of managing to live a pioneering life took precedence. And nobody seemingly knows how to create a more sane economy.
While I lived there, the prevailing sentiment was that while it would be nice to be growing better and closer, more caring relationships between people, it was not happening, and some persons went out of their way to knock down expectations of it. Admittedly, I lived there during a very difficult and paranoid time for the community, but at the same time, there were other reasons why it was not a friendly place overall, despite the efforts of some individuals.
It was a place of pilgrimage, and for that, it worked admirably.
Vera, it's debatable whether the path EA adopted is sustainable or not. It could be argued (and has by the Farmer faction) that sometimes feeding people from the local environment takes precedence over aesthetics and may even justify disrupting the local ecosystem somewhat.
But in this post I (and Sky) was more concerned with how to help ICs become more sustainable in the sense of lasting longer, keeping people and making an impact on climate change. I outlined the ways I think this could be done, but if you have any other ideas, I would love to hear them.
As far as people growing closer (and better?), I think families are important for the highest levels of intimacy/closeness, and beyond the family, community-level economic interdependence that is non-homogenizing (meaning relies on specialization/special gifts and talents) is essential. Most (all?) ICs don't have both these features. In addition, a federation-level economic interdependence would also be helpful for luxuries and a few necessities.
I know, Iuval, that this was a strong consideration.
But lots of corners were cut. When the land around Farmer was cleared, the necessity of protecting creek banks (actually part of state law!) was ignored. At that time, they were promising to plant fruit trees at the edges of the pasture instead of the native vegetation they mowed down. That never happened. The sheep that were raised there proved unprofitable... but then there was a small dairy later which was good.
For many years, people were driving through creeks and damaged them with silt... that could have been prevented. When I was there, there were several dumps for cardboard boxes, and nobody bothered to take the plastic tape off. Right next to the creek. And hog runoff right next to the creek also... (against the specific rules of the community!). The craziest thing was the outside furnace used to heat the community hall. It ate trees for breakfast. Nothing remotely eco about it. I was one of the people feeding it in the winter. When I asked why they did not choose an efficient wood stove, I was told that it was bought quickly by people who were afraid that nothing would be done and a bad furnace was deemed better than no furnace. When I was leaving, there was concern about its wood consumption... even in this richly wooded environment...
As for the relationships... EH was not a friendly place. And people were afraid to have open friendly honest conversations. When I came back to tiny town America, I was astounded how friendly folks here seemed, contrasted to EH.
So that was why -- in part -- I did not stay. I imagine it's part of the reason why others did not join. I know of a couple who was turned down for membership because they were deemed to care too much about the environment... :-)! They ended up at Dancing Rabbit instead.
So this all goes under "keeping people."
My impression was that EH accepted as members a lot of "disruptive personalities" who then shaped the community in an unhealthy direction. That would be what I would most pay attention to if I were to look for solutions. They pretty much took whoever showed up in the long early years.
I agree that having a good, discerning membrane is important, not just for ICs, but for all levels of organization of life, from organelles to the UN. But many ICs have that, and are friendly places who care about nature and still they don't last long and keep people.
So keeping out assholes (or free riders in evo-game-theory lingo, as in anyone who takes more resources than they give back) is one function of a good membrane. A good membrane is also helpful for keeping monitoring of free rider costs down, by forming a sort of "reset" of costs, above a certain number of parts, forming a higher level of organization (as in forming families above a certain number of individuals, and ICs above a certain number of families, as opposed to the ineffective ICs above individuals, without families). See my other substack articles about that. Once you have assholes in the community (they don't have to come from the outside, they could be internally generated also), it is also necessary to dis-incentivize them from free riding behavior or expel them. Liberal communities are bad at both good membranes and effective asshole dis-incentivizing strategies.
From my friend Barry:
Dear Iuval,
"Interesting article. I'm not sure I absorbed all of it, but it had some good ideas.
As with your other writing, I think more specificity would help. I gather from your post that ICs are not doing as well as you think they should. I assume - though its not totally clear from the text - that the problem is that not enough people are joining or forming them, and the ones that do form struggle with internal governance and are not providing the kind of life that they should be. And I guess Sky Blue and you are both trying to fix those problems."
Only superficially is that "the problem", and the conflicts are not just about governance. Upstream of that is that they (the communards) don't really need each other, given the intrusion of the global economy into their lives, which has only gotten worse with the internet. I guess I failed to convey that.
"But you are describing all these problems in abstract ways. What does a community where "passive-aggressive conflict-avoidant behavior prevail" look like? Passive-aggressive covers a lot of ground. X tells me I'm being passive aggressive when I ask politely what she wants to do when she feels that really I mean I want her to do something in particular but I'm not coming out and saying it. Similarly getting "stuck in a polarized dynamic". That could be anything from having long community meetings over controversies to people refusing to talk to each other because they disagree about whether to buy out-of-season vegetables or whatever. "
Those were coming from Sky, not from me, and I didn't know the specifics, nor did I want to distract the reader with them, because ultimately the specifics don't matter! Or maybe they matter the same way the underlying dynamics of a gas matter for thermodynamics, in some average way.
"If the problems are described more clearly, it will help guide you in explaining how the principles you are advocating will help solve them. "
If there is no higher level to an individual (human or not), there are an infinite number of conflicts that can arise. If there is a higher level, then internal conflict will be selected against in an infinite number of ways. That is the understanding (one might say dogma) of multi-level-selection. The only refinement I offer is the generalized Dunbar number, that the number of parts at each level matters, there is an optimum for fitness (and maybe other utility functions when the levels are not evolutionary). And the only other new thing is that capitalism tends to dissolve those levels, specifically their "membranes" that keep their parts interdependent on each other more than on external sources.
"There does seem to be a fundamental tension about the size of a community that one lives in. As you point out, humans seem to be evolved to deal with around one or two hundred other humans. If you live in a medieval village, that's your community. But the basis of your connection is just proximity and the fact that you build up trust with them and depend on them. As you mention, that can be enforced by authoritarian customs (Do what your elders say). Modern society gives you other options which are very attractive. Your 100-200 people consist of your extended family, your neighbors, your coworkers, maybe your spouse's coworkers, people who share some common interest via religion or a hobby or a sport, etc. It's hard to find all those people in your village, because the village isn't going to necessarily have many people interested in (for example) theoretical physics or whatever sport you happen to fancy. Or, if you use the collective of villages you mention (or larger collection of collectives) to find the people whose interests intersect yours, we are back to weakening the bonds with your local community because you are putting energy into these other synthetic communities."
Yes. That is a tension/dialectic between the human need for variety and choice (liberal), and the human need for stability and strength in one's connections (conservative). In a way, ICs were supposed to solve/synthesize that tension by choosing whom your connections are and becoming more strongly dependent on them, but they failed mostly in the latter, and partially the failure was due to capitalism and their strongly liberal nature (the conservative ones do better). I think there is more to the stability of a medieval village than authority, proximity and trust. Trust is built because people depend on each other for basic needs, and those villages that survive are those where that interdependence (and hence trust) is strong.
"Again, if there is no choice, and you have a bunch of people who are not especially interested in expressing their individuality, then you play whatever sport the village plays, go to whatever church the village has, and think about what the other villagers think about. But I'm guessing that the kind of people who are going to go looking for an IC in 21st century USA are going to tend to be noncomformnists who will have pretty specific ideas about the kind of people they want to invest energy into. "
Yes. And still, without the glue of strong interdependence, conflict will arise even with those people. Can that interdependence be created without an evolutionary pressure on the IC? I am not sure if our foresight and understanding is strong enough to create it, without an evolutionary pressure.
"I went to a high school with 160 students (40 per grade). It was such a relief to go to MIT (4000 undergrads), both because it was already selecting for rare characteristics in the people and because such a large group could accommodate multiple different groups (Next House & Senior House, physicists and electrical engineers and linguists). "
I enjoyed our alma mater partially for that reason too. And yet, that was such a transitory experience. You and Lew and Larry (whom I know from high school) are my only friends whom I keep in touch with from that time.
An interesting analysis. Some very good points I agree with and also a bit brain twisty for me personally. Other than economic or legal problems, the lack of fundamental shared values seems to me the number one destroyer of intentional communities. By shared values I am not talking mission statements or larger than life visions we can all get excited about and get behind. I am talking collectively agreed upon understandings of what actually is a clean bathroom for instance. When you take a group of folks from widely divergent backgrounds and expect them to somehow magically live together harmoniously day in and day out, well it approaches the miraculous for that be long term successful imo. Again I am not talking differences in religious belief or even differences in world view, I am talking differences in basic standard of living stuff. The things we all make baseline assumptions about and unconsciously assume that others must also share. Yes rampant out of control capitalism plays a role in making the economics of intentional community living very difficult, but I think most IC's are just way way overpriced for most ordinary folks. My husband and I can live significantly cheaper on our own than in any IC we have explored. This seems quite backwards to me since I look at community living as an evolutionary human survival mechanism, meaning it evolved to make basic survival for BOTH the individuals and the group easier not harder! So from my perspective instead of saying that the messed up world makes IC living hard, I would say that IC's really need to look at the reality of what individual members need to actually survive in a falling apart world. So basically I guess I am opposed to the inherent ideology of IC's being a social experiment/example of how to create a better world. If IC's are to work they need to get over themselves imo. Lots of entitlement attitude and trust funds going on with IC's and average folks are just turned off and/or cannot afford that. Sorry but starting an IC should not be a 'holy mission' imo, it should be first and foremost about basic survival. Fine to have a larger vision/purpose but that should not supercede practicality.
Differences in values around a clean bathroom or kitchen make no difference if the community is organized with families which do NOT share a household with other families (except to invite them to their houses as guests sometimes). That is the main idea of nested levels of organization. Our own organs and psychological parts share much more within our bodies/minds that with other individuals. And there should be much more sharing within a family than between families. And there should be much more sharing within a community than out of it. Capitalism has changed this natural order of things...
The overpricing of ICs I agree with. But we still need money to get going, since we're lacking social capital, environmental capital, and local tech, and land, tools and building materials are not free. So funding is another option, but how do we inspire fundors?
And this brings us to your other objection, that we should forget about world changing ideologies and focus on basic survival and affordability. That is fine when people can survive better in an IC than in the mainstream world, or when the mainstream world is just fine so that an IC can just incorporate it. Neither of these scenarios is currently the case. We want to inspire not just donors, but ordinary humans to do something DIFFERENT, which requires a world changing ideology or vision. At some point, we might be able to have a networld of ICs that is obviously a nicer place to live for most people, which includes affordability. But until then we need a vision that inspires, and that is also practical (as in the theory of change, requiring strategies and tactics to get from where we are to where our vision wants us to be).
At the risk of offending, I will hazard a guess, that you might be allergic to visions, after the disaster of the Ghost Dance and Ghost Shirts, even though you are not of Lakota ancestry. We of European descent have similar disastrous visions that inspired people but ultimately backfired, like Marxism, or some of the utopian socialist visions like Fourrierism. It makes sense to be skeptical of grand visions after these histories. However, humans still need that when trying to do something different. It doesn't mean we can't also be practical, but there is an "activation barrier"--we need more people, more money and more time to make things appealing to most people for which vision by itself is not too compelling.
All good points again. I used differences in clean bathroom standards as an analogy but really it can apply to all communal endeavors even with separate residences but shared resources. Like how clean do the garden tools have to be and what is an acceptable amount of weeding, where and how should shared things be kept etc etc. In both communal living as in any relationship, the small stuff can really matter sometimes more than the big stuff. I think I have become allergic to ideological visions in the IC's because there is such an underlying thread of elitism in many of them. It doesn't have to be that way and visions are of course fine and obviously positive social change is to be promoted, but that insidious thread of 'specialness' that seems to infect so many ideologies these days really creeps me out. The Ghost Dance was a completely and totally different thing than what I see happening with woke and IC ideologies. The former was spirit posession /survival driven and the latter is very much intellectual/ political/ideological based.
Maybe keep communal stuff to a minimum at first, until more trust can be built, and more common values. But that's not the same as the status quo either, because I am proposing a strong interdependence due to producing stuff and services for and using stuff and services primarily from the community, or enough to become inter-dependent.
Sure the Ghost dance was survival driven, but it led to disaster, because the ghost shirts were not bullet proof. That was a false ideology/belief.
I hear you about elitism.
We'll just have to disagree about the ghost dance as it would take pages to explain my perspective on that. There was a history of seemingly effecitve 'bulletproofness' medicine practices amongst many native tribes, so not really that far out there and not a false ideology at all in regards to spiritual survival/revival. I am sure there are many good folks involved with IC's and more power to them, I just don't think they are going to 'take off' unless the larger global picture falls apart a whole lot more, which could of course happen quite quickly. Communal living is hard. Tribal members historically gave up a lot of individuality in order to be part of the group. It was a fair trade off when individual survival completely and obviously depended upon group cohesion. Now we have generations of the promotion of '' individuality' in western culture and the techno advantages to 'go it alone'. Good things have come from that, but also there is a great longing to belong to a tribe again while at the same time an unwillingness to sacrifice individualness in order to do so. I think an extreme survival scenario is the only way we are realistically going to overcome our determined individual independence in order to form close knit interdependent communities again. For cripes sake alot of folks cannot even figure out how to stay married or in good relations with their own families anymore. It's been too easy for folks to just move on and start over somewhere else and remain estranged from each other. So what is going to keep folks connected and committed to a specific community unless outside circumstances force them to learn to get along.
You make good points about individualism and the need to sacrifice some individuality in order to get the benefits of family and tribe. Most people won't do it, but a few could, and those are the ones we appeal to, even though some of them are currently seduced by money and comfort. And if they can grow their villages/tribes in federations, it could eventually appeal to people who would need some training to get out of the cult of individualism. Waiting for things to totally collapse might backfire and lead to times ruled by warlords and constant strife between tribes, and even oppression of women and creative people within tribes. Times of "might makes right" with the biggest and strongest men ruling over everyone else. Do you think there is nothing good that came out of the European Enlightenment?
I agree about the potential warlord scenario following societal breakdown. Very scary to contemplate. I thought I was clear in my comment that obviously many good things have come out of the drive for individualism in western civilization. But just like with everything, there are both good and bad effects.
A very timely topic. I just read Sky Blue's article. At the outset he makes the assumption that ICs are -- in contrast to the mainstream world -- more sustainable and just. They are not, in my experience. Earthaven has had a pretty devastating impact on the beautiful creeks running through it, and to a lesser extent on the surrounding forest and land. The contingencies of managing to live a pioneering life took precedence. And nobody seemingly knows how to create a more sane economy.
While I lived there, the prevailing sentiment was that while it would be nice to be growing better and closer, more caring relationships between people, it was not happening, and some persons went out of their way to knock down expectations of it. Admittedly, I lived there during a very difficult and paranoid time for the community, but at the same time, there were other reasons why it was not a friendly place overall, despite the efforts of some individuals.
It was a place of pilgrimage, and for that, it worked admirably.
Vera, it's debatable whether the path EA adopted is sustainable or not. It could be argued (and has by the Farmer faction) that sometimes feeding people from the local environment takes precedence over aesthetics and may even justify disrupting the local ecosystem somewhat.
But in this post I (and Sky) was more concerned with how to help ICs become more sustainable in the sense of lasting longer, keeping people and making an impact on climate change. I outlined the ways I think this could be done, but if you have any other ideas, I would love to hear them.
As far as people growing closer (and better?), I think families are important for the highest levels of intimacy/closeness, and beyond the family, community-level economic interdependence that is non-homogenizing (meaning relies on specialization/special gifts and talents) is essential. Most (all?) ICs don't have both these features. In addition, a federation-level economic interdependence would also be helpful for luxuries and a few necessities.
I know, Iuval, that this was a strong consideration.
But lots of corners were cut. When the land around Farmer was cleared, the necessity of protecting creek banks (actually part of state law!) was ignored. At that time, they were promising to plant fruit trees at the edges of the pasture instead of the native vegetation they mowed down. That never happened. The sheep that were raised there proved unprofitable... but then there was a small dairy later which was good.
For many years, people were driving through creeks and damaged them with silt... that could have been prevented. When I was there, there were several dumps for cardboard boxes, and nobody bothered to take the plastic tape off. Right next to the creek. And hog runoff right next to the creek also... (against the specific rules of the community!). The craziest thing was the outside furnace used to heat the community hall. It ate trees for breakfast. Nothing remotely eco about it. I was one of the people feeding it in the winter. When I asked why they did not choose an efficient wood stove, I was told that it was bought quickly by people who were afraid that nothing would be done and a bad furnace was deemed better than no furnace. When I was leaving, there was concern about its wood consumption... even in this richly wooded environment...
As for the relationships... EH was not a friendly place. And people were afraid to have open friendly honest conversations. When I came back to tiny town America, I was astounded how friendly folks here seemed, contrasted to EH.
So that was why -- in part -- I did not stay. I imagine it's part of the reason why others did not join. I know of a couple who was turned down for membership because they were deemed to care too much about the environment... :-)! They ended up at Dancing Rabbit instead.
So this all goes under "keeping people."
My impression was that EH accepted as members a lot of "disruptive personalities" who then shaped the community in an unhealthy direction. That would be what I would most pay attention to if I were to look for solutions. They pretty much took whoever showed up in the long early years.
I agree that having a good, discerning membrane is important, not just for ICs, but for all levels of organization of life, from organelles to the UN. But many ICs have that, and are friendly places who care about nature and still they don't last long and keep people.
Yup. Somebody in the corporate world wrote a book with a telling title: The No Asshole Rule.
As for the other reasons... what is your guess?
So keeping out assholes (or free riders in evo-game-theory lingo, as in anyone who takes more resources than they give back) is one function of a good membrane. A good membrane is also helpful for keeping monitoring of free rider costs down, by forming a sort of "reset" of costs, above a certain number of parts, forming a higher level of organization (as in forming families above a certain number of individuals, and ICs above a certain number of families, as opposed to the ineffective ICs above individuals, without families). See my other substack articles about that. Once you have assholes in the community (they don't have to come from the outside, they could be internally generated also), it is also necessary to dis-incentivize them from free riding behavior or expel them. Liberal communities are bad at both good membranes and effective asshole dis-incentivizing strategies.
"Liberal communities are bad at both good membranes and effective asshole dis-incentivizing strategies."
Hammer, nail, head.:-)