In my Sustainable Living (SL) Text, I overview a few locations where the people are living in a new way of cooperative and localized living. It is really about rebuilding community, and that’s what ‘Intentional Communities’ are all about – living with cooperative intention instead of just living with people in the same locaton. I say this as opposed to how most of us in the MDCs currently live – we have neighbors and people around us but rarely do we have true community. We may even know some of our neighbors enough to have conversations and even share some tools, but in most cases that is where the interactions stop. That is not what true community is about. Our ancestors for most of history lived in communities where everyone interacted and where all relied on each other. In many cases this was tribal systems and as we started to live in more urbanized environments. Peasant cultures were by necessity community structured (see previous posts Relocalization and Community and Reframing and Visualizing a New Society 1).
From my SL text, “So what is a community? There is no one succinct definition since it is a self-defined, specific group of people who interact in the context of shared, tasks, values, or goals, and who usually set established norms of ethical behavior for that group, which may be codified or simply acceptances spoken or unspoken (that is everyone understands they exist). As such we can say that when one is a member of that community, an ethical obligation exists to abide by those norms concerning attitude and behavior. Being a part of a community means to accept its membership ‘rules’ as a tacit form of contractual commitment to the community values.” Today, we more than likely live in urban environments were the legal rules and regulations for the most part govern our behaviors. Looking at our modern governmental systems (The U.S. is not an exception) the trend seems to be ‘screw thy neighbor’ especially if it is legal, even if not ethical. When Adam Smith talked developed his ideas of economics back in the mid-1700s, he talked at length about morals and ethics (indeed, his first book in 1759 was titled The Theory of Moral Sentiments). Something our modern world seems to have readily dismissed in its rush to attain individualized monetary wealth at the expense of community. Smith’s second book in 1776 was The Wealth of Nations and yet it too is a discussion of the morals and ethics inherent within a community
The world we live in has fast become globalized within the last 37 years especially. Much of this globalization can be equated to the industrial revolution that occurred in the MDCs over the last two centuries. This time, rather than the slow erosion of village community by the industrial revolution, the modern world is doing it rapidly, and at the same time selling a homogenous technological worldview, which swiftly erodes cultures of all kinds (see earlier post The Dumbing Down of Humanity – Controlling the Information 2, and also ones mentioned above). If you want to know where the roots of most international conflict derive from, I would suggest reading about the erosion of culture. I see the rise of fundamentalism in all its forms as an attempt by groups all over the world to try and control the changes occurring in their lives and fit them within the worldviews they see being quashed by the juggernaut of globalization. I believe that nearly everyone wants to embrace modern technological living, with its comforts and luxuries, but I also believe that they want to do it in their own way with their own cultural frames intact, and not being crushed by a mindless and faceless corporate mindset. Community is a lot like your teeth and dental health, you don’t notice how valuable it was until it was gone. In most large urban centers in the MDCs there are pockets of community springing up, mostly out of necessity, as this is the only way for disenfranchised people to become resilient in group efforts for everyday living. In the LDCs, many communities still exist as they have for millennia but even there the erosion of community is self-evident as the young buy-in to the globalized mindset and move way.
From my SL text: “The individual today is no longer tied to only one main community, which would have existed only 60 years ago. Think about farming communities or small villages in which individuals may have lived their whole lives, many not venturing more than a few miles from the community. Communities today seem to have multiple and overlapping bonds with many different kinds of communities. The options to enter and exit groups, shows how communities are more like networks and are less concrete and more abstract in their structures.
Traditional and territorial kinds of community that were inextricably linked to place are different from the new expressions of post-traditional community. The revival of community in modern discourse is undoubtedly connected with the crisis of belonging in its relation to place. Globalized communications, cosmopolitan political projects, and transnational possibilities have given new possibilities to community at precisely the same time that globalized capitalism has undermined traditional forms of belonging. Yet these new kinds of community ideas are often merely organized social networks of individuated members that have not been able to substitute for traditional communities that fulfilled our inherent need for belonging. Gerard Delanty comments whether new forms of community can establish a connection with place or if they will remain an imagined condition as we struggle to create a new world. This is an important topic for the future.” The forms that new community are taking are as varied as people in them. But if there is one thing that so many are thinking worldwide, is how do we live differently than we are doing? How do we feel a sense of connection and thereby drop the sense of isolation that so many people worldwide are now experiencing? The present model is certainly not working for most and it seems like the time is right for a transformation. And that connection is a return to the true sense of community, where individuals live with each other for the benefit of all the individuals in a community without losing their own individuality. In keeping with my spiritual focus, the lyrics of a song from my youth:
“In the morning when you rise, Do you open up your eyes, see what I see? Do you see the same things every day? Do you think of a way to start the day, getting things in proportion? Spread the news and help the world go ’round. Have you heard of a time that will help us get it together again? Have you heard of the word that will stop us going wrong? Well, the time is near and the word you’ll hear When you get things in perspective. Spread the news and help the word go round…
There’s a time and the time is now and it’s right for me, It’s right for me, and the time is now. There’s a word and the word is love and it’s right for me, It’s right for me, and the word is love.” ‘Time and a Word’ by YES, (Jon Anderson & David Foster).
TBC…..
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