The Political and Economic Principles of Natural Intentional Community

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Regular readers know that I intend to (co-)create, through experimentation, intentional (natural) communities, to serve as models for those in our current society seeking a better way to live, and for those who survive our civilization’s collapse later in this century to consider as they search for new ways to live in a world without social, political or economic structure. I have given up on reform of the existing systems and structures, and believe that Bucky Fuller was right when he said that “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

 I remain convinced that

Whether you want to change the political or economic system, save the whales, stop global warming, reform education, spark innovation or anything else, the answer is in how meaning, and understanding of what needs to be done, emerges from conversation in community with people you love, people who care.

So in a recent post on this subject, I wrote about the social aspects (capacities and principles) of intentional (natural) communities. of which the most controversial was polyamorism (the principle of operation, and the capacity, to love everyone else in the community, exhibiting compersion, the antithesis of jealousy). My research suggests that most intentional communities succeed or fail for social reasons — their members either have the social skills and wisdom to make the community flourish, or they don’t.

But I think intentional communities, if they are to truly be models of how to live, should also be governed by certain political and economic principles. Here is a list of some of those principles:

  1. Stop at One: In our horrifically overpopulated world, it is inexcusable to bring even a ‘replacement’ number of children into the world. At the same time, having some children in the community is important for diversity and renewal.
  2. Radical Simplicity: Buy, make, consume as little as you must to live a full life. Waste nothing, reuse and recycle everything, cradle-to-cradle. Make rather than buy. 
  3. Pledge to Buy Local: Buy nothing that is imported or transported long distances unless there is absolutely no alternative. Seek out and support, reciprocally, local producers and services. Buy organic, natural products. 
  4. Leave the Earth As You Found It: Leave no enduring footprint. Amass no personal wealth. Give away everything you don’t need, so that when you die, there is nothing left.
  5. Practice Bioregionalism and Permaculture: Plant native species that need no chemicals, irrigation or other unnatural maintenance to thrive. Learn what was meant to grow in the place you call home, the place where you belong.
  6. Cooperate and Collaborate: Work with the others in your community. Learn, discover and develop everything collaboratively.
  7. Practice Consensus Democracy: Let unanimous consensus emerge. Don’t resort to votes, divisive debate, manipulation or coercion.
  8. Value Everyone’s Time Equally: By doing this, you can replace money with time as your ‘currency’ of human activity. And by putting time ahead of money, you show how trading off your time to get more money, or using money to ‘buy’ time, are foolish and addictive behaviours. And you make leisure time precious.
  9. Study and Pay Attention to Nature, and Practice Biomimicry: When you have a problem living comfortably, study and learn from nature, and discover how she ‘solves’ the problem. 
  10. Be Self-Sufficient: Learn how to do things yourself. Produce only what you need, and give away to others any excess you produce. Buy from others only what you cannot reasonably produce yourselves.
  11. Incur No Debts: You can’t be a wage slave, or any other kind of slave, if you don’t owe anyone anything. 
  12. Be Generous, and Pay It Forward: Give without the expectation of repayment. A community knows without having to keep score, and those who take more than they receive will know it, and be discouraged. 
  13. Be Organic: Stay Small: Natural organisms self-regulate their size. When they get too big to self-manage, they split in two.
  14. Be Responsible: Listen to the larger community, be responsible and responsive to it. Your reputation is critical to navigating through conflicts with conventional social, political and economic institutions.
  15. Understand the Power of Relationships: Networking and creating alliances within and without the community is essential to resilience.

What’s missing? If you were to set up a Natural (intentional) Community, would this (along with the social principles from the earlier article) giveyou enough guidance to know what to do?

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5 Responses to The Political and Economic Principles of Natural Intentional Community

  1. Theresa says:

    Thats a great list. I’ve been living with few needs for a very long time so most of it falls into place once you have that limitation working for you. The thing that I’ve never been able to incorporate or afford (along with the radical simplicity) is to buy local. Its very costly and takes a larger percentage of income to buy local.

  2. Dale Asberry says:

    Is the first item a good idea? Wouldn’t a natural community want to stay a manageable size without the dictate? Plus, only one child per woman would result in a declining population.Another idea would be to accommodate immigration and emigration. Knowledge import and export doesn’t work like resource import/export.

  3. I got a list from you, Dave, earlier about indigenous peoples. ( I wonder how many are ployamourous) List is reproduced here. Spooky coincidence?indigenous peoples are almost never authoritarian with their children; children learn by doing, by making mistakes, and by hearing guidance and candid comments on their behaviour, not by being ‘told what to do and not to do’* knowledge is absolutely critical to survival in indigenous communities; exchange of knowledge is expected, automatic, urgent and completely candid, and deceit and hoarding knowledge is extremely disreputable behaviour (because it can expose others to danger) — these are cultures of collaboration and detailed, exhaustive knowledge-sharing, not of competition for ‘knowledge advantage’* there is an expression “the land is made perfect by knowledge” that stresses that what is valued in these communities is knowledge and understanding of the environment, not control or ownership of it* indigenous communications are generally extremely honest and forthright; the words that accompany greetings are those of great joy, not politeness* words are as precise as they need to be, so there are completely separate words used to describe fish and other prey, and snow, and attributes of the land, not taxonomically but by need (e.g. there is a need for a separate word to describe snow suitable for the construction of temporary snow shelters, so there is such a word) — this is not poetry or obsession, it’s extremely practical, and word differentiation is a matter of necessity, familiar observability and, sometimes, valuable analogy* part of the learning of indigenous languages is learning when to speak, when and how to listen, and even when and how to tease — in oral cultures there is much more to language than just vocabulary, grammar and syntax* stories are essential, detailed, and allowed to take as much time as they need to take to be told; interruption is considered extremely rude, though it is often acceptable toleave if you do not find the story of interest* indigenous languages generally have no swear words (anger is considered ‘childish’ behaviour and scrupulously suppressed), and they also have no ‘status’ words (e.g. there is no concept of or words for rank or hierarchy or, in anything close to our sense of the term, ownership, in Inuktitut)* these languages have evolved to facilitate analogy, as an essential tool of learning and imagination — drawing analogies and use of inductive reasoning are not as ‘forced’ or deliberate a process as they seem to be in Indo-European languages* from necessity, indigenous people have developed prodigious memories and mental maps of detail, and can often recall routes and places that they have seen only a few times many decades earlier — in the process every landmark is given a name to help entrench its later memory, and great attention is paid to orienting and placing these landmarks in context* these cultures have an overarching respect for all life, and again this seems more practical and adaptive than spiritual (others may disagree with me on this) — caching extra food, wasting nothing, not hunting just ‘for fun’, not disturbing animals except for hunting, not spoiling the land, paying attention to the animals that are being hunted — all these behaviours are oriented to encouraging prey to ‘make themselves available’ for the hunter as a matter of reciprocal respect (their self-sacrifice meets the hunter’s real need for sustenance)* indigenous peoples are part of the environment, and do not see the environment as something apart from them; they see themselves as co-stewards of the land along with other creatures (and in some cases, with the spirits)* by definition, then, the place the people live in is ideal, has become so through millennia of evolution and adaptation, and any change made to that place is therefore necessarily for the worse* the concept of gatherer-hunters as ‘nomadic’ and civilization cultures as ‘settled’ is precisely backwards — it is the civilization cultures that despoil or exhaust the land and expand, move on, seek new frontiers, while gatherer-hunter cultures live in balance within large but mostly-fixed territories for millennia; the stories of indigenous peoples of how they ‘arrived’ where they now live are in total conflict with our history of them (e.g. that they crossed the land-bridge from Asia during ice age retreat) — their stories are that the people emerged where they are now, rather than traveled to them* they have a profound respect for individual decisions; after sharing of knowledge, if there is no consensus on action each individual is trusted to do what he or she thinks is right and responsible, and there are no recriminations for not conforming to what others (or some designated or self-styled ‘leader’) think is appropriate* advice is rendered by the telling of stories and the answering of questions when asked, not by proffering instruction or unsolicited opinions — this is a consultative process, not a hierarchical one (elders, chiefs, shamans are respected, but they do not have or seek power or authority over others the way the ‘leaders’ in our culture do)* because of the vast amount of detailed information that is needed to thrive in a complex environment, people in these cultures do not depend entirely on the conscious mind to process that information — they appreciate how the subconscious, dreams, and instincts play into and enrich our understanding, and allow these elements to play an important part in their decision-making process* generosity (both with knowledge and material possessions) and egalitarianism are essential elements of these cultures, and produces an environment of great reciprocality and trust* much of the activity of these cultures enables the building of great self-confidence, freedom from anxiety (fear of the unknown), freedom from depression, and high self-esteem: the acquired respect and trust of others, the respect for individual decisions, the granting of individual responsibility, the learningand practice and recognition of finely-honed skills, a culture of collaboration and consultation — contrast this with our culture where so much activity has the effect of battering self-confidence and self-esteem, and stressing helplessness and dependence* in many cases, these cultures carefully space the birth of children at least three years apart, in part for practical reasons but also in part to allow parents and adults to spend enough time and attention on each child to equip them with the important capacities and learnings they need to succeed; in some cases infanticide has historically been practiced when necessary to ensure this space and opportunity for each child, and in that case can be seen as an embracing rather than an abrogation of responsibility* these cultures show profound respect for women as full equals, with roles determined by strength, stamina, skill and capacity rather than assigned automatically by gender, and many roles shared and alternating; the prevalence of men as hunters and of women as gatherers reflects only the biological fact of greater strength of most males and greater stamina of most females, and roles are changeable without shame for those whose biological qualities are exceptional* there is a deliberate attention to uncertainty, unpredictability, qualification and imprecision in indigenous languages, with any declaration of absolute certainty seen as evidence of oversimplification, arrogance, or poor judgement; likewise, there is much less propensity in these languages to raise and dwell on dichotomies, the simplistic black-or-white contrasts that leave no room for subtlety, imprecision, nuance, change and uncertaintyLink

  4. If you are interested in more information about biomimicry please visit The Biomimicry Institute and The Biomimicry Guild.

  5. melinda says:

    stephen, what a nice piece, thanks for sharing :)

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