Adventures With Communities - Part One
October 23, 2005
All
of us already live in communities. Even if we are relatively isolated
in a cabin in the wilderness or on a remote island somewhere, we are
still dependent on other people for part of our physical, mental, and
spiritual sustenance.
I will recount some of my own experiences in
community living and I will present ideas that might lead us toward
improvement of existing communities, and establishment of communities
that are consciously structured - from the ground up.
When I left my parents’ house and went off to work in the late 1960’s I
began to observe first-hand some of the suffering of my fellow humans.
I thought about starting an organization called “Help” that would be
there for anybody who had any kind of problem. Though I was not able to
manifest such an organization at that time, the same sort of ideal
remains with me today. How can we best organize ourselves to help
everyone who is suffering? I visualized the Help organization as an
office where people would come with problems. Then the Help staff would
try to help resolve the situation.
Gradually there comes an understanding that people have many problems
in common. It seems that food and shelter are basic essentials that
everybody needs. Beyond that there are various other financial,
emotional, mental, and spiritual problems.
When we bring groups of people together we observe that there is an
overlap of needs and resources. One person’s needs may often be
assisted by the resources of another. Resources such as time, money,
skill, attitude, and demeanor may benefit others who are short of time
and money, and perhaps deficient in particular social or mental skills.
There is a great tendency to connect with others who may be able to
help us in some way. In the process of helping others with the
resources that we each have available we will find that we are
personally benefited, have had some of our own needs met.
I have
noticed that in our ever-busier lives it is difficult to achieve an
optimum exchange of resources - especially on personal, emotional, and
spiritual levels. The rat race of an ever-more complex society does not
permit us the time to bring our problems to a deeper level. A slowing
down process seems to be required.
How can we make our lives more efficient and more simple? I have always
looked toward the establishment of consciously structured communities
as an eventual solution to many of these problems.
Current society often embodies great duplication of effort. For
instance, we each have our own car, our own stereo, our own computer,
and our own expensive house. We seem to be self-centered, always with
more desires to fulfill. Though we may feel that we would like to help
our less fortunate sisters and brothers, such ideals are usually
relegated to some future time when our own “immediate” needs are
brought under control.
It is true that our individual prosperity and success are important,
for without them we are less capable of helping others. I recall a time
when I wanted to help some of my friends out of the misery that they
seemed to be involved in, yet I became aware that although I felt
sympathy for them, my own situation was not much different than theirs.
I would not really be able to help them until I first dug myself out of
the hole.
As it turned out, I was in time able to extricate myself from that
misery-making situation, I lost touch with those friends, so was not
able to help them. Perhaps I have been able to help others in similar
situations. Even so I do not feel that I have been able to do much.
Current society has a lot to offer, though I would like to see
improvements. The motivation to work to make a living, to achieve
material success, seems to be strong. The inherent discipline of our
legal system and perhaps specifically of our carefully controlled
traffic system and the rules of the road, lead to a personal
structuring of our time and effort that contributes to self-improvement
and efficiency.
One challenge for me with consciously structured community lifestyles
is how to replace the personal security/personal gain motivation with a
motivation based on the mutual well being of the whole community. My
current thinking is that this can best be done by reminders, by such
methods as inspiration, affirmation, and realization.
I am trying to think of my earliest experiences with community
situations. I cannot say that it occurred in high school sports because
I was never very successful as a team player. My skills and physical
prowess did not allow me to compete or contribute successfully.
Maybe in Boy Scouts there was some teamwork. I loved the hiking and
camping trips. I excelled at leading sing-alongs, creating a feeling of
group spirit.
Also I used to put on circuses and skits in my neighborhood. I was
always trying to organize something. I was active in dramatics and I
enjoyed writing and directing - bringing about fairly extravagant
productions that would bring all to a sense of joy and forward progress.
I published several newspapers and magazines, attempting to promote and
unify the ideals of my peers.
When I heard about the “hippies” in the mid sixties I was thrilled that
there were others with innovative ideas who seemed to be bonding
together with a certain forward momentum. Since I was in high school at
that time, my primary concern was with improvement of the educational
system, and I saw that the hippie movement could catalyze radical
reforms in education.
My view of the hippies was always very idealistic. Though I found that
there were crazy types of hippies with various personal agendas, I was
proud to be a member of what I saw as a very innovative forward
thinking group of young people. I appreciated the natural and simple
lifestyle that I generally found among the hippies. There was a desire
to exist in attunement with nature and with our fellow beings on the
planet. I appreciated the long hair, simple recycled colorful clothing,
efforts at self-sufficiency (growing their own food and constructing
their own dwellings), generally positive and mellow attitude,
camaraderie and friendliness, exemplified by the two-fingers-raised
“peace” sign that was flashed to fellow hippies and anyone else who
responded to the ideals of love and harmony.
I did not like, especially in retrospect, the degenerative aspects of
the hippie movement -- drugs, lack of cleanliness, loose morals, lack
of constructive activity. These negative aspects may not have been
universal to the movement.
Many of the hippies eventually joined the rat race in order to get an
edge on their individual prosperity. This had its benefits but there
seemed to be something lost also.
I joined a hippie community
called Gilpin. I have many fond memories of that experience. I lived
there off and on for about three and a half years. For me it was a time
of peace and relaxation, of recovery from high school. School had
become an increasingly frustrating experience for me, symptomized by
almost weekly headaches that often culminated in throwing up.
I joined the hippie commune in 1971, and basically have never had
another headache. The stress of the school yeas was gone.
There were a number of vacant buildings in Gilpin, an abandoned village
on the Kettle River eight miles west of Grand Forks, British Columbia,
Canada. A nice one-room house was pointed out to me, and I moved in
with my few possessions.
It was January of 1971, midwinter, difficult to keep warm. I had to cut
wood and carry water every day, but it was a blissful existence.
There was a larger building called the “Big House”. There the hippies
would gather. There always seemed to be lots of food and people talking
and singing. It felt good to connect with other young people in this
grand experiment of crating a new type of society outside of the
existing society.
Some hippies grew food and tried to organize community gardens. Others
built houses and shelters of various types. In the warmer months we had
picnics with hippies from other areas, and many enjoyable times
swimming in the river. Some hippies had jobs in town, usually temporary
or part-time in nature. When we traveled we would often cram many
people into whatever vehicle came to hand. It was before the days of
seat belt laws. We would pile into the backs or into the cabs of pickup
trucks. We seemed somehow to be divinely protectede from mishaps. For
we were the hippies, a new and exciting breed. In general everyone
seemed to care about everyone else. There was no such thing as a locked
door. Though it seems a bit strange now, we would just walk freely into
whatever house we chose, seldom pausing to knock.
I was known as “Space” or Space Kid”. Many of the hippies seemed to
have adopted new hippie names, such as Sky, Rainbow, and various
creative monikers.