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.