“Above all, we need a very powerful vision. Because the old system is very clear about what it wants. And if we don't believe in a positive world in which all humans are liberated to express their creativity, we cannot build it.
“So if we put our energy into all the alternative ways of doing things, we can learn from nature how to go about this process of evolution that's called for today. We can build alternatives to the old models.
“We must hold the vision very clearly, and then go about doing whatever each of us loves doing most, knowing that none of us has to do the whole thing, and that together, we can really make it happen.”
-- Elisabet Sahtouris, biologist and futurist, from After Darwin Part II
In this article I’m going to introduce myself, where I’m living, and some of the issues I’m encountering currently in my personal life and in the growth of my community.
I reside in a unique setting – an intentional community dedicated to a exploring ecological, relational, and cultural sustainability. The setting is a small aspiring ecovillage in the mountains of Southern Appalachia.
In this rural and natural place, I return to a schedule that is more fluid. Sometimes I wake up with the dawn, rolling out of my bed and into a morning hike with friends, or a meditation, day preparation, and yoga stretching, empowered and vital. Other mornings I lie with my lover and share dreams, make plans, and make and share love. I’m also struggling to find sufficient, sustainable work while remaining in integrity with my commitment to the Earth and to my values of fairness and evolving creative possibilities.
Still, I ask myself, am I doing “the right thing”?
When I think about right livelihood, I imagine it means the “fit” between a person’s skills, their calling, and the needs of the universe-at-hand. Like the ecological concept of a “niche”. In my recent quest for right livelihood, however, I’ve also perceived the pitfalls of my own cultural privilege: the luxury of wallowing in narcissistic questions, perpetually wondering what my “perfect calling” is, not making any decisions because of the security I was used to having while growing up. My parents had a strong work ethic, and made a decent living -- and I feel I was given too much, had too many options, while at the same time was not trained in the rewards of applied effort and self-determination. What is this illusion of “success” that we all chase after, anyway? It reminds me of an illusory pitfall mentioned in Buddhism -- that of “grasping for the self,” as though self is any one thing, is static, is some sort of fixed object, frozen and definable.
Despite my parents unconditional praise, what have I ever done to make the world a better place? I know in my heart what I have actually achieved – the beginnings of a community garden in Carrboro, NC,; a beautiful and wide set of sitting steps on a building at Clemson University's Organic Farm. These are two things I am proud of.
One of the biggest things I am running into here in my rural ecovillage is culture shock – that of not having what I need immediately; that of finally maxing out my line of credit; that of discovering that my own time and space for self-contemplation is itself a luxury.
I see the unfairness of a system where economic and cultural privilege is inherited rather than earned; of a system which enforces and perpetuates the disempowerment of people based on the conditions of their birth, for example fining people who don’t have enough money; of a system where money itself makes money and where a lack of it fundamentally cripples a person’s pursuit of their dreams.
In his book, The Dream of the Earth, Thomas Berry writes about the human ideal, quoting anthropologist A. L. Kroeber. “The ideal situation for any individual or any culture is not exactly [peaceful] ‘bovine placidity’. It is, rather, ‘the highest state of tension that the organism can bear creatively’.”
The ecovillage that I belong to is an experiment containing many experiments. It seems that everyone in our community has their own notion of how to live best in this village, in this world, on this land, and in this time and age. From cohousing to group housing to single-residences, from natural building to cutting-edge eco-homes, from farmland and fields, to gardens and edible landscape plantings, everyone here is struggling to manifest their own particular vision of an ecological community while holding a collective vision together. Some people have left the property and moved next door, where they can pursue their own homesteads or land use decisions without the meetings, community service hours, oversight processes, and consensus demanded by the our current guidelines.
The ecovillage I live in is a gated community, with visitation by appointment and a requirement of membership for longterm residency or representation in council. It is different than most membership-based communities I’ve heard of, however, in that many of the people who make a living from the land are also community residents. Other gated communities I’ve heard of have no space for the builders, electricians, technicians, the so-called “working class” to live within that community. For example, a married couple I know in South Carolina make a living as workers at a popular high-class, masterplanned community. The option of actually residing in that particular community, however, is impossible, since residence membership is so far out of their economic sphere. Still, while laborers in this developing village are able to also live within it as members, it is difficult for those without a cushion of money or privilege to move forward in our own village’s living opportunities.
And while we, too, have retirees and a privileged class living here, these people in our ecovillage tend to be more new-age, more dogmatically ecological, and more generally fueled by the permaculture paradigm than I imagine are people in those more conventional gated communities which are so rampant across these mountains. Do people in your conventional masterplanned community want what we want here – passive solar house designs, community farms and agriculture, great stretches of interconnected and healthy wilderness, community-based designs and decisions?
As of March 2008 – almost two decades into the life of this village which was built from the forest – there is still little positive space for children, and limited economic opportunities for working families. It is true that we are working toward changing these aspects of our village life, but I wonder, how can we design well for families if there are no families living here now, evolving the village as it grows with their real-life needs and unfolding experiences? Architectural design guru and philosopher Christopher Alexander and friends emphasize that in design work it is vital for those who will be the users of a design, to participate actively in the design process itself. Otherwise how can a design evolve as a practical response to the dialogue between users and place? Anything masterplanned is inherently alien, made by outsiders who disempower those who have the most to say about a design from feeling like their needs and opinions are worthwhile.
Living here I find a different mindset from the world I came from. In the sense of having a tight community of under 100 people living together, with our consideration for one another and our somewhat limited interaction with the “urban” world, we are very small-town. On the other hand, everyone here is trying to build both a village and a culture that stands as an improvement on, and in many ways a radical departure from, the dominating culture of consumption— which is itself consuming and destroying the planet and the deep knowledge of countless indigenous cultures and species. So in a sense, our community is in a constant state of rapid evolution and intentional experiment.
There are negatives we carry with us here from the dominating culture. There are still embedded socioeconomic class divisions, and the unconscious attitudes and prejudices that come with them. For example, male superiority, entitlement to privilege, antagonism toward single mothers, devaluation of childrearing, and an adherence to dominating cultural mythologies are all present here in our community. The ongoing difficulty in our village of sustaining families with children, and the difficulty of those who need work finding work are two of the more difficult issues we are currently grappling with. I myself have been brought face-to-face with shortcomings in my own socialization. I have seen not only the disadvantages, but also the intentional obstacles the dominant culture has put in place to perpetuate the enslavement of the lower socioeconomic classes.
In future articles I’m looking forward to addressing many of these topics, from politics to ecovillage experiments, individual visions, political issues, community processes, and social and material technologies.
