The Costs and Problems of Community, and Why It Might Not Need to Be Organized
Recommended Reading Jan. 17th.
The Costs of Community by John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
...I suspect many of my readers have encountered Robert Putnam's widely discussed book Bowling Alone (2000), which traced the collapse of social networks and institutions straight across American society. The implosion of the old grassroots-based party system is simply one example of the trend Putnam documented. Putnam's book sparked a great deal of discussion, some of it in the peak oil community, but nearly all of that discussion fixated on the benefits that might be gained by reinventing community, and left out a crucial factor: the cost. By this I don't mean money. Communities need regular inputs of time and effort from their members, or they collapse into mass societies of isolated individuals – roughly speaking, what we've got now. Communities also need subtler inputs: a sense of commitment, of shared purpose, of emotional connection, of trust. To gain the benefits of living in community, it's necessary to sacrifice some part of the autonomy that so many Americans nowadays guard so jealously. The same thing is true of those subsets of community already discussed – political parties, for example, or citizens' organizations, or any other framework for collective action that's more than a place for people to hang out and participate when they feel like it...
The Problem of Community by Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book
John Michael Greer has a superb piece up about our reluctance to seriously consider real community and organizational strategies. I think it is well worth reading for anyone interested in this question of community - because we have to ask ourselves, if this is the tool we've got, why do so few of us want to do the work? Why are so few of us able to do the work?...
I think this is absolutely a fair cop - I know a lot of people who want to build community - but only with people like them, who agree with them. I know a lot of people who do seriously want to build community - but are exhausted and overburdened by the job. What I think Greer leaves out in this important conversation is the issue of time and energy and resources. The absent space of political and social engagement that Greer rightly points out is a result not just of a culture of autonomy, but of a culture of industrialism that demands the labor of everyone in a unified project - and leaves very little space for other work...the re-establishment of an American political power requires also that many of us disengage from the workforce - I mean that quite seriously. That doesn't necessarily mean that this disengagement should occur on gendered terms - if anything, we've seen that more men are being laid off than women. But we're going to have to find time to live on one income - by combining households and reducing costs if we're to have a meaningful democracy - and this is not easy. I don't understate the enormous difficulty for people, the cost to their lives. And yet, what is most needed to establish community is time, the hardest single thing to claim...
Why Community Might Not Need Organizing by Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
I read with interest John Michael Greer’s recent post, The Costs of Community, and then Sharon Astyk’s response, On the Problem of Community and I wanted to add some thoughts to the flow...
Greer notes in his piece that “one of the reasons I don’t dismiss the Transition Town movement, though I have serious doubts about some aspects of it, is precisely that many of the people involved in it have committed themselves to it in a meaningful sense, and the movement itself has succeeded in some places in building a critical mass of commitment and energy”. Greer is right, it has done that, in some places, and I want to reflect on some of that. First thing I want to say is that for me, relocalisation is not just about a political shift. It is predominantly a cultural and economic shift. It is a fine idea, speculated upon to death on websites like mine, but I am increasingly drawn to the observation that the people that are making it happen are not the thinkers, the bloggers, the philosophers, but the self-starters, the enrepreneurs, who get on with it and start projects.
I do feel that there is something faintly patronising about the idea that we need to ‘create community’. It is like a couple who move into a rural village and wonder why “nothing is happening here” and then alienate themselves by trying to start lots of things without just immersing themselves first and discovering what is already happening there. Community is already there in most cases.. It is a more chaotic, far more diverse, stubborn and atomised kind of community. But it does exist. It is neither better, nor worse, just different...If our expectation is that the entire street can only be classed as being a ‘community’ only when they have all held a street party or made compost together, we are going to wallow in disappointment for some considerable time. What happens though, is that certain projects emerge, usually driven by a few committed and passionate characters, around which that community can coalesce, and begin to take owenership of...
My emerging sense is that Phase Two of Transition initiatives is to shift to promoting a culture of social enterprise and to support, train and enable it. This is where Totnes is starting to get to. Strictly speaking, in so far as the Transition model is set out in the Transition Handbook, we are nearly finished. Our Energy Descent Action Plan, Step 12 of the 12 Steps, is nearly ready to go. The truth is though, that really we are only just starting, and the question as to how to make it happen is key. Perhaps Step 13 is to promote social entrepreneurship. Nurture the ideas that emerge from the EDAP and start building the parallel public infrastructure that way.
What is distinct about the Transition approach though, it seems to me, is about context. Many projects like the rickshaws, local food production, local energy companies are all great, but Transition puts them in a context. It weaves a larger tapestry, tells the story about what could happen if they are all joined up, part of an historic push. While it is true that the Transition, the successful navigation of energy descent, will need community, it will also need its stubborn, visionary, determined and headstrong pioneers in order for it to start to crystallise around our metaphorical piece of string. While the work of ‘creating community’ is vital, we must also recognise that much more of it exists than we often give credit, even if it does look different to our idea of community. It is also essential to acknowledge that like our home-made crystals, or a rock on which lichens can grow, just a few people can start to put in place the bones of a Transition economy, and the support will come. They may prove to be one of our most precious natural resources.
The Costs of Community by John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
...I suspect many of my readers have encountered Robert Putnam's widely discussed book Bowling Alone (2000), which traced the collapse of social networks and institutions straight across American society. The implosion of the old grassroots-based party system is simply one example of the trend Putnam documented. Putnam's book sparked a great deal of discussion, some of it in the peak oil community, but nearly all of that discussion fixated on the benefits that might be gained by reinventing community, and left out a crucial factor: the cost. By this I don't mean money. Communities need regular inputs of time and effort from their members, or they collapse into mass societies of isolated individuals – roughly speaking, what we've got now. Communities also need subtler inputs: a sense of commitment, of shared purpose, of emotional connection, of trust. To gain the benefits of living in community, it's necessary to sacrifice some part of the autonomy that so many Americans nowadays guard so jealously. The same thing is true of those subsets of community already discussed – political parties, for example, or citizens' organizations, or any other framework for collective action that's more than a place for people to hang out and participate when they feel like it...
The Problem of Community by Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book
John Michael Greer has a superb piece up about our reluctance to seriously consider real community and organizational strategies. I think it is well worth reading for anyone interested in this question of community - because we have to ask ourselves, if this is the tool we've got, why do so few of us want to do the work? Why are so few of us able to do the work?...
I think this is absolutely a fair cop - I know a lot of people who want to build community - but only with people like them, who agree with them. I know a lot of people who do seriously want to build community - but are exhausted and overburdened by the job. What I think Greer leaves out in this important conversation is the issue of time and energy and resources. The absent space of political and social engagement that Greer rightly points out is a result not just of a culture of autonomy, but of a culture of industrialism that demands the labor of everyone in a unified project - and leaves very little space for other work...the re-establishment of an American political power requires also that many of us disengage from the workforce - I mean that quite seriously. That doesn't necessarily mean that this disengagement should occur on gendered terms - if anything, we've seen that more men are being laid off than women. But we're going to have to find time to live on one income - by combining households and reducing costs if we're to have a meaningful democracy - and this is not easy. I don't understate the enormous difficulty for people, the cost to their lives. And yet, what is most needed to establish community is time, the hardest single thing to claim...
Why Community Might Not Need Organizing by Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
I read with interest John Michael Greer’s recent post, The Costs of Community, and then Sharon Astyk’s response, On the Problem of Community and I wanted to add some thoughts to the flow...
Greer notes in his piece that “one of the reasons I don’t dismiss the Transition Town movement, though I have serious doubts about some aspects of it, is precisely that many of the people involved in it have committed themselves to it in a meaningful sense, and the movement itself has succeeded in some places in building a critical mass of commitment and energy”. Greer is right, it has done that, in some places, and I want to reflect on some of that. First thing I want to say is that for me, relocalisation is not just about a political shift. It is predominantly a cultural and economic shift. It is a fine idea, speculated upon to death on websites like mine, but I am increasingly drawn to the observation that the people that are making it happen are not the thinkers, the bloggers, the philosophers, but the self-starters, the enrepreneurs, who get on with it and start projects.
I do feel that there is something faintly patronising about the idea that we need to ‘create community’. It is like a couple who move into a rural village and wonder why “nothing is happening here” and then alienate themselves by trying to start lots of things without just immersing themselves first and discovering what is already happening there. Community is already there in most cases.. It is a more chaotic, far more diverse, stubborn and atomised kind of community. But it does exist. It is neither better, nor worse, just different...If our expectation is that the entire street can only be classed as being a ‘community’ only when they have all held a street party or made compost together, we are going to wallow in disappointment for some considerable time. What happens though, is that certain projects emerge, usually driven by a few committed and passionate characters, around which that community can coalesce, and begin to take owenership of...
My emerging sense is that Phase Two of Transition initiatives is to shift to promoting a culture of social enterprise and to support, train and enable it. This is where Totnes is starting to get to. Strictly speaking, in so far as the Transition model is set out in the Transition Handbook, we are nearly finished. Our Energy Descent Action Plan, Step 12 of the 12 Steps, is nearly ready to go. The truth is though, that really we are only just starting, and the question as to how to make it happen is key. Perhaps Step 13 is to promote social entrepreneurship. Nurture the ideas that emerge from the EDAP and start building the parallel public infrastructure that way.
What is distinct about the Transition approach though, it seems to me, is about context. Many projects like the rickshaws, local food production, local energy companies are all great, but Transition puts them in a context. It weaves a larger tapestry, tells the story about what could happen if they are all joined up, part of an historic push. While it is true that the Transition, the successful navigation of energy descent, will need community, it will also need its stubborn, visionary, determined and headstrong pioneers in order for it to start to crystallise around our metaphorical piece of string. While the work of ‘creating community’ is vital, we must also recognise that much more of it exists than we often give credit, even if it does look different to our idea of community. It is also essential to acknowledge that like our home-made crystals, or a rock on which lichens can grow, just a few people can start to put in place the bones of a Transition economy, and the support will come. They may prove to be one of our most precious natural resources.
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