SUMMER 1997 - ISSUE NUMBER 40
What is Community?
Among other things, community is a myth. At some level, I think community connotes comfort. We yearn for it. But in reality and at best, community is a freely-associating group of people working individually and collectively to meet basic human needs, including the need for political self-determination. The essential dynamic of community is exchange &emdash; of love, labor, spirit, wisdom, knowledge, care, and goods. Ideally, there is nothing wrong with the exchange model as long as the individuals at every stage of development are valued equally; that the special needs and gifts of the young, old and infirm are recognized. For community to exist there has to be meaningful exchange, not just lip service. The exchange of labor around building our house, for instance, awed me. To make community, you have to have time, and high levels of tolerance for diversity and eccentricity. If, by community, all that we mean is a psychological community, a community of values, we run the risk of driving differences underground. A functioning community works like an organism &emdash; with each part or individual interacting with others, and with the environment to create one whole thriving entity.
Why is community so important right now?
The mega-institutions are failing us. Institutions (like the church) provide some structure but some of the assumptions that they make, like valuing hierarchy, work against community. And, for the most part, they have undermined community. People don't feel tied in or connected to these large institutions. There is a problem of scale here. Historically, communities were clans, tribes, and villages, most of which were within a distinct size range. There needs to be face-to-face interaction for community to exist. There's a big difference between a community where you live and a community of kindred souls connected by their convictions or by computer &emdash; virtual community. It's great to be in touch with the network of folks who share your values, but if you fall off a ladder and need some chicken soup, then you're in trouble. Much of the community's interaction will have to do with the specifics of place. Communities must be understood as the total biota of an area, not just the human species. Large institutions ignore the natural boundaries which can help to define communities, and they override the natural and social processes that sustain community. People need to feel connected with and responsible to one another and the Earth.
So where do we start in forming community?
There's a story about a Zen master; someone asked him how to get a zendo started &emdash; he said you rent a room, go there at 4:00 a.m. and you sit; pretty soon someone will see the light on and will come to find out what's going on &emdash; we're talking slow &emdash; attraction rather than promotion. This also speaks to the need for individuation and community; you've got to have a satisfied mind. My personal prejudice is that community must begin with people doing their own inner work. The individuals must work toward individuation, toward owning their own projections, and learning what their own conscience sounds like, or else you have a perfect set up for a form of fascism &emdash; whether under the banner of ecology or white supremacy. "Community" is risky if members have not taken responsibility for their own individual psyches. Communities have to consist of conscious individuals, rather than people who are looking to transfer their dependencies to a group. To me, it begins with the pursuit of self-knowledge and honoring that pursuit in others.
What do you mean by individuation?
A standard definition of individuation reads "The conscious realization of one's unique psychological reality, including both strengths and limitations."
After individual work, what's next?
In Starhawk's latest book, Truth or Dare, she talks about forming affinity groups, small, self-selecting groups formed for some spiritual or political purpose. In order to become most effective, such groups can do specific kinds of work together to develop their communication, to form bonds and to learn to trust each other. Through the small group process we can learn to surface, accept and honor our differences. These small groups are a good intermediate step to forming community. They can become the nuclei of larger community.
Okay. So we've got some small groups. Now how do we move to a community level?
Deliberately, intentionally. As I said before, a community needs to include the total biota, not just the people. We need to reconnect with the land.
How do we do that, especially in urban areas?
It is more difficult in urban areas, but still possible to get in touch with our life-places and their natural boundaries. A good place to start is to tune into the watershed. A very potent thing to do in an urban area is to identify the water courses, to trace them. It's also helpful to collect historical information about what kinds of plants and animals inhabited the land prior to the European advent. In San Francisco Nancy Morita took on such a project which she called Wild in the City. After a process of thorough historic research, she was able to produce a map that conjured visions of grizzly bears prowling on what was a couple of hundred years ago the shore of the bay, and is now the financial district &emdash; site of the Bank of America Headquarters and scores of other tall buildings. That struck me as very potent information.Another activity that fosters community with Earth and others is growing some part of your own food in community gardens. There are simple techniques for urban food production, such as rooftop gardens, pulling up a section of sidewalk and planting tree crops, or reclaiming a vacant lot, but to endure, these projects must be "owned" by the neighborhood, designed locally to meet locally-determined needs and preferences &emdash; otherwise they're abandoned or vandalized.
What other types of things help to build community?
I think any kind of project in which people empower themselves helps to build community. When people work together for their common good, functional ties are strengthened. I'm thinking of things like recycling or building a park.But I think we need to employ some new ways of communicating in groups if we are to survive the ecological/economic crisis which we are facing as a planet. Consensus decision-making is a slow but effective method of resolving conflicts, respecting individual differences and developing trust in a group. It is time-consuming but it works. It is very different from the normal adversarial, majoritarian civic process. In consensus every member of the group is valued and respected &emdash; that builds community. People work together to evolve a decision that is universally accepted, rather than just to hammer out a position that will win 51% of the votes leaving 49% of the people vaguely dissatisfied. Of course there are limits to the size of a group that can function on a consensus basis.
It seems that economics enters into all this. Don't economic barriers tend to divide people and discourage community?
Yes, it's hard to build effective community under the market system (or the nation-state for that matter) because organizing among the less advantaged is a distinct threat to entrenched economic or political power structures. Also, in a market economy everything &emdash; including loyalty &emdash; has a price and can be bought. And the nation-state is the preeminent terrorist institution. Clearly, it's going to be a tense time around the world. In The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler talks about the difference between a cooperator model and a dominator model of society. Since the age of revolution there have been increasing upsurges of autonomous organization for self-determination that have been overpowered by increasing levels of violent repression. Now that the very survival of the planet depends on getting out from under the dominator model and into the cooperator model, the impulse to organize for self-reliance and to counter this dominance model is going to intensify and there's likely to be a great deal of strife; a grailless time, in mythological terms. There's an incredible flowering of lifesome effort on the planet side by side with all this violent craziness &emdash; and no certainty as to outcome.
What can community do to help people out of that economic bondage?
In order to function usefully in turbulent times, and to deal with privation you've got to have the relationships within your own psyche reasonably stable and at peace to be in community with your better self and higher purpose, and the relationships in your immediate household and community to be mutually supportive; and then it becomes a little more possible to live simply and to derive satisfaction and contentment from non-material pursuits, but that is really difficult without a community. It's hard to choose voluntary simplicity &emdash; to swim against the mainstream &emdash; without buddies. In San Francisco, the Friends Service Committee has started the Simple Living Project, in which participants choose a lifestyle based on simplicity, and also develop educational materials to teach others how to simplify their lives. They have published a book on this topic, Taking Charge of Our Lives: Living Responsibly in a Troubled World. It is simple but not easy, however the Friends have a long history of group work and attending to the inner voice to build on and to share.In addition to supporting alternative lifeways, affinity groups can be a secure base for non-violent resistance, and it is already coming to that. We will need to synthesize a blood tie; if things go up for grabs we'll have to manifest a harmony of motives, and an ability to protect and care for ourselves and others.
Do you think that the average person feels the connection to the Earth that you refer to?
However oppressed by the structure, every human being has some of this lifesome knowledge at heart; it's necessary to speak to that part of the person; we've all got to be trying in lots of gentle ways, to act in the knowledge that we're part of a community of beings. The life-force that is love takes hold in funny ways. It's like gardening &emdash; you never know when the seeds are going to come up. You keep throwing the seeds out there with hopes. It's hard not to get strident about the necessity for dramatic change; it's hard to see the global relevance of pulling up a strip of pavement to plant street trees; but, in your neighborhood, on your block, the significance and benefit of such an action is obvious: it's a form of magic.
Magic? What does magic have to do with all of this?
In the course of writing my book, I interviewed Starhawk. I asked her how high her apocalypse quotient was. She said that, bad as it looks, it's not all lost yet because she believes in magic &emdash; which she defines as the ability to change consciousness at will &emdash; an ability, she believes, best developed through group practice. If it's magic that's running the biosphere, it's an awesome power. But to avail ourselves of such power demands practice &emdash; discipline and effort. And, ideally, the function of community is to be complex and diverse enough &emdash; wise and compassionate enough &emdash;to govern all magical and liberatory works.Here's a portion of a poem by Starhawk that appears in Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism, edited by Judith Plant:
Life, teeming, greedy life
That grows, cell by swelling cell, divides, devours, unites and changes filling your ocean belly, flinging a green cloak over the land, learning to swim, crawl, run, stalk, fly caress, and stand erect, made of earth air water fire and what goes beyond these and unites these the mystery
She is alive in us: we are alive in her as in each
other as all that is alive is alive in us.
and all is aliveWhen we are afraid, when it hurts too much
We like to tell ourselves
stories of power
how we lost it
how we can reclaim itWe tell ourselves
the cries we hear may be those of labor
the pain we feel may yet be that of birth
Return to the Index of Synapse 40, Summer 1997