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Question: Can We Design The Next-Evolution of Community?

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(DRAFT 2. A Work-In-Progress)

The Problem: Our Communities are Failing

I've been thinking about community lately. There is a great need for a new and better model for communities in the world today.

Our present communites are not working and most are breaking down or stagnating. Cities are experiencing urbanization and a host of ensuing social and economic challenges. Meanwhile the movement towards cities has drained the people -- particularly young professionals -- away from rural communities, causing them to stagnate and decline.

Local economies have been challenged by national and global economic integration -- from outsourcing of jobs away to other places, to giant retail chains such as Walmart swooping in and driving out local businesses.

From giant megacities and multi-city urban sprawls, to inner city neighborhoods, to suburban bedroom communities, and rural towns and villages, the pain is being felt everywhere and at all levels.

Our current models for community don't scale, they don't work anymore, and they don't fit the kind of world we are living in today. And why should they? After all, they were designed a long time ago for a very different world.

At the same time there are increasing numbers of singles or couples without children, and even families and neighborhoods that are breaking down as cities get larger.

The need for community is growing not declining -- especially as existing communities fail and no other alternatives take their place. Loneliness, social isolation, and social fragmentation are huge and growing problems -- they lead to crime, suicide, mental illness, lack of productivity, moral decay, civil unrest, and just about every other social and economic problem there is.

The need for an updated and redesigned model for community is increasingly important to all of us.

Intentional Communities

In particular, I am thinking about intentional communities -- communities in which people live geographically near one another, and participate in community together, by choice. They may live together or not, dine together or not, work together or not, worship together or not -- but at least they need to live within some limit of proximity to one another and participate in community together. These are the minimum requirements.

But is there a model that works? Or is it time to design a new model that fits the time and place in which we live better?

Is this simply a design problem that we can solve by adopting the right model, or is there something about human nature that makes it impossible to succeed no matter what model we apply?

I am an optimist and I don't think human nature prevents healthy communities from forming and being sustainable. I think it's a design problem. I think this problem can (and must) be solved with a set of design principles that work better than the ones we've come up with so far. This would be a great problem to solve. It could even potentially improve the lives of billions of people.

Models of Intentional Community

Community is extremely valuable and important. We are social beings. And communities enable levels of support and collaboration, economic growth, resiliance, and perhaps personal growth, that individuals or families cannot achieve on their own.

However, do intentional communities work? What examples can we look at and what can we glean from them about what worked and what didn't?

All of the cities and towns in the world started as intentional communities but today many seem to have lost their way as they got larger or were absorbed into larger communities.

As for smaller intentional communities -- recent decades are littered with all kinds of spectacular failures.

The communes and experiemental communities of the 1960's and 1970's have mostly fallen apart.

Spiritual communities seem to either tend towards becoming personality cults that are highly prone to tyrranny and corruption, or they too seem to fall apart eventually as well.

There have been so many communities around various gurus, philosophers, or cult-figures, but they have almost all universally become cults or have broken apart.

Human nature is hard to wrangle without strong leadership, yet strong leadership and the power it entails leads inevitably to ego and corruption.

At least some ashrams in India seem to be working well, although their internal dynamics are usually centered around a single guru or leadership group -- and while there may be a strong social agreement within these communities, this is not a model of community that will work for everyone. And in fact, only in extremely rare cases, are there any gurus who are actually selfless enough to hold that position without abusing it.

Other kinds of religious communities are equally prone to problems -- however perhaps at least some, such as the Quakers, Shakers, and Amish may have solved this -- I am not sure however. If they were so successful, why are there so few of them?

Temporary communities are another type of intentional community, for example, Burning Man, seem to work quite well, but only for temporary periods of time -- they would have the same problems of all other communities if they became institutionalized or tried to not be temporary.

Educational communities, such as university towns and campuses, do appear to work in many cases. They combine both an ongoing community (tenured faculty, staff and townspeople) and temporary communities (seasonal student and faculty residents).

Economic communes -- such as the communes in Soviet-era Russia were prone to corruption, and failed as economic experiments. In Soviet Russia "some were more equal than others" and that ultimately led to corruption and tyranny.

Political-economic communities such as the neighborhood groups in Maoist China only worked because they were firmly, even brutally, controlled from the central government. They were not exactly voluntary intentional communities.

I don't know enough about the Israeli Kibbutzim experiments, but they at least seem to be continuing, although I am not sure how well they function -- I admit my ignorance on that topic.

One type of intentional community that does seem to work are caregiving communities such as assisting living communities, nursing homes, halfway houses, etc -- but perhaps they seem to work only because their members don't remain very long.

Why Aren't There More Intentional Communities?

So here is my question: Do intentional communities work? And if they work so well, why aren't there more of them? Or are they flourishing and multiplying under the radar?

Is there a model (or are there models) for intentional community that have proven long-term success? Where are the examples?

Is the fact that there are not more intentional communities emerging and thriving, evidence that intentional communities just don't work or have stopped replicating or evolving? Or is it evidence that the communities we already live in work well enough, even though they are no longer intentional for most of us?

I don't think our present-day communities work well enough, nor are they very healthy or rewarding to their participants. I do believe there is the possibility, and even the opportunity, to come up with a better model -- one which works so well that it attracts people, grows and self-replicates around the world rapidly. But I don't yet know what that new model is.

Design Principles

To design the next-evolution of intentional community, perhaps we can start with a set of design principles gleaned from what we have learned from existing communities?

This set of design principles should be selected to be practical for the world we live in today -- a world of rapid transit, economic and social mobility, urban sprawls, cultural and ethnic diversity, cheap air travel, declining birth rates, the 24-7 work week, the Internet, and the globally interdependent economy.

In thinking about this further there are a few key "design principles" which seem to be necessary to make a successful, sustainable, healthy community.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it is what we have thought of so far:

Shared intention. There has to be a common reason for the group of people to be together. The participants each have to share a common intention to form and participate in a community around common themes and purposes together.

Shared contribution . The participants have to each contribute in various ways to the community as part of their membership.

Shared governance. The participants each have a role to play in the process of decision making, policy formation, dispute resolution, and operations of the community.

Shared boundaries. There are shared, mutually agreed upon and mutually enforced rules.

Freedom to leave. Anyone can leave the community at any time without pressure to remain.

Freedom of choice. While in the community people are free to make choices about their roles and participation in the community, within the communities boundaries and governance process. This freedom of choice also includes the freedom to opt out of any role or rule, but that might have the consequence of voluntarily recusing oneself from further participation in the community.

Freedom of expression. The ability for community members to freely and fearlessly express their opinions within the community is an essential element of healthy communities. Systems need to be designed to support and channel this activity. If it is restrained it seeks out other channels anyway (subversion, revolution, etc.). By not restraining expression, but instead desiging a community process that authentically engages members in conversation with one another, the community can be more self-aware and creativity and innovation can flow more freely.

Representative democratic leadership. The leadership is either by consensus and includes everyone equally, or there is a democratic representative process of electing leaders and making decisions.

Community mobility. This is an interesting topic. In the world today, each person may have different sets of interests and purposes, and they are not all compatible. It may be necessary or desirable to be a member of different communities in different places, times of the year, or periods of one's life. It should be possible to be able to be in more than one community, or to rotate through communities, or to change communities as one's interests, goals, needs and priorities shift over time -- so long as one participates in each community fully while they are there. The concept of timesharing in various communities, or what one friend calls "colonies," is interesting. One might be a member of different colonies -- one for their religious interests, one for social kinship, one for a hobby, one for recreation and vacation, etc. These might be in different places and have different members and their role and level of participation might be different in each one. Rather than living in only one particular community, perhaps we need a model where there is more mobility.

Size limitations. One thing I would suggest is that communities work better when they are smaller. The reason for this is that once communities reach a size where each member no longer can maintain a personal relationship with each other member, they stop working and begin to fragment into subgroups. So perhaps limiting the size of a community is a good idea. Or alternatively, when a community reaches a certain size it spawns a new separate community where further growth can happen and all new members go there. In fact, you could even see two communities spawning a new "child" community together to absorb their growth.

Proximity. Communities don't require that people live near each other -- they can function non-locally, for example online. However, the kind of intentional communities I am interested in here are ones where people do live together or near one another, at least part of the time. For this kind of community people need to live and/or dine and/or work together on a periodic, if not frequent basis. An eating co-op in a metropolitan area is an example -- at least if everyone has to live within a certain distance and eat together a few times a week, and work a few hours in the co-op per month. A food co-op, such as co-op grocery store is another example.

Shared Economic Participation. For communities to function there needs to be a form of common currency (either created by the community or from a larger economy the community is situated within), and there should be a form of equitable sharing of collective costs and profits among the community members. There are different ways to distribute the wealth -- everyone can be equal no matter what, or reward can be proportional to role, or reward can be proportional to level of contribution, etc. What economic works best in the long-term, for both creating sustainability and growth, for maintaining social order and social justice, and for preventing corruption?

Agility. Communities must be designed to change in order to adapt to new environmental, economic and social realities. Communities that are too rigid in structure or process, or even location, are like species of animals that are unable to continue evolving -- and that usually leads to extinction. Part of being agile is being open to new ideas and opportunities. Agility is not just the ability to recognize and react to emerging threats, it is the ability to recognize and react to emerging opportunities as well.

Resiliance. Communities must be designed to be resiliant -- Challenges and even damages and setbacks are inevitable. They can be minimized and mitigated, but they will still happen to various degrees. Therefore the design should not assume they can be prevented entirely, but rather should plan for the ability to heal and eventually restore the community as effectively as possible when they do.

Diversity. There are many types of diversity: diversity of opinion, ethnic diversity, age group diversity, religious diversity. Not all communities need to support all kinds of diversity, however it is probably safe to say that for a community to be healthy it must at least support diversity of beliefs and opinions among the membership. No matter what selection criteria is used, there must still be freedom of thought and belief, and expression, within that group. Communities must be designed to support this diversity, and even encourage it. They also must be designed to manage and process the conversations, conflicts, and changes that diversity brings about. Diversity is a key ingredient that powers growth, agility, and resiliance. In biology diversity is essential to species-survival -- mutations are key to evolution. Communities must be designed to mutate, and to intelligently filter in or out those mutations that help or harm the community. Processes that encourange and process diversity are essential for this to happen.

Comments

  • Public Comments

    • Calvin Mitchell Calvin Mitchell
      7 months ago


      my question is: what is the intent behind intentional communities? Survival? Fellowship? Spiritual Maturity? Thrivation? Power (economic, social or otherwise)? Why SHOULD intentional communities exist?
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • johnrod johnrod
      7 months ago


      Campuses might be a an example, including off-site residential learning communities, and residential learning and innovation communities. These may have varying lengths of stay, facilities, supportive organizational networks, and consumers for their work. Thanks.
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • Phil Duby Phil Duby
      7 months ago


      "they need to live within some limit of proximity to one another and participate in community together"

      Is proximity an artificial limitation? Based on the historical concept (requirement) of community? There have been discussions in other twines about online communities, and what is needed to build the 'spirit' of community and participation. 'Older' community types needed proximity, to enable participation. So far I have not encountered a good (sufficient) model for enduring online communities either. Proximity means different things to different (need better term here) cultures and contexts. Your 'neighbor' distance is quite different for urban and rural settings. Going further back in time, it was different again with nomadic cultures.

      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

      • Nova Spivack Nova Spivack
        7 months ago


        I agree with your point. And yes proximity is an artificial limitation, but one we need to solve for so long as we still live and interact for much of our time in the offline world.
        Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • tomie tomie
      7 months ago


      You say community formation is a design issue. I would say it is a tools issue. The huge growth of social media is because of the freedom it allows for people to reach out to each other. Particularly twitter, where it is possible to engage easily with complete strangers.

      Once people start relating to others, who in a pre-socmed world they wouldn't be able to find easily let alone be able to reach out to, then they can go on and form their own groups of like-minded people into communities.

      The structure of these communities is then formed by the focus of the shared interest, the nature of the participants and the environment (geography and communication methods,) that the community exists in.

      I think the parameters you have laid out cover a lot of ground and help define the nature of a community by the factors that go into making them work. But I think the idea of a "build it and they will come" design approach may only partially work.

      All over the UK there are church halls, community centres and village halls that are grossly under-utilized because not every coming-together of people requires that sort of structure.

      The ease with which people can freely associate thatt we see working in twitter, friendfeed, facebook and others like them is is brought about by the wonders of modern technological tools.

      I think there is so much more to be done in making and improving better instruments of communication to enable people to relate to each other better and empower them to define their own communities to suit themselves.

      Alienation is the curse of the modern world and anything that helps people be together voluntarily and share life's adventure has to be a good thing.

      • Nova Spivack Nova Spivack
        7 months ago


        You raise an interesting question: Is social media sufficient to fill the void left by our failing geographic communities?

        Is the next stage in community a shifting of the majority of our social interactions and community life away from face-to-face, geographically centric relationships -- to online social media and virtual communities?

        I'm not so sure. While I agree that social media enable a new kind of community -- communities that are larger, more fluid, and not bounded by geographic limitations -- I'm not sure that online communities completely replace physically-based communities.

        Perhaps it is just an issue of bandwidth and resolution not yet being good enough -- but there is still a very big difference between relating to people in the real world, and relating to them online. Online communities may be a lot richer on the intellectual level, but they lack the "analog hi-fidelity" of offline experience.

        If most people were asked to choose only one type of community to spend the rest of their lives in, I think they would still opt for the real face-to-face communities over their online communities. I say "most people" because it's a bell curve. There are those on the edges of the curve who might feel differently. But for the majority today, I think it's a safe statement to make.

        Geographic co-habitation and face-to-face community interactions are still much richer and more important to us than online communities and relationships.

        But I think you are also onto something here.

        It may be that the next form of community incorporates BOTH geographic and online community technologies and design principles into something new. A new kind of community that is both geographic and distributed.

        That could be the best of both worlds. Enabling people to be physically co-present for some of the time, yet still connected when they are moving around the world, doing other things, or perhaps participating in other geo-centric communities they time-share themselves with in other locations.

        Perhaps there is a kind of social convergence between the offline and online world that is taking place, Or needs to.

        Maybe there's something important in this direction of thinking. I'm going to think about this more.

        Thanks for suggesting it!

        • Neil Traft Neil Traft
          6 months ago


          That's a worthy observation on using communication tools to assist community members in keeping in touch with each other.

          I'm not sure what tomie was getting at, but I don't think he was saying that virtual communities could replace physical ones. I think he was only saying that in the past it has sometimes been difficult for people to find and connect with people that share their goals or interests. So community formation is a "tools issue" in that we require better tools to form stronger communities, and social media tools can help. I agree; many people I know have started using Twitter, and often they'll meet people in the same city who share their interests, and then coordinate physical meet-ups (also using services like Meetup.com). These kinds of gatherings can sometimes result in the forming of neighborhood associations or clubs and groups like NetSquared and Jelly.

          Of course, that's not to say that our communities aren't antiquated or that there isn't a better community waiting to be designed. I, personally, feel that there's a lot more to be improved than just our communication tools. So it's still a "design issue."

        • Jack D. Logan Jack D. Logan
          6 months ago


          Not all of our geographic communities are failing. No virtual community will EVER replace a physical community - period.

          Virtual communities are, however, gaining momentum and allowing flex-time communication, sharing, and conversation, but it's far from the real thing.

    • . .•∞º˙ . .•∞º˙
      7 months ago


      By intentional communities, are you implying that individuals selectively choose to associate, as in a neighborhood? If so, I believe the more accurate term might be accidental communities.

      People move into a neighborhood not because of their neighbors, but because of what that neighborhood offers. Is it close to school? Close to work? Low crime/safe area? People also choose a neighborhood because they like the house, it suits their needs for size and budget, and since a home is probably the single largest purchase most people will make in their lives, their home needs to speak to their values and aesthetics. Who the neighbors are and if you can actually get along with them are secondary, and in many cases, simply hit-or-miss. Aside from the detractive value of a car on blocks in the yard next door to a potential home in the neighborhood of choice, your neighbor may become your best friend, or your worst enemy, but that is not part of the initial selection criteria when choosing a home.

      These Accidental Communities really aren't very cohesive, since the only thing that members share is a common boundary between their properties. Even when "planned" with places like Levittown, the sense of community is very loose, and undefined--the community exists, but is not based on any set of shared values or common vision--it's just cheap housing, developed in response to the rapid return of Veterans after World War II.

      I think a more realistic view of an intentional community would be one based on religious values--what are your faiths and beliefs, and can you locate a religious group--a church--that falls in line with those values. In that sense, I believe that an intentional community such as this is highly functional, and does exhibit a great deal of long-term success.

      Case in point. My family belonged to a church when I was a kid. I was raised under a traditional New England Protestant, Anglican Church--very formal, very traditional, very old fashioned. And also a very vibrant part of the community. Many of the original towns on the Eastern Seaboard began as religious communities, starting with the Puritans and expanding out from there. Most have grown far beyond their initial boundaries and social limitations, but the essence of that quaint New England community can still be found.

      The only thing with our church was, we didn't live next door. And actually, none of our neighbors went to that particular Church--most of the townspeople were Hebrew or Catholic--so in terms of living within and associating closely with other members of that Church, we somewhat bypassed our local "neighborhood" to be with our Church community.

      I have since relocated, and spent several years in my new 'neighborhood' looking for another Community that I would feel comfortable with, and oddly enough, have found a new Church, that also includes a great deal of my actual neighbors as members. As a matter of fact, our particular Community has grown from fewer than 90 original members, to over 1200 today, in a very short period of time. Obviously, they have a working formula for building a community, and a successful long-term existence--the roots of this particular church community go back more than 300 years and extend back another 2000 or so.

      So I would think that the answer is, YES, there are successful models for intentional communities, you simply have to look in the right places.
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

      • Nova Spivack Nova Spivack
        7 months ago


        It would be interesting to hear some of the principles that have made your Church community thrive. Could they be abstracted as design principles for other kinds of communities (perhaps even for non-religious communities too?)
        Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

        • . .•∞º˙ . .•∞º˙
          7 months ago


          Well, I think you've actually listed several good ones in you're second draft above. (I don't want to get Evangelical, as I believe that one's faith is one's own so please accept the following without prejudice), Some of the other elements that might be considered design principles:

          Belonging--being accepted by the group and the group being open to accept, a form of welcoming.

          Purpose--our church has several, as defined by our mission statement: "Our mission is to be the body of Christ in our community through worship, education, fellowship and service."

          Safety--people have gathered together as communities for millennia for protection. Protection from the dark, protection from evil, protection from the wild, protection from enemies, etc.

          Sharing the good--churches in general are always very quick to help, or offer help to others. And not necessarily to draw in more members, but to act as we have been taught by extending ourselves and offering what we can to those who lack.

          A place for answers--perhaps not answers alone, but a place to share questions and then seek answers together. (Our minister is very good at this and I invite any who wish to, to experience some of his questions and answers.)
          Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • scott newell scott newell
      7 months ago


      Community is at the heart of civilization. Without a strong sense of it, civilization begin it's inevitable decline. The anomie and social isolation most people in the West feel today is a result of urbanization and mass culture of the rise of industrial civilization. Social media is wonderful in interconnecting us to the virtual world, but as noted in your article, we still need a true local community to realize our full potential for self-actualization. If we do not find this, realize this elemental human need for belonging, we will continue to decline both psychologically, and as a nation.

    • Howard Shippin Howard Shippin
      7 months ago


      That's a very nice and timely set of reflections on a subject which is really crucial for our era. M. Scott Peck pointed this out a few years ago in A Different Drum - Community Making and Peace (see Wikipedia article). I have spent most of my adult life in intentional communities.

      Since 1984, I've lived in Wahat al-Salam ~ Neve Shalom, a village of Palestinians and Jews in Israel / Palestine. It's a fairly loose community model, and is based upon diversity. It doesn't expect to be utopian. There is no shared religion, ideology or political agenda. Individuals remail true to their separate national and religious identities, and tend to disagree on many things. However, the community does provide a singular model of long-term equal coexistence between two peoples that are otherwise engaged in a long and bitter regional conflict. Probably the gel that holds our community together are its joint endeavors and the sense of working together for a better society. The children from the village attend a binational kindergarten and primary school. About a third of the adults are employed by the village (usually in its educational institutions) and the rest commute outside to normal jobs. Participation in community functions is completely voluntary.

      Wahat al-Salam - Neve Shalom may be an extreme example of heterogeneity. However, every close community grapples with serious challenges thrown up when human beings try to participate together in a more intense way than they ordinarily do in urban societies. Relationships are often strained by internal politics and the complexity that results when dealing with one's neighbors in multiple roles. Despite everything, even an imperfect community may be preferable to the complete absence of community found in modern urban society, where it is so easy to turn a cold shoulder to neighbors and live in total disregard of the environment.

      The alienation found in modern society needs to be tackled through creative community building. Religious congregations, yoga groups, clubs and interest groups, all attempt to provide this. Participation in community building leads to the acquisition of social skills that are important both to individuals and to society as a whole. The more we are challenged, the more we learn. In modern multi-ethnic, multi-religious societies, it is especially important for us to learn to relate closely with people who are different from ourselves. It is therefore necessary that our group affiliations should not be insular or isolating.
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • Javed Alam Javed Alam
      7 months ago


      I am not sure if intention alone is sufficient to hold a community together.

      Intention may lead to action. It is the start but a community also have to support its members emotional and motivational needs. In fact the two are very closely tied, grossly understood and very hard to align in a communitarian interest.
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio
      7 months ago


      Nova, Tomie and Scott,

      One simple question to Nova: Was not "cheap air travel" based on cheap energy and expensive information?

      One approach to fight complexity in support to the idea of designing communities:

      Have you looked at "The Leader as Designer" in Peter Senge's "The Ffth Discipline"?

      Is the alternative Fifth Discipline's approach useful " to make a successful, sustainable, healthy community."?

      Senge understand now that Deming approach in the book “The New Economics: for industry, government, education” is essentially the same of The Fifth Discipline. Deming argues:

      If economists understood the theory of a system, and the role of cooperation in optimization, they would no longer teach and preach salvation through adversarial competition. They would, instead, lead us into the best plan for a system, in which everybody would come out ahead.” However, Deming explains that “[C]ompetition should be directed towards expansion of the market and to meet needs not yet served".

      • Nova Spivack Nova Spivack
        7 months ago


        So if I read you correctly, you are suggesting that competition is damaging to community, and cooperation is a better model -- unless cooperation is used to find new opportunities. The problem I see with this is that without some measure of BOTH cooperation and competition you don't get evolution.

        • Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio
          7 months ago


          Yes I suggested that competition is damaging to community. But, I suggested much more, such as looking into Deming and Senge's work, not to reinvent the wheel. Deming claimed that the prevailing system of management is destroying... (He did not actually said is as this) community. I think he said is destroying our people. Instead, Deming suggested the System of Profound Knowledge (SPK). I strongly suggest SPK should be considered at in the effort to understand the damage of excessive competition.

          From a systemic point of view, I believe that the SPK is the key to get global communities into a much higher plateau, that what we are experiencing . The balance between regulation and markets is what should be aimed at. That is the measure in which BOTH cooperation and competition work out to get evolution. That balance should help include people at the Bottom of the Pyramid in the Global Community 2.0, as Joe says.

    • steveo steveo
      7 months ago


      Hey Nova, great subject to be putting out there for discussion.

      Some notions regarding the requirements for designing a community:

      1) Educate around the fact that community is needed.

      Although its a form of physiological sustenance that benefits all, the need is vague (probably clouded by modern society's priority to make money) We all need to be clearly aware that we need to work to develop and maintain our communities, and be open to those who want to be included, even if they have some views that are not always in sync with ours.

      2) Identify and highlight areas where community members need to cooperate and rely on each other.

      In less developed societies, where care services are not as readily available, its more common for community members to rely on each other to mind kids, look-out for elderly relatives, provide meals in times of need etc. Adhering to a code of connectedness and trust is important if you want 'in' on these group benefits. Modern conveniences: crèches, fast food, food to-go, electronic systems for monitoring the health of the elderly etc. have reduced the need for for people to rely on each other, and community participation. The modern conveniences won't go away, but community needs around schools, the local environment, infrastructure etc. will persist.

      3) Create a culture in your community that understands money

      As the Beatles song claims "...money can't buy me love." People with money tend to build bigger walls and gates around their houses. Money presents a feeling of having to neither rely on, nor deal with their community so much. Its often the folks in the Penthouses that are on the high doses of Prozac though.

      4) Walking and Public Transport

      Following of from your point regarding proximity - in the suburbs people tend to live close together, but its harder to be really in touch with what's going on we if people spend a good chunk of their lives in the bubble of a car. When people walk, or take public transportation, they are more likely to have enriching interactions with other members of their community, and meet people by chance.

      5) You don't have to love everyone.

      Whenever a group of people get together, there are times when it will become dysfunctional. Everyone is not going to get along with everyone all the time, and there are times when people will need to measure the dosage of interaction with others, but the key is maintaining the community and not running away if there are petty differences.

      6) Embrace community organizers.

      A small group of activists that can infuse unity and participation among many. These activists need to be enabled and encouraged. I know of one former community organizer who is shaping up to be a pretty good president.
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • joey1058 joey1058
      7 months ago


      Redesigning community has been tackled from every possible perspective since the concept of urban sprawl was recognized. These ideas aren't new. On a planet that is increasing it's human growth exponentially, we are no longer looking at concepts of nationalists. We are indeed thinking community on a global scale. "Build it and they will come" fits only in a niche. That thinking is what helped to contribute to urban sprawl. As a wired world, those that are able to seek what they wish will transplant themselves to the locations they need for the best individual opportunities. The new concepts here are now those that are not able to transplant themselves can still participate in geographical communities. And in doing so, import resources from the distant geographical location to the local geographical location. Community "2.0" needs to embrace globally, in my opinion. Physical location only applies to tourism now.

    • . .•∞º˙ . .•∞º˙
      7 months ago


      Side Note: Interesting article today about the ongoing success of Trappist Monk business operations to sustain their community...http://www.twine.com/item/126z7znvj-1kk/business-secrets-of-the-trappists-part-1-forbes-com?sid= Some good lessons/design principles here as well:

      Service and Selflessness

      Secret 1: Mission

      Secret 2: Selflessness

      Secret 3: Commitment to Excellence

      Secret 4: Ethical Standards

      Secret 5: Faith

      Secret 6: Trust

      Secret 7: Living the Life
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • Dicky Adams
      7 months ago


      Most of what you describe was attempted by Soviet Russia (no I am not shouting "Commie!" at you) and it failed. Hard, directed, top down design doesnt work. the UK has many "new towns" that at best are bearable places to live. Online most communities ultimately fail because they are designed and largely unadaptive. By now MySpace should be a completely different beast to what it started out as because it's users are different and their needs have evolved, but it isn't so it is supplanted and will wither. There are always rules, hierarchies and privelege in communities that emerge naturally. I think emergence is the key point. You talk design, I would talk conditions and emergence, adaptation and eveolution.

    • Rick Rick
      7 months ago


      So, I would suggest that the commenters on this thread look into christopher alexander's work -- on the pattern language of architecture. he has been working for a long time on how to design communities that are able to adapt, grow, and serve their users. as for the dichotomy between cooperation, and community -- as you said, in general both are necessary. but I think the "community" is basically a backdrop of cooperation within which competition can meaningfully take place. for instance, competition between communities to see who can offer the most tax breaks for industries to locate is destructive -- of community, labor solidarity, and environmental standards. On the other hand, competition between communities to offer the best education to their residents is A Good Thing.

    • macbraughton macbraughton
      7 months ago


      In your post, Nova, you bring up the idea that making better communities is primarily a design problem. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but this sounds a lot like Buckminster Fuller, who was writing about this stuff back in the 60's and 70's. His ideas in regards to the issues of community and sustainable living are still relevant and fresh and even radical almost fifty years later. His seminal work on this is Critical Path, and although Bucky kinda speaks his own language sometimes it is worth checking out.

      There is already a lot of discussion related to this idea out there, and I'm sure others could point to it, but I think that it is so relevant for all of us to speak up because these issues haven't gone away, it is just becoming more and more urgent that we find solutions.

      I've been thinking lately about how the social order of Christianity became prominent in Europe basically because of the institutional breakdown of the Roman Empire. Similar circumstances but on a smaller scale also set the stage for the rise of Islam among the Arabs. It is largely overlooked that religious movements find their power in meeting societal needs (or at least convincing people that they do). Although on an individual level people tend to idealize their religious views, in the meta perspective there is some utilitarian aspect at work that helps sustain and spread the religion otherwise it would just die out if it did not at least be perceived to do anyone any good.

      This is not to endorse the religious worldview necessarily, but we have to acknowledge it nonetheless, especially when talking about the future, because some of the greatest advocates and greatest adversaries of change throughout history have been people who were at least influenced by religion. The prominent world religions of our time are all basically different visions of a future universal society. Specific details and some values vary from one to another, but they are mostly espousing the same things. The big problem is that they too are competing with one another for people's headspace and most attempts to bring them together have been greeted with skepticism at best and apathy at worst.

      An old idea that re-emerged and mutated in twentieth century popular culture was the idea of a New Age. There are tons of speculative and suspect books out there with grandiose claims about the nature of this long-term shift in human society, but at its root is the idea that there are cycles that go beyond our individual lifespans. Way beyond, and the idea behind "dawning of the age of Aquarius" is also rooted in a fact called the precession of the equinoxes which has to do with a 26,000 year cycle related to the wobble of the earth on its axis.

      Geological evidence suggests that humans have been evolving on earth for 2 million years or so. This means that as a species we have gone through at least 76 of these cycles. "This has all happened before and this will all happen again". If this isn't the first time you've heard this quote lately it's because this stuff is definitely on the collective mind of humanity right now!

      We are now a global civilization on a scale never seen before. We are facing the same problems that we have always faced but on a more massive scale because there are more of us alive at one time than there has ever been. We have better tools than our ancestors, but also more destructive weapons. There are many possible futures but the biggest obstacles for community building are all of the barriers that we have erected in pursuit of individual gain. In finding a solution I'm not talking about loosing our individuality but about learning to be individuals together. Words are not that great for communicating these ideas, so the greatest advocates of this new global community of individuals so far have been filmmakers and musicians. I think as the internet continues to grow and evolve there will be more and more room for these creative people to express themselves and less room for those purely seeking personal gain to exploit them.

      The greatest single thing we can do as individuals to create a better society for the future is decide that it is something worth doing. As more of us make that decision as individuals and choose to have community and to work together, we will be fulfilling the very meaning of community. It is one of those wonderful positive feedback loops. A self-fulfilling prophecy in the most benign sense possible.

    • laodan laodan
      7 months ago


      Nova Spivek diagnoses:
      - Loneliness, social isolation, and social fragmentation are huge and growing problems
      - Our present communities are not working and most are breaking down or stagnating.

      Scott Newell observes that "Community is at the heart of civilization. Without a strong sense of it, civilization begin it's inevitable decline".

      I personally believe that all living species are governed by a set of immutable rules:
      - without a community the individual can't reproduce and dies out.
      - without a dose of individualism the community is bound to stagnate and then to collapse.

      The balance of the tension between those two polarities within all living species seems to act as the ticking clock on their evolutionary roads.

      From humanity's long haul history we observe that societal forms go hand in hand with the sharing by the individual atoms of a common view about reality (worldview).
      - animism within tribes over tens of thousands of years.
      - religion and/or philosophies within kingdoms and empires over a few thousand years.
      - modernity within nation states over a few hundred years.
      Do you observe, as I do, how one zero is taken away from the length of any successive societal epoch?

      Animism, religions and traditional philosophies balanced the tension between the two polarities (societies / individuals). Modernity, in stark contrast, favors the individual over the community. This was true in the time of the merchants and "discoverers" fighting the edicts and interdictions of Christianity and this is true today in the fight of Western modernity against the edicts and interdictions of Islam or in the fight of Chinese modernity against the edicts and interdictions of Tibetan Buddhism.

      Force is to observe that anywhere the idolatry of individualism has rooted this has led to the demise of the religions / philosophies that were shared by the individuals. Individualism is a powerful force indeed. In testament to this force that was perceived as destructive religions and traditional philosophies anywhere on earth devised the same kind of answers:
      - material possessions don't bestow happiness nor contentment
      - happiness and contentment result from the sharing of the accepted worldview among all the individuals of any given time.

      Modernity departed from this idea to balance the tension between individuals (atoms) and community (grouping) and favored individual enterprise over societal cohesion. More precisely it subordinated social cohesion to the individual enterprise of its triumphing entrepreneurs who in the process of their accumulation of capital gained the levers of powers within their societies.

      Practiced extremely successfully over less than two centuries, during high modernity, this process unfolds today in late modernity when we observe two concomitant forces at work:
      - ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION: Financialization, Outsourcing, Institutional lag, Eradication of all particularisms and traditions (languages, belief systems,..., etc.)
      - SIDE-EFFECTS OF MODERNITY, a converging set of Crises:
      + Environmental Chaos: Climate Change, loss of bio-diversity, poisoning of land, water and air, etc.
      + Resource Collapse: Oil. Water. Topsoil. Fisheries. Seeds. Arable land. Minerals. Copper. Food, etc.
      + Societal Atomization: Loneliness, social isolation, and social fragmentation acting as the symptoms of a grave societal malady. Cause: the loss of a commonly shared worldview is thinning the societal glue to the point of societal atomization.

      Nova's "Question: Can We Design The Next-Evolution of Community?" has to be understood and answered in this particular context.

      My personal take is that "The Next-Evolution of Community" is out of our hands. It will result as a new realignment or balance of the near infinite load of factors interacting in the "whole earth ensemble" or "whole earth system": climate, resources, species, humanity, etc. This in no way implies any determinism. We are faced with many possible outcomes.
      Our dreams and visions of a better tomorrow will eventually bring us to act as a nano-push on the unfolding balance between those many possibles.
      "I believe that what we do today depends on our image of the future, rather than the future depending on what we do today. We build our equations by our actions. These equations, and the future they represent, are not written in nature. In other words, time becomes construction. Of course, we have some conditions that determine limits of the future but within these limits are many, many possibilities. Therefore, since no deterministic prediction is likely to be valid, visions of the future--utopian visions--play a very important role in present conduct." (quote of Ilya Prigogine from an interview by NPq of Fall 2004 titled "Beyond Being and Becoming")

    • haig
      7 months ago


      I would love to see an intentional community that experiments with rational-based governance systems and sustainable economics, but unfortunately, the current powers that be hold a monopoly in those areas and do not want to see any disruptive innovations.

      Intentional communities within national borders are limited to basically hippy communes or nudist colonies or similar things. Try creating a new system of economic organization (alternative currencies, banking, ..) or ways of governing (futarchies, ...) and see what happens.

      Of interest, you may check this out: http://www.seasteading.org/
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • edmittance edmittance
      7 months ago


      Interesting post - thank you :)

      I have been in and around online and physical communities for some time now and appreciate the thought you're putting in here.

      Have you heard of the Transition Network (http://www.transitiontowns.org)?

      They are self-starting bottom up groups of people all over the UK, USA, AUS, NZ and more who are joining up with their neighbours (the local aspect is absolutely vital) to work together on reducing their neighbourhoods' dependence (and use) of oil in repsonse to peak oil and all that brings, and minimise their environmental impact by reducing CO2 emissions.

      With so many initiatives blossoming all over the place, establishing any formula to define these communities would bring much trouble - they all have different contexts and characters and issues etc. They do all share an intent however, and focus on producing measureable change (like CO2 reduction, resilience indicators etc.).
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • Cait Hurley
      7 months ago


      There's something very zeigeisty going on here. I think alot of people are beginning to think along the same lines.

      I was thinking the day befoer yesterday about how I could achieve something solid to support a "neighbours" community actually working, and providing each other services. The model I always bear in mind is 'barn-raising'. So I was thinking:

      -Hold a neighbours party, not for the whole street, if it's a long one, but for eg: your immediate 5, and the 5 opposite.
      -At the party, ask them all to put down their various skills they'd be willing to exchange and be part of a support network to provide on a good old paper form, not an internet thing
      -Service examples: pet feeding / sitting for vacations; watering the garden / keeping the garden ticking over for vacations; generalised gardening - particularly for older people annnnd the big ultra positive one I think - organised redecorating for older people / or frankly, everyone. this follows the barn raising idea - if you took out a weekend, with 20 volunteers, you could easily decorate 2 peoples' places from top to bottom. What a fantastic, communal and fun thing to do.

      How to translate that to online? My suggestion would be not to reinvent the wheel, but utilise the point that so many, many people are now on Facebook. Create a Facebook app / with a similar external presence that allows motivated local community individuals to fond those people closest to them geographically *or* simply create a shell which they can populate as they recruit locals, which allows them to administrate?

      Problem to overcome: in poorer neighbourhoods / rural neighbourhoods many people simply do not have internet or broadband access. So there has to be a real world mirror in organisational terms to allow total inclusivity.

      ...or, you know. Something along those lines ;) Anyway. I'm going to see if my neighbours party has legs and let you know!

      C.
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • Martin Kloos
      6 months ago


      Interesting reflection!

      what I'm wondering: will the aforementioned design principles be sufficient to design sustainable communities or is there something else, within the communities that must be designed for in order for it to work? And isn't the fact that we are not designing (enough) for the communities itself while they're running one of the main factors why they fail?

      I believe so, since (specifically in online environments) it's not so that technology or environment make communities a success but the behaviour and attitudes of people (logically). Why is one community an instant success and another, running on the same (technology), a failure? I've taken an communities of practice approach in my masters thesis on communities of practices in online social environments (http://www.martinkloos.nl/thesis-M.Kloos.pdf) that somehow tries to dive into this.

      Another interesting to approach is research on sociality being conducted at the University of Amsterdam. They stress that the design for sociality question is the real question to be answered in social environments. Some interesting reference on this:
      * an award winning paper: http://primavera.feb.uva.nl/PDFdocs/2008-01.pdf
      * interesting slideshare presentation on sociality (some english slides explain the most interesting parts starting at slide 22): http://www.slideshare.net/renejansen/de-passie-van-winkwaves
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • Cliff Gerrish Cliff Gerrish
      6 months ago


      B.F. Skinner and Walden II.

    • nathan seckinger
      6 months ago


      A great start would be online forums and blogs that don't force you to sign up for an account every time you want to comment on an interesting thread. Are you listening Twine?

      Just sayin'.

      Anyway this is a really fascinating conversation. Much of what I'm reading here echoes ideas I've been working on for last 15 years or so, and many people seem to have come to similar conclusions. I'd like to throw in a few of my own suggestions for design principles.

      0. First and foremost, Values over Plans. The number one reason why institutions fail is because the members try to impose theoretical policy rather than acting spontaneously from a shared moral perspective. I've numbered this 0 rather than 1 because this is the basic framework that has to undergird everything else I'm about to say.

      1. Reflexive Skeptical Empiricism. By this I mean that the values of the community must be based on a direct, first-person encounter with life experience, rather than a theory or ideology. The skeptical part of this refers to the fact that often we think we are being unbiased and empirical when we're not. Humans tend to naturalize their assumptions and biases--to see them as basic and obvious and therefore unworthy of examination. A good example of this is the current North American battle raging over gender--until 20 years ago few people (Simone de Beauvoir being a major exception) bothered even to ask whether there are only two genders. Since then it has become obvious to researchers that there are dozens, and that our binary notions of male and female are very local to middle class, post-Christian modernity--not universal at all, in fact. Yet not everyone is ready even to grasp this idea, let alone admit it to be true, so the battles over feminism, queer rights, and sexuality politics rage on for the time being. A skeptical empiricism is one that remains always already on the lookout for naturalized biases--digging up hidden assumptions and taken-for-granted notions and exposing them for the untested expectations that they are. Now the "reflexive" part is extremely important here. One's skepticism must not be limited merely to the beliefs, attitudes and behavious of others--this is disastrous wherever it occurs because it inevitably leads to a notion of moral superiority. We have recently seen this with the failures of natural science and critical theory—speculative hypotheses such as atheism, marxian economics and evolutionary natural selection have been paraded in the media as though they were self-evident absolutes rather than untestable good guesses.
      Rather, one must make one's own attitudes the primary target for skepticism. To paraphrase the Nazarene, pull the log out of your own eye before you try to pluck the dust speck from someone else's.

      2. Covenantal morality. By this I mean an honour code based on the dignity and absolute worth of oath-taking and promise-keeping. One’s personal orientation must be based on a sense of commitment to an Other. Where appropriate, that Other may or may not need to be a divine entity or entities, but it any case it must first of all include one’s neighbours, and whatever one believes about the Divine, those beliefs must never be allowed to trump the sacredness of the trust relationship between actual, living humans. Without this sense of a duty to other people, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of your principles are, because it will be impossible to enact them. This is the key point. People often talk about how morality is necessary because it is somehow important in itself. That’s not what I’m saying here (although I’m not disputing the claim either.) What I’m saying is that we need a sense of duty in order to implement the rest of our principles—without an honour code, rules are unfulfillable.

      3. Strict elitist filtering. This is the one that people always object to. But remember: Values over Plans. People don’t like elitism because it grates on their sense of fair justice and equality. But a radical empiricism will reveal that, in our consistent experience, very few people are ready for the power and responsibility of complete service to their community. People that are still acting out of self interest must be screened out, because otherwise they will sabotage the system with their own narcissistic ideals and aspirations. Every voluntary association I have been involved with collapsed within a couple of years if it failed to screen out both narcissists and ideologues.

      4. Libertarian anarchy. This is the point of the filtering. People need to work hard to prove that they are sufficiently dutiful in order to earn their way into the community, but, once in, they ought to be subject to as few rules as possible. The idea here is NOT the kind of libertarianism promoted by fiscal conservatives and Blue Anarchists, where freedom is the main thing and all that matters, no matter what the cost. That kind of thinking would already be screened out on the grounds that it is neither reflexively skeptical nor duty-bound. Rather, the idea is that moral decisions need to be guided by a personal sense of commitment rather than an externally imposed law. If we need religious scriptures, judges, and police to know how to be nice, then it is already too late, because all of those require human interpretation in order to work. By handing responsibility for our actions over to an external authority we are dodging a responsibility that ultimately ends up in our lap anyway. As Gibran put it, no prison will ever make the innocent feel guilty, nor the guilty feel innocent. So laws are pointless. What’s needed is moral people. Elitist filtering ensures that those entrusted with such authority will not abuse it.

      5. Good policy. No laws does not mean no rules. It just means that the rules must be followed voluntarily rather than coercively. On the contrary, without good, thorough rules, the system is likely to collapse because people cannot solve all the problems of an entire infrastructure all at once. Ongoing research, dialogue, and contemplation needs to go into the development of a very thorough and comprehensive policy code so that people have guidelines to fall back on when they are unsure, confused, or in a hurry. But policy is different than law in that one has the option to violate it when appropriate. People obey policies because they are reliable, not because they are forced to comply.

      6. Egalitarian meritocracy. By this I mean that people earn authority, or sway in the community, by virtue of their good track record. Quakers refer to this as “seasoned weightiness.” Being seasoned means that one has sat with a problem for a long time, and being weighty means that one has consistently expressed only clear and profound opinions on the matter. This kind of authority is voluntarily assigned by the community out of respect for one’s skill and worthiness, rather than because of the station one happens to be born into or hired for. It is egalitarian because this kind of authority is not binding over those who disagree with it, the way that, say, the authority of a boss or a judge is binding. In egalitarian meritocracy one is always free not to obey the authority figure. But one just doesn’t, because one admires the person so much.

      7. Clear disciplinary procedures. Most egalitarian associations and intentional communities fail because they don’t have any kind of clear plan about what to do with someone who just won’t play fair. No matter how well designed the system is, there will always be members who decide that they don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else. Elitist filtering will reduce this problem but not eliminate it completely. And libertarian anarchy coupled with egalitarianism make for a disastrous combination when it comes to this problem. With no binding laws and no one with the authority to impose discipline, miscreants are expected to discipline themselves—a feat that they have already shown themselves unwilling or unable to do. Thus the community must have extremely clear policy with extremely clear and unambiguous definitions of what constitutes violation and what its consequences are. This must include opportunities for appeal, and some body must be given the authority to make a final decision. This decision ought to be guided by the ideal of loving wisdom rather than obedience to legal precedent.

      8. Relaxed, not hysterical ideals. A healthy community does not not spend its time preparing for—or attempting to ward off—some impending catastrophe, whether that be a market crash, an environmental catastrophe, a Christian Apocalypse, or a Muslim Day of Reckoning. Belief in such systemic failures is extremely dangerous to the mental health of a community because it relies on paranoid and untestable speculations. This kind of panic quickly becomes a justification for the suspension of civil liberties and rational discourse because people begin to believe that there just isn’t time to be nice—that the crisis is too severe to waste time on patient investigation. Furthermore there is never any way to disprove the theory, so it never goes away and the people stay in a perpetual state of crisis with a consequent erosion of civil discourse. Unfortunately most of the talk about intentional community that we hear today is motivated by this sort of dystopian idealism; we are told that we are “killing our environment”—whatever that means—or that “our families and communities are in crisis.” None of these claims stand up against reflexive skeptical empiricism—they turn out merely to be media memes that spread like fire because nobody knows what the absence of such crises would look like. I would submit, rather, that the North American middle class is obsessed with fixing things—a fallout from our Protestant missionary heritage—and that we cannot motivate ourselves to make good, sustainable decisions without acting out of social panic.
      Well, these are some basic parameters that I would suggest as a starting point. Obviously the list is not exhaustive and many of the other comments made on this page are also good to keep in mind. Also bear in mind that some of these values, if taken independently, could be quite disastrous. The list is intended to function as a set, with each value checking and balancing all the others.

    • Ilana Moss Ilana Moss
      6 months ago


      Human beings, like all living things, respond to the environment in which we live.

      Healthy communities form naturally wherever the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs of people are being met.

      We have enough scientific evidence now to understand and meet those needs. Now, all we need is the desire, motivation, and will to create environments where people and communities will naturally grow and thrive.

    • Frank Stone
      6 months ago


      While researching something interesting, Google led me to the frothy shores of this internet backwater called Twine and, unfortunately for me, I began to read this article. At first I thought, "Aw, how cute -- they're designing a new community for themselves." Then you went off the road and into the weeds. Scary stuff, man.

      Ever heard of "Design for Utopia" by Charles Fourier (the other Fourier)? You can look to it as a forebear of your folly.

      Your exercise, to design community rationally, practices a methodology devoid of human character and reasoning, dependent on machine-like inference for blasting through a universe of uncertainty to an unknowable destination whose edifice presents a facade of scientific operational value but dubious truth.

      You describe our world today so that we can design practically: "a world of rapid transit, economic and social mobility, urban sprawls, cultural and ethnic diversity, cheap air travel, declining birth rates, the 24-7 work week, the Internet, and the globally interdependent economy." Cripes! That's not the world I live in.

      Rapid transit: Universally dismal, failing rapid transit systems throughout the world.

      Economic and social mobility: If interminable and crushing booms and busts qualify as mobility, you've got a point.

      Urban sprawls: Yes, good. Please design with a goal of eliminating urban sprawl. Go vertical. Tower cities. Magnetic elevators.

      Cultural and ethnic diversity: Your intentional communities of relatively small size, despite your good intentions, work toward a white-washing of cultural and ethnic diversity. Culture and diversity do not live in your efficient, correct and optimized community. Never will. It's a contradiction.

      Cheap air travel: For whom? I'll let you figure that one out.

      Declining birth rates: You're not describing the world. You're describing your utopian future.

      24-7 work week: Are you one of the dudes I see texting while walking down the sidewalk?

      The Internet: This may come as a shock, but the internet has nothing to do with community. "Geographic community" is redundant.

      Globally interdependent economy: Not for long.

      Shared intention. You list this as a requirement but lack a clear intention in designing the community itself. I'm afraid you're designing a community because you have the technology to make it better, stronger, faster.

      You jump into solving this problem as if community can be isolated and addressed as a discrete problem. If you ignore the staggering number of factors that comprise community, which encompass the totality of civilization itself, you're committing an intellectual act equivalent to jerking off in public. Too bad for you, this messy world gums up the the works in methods you employ.

      You touch on the subject of personality cults, the paradox of leadership, corruption. After a few words of treatment on this issue central to notions of community, without establishing any foundation for discourse, you charge on with your vague design principles. I shouldn't be surprised, since this is how we end up here.

      A notice to all prospective community designers: before declaring the design of your first Utopia a success, please address energy scarcity and limits to growth. Despite expectations, even your community must adhere to physical and ecological principles. All that great stuff you call progress is predicated on cheap energy. On top of that, your community needs to live in the world. Only design in a vacuum if you intend to deploy into a vacuum.

      You suggest freedom of expression as a necessity because, without it, subversion and revolution will break out? Are you kidding? Sounds similar in purpose to a corporate charter to provide community service because it keeps the natives from getting uppity. Study revolutionary theory and you'll find that uprisings usually occur when people aren't getting the stuff they expected. The truly oppressed tend to stay that way, and we in the dominant nations take great advantage of that. Oppressed people, incidentally, don't tend to design communities of the future -- that's the domain of a privileged class.

      Quakers, Shakers and Amish. Endangered groups, these plain people. But rather than scrutinizing the external forces playing on these groups, and possibly integrating those concerns into your design, you question their success as a form. Further, you cite propagation and growth as metrics for success. Please! Try to avoid measuring success in corporatist and viral terms. The fact that these communities have survived at all points to their success. Examine their views on technology and really try to learn something. Please.

      You discuss inter-community proximity in terms of travel and other non-essential factors, fully neglecting trade. If your community does away with trade as a relic of history, please indicate by checking here: [ ]. You gonna twitter those solar panels from the factory in Germany to your intentional community?

      I like your idea of itinerant workers, only because it occurs anyway. It's been happening for years in subjugated parts of the world (who built dream-city Dubai?). It's beginning to happen in your country, too. Read some history of the Great Depression. Don't expect these people to wear smiles on their faces very often.

      I question your feint on gathering lessons from the Kibbutzim in light of proximal encyclopedic information. I thought you floated within an information cloud 24-7. Your intellectual laziness illustrates an eviscerated thought process, not only a dearth of curiosity but a lack of imagination. You're more interested in applying your methods than forging new connections and integrating research.

      It's amusing that you apply systems design principles as goals for your community. Agility. Resilience. Scalability. Hey -- how do I get some of that in my town? Why not add requirements for performance and cost? Good luck measuring these qualities, since engineering's a bitch without quantifiable information.

      I say that's amusing because it shows you're not even executing your ill-fitted methods effectively.

      Our intellectual heritage finds its rootstock in what we clumsily call myth and magic, the rich and nebulous force that at once defies technique and gives us meaning. Classical ratiocination followed and, through its own methods, proved itself capable of delivering a superior product. Eventually, with refinement of method, we arrive at the scientific form of Galileo, Leibniz, Newton. In this way, we've occluded our innate, non-technical senses to lower and lower levels, to the point where we overlook the most crucial, fundamental details. Our human faculties compromised, we compulsively pound out tools in a foundry we don't understand.

      Think smaller, simpler. Handle complexity not with design but by design. Permaculture. Hey -- what's the rush? Slow down. I'm disappointed that you choose to intentionally design what can only emerge organically from basic principles.

      You steer desultorily close to Technocracy and I find that prospect horrifying. I take an angry tone here because you deserve to be scolded. Go to your room! And no blogging!

      Now it's time to post something about Wolfram|Ego. Then I'll get out of here.
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • Florence Haridan Florence Haridan
      4 months ago


      I am curious about the fact that love and acceptance has not been mentioned. People become part of a communities for emotional reasons. We seek to be accepted, to be valued and to contribute in a meaningful way.

      I bring people together to grow, learn and love themselves and each other. Each and every day we face obstacles that are more easily overcome with the help of a fellow human being. As we come together focusing on shared values creates greater and more focused energy.

      It is in the articulation of shared values that will create trust and overcome adversity. Shared values overcome ego and selfishness and lead the way toward respect and love.

      Love is the essence of community. Love of self, love of others, love of the world. Nothing else matters.

      As a business leader I have experienced the inclusion of love in business is shunned. It is this that I work toward over coming.

      A number of years ago, Tim Sanders, the Creative Director at Google, wrote a book called Love is the Killer App. It is a brilliantly simple view of sharing. Knowledge, networks and love. It is the giving of these that meaningful relationships are built and love expands.

      I could go on and on...I shall save a bit and return soon...

    • Martien van Steenbergen
      4 months ago


      I second the suggestion to developing a comprehensive community pattern language.

      For example, see:
      - http://blog.fen.net/2005/04/09/patterns-of-community-development/
      - http://dreamsongs.com/Files/JiniCommunityPL.pdf
      - http://www.haydenaud.com/UD/CPL.htm

      A (Community) Pattern Language helps us collect and share practical wisdom in a neutral flexible meshwork fit for lay people to use in day to day live.

      My personal take on this is developing a Community Pearl Language using an Semantic Wiki. Pearl rather than Pattern, because a Pattern focuses on a problem while a Pearl inverts the problem into its corresponding wish and focuses on that.

      Succes en plezier,

      Martien.
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine

    • Martien van Steenbergen
      4 months ago


      As for “I wonder how the manage the business side of things while also maintaining their spirituality”: monetary systems have a profound impact on how people behave, especially within (and between) communities. Monetary systems have a profound impact on organization, too.

      From a systemic point of view, there are monetary systems that drive people apart, create competition, war even. Our current monetary system (with compound positive interest and a limited, yet ever growing, amount of money) is such a system. It creates worldwide slavery and burns up all natural resources.

      There are monetary systems, however, that foster community, sharing, mutual help, solidarity, etc. These systems have spirituality and ethics built-in.

      Therefore, design your community monetary system around a set of ecosophic principles. Ecosophy is the practical wisdom of the houseold. These principles include: wealth (for man and nature), abundance and scarcity (balance both of them), complete (make paid for and voluntary activities visible), uniting (select designs that bring people together rather than drive the apart), emergence (foster personal development and talent recognition), creative (every transaction creates something of value for someone else or for nature; making wealth abundant for all), transparent (for an ever growing benefit of the doubt (from microcredit to macrocredit), flowing (make sure money keeps flowing; money equals energy), sufficient (make sure there is always exactly the right amount of money), fair (so it reflects individual and group contributions in a balanced way; no one has an unfair advantage), reliable (fuel bonafide players while exposing malafide players red-handed), tempering (avoiding extremes), elegant (make protocols open, accessible and comprehensible for all), open (make all technology, rules, implementations, accounts, verification, control open so there is no doubt about reliability and robustness), self-organising and self-healing (include an evolving immune system against attacks and malbehaviour), decentral or distributed (follow the rules of the net, without a center and based on open protocols for maximum cohesiveness and minimal coupling).
      Nova Spivack - My Public Twine
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Nova Spivack

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Calvin Mitchell

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