JUST DO IT (JUST DON’T TALK ABOUT IT)

Hands up who wants to live in a commune? You sir, your hand is clearly down – can I ask why you don’t want to live in peace amongst your fellow humans?

That’s just it. I don’t think it would be peaceful. Squashed together in a freezing cold shack, smelling to high heaven in recycled clothes, and bickering over whether bread is vegan because of the yeast.

What if I told you there was a place where you didn’t have to share your wife? Where you could take a shower twice a day, eat meat, own your own car and not have to hold hands and sing before every meal?

That ain’t no commune, that’s just normal life.

Exactly.

***

Just Do It is a community of six adults who live on a piece of communally owned land near Santa Cruz, California. In the mid 1980s they decided they wanted to find a home, and instead of scrambling to buy individual bedsits in some grey cube of city-land, they pooled their money and bought a couple of acres with a view of the ocean. The intention was to have no intention: they just wanted to live somewhere nice and couldn’t afford to unless they worked together.

The first thing they did was build a house – a house no one was going to live in. The plan was to build a communal living space with a spacious living room, industrially equipped kitchen and a bathroom suite. The house would act as a temporary sleeping space until the other private homes were built. Using 50ft crossbeams salvaged from an old Santa Cruz restaurant, the team drew up a blueprint and got their hands dirty. In fact, all the electrical and plumbing fixtures were also salvaged, and considering they weren’t paying for labour, they estimate the 2600 sq. ft. house cost a mere $20,800 in total. They had to learn how to mix cement, fit windows and raise a tin roof – but they were all young, committed and hungry for a home (and only one of them had a full-time, 40-hour a week job). Once the Big House was liveable, the community helped each couple build themselves a small private home of 435 square feet, which could be extended in the future with funds taken from the couple’s personal income. The private houses had no kitchens and no showers or baths – and they still haven’t.

Thirty years later and the community is going strong. Kids have come and gone. The private homes have been extended and personalised, and the couples still eat dinner together every night. In fact, this was the one ‘rule’ they made as a community – to always eat dinner together. Their belief is that no one likes meetings. Instead, any interpersonal issues or collective property decisions can be brought up nightly over lamb shanks and a glass of Californian red.

At this point, I want to reiterate that Just Do It isn’t an intentional community, and therefore I’d like to defend why I included it in this blog. The community has no aspirations to confront the problems of how the system coerces us to live. That is not to say the individual residents of Just Do It aren’t politically, artistically or morally active, but that the community itself is not. The important thing is that living projects like Just Do It are an easy step away from the trap of individualism which the current mainstream model promotes. Most people would like to live in a beautiful house, eat delicious food, and have money to go on holiday – this form of communal living denies you none of that. But of course there are pros and cons.

One of the emotional benefits of this kind of community became evident when some of the couples decided to have children. While two of the couples decided they wanted kids, one couple did not. Speaking to the childless man of the six, he  revealed how honoured and touched he felt that he could play a central role in the lives of his co-residents’ daughters. It gave him the chance to be a father figure without the responsibility of being an actual father. In name he is no official relation to his co-residents’ daughters, but he is emotionally invested in them. The children themselves benefited from having closer contact with a wider range of adults, and the parents were given more flexibility in work and travel, knowing that their live-in friends were around to watch the kids.

The obvious difficulty with the arrangement is the inflexibility of group ownership. As the residents have all put their time and money into building their home, it would surely be problematic if one couple decided they needed a change and wanted to move. All members of Just Do It have paid occupations in the mainstream world. As is the nature of the market-focussed capitalist system, employment opportunities move in response to where employers can find the cheapest labour. It may be a hassle to relocate from London to Manchester to follow a job with the BBC, but it’s much more tricky if you’re tied into a communal living setting such as Just Do It.

In fact, the project didn’t start with three neat couples. One of the original members was bought out of his share in the early 1990s, for around $25,000. Three other singletons also helped to build the house, but didn’t invest any money for materials. Two of these individuals have stayed closed to Just Do It, and their ‘labour shares’ allow them permanent ‘right to return’ to the property; the third seems to have had a dispute with the couples and is no longer in contact.

The current members are also not without conflict. Recently the community decided to cut down a fir tree which was becoming a fire risk due to its proximity to the Big House. The decision was made while one member was away on business, and when he returned he was not only upset that his favourite tree was gone, but upset he hadn’t been consulted.

Another thing to note is that all the buildings at Just Do It are officially illegal. The community never applied for planning permission, and as far as Santa Cruz county are concerned, the land still holds nothing more than one small Redwood shack. The fact that the site can only be accessed by a private dirt road, and that they’re very friendly with the neighbours, all helps to keep the community go unnoticed. Nevertheless, the residents are all aware that their dream could perish if they made an enemy who decided to turn them in to the authorities, or some unscrupulous blogger wrote about them on the internet … don’t worry, they’re not really called Just Do It.

It may be unsurprising that Just Do It is one of the most successful ‘communities’ that I’ve visited – they’re wealthy, they’re intelligent and their project hasn’t put their own security at risk in the name of a higher cause. Nevertheless, as an avid believer in the mantra that you can’t make other people happy unless you’re happy yourself, I recommend projects like Just Do It as a non-radical step towards a richer life.

In the words of Greg, founding member of Just Do It: ‘The couple is the refuge from the commune and the commune is the refuge from the couple.’

To see a short video on Just Do It, made by the residents, click here

DANIEL AND THE CITY OF ANGELS

‘I want to be able to do the right thing, but I can’t do that without other people’. Smiling and sipping on his pho, Daniel confidently responds to the first question of our informal lunchtime interview: Why do you want to join an intentional community? Daniel is a 24-year-old from San Antonio, Texas who has spent the last two years teaching English in Madrid. He has recently moved to L.A. in the hope of becoming a member of the Los Angeles Eco-Village, a community of around 40 people who have chosen to live together in order to be more environmentally aware and impose a lower ecological footprint.

Daniel became interested in permaculture and sustainable living after his friends launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a greenhouse farming project in Texas. It wasn’t so much the agriculture that hooked him, but the practice in permaculture of ‘stacking functions’, or multi-functioning systems which minimise wastage by turning the unwanted output of one practice into the desirable input of another practice – one of the simplest examples of permaculture is using animal manure to fertilise vegetables. Daniel is also an avid musician, and explains that the environmental messages of his musical heros – such as Radiohead’s Thom Yorke – have influenced his commitment to the cause.

After his two years in Spain, Daniel was ready to move back to his own culture. He chose L.A. for a host of reasons. The first was that he wanted to live in a large and diverse city. He matched this desire with his beliefs that Californians are generally more welcoming and friendly to his worldview than other demographics in the U.S., and that L.A. was in more dire need of environmental activists than the San Francisco bay area. His other reason was that L.A. was the home of the Los Angles Eco-Village (LAEV).

Daniel had stayed in a rural eco-village outside Madrid for two weeks and had asked the residents for their opinion on the LAEV. After watching a few online interviews and documentaries – and speaking to others in the international eco-village network – they gave their seal of approval, affirming that the LAEV looked like the real deal.

Upon arriving in L.A., Daniel had no hesitation in visiting the L.A. eco-village and stating his intentions of joining. He was advised to move slow, and first attend some of the Sunday evening ‘pot luck’ dinners where he could informally get to know some of the residents, and see if they needed any help with any of their projects. When I met Daniel, two months after his arrival in L.A., he was already involved in a collection of projects at the LAEV – including tending the garden, helping a sick resident with some daily chores, and helping one member with his Wednesday afternoon free music lessons, which he gives on the street in front of the main house. Daniel was also about to undergo the first formal step in his initiation process, a open forum group interview in which members of the community ask Daniel questions on his reasons for wanting to join, his long-term life goals, and how he makes an income.

Despite the relative haste with which Daniel has committed to joining the LAEV, his reasoning seems a mature balance between pragmatism and idealism. He admits that paying lower rent will mean he has more time to focus on his music, but he especially wants to use the opportunity to learn more about sustainable living. The LAEV is alive with ecological workshops – e.g. how to manage grey water (semi-polluted water from sinks and showers etc) – documentary film nights, lectures by leading environmentalists and community engagement events. Daniel is aware that by literally surrounding himself with such activities he will stay continually inspired and engaged. His current residence has no opportunity for recycling, the LAEV has many.

Daniel is also aware of one of the undervalued perks of living in an intentional community – travel without travel. By proudly living with a humane intention, and by offering affordable guest accommodation and often a work-share (work for your board and bed) option, eco-villages are magnets for international eccentrics who are also looking to change the world. Even the residents of the most far flung communities seem to get their dose of new ideas and new inspiration through the hundreds of visitors that may stop in throughout the year. Instead of searching through the L.A. Times for exciting events concerning sociology, anthropology and the environment, Daniel merely needs to stroll down to the community dinner and see who’s dropped in for the night.

There are of course downsides to living in the LAEV. The internal politics of any intentional community are fiery at the best of times, but the LAEV perhaps struggles more than some for two reasons. One is that despite its underlying ‘eco-ness’, the members don’t seem to have an exact unifying intention. Individuals seem to have chosen to live there for a wider variety of reasons than other communities I’ve visited, which makes developing consensus on practical issues a slightly harder task. Two is that the LAEV is in a city. The continuous reminder that the have-nots of the world are suffering – homeless crack addicts are a regular feature of the LAEV neighbourhood – can seed despondency towards the values which the community shares: it’s difficult to keep focused on recycling when the hungry and mad are sleeping on your front porch. The city is also alluring, aggravating, enthralling and exhausting – your favourite band is playing but it costs $50, whirring sirens are only nulled by the roar of helicopters, and cycling to work requires super-human awareness to navigate the eternal 5-lane traffic.

The ideas in the above paragraph are my own reflections, and I didn’t discuss them in detail with Daniel. Hopefully the next time I see him he will be able to tell me if and how these negatives have influenced his life at the LAEV. For now, I’ll end this post with a story from Daniel that is perfect for understanding the benefits of community – and how community can be the antidote of mind-frazzling city life.

In his first few weeks in L.A., Daniel was cycling to visit the L.A. Eco-Village and was hit by a car. After the driver attempted to bribe him with a $100 bill, Daniel stumbled away and walked his bike to his destination. While he waited for a community members’ meeting to finish, one of the other residents realised he was in pain and offered to drive him to the hospital. When Daniel returned to the LAEV and told his story, the community rose up to help. Being big into bike advocacy, one member asked Daniel if he was going to get a bike lawyer. Daniel had never heard of this. The member continued to tell Daniel that there were a number of lawyers in L.A. who could offer legal advice and perhaps take on his case pro-bono; they were committed to changing bicycle law in the city and would be happy to help. You can’t search for a bike lawyer on Google if you don’t know they exist. Without the community, Daniel would have never known about the help he could get, and would perhaps have had less confidence riding again in the future. By surrounding himself with people who inspired him – by seeking community – Daniel found the help he needed without even needing to look.

 

 

Los Angeles Eco-Village: http://laecovillage.org/

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO COMMUNITY

Hitch-hiking: It’s all about mentality. You’re on the road with your thumb out, if you’re prepared you’ve made a sign. Zoom … zoom … zoom, the cars go by. The vans go by. The trucks go by. You force a wider smile. You sweat and gulp some water, you scrutinize your cardboard sign. Maybe the ‘L’ in Bilbao isn’t clear enough. You go over it in your biro; the Lidl in St Jean de Luz didn’t have any thick markers. You write a new sign: St Sebastien (it’s a little nearer).  Hmmmm, the ‘IEN’ is a little squashed. Oh well. You hold it out, force a fresh smile and dance a kooky ‘I’m-not-a-rapist-I’m-a-nice-man’ jig. Zoom. Your mind starts to wander and then … hang on … hang on is that an indicator … ? Yes they’re stopping! They wind down the window with an awkward grimace. ‘Bonjour .. en faites je vais aller juste a la village prochaine, dix kilometres peut-être’. I’ve stopped listening; my backpack is nestled up against the magazines and empty bottles of the back seat and I’m bouncing into the front. Your car smells beautiful. 10km is 10km … I’m on the road.

I’m halfway through my year of visiting intentional communities and I’ve just had a lesson in this classic hippie mantra: life is a journey, not a destination. I recently hitchhiked from an arts community near Montpellier in the south of France to my cousin’s eco-homestead near Sertã in central Portugal. The trip took three days. The experience reminded me of the inherent link between having a positive mentality and sustaining high motivation. I have always been fascinated with motivation, with the way in which people maintain focus and passion for the lifestyle they have chosen, or the life that has been thrust upon them. One of my hopes upon visiting intentional communities was that the people there would be more enthused with their day-to-day lives than the average ‘mainstream’ citizen. I guessed that because they’d expressly chosen to live in an alternative way, they would have more commitment and excitement about living it.

Hitch-hiking is a daunting exercise in self-motivation. It is unlike all other travel in that your journey is both totally out of your control, and totally within your power to alter. You’re not waiting for a scheduled train, you’re not rushing for a chartered flight, you’re a toy sitting on a shelf. You make yourself look pretty (friendly), you advertise your attributes (you hold a sign of your destination) and then you do your best to get sold (pick a good spot on the road, wave your arms, do dances, give smiles, compliment people). The more energy you put in, the more rides you get.

Motivation is easiest to understand at its most primal. When you’re hungry, you’re motivated to find food. When you’re horny, you’re motivated to find a sexual partner. When you’re out on the road with no way forward besides a seat in a stranger’s car, you’re motivated to search for a lift. By making yourself vulnerable, you inspire action in others. The best way to hitch is to ask for lifts directly, usually at service stations on the highway where it’s clear to all drivers that you’re stuck until someone helps you. This method also takes the most courage and self-motivation, no one is going to approach you so you have to sell yourself. And when you do you get a lift, a whole new gauntlet begins.

When you don’t share a language with your driver and you’re in their debt (a.k.a their car), you have to summon energy and friendliness. Your payment for the ride is providing entertainment to the driver. You offer your company and they offer you travel. This risk ignites the mind. It makes you more inventive, more courageous and more open. Suddenly you have to use the song on the radio to ask how many children the driver has, or mime smoking and drinking to confirm that cigarettes and alcohol are cheaper in Spain than in France. Such theatre can be exhausting, but the thrill of being in a car after hours in the baking sun is enough of a stimulant to see you through.

The fact that risk creates motivation sheds light on how intentional communities function. There are two ways to end up living in an intentional community: you either start one or you join one. Both tactics involve high risk. Either you invest your own time and money into a new project that may fail to be workable and habitable, or you throw yourself in amidst a group of closely bonded strangers and hope to be accepted and find a role for yourself. If risk creates motivation then the first few weeks, months or years in a new community will surely be garnished with motivation. You’re not normally late for your first day at a new job. However, once something becomes comfortable the risk begins to melt. Routine sets in. Day-to-day life becomes expected and understood, and perhaps your motivation stagnates.

Whether the average citizen of an intentional community is more motivated than the average ‘mainstream’ citizen will be explored further in coming blogposts, but before we leave hitch-hiking, there’s one final lesson to be learned. It’s a classic symptom of hitch-hiker ‘I’m-cooler-than-thou’ arrogance. You peer into the distance … is that a VW campervan? Yes it is … is the guy driving it sporting a scraggy beard and a faded T-shirt? Yes he is … ok, am I looking hippie enough? Ok perfect, here we go, this is going to be a ride for su- ZOOM! He passes you. You can’t believe it. Another car approaches: a brand new black Audi saloon. You begin to lower your sign, you begin withdraw your smile … and then it slithers to a halt. ‘Hey, hop in. I’m just coming back from a business meeting selling Captain Morgan rum for Diageo’. You are humbled. The guy speaks perfect English, he has air-conditioning, he offers you some water. He then casually informs you about the local area and explains that he’s going to Bilbao but that he knows a trucker route to Portugal – it’s only about 30 minutes out of his way so he drops you there. And so ends the lesson in judging a book by its cover.

When you live in an intentional community, you’re used to be people sharing your views. They might disagree about whether amplified music should be banned after 10pm, but they sure as hell hate Tescos as much as you do. When you’re on the road, a lift is a lift. You meet nationalists, communists, stoners and market fundamentalists – and they’re all doing you a favour. You don’t choose who you sit next to, and normally you don’t really choose what to talk about. This exercise in humility and flexibility is a perfect workshop for anyone who has to live in close quarters with others, and who has to make joint decisions about how they live together. Even if you disagree with everything the driver says, you have to sit and listen, and unless you want to be left out on the road, you’re going to listen with patience. This is of course a lesson for everyone in all walks of life, but for those in intentional communities who state openness and inclusivity as one of their guiding principles, its absolutely essential learning.

SEEDING WITH THE ENEMY

I began this blog with a photo of people standing in a circle, holding hands and facing each other. It was a natural lift-off point because the picture embodied the trepidation I felt at embarking on my tour of intentional communities. It scared me with its hypocrisy; it made me feel excluded and angry that a group of people who are looking for more harmonious ways of living together, and of living with the planet, only wanted to look inwards. After some analysis, I realised that it was more likely they didn’t realise that such a photo would make people (me) feel unwanted. I hoped that it was an ignorance of PR rather than a secret desire to wall themselves in against new people and new ideas.

After my last three posts – all sketches of communities that I’ve visited – I have decided to return to the question of inclusivity and examine how and why it is so fragile and yet so crucial to the longevity and resonance of intentional communities and their relationship with the mainstream world.

I mentioned in an earlier post that there is a debate within the German eco-village movement as to whether people with extreme right-wing views should be accepted into the community. The point was raised by a woman at the Sieben Linden eco-village in Germany who admitted that she was scared of allowing racists to take part in her permaculture courses. Obviously, she could not tell whether applicants were racists when they signed up for the course, but after spending a weekend with a group it often became clear if someone had racist prejudices. Although there is nothing explicit in the tenets of permaculture which forbids those with racist views to practice it, the holistic nature of the ecological theory usually attracts those with more socialist political views. The German permaculture tutor was shocked when she realised that people on her course were white supremacists. She didn’t know what to do. Luckily for her, it was only one weekend. Afterwards she could return to her eco-village where new members can only join after a slow and measured process of integration – one in which any racist views will most likely be revealed, and further participation can be vetoed.

The debate throws up a contradiction. If you believe in fundamental equality, in the principle that no one person has any more or less value than any other, then you need to enact this belief in your lifestyle. If your lifestyle involves being a member of an intentional community, where you – amongst others – get to decide whether new members can join that community, you are quickly faced with a sticky dilemma. If someone wants to join the community, but holds – for example – racist views, should you let them in? Idealists might argue that the community must welcome them, even if it makes life harder for those already living there. Realists might say that in order to preserve the atmosphere of openness and peace that (in theory) prevails, they cannot be allowed to join. By including those who hold extreme prejudices against a specific group, you not only put those in that specifically attacked group in danger, but also those in the ‘majority’ who are hurt and offended by such extreme, hateful views.

The difficulty is that those with extreme prejudices often have the most to gain from life in an intentional community. Extreme homophobes or racists are often very vulnerable people who have been drawn into hatred groups because of the community they offer. It’s a common psychological phenomenon that growing up in a poor community with little emotional support from family, school or peers can lead to social alienation. This social alienation – and lack of funds to combat it with other forms of escapism – leaves an individual ripe to the sense of place offered by extremist groups who feel unified and mutually supported through their hatred of an easily identified other. It seems no surprise that such prejudiced extremists would also be attracted to the community offered by movements such as environmentalism and ecological sustainability. Everyone is looking for a home, but some need clearer boundaries and raison d’êtres than others. The definite goals and immediate physical activities that are necessary for building eco-villages are perfect catalysts for community building. It’s the same as accountancy firms sending their employees out to construct oil-drum rafts as ‘team-building’ exercises. Growing legumes and digging toilets brings people together.

      

The question of course, is not whether such hate-mongers should be allowed into  these communities, but how? The quickest route is old fashioned indoctrination. The Californian cults of the 60s would have just made the young racist repeat ‘Kevin is God’ (or whatever the leader’s name was) a thousand times a day until he no longer hated black people, but just hated anyone who didn’t think Kevin was God instead. The slower and more moral way is to allow them to get to know the people who they hate. If the community is diverse, but relatively harmonious, the extremist will (in theory) see that the members of the minority group he hates have many similarities to him, and that their race or sexuality does not harm or impose upon his own identity and sense of place. This way his hatred will melt away and be replaced by wisdom. Hopefully. The other possibility is that he will at some point have a conflict with how the community is organised and then project his resentment onto an easy scapegoat, a.k.a. the minority he despises. In such a closed community, this could cause even more tension and perhaps extreme violence.

What I discovered in Germany was that those who are unwilling to allow extremists into their community are not in reality most afraid of how those extremists will treat their chosen hated minority (in reality, there aren’t that many non-white people in the German eco-village network), but are in fact most scared that their own values will be compromised. What they really fear is that the new extremists will affect the overall outlook and philosophy of their community (whether it be the amorphous ‘permaculturists’ or an in-situ village), and that the community they feel so attached to will move further away from their own beliefs. During the live debate at Sieben Linden, individuals identified that they didn’t trust their fellow community members enough; they were scared that those other members wouldn’t have the strength to stand up to the new extremists, that they would cower in the face of their hatred. This confession was a helpful step in the eco-village’s journey towards more open communication and social cohesion, but it provided no clues as to whether the community would accept those with extreme prejudices or not.

Each intentional community is created for a specific aim. That aim can range from the apolitically vague (‘to live in more harmony with nature’) to the topically specific (‘to stop the construction of a third runway at Heathrow’), but if the members of that community lose sight of that aim, they already have one foot in the grave. It is totally sensible that an intentional community will protect itself from being infiltrated by individuals who have views that are counter to its aim. If you hate air travel, you won’t want to live with the owner of BAA. The issue becomes more complex when the intention of the community is something altogether more abstract and – in the long run – more important. If you want to promote human equality, can you afford to host individuals who believe that the colour of your skin denotes your value to society? On the other hand, how can you live in harmony with yourself and your ideals if you can’t find the strength to reach out to those in need – however dangerous they might be – and welcome extremists into the supportive community that they so clearly lack? Living with intention may be a noble choice to make, but great ethical ambitions come with great practical pitfalls, and perhaps the potential for great emotional suffering as well.

PLANES, GRAINS, & GROWING INSANE

We started breaking the law as soon as we stepped out of the airport. You’re not allowed to walk out of Heathrow Terminals 1, 2 & 3. You have to take the free bus provided – through the tunnel. We didn’t know the bus was free. We wanted to walk. So we walked through the tunnel via the pedestrian service path. It felt like a zombie movie. We then walked past the car parks, over the motorway, and down to Sipson – one of the three villages earmarked for destruction with the construction of a third runway at Heathrow.

Sipson is home to the Berkley Nurseries, an abandoned network of greenhouses once used to grow plants commercially. The Berkley Nurseries are now home to the environmental activist squat, Grow Heathrow. If you want to read about how the residents of Grow Heathrow use the land and engage with the local community, read my story in The Land magazine here (Grow Heathrow – The Land). In this post I’m going to talk about the people who live there, and how they live together.

                                                   

When my friend and I arrived the gate was locked. After a few knocks and shouts, a pale thin twenty-something creaked it open and led us inside. He felt like a peaceful stoner who liked nothing more than tend his crop and smoke it. He explained softly about the activities of Grow Heathrow, it’s boundaries and their relationship with the traveller community. He also explained vehemently how there was no hierarchy at the squat, how no one person could tell another what to do, and how no one had any power to control any other person’s time. It wasn’t until later that we found out why he was so desperately repetitive.

The tour ended in the kitchen, where some bushy-bearded hippies prepared salad and vegetable stew. We were met by a middle-aged man who looked a little out of place. He talked of how he’d discovered the Grow Heathrow community just a couple days before, how he loved the project and how he was fixing up his van so he could live in the back of it. He explained that he worked for O2 installing internet receivers in tall complicated structures, such as the towers of Heathrow airport. He was clearly very lonely, very keen to make friends, and despite good intentions, doing a very good job at making a total nuisance of himself. He was treated kindly and with patience, and greeted with smiles when he made his excuses and went back to his van.

After dinner, we sat on tatty sofas huddled around a wood-burning stove. Fifteen people, mostly British, all between the ages of twenty and forty. It was calm and the talk was interesting. Then I went outside and found another group of people: three men poking a bonfire and barely speaking. I opened with a joke to break the ice; I may as well have pissed on the fire. After a tense few flame-engrossed moments, the drama started. ‘Those fucking cunts ….’, he barked. And what came next was a tirade so spiteful you expected it to be followed with pitchforks and handguns. It turned out not everyone at Grow Heathrow was at peace with each other.

The firestarter was the most elderly (early 50s) and longest standing member of the community, one of the few who had stayed since its 2010 inception. He felt double-crossed, under-valued and disrespected by his cohabitants. His fireside companions seemed to have different reasons for their loyalty, but that’s a question for the psychoanalysts. Once amongst these outsiders it was hard not feel distrust for the larger group chortling away inside the greenhouse. How could they enjoy their contentment while these rejects suffered?

                                                  

The next day the flames were out but the fire was burning. A group of Climate Camp volunteers had booked to use a space at Grow Heathrow for a meeting and workshop. While chopping wood with the underdogs, my friend and I watched the sparks fly. It turned out that the young pale man who introduced us to the site was no longer meant to be there. It had been decided by consensus that he should leave the community, for reasons that were not particularly clear to me. Now, this man was showing the Climate Camp volunteers to their workshop space, chaperoned by another man who had been allocated the hosting job in a earlier meeting. Politics ahoy.

Another twist to the tale is that the firestarter was known to suffer from mild autistic tendencies. Everyone agreed that although he was still aggressive, unreasonable and over-sensitive, he had been improving ever since he first helped set up the community. Later we sat with him as he complained about the loud music that was emanating from the metal-workshop. Apparently Grow Heathrow had a good relationship with its taxpaying neighbours, but the loud music often upset them. Just then, one of his fireside friends dashed through the greenhouse to turn down the music, minutes later, the metalworker nipped out and turned it back up.

                                                 

Grow Heathrow was spearheaded by the anti-aviation activist group, Plane Stupid, and the Transition Towns network who create grassroots community projects that seek to build resilience in response to peak oil, climate destruction and economic instability. The purpose of the activist squat was to protect the local community from the destruction of their village, and to hinder the proliferation of the aviation industry. The purpose of most of the individuals now living at Grow Heathrow seems to be to find a very cheap place to live where they can experiment with their own environmentally-driven projects. The few who still hold the protection of the village as their main purpose seem to resent the others for not pulling their weight in the day-to-day running of the site. Some residents chop a lot of wood, cook a lot of meals, and kill a lot of rats – others design geodesic structures for sustainable living.

In mainstream society this kind of division of labour is totally systemised. Some people drive buses, other people take those buses to science labs where they test how to make buses more efficient. They each get paid, and ignoring the unequal opportunities that have led each to her profession, each has chosen a specific economic role to play. At Grow Heathrow, no such organisation exists. When I asked who cooks the shared evening meal – made up of out-of-date food donated by local vegetable markets – residents shrug their shoulders and say, ‘If you walk into the kitchen around seven p.m. and no-one’s cooking, you cook’. The system must work because they’re all still alive, but it doesn’t take a sociologist to conclude that there must be some arguments.

The beauty of the community’s social structure is also its greatest flaw. Anyone can come stay at the site, you need bring no money, you need bring no skill. If you hang around long enough, and show that you’re able to do something productive for at least one day a week, you’re probably get accepted into the group. What being ‘accepted’ means exactly is difficult to know. The man the who installed O2 networks at Heathrow was tolerated, but not accepted. The firestarter who chopped most of the wood is a valuable worker, but things would clearly be calmer if he didn’t live there. Without a communal reason for being, without an ‘intention’ for their community, Grow Heathrow is rife with petty politics and Shakespearean deceit. As an example of how to live with almost no money, it’s inspiring. As an experiment in ruleless communal living and an attempt to deny all hierarchy, it proves that hell need be nothing more than the company of others.

Grow Heathrow – http://www.transitionheathrow.com/grow–heathrow/

Transition Towns – http://www.transitionnetwork.org/ or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns_(network)

Plane Stupid – http://www.planestupid.com/

                                                      

INTO THE WYLD

 

 

In feudal times, you either owned some land or your worked on it. With the rise of the mercantilism of the Renaissance, the middle-classes grew and the fields began to empty as the city became the ticket to wealth. Yet still the hierarchy of rural England remained, the lords lived in their manors and their servants worked in them. Now, in the 21st century, anyone can be a lord of the manor – anyone who happens to have a couple million pounds going spare. As long as you’re among the 1%, you’re entitled to a title. But if you’re part of the doomed 99%, you may as well put down that copy of Country Life and start planning your AXA pension – as the chance of living in a country estate is nothing but a fairytale.

Or is it? Enter Monkton Wyld Court, a 16-room Victorian mansion sat in 12 acres of landscaped garden and farmland in the rolling hills of east Dorset. Only a ten minute drive from the majestic Jurassic Coast, this beautiful house and grounds can be yours for the princely sum of zero pounds and zero pence. All you have to give is your labour.

Monkton Wyld is owned by a trust which currently ’employs’ seven people. Each ’employee’ is paid £50 per week, furnished with a private room, has their food provided, and is charged with managing one aspect of life at the site. There’s a kitchen co-ordinator who plans meals and orders stock, a carpenter with a fully equipped workshop who makes repairs on the buildings, a gardener who grows herbs and vegetables, an office manager who deals with Bed & Breakfast bookings and a housekeeping coordinator who ensures the house is clean and ready for guests. In short, Monkton has everyone it needs to run its mini-economy. Someone collects food, someone cooks it, someone arranges for paying guests to visit, someone accommodates them, and someone ensures the whole place doesn’t fall to bits. The community earns money through its Bed & Breakfast and by offering courses on such rural/earthy topics as bread-making, beekeeping and botanical drawings – and that income pays for their food and wages.

If you want to live at Monkton, first you have to volunteer. Of course, planting a thousand potatoes or preparing large meals twice a day are strenuous jobs, so volunteers are the perfect way to supplement the workforce. These visitors pay nothing to stay at Monkton, but must work from 9 – 5 for their board and bed. I was one. The work is varied – mornings making soup, afternoons picking rosemary – and there’s plenty of time for tea breaks.

Volunteers also serve another important purpose at Monkton Wyld: change. With seven new people joining the community every fortnight, the residents are never without the opportunity to socialise with someone new. In fact, the permanent residents of Monkton probably meet more new people a year than the average UK citizen.  Moreover, these visitors are more likely to share their interests than not: most of the volunteers are interested in alternative living, environmental awareness and building things with their hands – but they’re not homogenous. I visited alongside an Italian journalist, a French engineering tutor, a British accountant, an Australian backpacker and an American ex-serviceman photographer who lives in Barnsley.

One of the central tenets of the community is to maintain an environmentally low-impact lifestyle. They have their own well, a reed-bed filter system, and two compost toilets. They use wood burning stoves to keep warm instead of central heating, and some buildings have solar panels. But there’s no limits to how much electricity you can use and there’s continuous hot water.

Despite its green credentials, saving the environment isn’t everyone’s number one reason for living at Monkton.  For some, the estate acts as a refuge from the complex economic and social machinery one must navigate in order to live in contemporary Britain. At Monkton Wyld there’s no commute, no tax, no rough-looking teens on the corner. There’s no redundancy packages and no bumping into your ex in the biscuits aisle. But there’s also no wider conglomerate in which to hide, no escaping the morning meeting and no avoiding the many menial duties which need day to day attention.

For others, Monkton is a place to live out their independent ecological mission. One couple have developed their own straw-bale house – which they keep extending as their children grow – and have built two award-winning compost toilets on site. They measure the amount of electricity they use each day from their solar panel – and if they run out, they run out. But this is their choice, and it’s totally self-imposed.

Another community member recently took over Monkton’s garden. After living in a different community for three years, he travelled to Dorset for a change, and found a new challenge in improving the yield of the vegetable garden to make Monkton more self sufficient.

The couple who manage the small dairy farm aren’t official members of the community, they rent the farmland from the trust and don’t get the £50 a week. They make cheese and yoghurt for the other residents, and run a business which imports hand-scythes from Austria and sells them to environmentally conscious hay-makers in the UK. They also run a magazine called The Land which focusses on how the general public’s lack of access to the land is a key cause of inequality, and tells of different initiatives around the world that relate to how land is being used, who’s using it.

But what is Monkton Wyld Court really for? Its main purpose seems to be a sort of unpolished golden cage. You either go there to escape, or you go there to make, but either way by forgoing the chance to save money you financially imprison yourself in beautiful surroundings. £50 a week is pittance. What happens when you need to visit the dentist? What happens when you you’re too old to work in the garden or in the kitchen – do you still get fed and a bed?  The other issue is children. It may be easy enough to raise your kids on a beautiful farm, but what if they want to go on a school trip to France – where do you get the money from? And now, with tuition fees for university, they may be able to get a loan to study if they wish to, but with the debt they will graduate with, how can they – if they so desire – move back into a community such as Monkton if they’re expected to pay that £20,000 back to the government?

My biggest fear when I arrived at Monkton was that I wouldn’t get on with the people. I imagined there would be pressure to take part in some uncomfortable rituals; that I might have to worship a new god. Disappointingly, this didn’t happen. I wanted to go on this adventure to push myself out of my comfort zone, but in fact everyone was lovely, and endless cups of tea while reading Ted Hughes by the fire is a ritual I’m already quite familiar with. My most revelatory thought about the community was a simple one: why isn’t every country manor in Britain owned by a trust and open to stay at for free, in exchange for working on the land?

In short, Monkton is a very British commune. You keep yourself to yourself and do your duty to the community by diligently fulfilling your work role. If you want to be greenest family in Dorset – fine. If you’d rather spend your fifty pounds on tobacco and chocolate – so be it. Monkton Wyld is a community of people who look after a big old Victorian house, deep in England’s green and pleasant land. They’re peaceful and their kind, and their home makes for a perfect two-week break from modern life. But if you’re looking for radical social change and holistically different ways of being, then you might have to travel a little further abroad.

Monkton Wyld Court: http://www.monktonwyldcourt.co.uk/

The Land magazine: http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/

THE FEAR OF BEING SOPPY

                                                                                                                           

We started with a song. “One by one all of us come to remember, we’re healing the world one heart at a time” was the refrain, over and over. I was excited by the awkwardness. Here I was, holding hands and singing in a circle, surrounded by dedicated environmental and social activists, only two-weeks after first ever hearing the phrase ‘intentional community’. The song was a neat cliche of what I had come to expect from my commune investigation; an attempt at immediate inclusion which directly cuts out any member who is not comfortable with such practice. I had travelled to an eco-village in central Germany to learn how to facilitate Process Work and Deep Democracy, two things I knew nothing about. Within 24 hours of my arrival I was crying in front of seventeen strangers and softly sobbing the words, ‘Everyone needs a home … Everyone’s just looking for a home’.

The eco-village was called Sieben Linden and the aim of the course was to teach the facilitation of Process Work. Process Work is psychologist Arnold Mindell’s practice of conflict resolution where individuals investigate their own fears, insecurities and ‘edges’, and then do group exercises in order to reveal these ‘edges’ and work together to bring about clearer communication and more interpersonal understanding. This form of conflict resolution is practiced in fields as diverse as corporate management consultancy and post-war reconciliation between African tribes. The only way to learn how to facilitate this process of conflict resolution is to take part in it yourself.

The first thing that struck me about my fellow course-mates was that they were mostly women, mostly over 40, mostly German, and that most of them were permanent residents of Sieben Linden. I currently live with three men in their twenties – two British, one Danish – none of which have ever lived in an eco-village. I was intentionally stepping out of my comfort zone to see what fruit might bear.

It soon became apparent that three of the seventeen participants were founding members of the community. They had worked and lived together for almost twenty years, first planning where to build their eco-village, then building and running it. A handful of the other Sieben Linden-based participants on the course were also ‘senior’ members of the community, figures who had central roles in the management and decision-making process of the village. What began to happen during the course was exactly what was meant to happen – all the skeletons came dancing out of the closet and unleashed the bundles of spite and distrust they’d been cradling for decades. Small bones of contention (e.g. whether a bike-lane should be constructed to protect child cyclists) burst out into direct confrontation. One would accuse the other of deceitfully directing community money into her own personal projects, and the accused would tell of the pain she suffered because everyone thought she was cold and selfish.

The course-leader actively encouraged these conflicts to play out. The idea is that behind any outburst, sore point or seemingly irrational niggle is a deeper insecurity about one’s identity, journey and place in the world. The leaders of Sieben Linden who were present were all intelligent, committed and open people who revealed themselves throughout the course just as the rest of the participants did. The difference was that these figures held such power and authority in the community that when they clashed the atmosphere in the room distilled into rich tension. Those who didn’t live there were given an intimate opportunity to gaze into the social workings of an established and prosperous eco-village, to see – and to be encouraged to participate in – the inevitable conflicts of fierce idealists living in such proximity to one another.

The recurring theme of the conflict was power. Sieben Linden in a self-governing village which is run by a handful of committees, each consisting of between five and seven members. There’s a committee for building, a committee for settlement planning, a committee for food and a selection of others. What became apparent was that some of the less vocal, more introverted, or less established members of the community felt excluded from these committees. They recalled the stress and trepidation they had felt when they’d acted to join a committee, and the disappointment that had followed the (seeming) rejection. The more powerful participants denied that the committees were exclusive, and denied that different members of Sieben Linden had any more power than others.

Process Work tackles the problem of invisible power structures. It recognises that status and rank exist in every form of social interaction and that no matter what you name something, or the structure you give it, some individuals will always wield more power and influence than others. The point of the course was to understand and investigate this, to challenge the participants to dig deep into themselves, reveal their fears, and have faith that the other human beings in the room would respect and understand them. In fact, the course focussed more on the individual than the group. Most time was spent on personal exercises that led each person into his or her true prejudices, and the aim of the group work was not to examine the prejudices of others, but to realise that the thing that so disturbs you about another person may be a form of envy, or a form of self-hatred in that the other person reflects a negative quality you feel you also possess.

It turns out that I have a deep and painful fear of exclusion. One group exercise involved choosing a contentious topic, taking sides on the debate, then letting your emotions guide your arguments. We chose the topic of whether to accept right-wing extremists into the global eco-village movement. I began logically: if you want the eco-village movement to stand against discrimination and for inclusion, then you have to include everyone, even those with racial prejudices. Naturally, other disagreed: how can you live and work alongside those who have such hatred of anyone who doesn’t share their own skin colour? Then it turned more personal. One woman explained her grandfather’s connection to Nazism, the subsequent shame of her father, and his economic demise under another totalitarian state, Soviet-controlled East Germany. She began weeping with fear at the idea that she would be associated with fascists, that she would have to live side-by-side with those she most despised. And as she cried I became immobile. I was struck by the fear that I would be the person that she, or anyone else, couldn’t bear to be associated with. I felt so deeply that those right-wing extremists were just looking for some meaning in their lives, something to work for and be a part of, and in their search some had chosen environmentalism. I became tense and my eyes filled with tears. I spoke out, ‘You have to include them, you can’t turn them away. They’re just looking for a home. Everyone’s just looking for a home’.

Such personal revelations as described above are undoubtedly beneficial, character building experiences – but they don’t necessarily change how we treat each other. Unsurprisingly, the conflicts that came to the course remained. There was no group orgy and there was no pretence that all would now be well. The residents of Sieben Linden did not invite the facilitator to their community in order to solve their ills; they understand nothing comes easy and are searching for ways to better understand each other and live in further peace.

The intentional community of Sieben Linden has no explicit philosophy. It does not demand a belief system from it’s members other than a respect for ecological sustainability. They have an involved and participatory local government which aims to allow roles for any member of the community. What they don’t have is a social system which actively empowers the vulnerable. They don’t have a way to ensure the less confident and the less eloquent amongst them feel strong and smart enough to join in. But what they do have is a commitment to their harmonious vision which pushes them to explore new forms of communication and human understanding. They are willing to make themselves vulnerable and uncomfortable – to go through tiring and emotionally draining practices such as Process Work – in order to build a more honest living environment and a more equal and democratic system under which to live. They may like singing songs and holding hands, but the residents of Sieben Linden are working hard to push themselves out of their comfort zone and into a deeper knowledge of the human condition.

Sieben Linden

http://www.siebenlinden.de/

Process Work

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process-oriented_psychology

http://www.aamindell.net/category/processwork-theory-applications/what-is-processwork/