Recently when asking myself, what is the best use of my life, the answer (in that moment) that came was this: Make a game out of seeing how many communal/cooperative entities you can help found over the next 20 years.

A big complaint I have about the communities movement is the predomance of the middle-class pattern to create a comfortable and disparate life for one's self, one family, or, at most, one's community. I see several branches of the communities movement: communes, housing co-ops, cohousing, ecovillages, and homesteads. With most there is some level of organization around that general model, but despite the similarities in values and goals between all models the amount of interaction, collaboration, mutual support, etc. is woefully limited.

But then you have lots of other movements developing other branches of alternative society that intersect nicely with the communities movement - worker co-ops, CSAs and sustinable agriculture groups, urban gardening projects, urban community centers, local currency and labor exchange projects, indipendant media, alternative education centers, as well as resistance based movements and organizations.

As Jello Biafra said, you want to bring down global capitalism? - stop giving it your money! Similarily, if we want to limit ecological destruction, we should stop purchasing from businesses that have that as a practice (as well as simply consuming less). Concurently, a friend of mine once said to me, we should be getting as much land out of the capitalist economy as quickly as possible.

Twin Oaks over produces cheese. East Wind makes nut butters. Sandhill makes sorghum. Trade between these communities happens. What if there were 20, 50, 100 different communities and co-ops that were all producing goods that could be traded?

My current fantasy is to pick a population center and help found and/or link a network of communal/cooperative entities that are providing housing, growing and distributing food, producing ecologically sound goods for money or barter, providing space for social events, arts and performance, and organizing, and engaging in community organizing and local politics.

For me, unsurprisingly, the larger visions is connected to memetics (cultural self replication). If youstart a community, you are reallysaying "If lots of people lived this way, we would have a chance." But starting a single community (or even a dozen in 20 years) is not solving the problem. If we look at otehr success memes, like Alcoholics Anonomous (or other 12 step groups) or global capitalism - these ideas take hold and spread seemingly unstopably. We need to design communities so compelling, that when visitors leave they say "i want to create one a lot like that, and i am willing to help make that happen."


...creating a network of groups for the purpose of mutual aid that will allow people to get their basic needs met with a high degree of security without the necessity of 1. being independantly wealth, or 2. engaging in the mainstream money economy as wage-earners. My belief is that this will have several positive benefits. It will simultaneously require and create more satisfying relationships. It will allow for more "liesure time," and it will reduce the stress of "earning a living", which will in turn increase the amount of time and energy individuals put into creative and altrustic endevours. For these reasons, and because of the increased localization of the economy, levels of consumption and waste will drop, which will make it easier to expand the network.