Building Urban Intentional Community using the Affinity-Group Network,
Material Spirituality and the Anti-Quota
A. Allen Butcher, April, 1999, revised May 2002
The ultimate test of human wisdom is our creation of a society based upon
the values of caring, nurturance, love and equality, using the processes of
cooperation and sharing. Competition, possessiveness and oppression can
never be more than individual or collective profit at the expense of others
and the environment. If we were to affirm that we are truly intelligent
beings, we would seek to look beyond the circumstantial culture which we
inherit to more deliberately build a foundation for a lifestyle that is
mutually fulfilling, environmentally sustainable and joyful in the most
positive sense.
In the pursuit of happiness, many people realize that the quality of our
relationships is one of the most important aspects of our personal
happiness, along with good health, a personal outlook of optimism, physical
activity, and personal control over one's own life. John Stossel made this
point in his April, 1996 segment of ABC's "20-20," titled "Happiness in
America." And he went on to say that all of these positive values are
generally considered to be more important than mere personal monetary
wealth alone. If the quest for ever greater wealth requires that we live a
life of competition (via exploiting comparative advantages),
possessiveness, greed and similar processes and values, then we can
understand why it is said that money can not buy happiness. How, then, may
we live our lives in such a way that the influence of conflict and
violence-generating values is kept to a minimum while
nurturing-relationship values are emphasized?
One of the greatest challenges in beginning to build such a culture based
upon nurturing-relationship values, however, is in simply finding the
appropriate words with which to describe it. As very few of us have any
experience living strictly by nurturing-relationship values, our language
is very limited with regard to how we may explain our intention. Because
of this, many of us get lost in semantics just as we start to explain the
idea of a cooperative lifestyle. One term often used to describe a range
of different efforts to live by positive values is "intentional community,"
which may be defined as, "a fellowship of individuals and families
practicing common agreement and collective action." The suggestion is that
people deliberately working together can better assure their collective and
personal happiness than can a "circumstantial community" comprised of
people living in proximity strictly by chance.
Intentioneering
As with any other field of concentration, the study and vocation of
deliberate social and cultural design and construction (such as intentional
community) has to involve the development of a set of terms, concepts,
theories and a pedagogy in order to discuss the issues, share the
experiences, and teach the knowledge gained. For this reason, a number of
new terms are coined and employed in this paper, beginning with:
"intentioneering."
The term "intentioneering" comes from the idea that enjoying a culture and
society based upon positive values must be something like living in
paradise. Since we know that we can create hell on earth, due to nuclear
weapons, shouldn't it also be possible for us to create heaven on earth?
Or if not heaven, then at least we can work to create what Kat Kinkade
refers to as, "successive approximations of paradise" in her writings about
Twin Oaks Community's experience with applied behavioral psychology.
The word "intentioneering" merges the terms "intentional community" and
"behavioral engineering" to derive one word to be used to refer to the
effort to build intentional community. The term also references one of
American culture's contemporary idioms for having a good time. The
exclamation "... going to Disneyland!" suggests a popular vacation
destination, and so it is a suitable adaptation of Disney parlance to take
the term "imagineering," meaning taking fairy tales and cartoon characters
and engineering these figments of imagination into physical, interactive,
holiday attractions, and create the new term "intentioneering," referring
to deliberate human cultural design.
Hopefully, the etymological reference to Disneyland will serve to emphasize
the goal of only positive values being involved in the process of
intentioneering. This is particularly important as, generally, the concept
of ones' behavior being engineered is not thought to be a positive idea,
since our experience with the dominate culture's ubiquitous and relentless
consumer advertising can be considered a negative form of behavior
engineering. What serves to assure that deliberately created
socio-psychological processes in intentional community are positive, of
course, is the concentration upon participatory governance and the
attendant functions of consensus facilitation, constructive feedback,
clarity of communication and similar processes.
The Parallel Culture and the Affinity Group
The second term coined for the purpose of explaining a culture based upon
positive or cooperative values is "parallel culture." The intent here is
to suggest that the goal is not to change the larger, dominate culture,
since that suggests negative connotations of manipulation or force, but
rather to recognize that the positive alternative has always existed along
with or parallel to it. The goal is to develop the parallel culture to
where it is the dominant social design. Monasteries are the oldest form of
parallel culture in civilization, while prehistoric tribal culture may be
considered as being an example of the integration of positive and negative
cultural values, prior to these motives being split between two different
cultures, the dominate and the parallel, with the advent of civilization.
People generally think of prehistoric human society as being brutish and
characterized by a competitive struggle for survival. Yet there is another
perspective offered by Richard Leakey, in the book "People of the Lake:
Mankind and Its Beginnings," in which he asserts that "Sharing, not hunting
or gathering as such, is what made us human." His study of human
prehistory in Kenya suggests that our long history as an "intensely social
creature" resulted in the embedding in our brains of the senses of
obligation and generosity as powerful human instincts helping to assure the
success of our species. Hence, there may be nothing spiritually mysterious
about our ability to know right from wrong and to seek peace, love and
harmony (sometimes referred to as our "inner light"); rather, it may simply
be an aspect of human development, like language capability, that evolved
through natural selection. (Still, there is a role in the parallel culture
for spiritual awareness. For this discussion see the section on "material
spirituality.") Due to the influence of our long prehistoric past, some of
us today would likely have a stronger instinct for cooperation, while in
others competition may be the dominate instinct. For this reason people
must have a choice of lifestyles, and this is the value of having parallel
cultures.
So the desire to live in community can be presented as an innate drive in
our basic constitution, possibly as strong as the primitive drive for
sugar, salt and fat in the diet, for procreation, competition and other
basic instincts. All that we need is a society that respects the
communitarian preference, and that nurtures it rather than destroying it.
And in the dominant culture it may be the monetary economic system, more
than any other single factor, that prevents us from honoring our basic
preference for sharing in community.
Given that the dominant culture today is generally characterized as being
based upon the political-economic system known as "neo-liberal market
capitalism," focused upon competition, possessiveness and similar values,
an alternative economic system focused upon positive values, such as
sharing, must be based upon an economic system known as ... what? Certainly
the term "communism" does not suggest the positive value of participatory
governance, since it refers to the authoritarian system of one-party rule
and the negative value of centralized control, with regard to "the
production and distribution of goods and services." Similarly, "socialism"
refers to the practice of "redistribution" of wealth from those who have to
those who have not, and this taking is essentially a negative process. A
more positive program would be the focus upon building common wealth,
similar to the way that nonprofit and some cooperative organizations work.
One of the important aspects of authoritarian structures such as communism,
as it has been experienced and in some communist theory, is the problem of
centralization of power and authority. This is also a problem in
capitalism, particularly the neo-liberal form, as wealth and power are
increasingly concentrated in fewer hands. This political-economic
structure can be called a "plutocracy," meaning rule by the rich. To avoid
this problem, the parallel culture must use decentralized forms of
decision-making, such as consensus and other forms of participatory group
process, practiced in small groups or "affinity groups" formed around
common interests or backgrounds, which then may send representatives or
delegates to larger governmental bodies. This can also be referred to as
"social anarchism," as long as it involves voluntary association. Similar
to how clans and tribes comprised nations, the "affinity-group network"
then becomes the basic foundation and building block of the parallel
culture.
The Political-Economic Matrix and the Egalitarian Commonwealth
To answer the question of by what name shall we know a culture built upon
positive values, I suggest a range of different terms that provide for
different forms of property ownership, while having in common the attribute
of participatory governance. The term "egalitarian" serves to refer to the
ideal of popular self-governance, and therefore would always be used in
reference to the parallel culture. Within a politically egalitarian
society, however, there may be a range of different economic structures,
including common property ownership, private property ownership, and a
mixture of the two. "Egalitarian communalism" refers to common property
ownership with a participatory government, and examples would be some of
the Kibbutz movement in Israel, Twin Oaks Community and other members of
the Federation of Egalitarian Communities in North America, and other
egalitarian communal societies around the world. "Egalitarian collectivism"
refers to private property ownership, and examples would be cohousing
communities and cooperatives, known by different names throughout the
world. "Egalitarian commonwealth" refers to a combination of common and
private property ownership structures (i.e., "economic diversity") with
participatory governance. Examples would be community land trusts and
those communities having both a communal core-group and other members
holding more private property. The dominant culture, however, with its
authoritarian structure would not appear on this egalitarian economic
continuum.
The dominant culture would be on the authoritarian economic continuum; same
economic range yet on a different political level. Between the egalitarian
and the authoritarian political levels would be majority-rule or
"democratic" societies, including "democratic socialism," with a similar
economic range. Note that now we have identified three economic
classifications (i.e., communal, economically-diverse and private) and
three political classifications (i.e., consensus, majority-rule and
authoritarian). Placing the economic continuum on a horizontal axis and
the political continuum on a vertical axis we create the
"Political-Economic Matrix" with nine separate and specifically defined
cells, each with a unique political-economic combination. Over time
cultures, societies and affinity groups may move among different cells, yet
historically, human civilization in general may be said to be moving toward
the top center cell, labeled the "egalitarian commonwealth," having a
consensus-based governance with economic diversity.
Viewing human civilization as moving from authoritarian structures to
democratic to greater degrees of popular participation suggests a "process
trend," while viewing the balance of common and private property suggests
an "integration trend," together moving us toward the egalitarian
commonwealth. An ecological analogy to these trends in human civilization
suggests that our history is like an ecosystem changing from a swamp to
scrub-land to the climax forest. Kenneth Boulding wrote in 1970 in
"Economics As A Science" that the primitive tribe or village is a good
example of a climactic social system, remaining stable until some
fundamental change takes place. Recorded history begins with one such
change, the advent of civilization and the end of the primitive climax
human culture. We have been working ever since, through the city-state to
empire and now to global culture, to arrive at a new level of cultural
stability, a more advanced climactic social system similar in ways to
primitive human culture yet at a different level of technology and social
complexity, if not also evidencing a higher degree of wisdom.
On the large scale, the parallel culture would best be considered to be an
"egalitarian commonwealth." The term "commonwealth" suggests the general
economic welfare of a region or group of people, and thus adequately
suggests a combination of economic structures. (See: "Classifications of
Communitarianism" by the same author.) On the large scale, the parallel
culture would involve a range of different forms of participatory,
self-governing, community organizations comprising an egalitarian
commonwealth. The part of the parallel culture that emphasizes strictly
positive values would have the goal of working toward egalitarian
communalism, or common property ownership, on the small scale. Note that
egalitarian communal communities are rarely found on the large scale. The
communal Kibbutzim range up to a maximum of about 1,200 people, and many of
these Kibbutzim have been transitioning to economic diversity. For this
reason the focus upon small-scale affinity groups in the parallel culture
is particularly important.
Rational Altruism and Time Economics
The easiest way to begin to structure the idea of an economic system based
upon nurturing-relationship values is simply to take the terms used to
explain the monetary economy and find existing or coin new terms with
opposite meanings. So the opposite of the term "rational self-interest,"
which is used to explain how it is that an economy can work well when
everyone is concentrating upon what they can get for themselves, is the new
term "rational altruism," explaining how an economy based upon sharing can
work well. Similarly, the term "comparative advantage," or how various
individuals or groups can each exploit their particular resources or
talents and trade their resulting commodities or services in the monetary
economy, is replaced with the concept of "mutual advantage."
The theory of "supply and demand," or how competition among buyers and
sellers affects prices, productivity and trade in privately-owned goods and
services, is replaced with the theory of "desire and dedication," or how in
cooperation people's needs and wants affects their motivation to produce
public goods and services. Thus, the perfect elasticity of aggregate
desire, or our tendency to want ever more, is motivation for the process of
intentioneering the dedication to satisfy those desires. "Artificial
scarcity" in the competitive economy, suggesting that the dominant culture
may be characterized as representing the "scarcity paradigm," is replaced
with the concept of the "plenty paradigm," suggesting that by sharing we
can enjoy a natural abundance. Finally, the "invisible hand" of the market
place, that specter of capitalism, is replaced by "material spirituality"
as an affirmation of the spiritual value of sharing through the
intentioneering of the parallel culture, the plenty paradigm, time
economics and rational altruism.
Rational altruism affirms the positive perspective that all of our needs
may be met, and that happiness is best provided, when we share. Since it
is harder to share when we value everything in units of currency, and hoard
as much as we can, an economy based upon the ideal of rational altruism has
to be based upon an alternative to monetary economics. A nonmonetary
economy, therefore, can not be an exchange economy, but must be a sharing
economy, and work or labor, if not motivated by money, must be motivated by
the nurturing-relationship value that it brings to the individual and
community as a whole. Time, then, becomes the basis of the nonmonetary
economy, and "time economics" provides for the common wealth by maximizing
public goods and services. The resulting shared wealth reduces the fear of
economic loss or exposure (fear of scarcity) and greed is not rewarded.
Rather than working for strictly the materialistic and temporal goals of
personal wealth and power, rational altruism affirms one's intention to
work for mutual benefit, social justice and ecological responsibility.
Happiness, then, is found as much in working for the good of all, as in
work for personal benefit.
The Anti-Quota and other Communitarian Luxuries
In time-based economics the "service credit" or "labor credit" is the root
of public good, and all work is valued equally. One hour is worth one
credit regardless of who is working or what is done. However, there are
two different forms of time economies, "labor exchanging" using "service
credits" or "time dollars," which are exchanged hour-for-hour, and "labor
sharing" using "labor credits," which are not exchanged, but used to keep
track of member's fair-share of work done for the community.
Labor sharing usually involves a "labor quota" or minimum fair-share
contribution of time that a community organization agrees is necessary for
the good of the group, and that each member must do in order to maintain
their membership. However, another form of labor sharing would involve
voluntary labor pledges given to the community for the maintenance of
ongoing community-wide service programs. Computing the average per-member
number of hours worked, or "done labor" for a particular period of time
would result in a second way to arrive at a figure for member's fair-share
labor-hour contribution goal. This "anti-quota" would be a voluntary goal,
rather than a requirement as in the case of the labor quota.
The anti-quota might be particularly relevant to an urban community, as the
urban experience has so many demands on a person's time. The anti-quota
lets every member know the amount of time that the average member gave to
the community, and thus an idea of what one's fair-share contribution of
work would be. This would represent a reliance upon the individual's
desire to support the community, and provide a passive form of positive
reinforcement, as it focuses upon the individual's maintenance of
self-motivation. More active forms of positive reinforcement would include
individual access to the services and resources provided by the community,
and various methods of group recognition of those who contribute time to
the community. This recognition might include both group events and
individual positive or constructive feedback, encouraging a focus within
the community upon positive morale-boosting functions other than monetary
reward.
Community in an urban setting involves bringing together people who
appreciate each other's company, and involves nurturing mutually supportive
activities among the group. We all have many different activities and
cares taking our time, yet some of those activities, and over time probably
many of them, can be made easier and more enjoyable as we find ways to
provide for them collectively within our egalitarian commonwealth rather
than individually through the consumer economy. Consider that through
building community we can enjoy luxuries that individually we could not
realize. We might consider the relationships we build among us through our
sharing of child care and food service, a vehicle cooperative and a
purchasing program and other services, as a "trust luxury," based upon our
experience of community members making agreements and following through
with them. The feedback and other levels of communication used to maintain
these services nurtures our friendships and encourages the pleasure we have
in enjoying each other's company.
Consider how the fellowship of community respects the spiritual ideals of
brother and of sisterhood, of living by the Golden Rule, or of practicing a
love-thy-neighbor ethic. The opportunity to conform our lifestyle to our
spiritual ideals can be cast as a "spiritual luxury," while the focus upon
sharing and ecological design can be presented as a "politically-correct
luxury." Visiting other communities around the world is a "travel
luxury." And more than mere luxury, intergenerational community where both
young and old are encouraged to care for the other, in comparison with the
usual pattern of age segregation in America, is cultural elegance. All of
these and more are "communitarian luxuries" available to everyone.
By emphasizing that the benefits of community are not commodities that can
be simply purchased, we can begin to develop an awareness of the unique
nature of rational altruism and of the communitarian lifestyle, which might
be cast as the "communitarian mystique." Such an outreach campaign may
then begin to counter our acculturation to "the American Dream," and its
attendant ideals of home as moated castle and that debt-financed
consumerism is a patriotic duty. Yet there are different ways to view the
effort to build community. One view, that our only choices are chaos or
community, suggests that building intentional community is a necessity in
order to assure our long-term survival. A less fatalistic view, which may
be far more effective as an outreach campaign, is that building community,
of any kind, is the effort to create luxuries that can not otherwise be
enjoyed.
Material Spirituality and Natural Law
Although we may recognize that there may be nothing spiritually mysterious
about our desire for community and other positive spiritual values (as
explained in the section: The Parallel Culture and the Affinity Group)
there is still an important role for spiritual expression in the parallel
culture, which may be presented in the term "material spirituality" and its
use of the concept of natural law.
As human beings, our nature includes both physical and spiritual aspects.
Our material lives are generally governed by the economic and political
processes in which we engage, and these influence our health and
happiness. In contrast, our spiritual lives arise from an awareness of
grace and inspiration, and a sense of right and wrong. Whether the source
of our spirituality is an external revelation (transcendence) or an
intuitive nature (immanence), our awareness and expression of spiritual
truth must inform and balance our economic and political lives, or how we
manage our time and provide for our happiness in the physical world.
Both the material and the spiritual aspects of our nature must be honored,
expressed and balanced, such that neither eclipses the other. With such a
balance we can justify both a respect for private property and for
commonly-owned property, since the former represents material values and
the latter represents spiritual values, and both are justified via natural
law. This balance is the basic ideal of "material spirituality," and this
ideal leads to the practice of rational altruism and the application of
time-based economics.
As a society of human beings our culture must express a balance of material
and of spiritual values, in order to support individuals in maintaining a
similar balance. This can be the best way for the society and the
individual to be mutually supportive, and this ideal is addressed in the
process of seeking justice through the institutions of law. The seat of
authority over individual choice, however, is always the individual
conscious, inner light, or awareness of truth and justice. However
inspired, the expression of individual awareness of philosophical or
spiritual truth and justice may be considered to be one's representation of
"natural law." A culture, then, must be able to trust in each person to
manage their participation in society according to the common positive
values of peace, equality, compassion, tolerance and justice.
Accomplishing this requires an ongoing emphasis upon acculturation,
education and spiritual instruction.
The concept of natural law encourages the expansion of our concern and
motivation from what is good for the individual, or just our own needs and
wants, to what is good for everyone, the world, and ultimately the focus
upon transcendent values of peace, justice, nurturance and happiness. As
this concept in democratic society has resulted in political issues, or
issues presented from a person's or a party's subjective concerns, being
addressed in objective legal terms of justice and fairness, the influence
of the ideal of natural law upon society can essentially be seen as a
secular expression of spiritual values. It is therefore through the
concept of natural law that spiritual, political, economic and social
issues may be integrated in one coherent world view, offering the potential
for the presentation of natural law as a unified field theory for the
design of human society.
What may result in confusion and misunderstanding of the concept of natural
law is the tendency to define nature as the law-of-the-jungle and
survival-of-the-fittest, as in each person for themselves, justifying the
worst experiences of arbitrary law, selfish parochialism and predatory
capitalism. These negative practices, of course, serve to respect only a
narrow, self-centered view of the reason for one's existence. In contrast,
there is a view that our existence serves the integration of the
laws-of-nature and of natural law. In this view, just as the laws of
physics, chemistry and all the natural sciences are immutable or beyond our
ability to change them, and just as we are subject to these laws of nature
and can only seek to understand and to live with them, so also are we
subject to natural law. Just as we seek to learn the laws-of-nature, so
also might we seek to learn and live by natural law.
The concept of natural law presents the ideals of justice, love and
nurturance as being of the order of immutability. Breaking these
metaphysical laws, as any in the physical sciences, unavoidably returns
negative consequences. Living with and respecting natural law as the basis
for how we utilize the laws of nature is the manner in which we, uniquely
situated between the realms of the physical and the spiritual aspects of
the universe, can best honor and most completely realize our full
potential.
As a global civilization, human beings have created a world order comprised
of economic systems and laws that, although may have originally been based
upon expressions of natural law, are increasingly subject to misapplication
through processes of writing human-made or "positive law," tending to
respect spiritual ideals less than wealth, and the power that flows from
it. As this new world order becomes increasingly exploitative of the
earth's resources, damaging to the natural systems that support life, and
economically and politically oppressive to humanity (materialism eclipsing
spirituality), the need grows for supporting economic processes, engaging
in cultural activities, and establishing social units in which individuals
can express a set of values different from the negative values of the
dominant culture.
Communitarian Values
The challenge to us is to build a culture with a political-economic system
that engenders in the individual an appreciation of others and a sense of
responsibility for the environment that we share. Trust in one another and
mutual responsibility are simple luxuries that are assured as we enjoy a
lifestyle expressing communitarian values. Providing a safe and nurturing
environment for children and seniors is an expression of communitarian
values, as are the provision of services where people work together for
mutual advantage and efficient resource usage. Communitarian values are
experienced in forums where people resolve disputes or discuss
opportunities or challenges, whether from within or from outside of the
community. Communitarian values are supported by architectural and land
use designs that encourage the random kindnesses and senseless acts of
beauty that encourage positive interactions among people. And
communitarian values nurture the development of friendships and the other
primary and secondary social bonds that make of our lives a joy, a work of
art, a labor of love, and an expression of our spiritual awareness.
All of the concepts and terms presented in this paper, as we find ways to
apply them in our lives through intentioneering community, may enable us to
understand, express, and enjoy a society based upon positive, nurturing
values.
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A. Allen Butcher, Fourth World Services
Providing information for a lifestyle balancing our personal needs with
those of society and nature.
PO Box 1666, Denver, CO 80201-1666
4thWorld@consultant.com phone: 303-355-4501 fax: 303-333-8671
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