Last week I posted this tweet:
There were some great responses, and I’ve enjoyed dm’ing with some of the people in the thread to continue talking about these ideas.
Reading through the responses in the thread has helped me get more clear on what I want and don’t want in an intentional community.
Here are some of the beliefs I have that have crystallized or been strengthened as a result of the post:
I don’t want to get bogged down in logistics, debt, or personnel management.
I don’t want to get bogged down in running a business venture as part of the intentional community. If that happens organically, then great. I’d love to keep bees, and experiment with mushroom farming and things like that, but I’d prefer not to stake any part of the community’s success on things like that going well.
I think that unless we’re talking about the scale of a town or larger, that capital corrupts. I think that if you’re taking VC money to fund your intentional community, you’ve already fucked up. See the “Isn’t there someone you forgot to ask” meme.
The real long-term project, in my eyes, is not necessarily the creation of one intentional community, but an “operating system” for the creation of small, human-led land projects, that do not take on debt and that allow the people living there to live whatever lifestyle they want, as long as it doesn’t harm others or the environment. I’m thinking of Earthseed here. More of an underground network of people who help and house each other, than a decentralized and capital-intensive nation-state.
Lastly, I just want to chill. I love talking and thinking about how to launch and run a decentralized network of intentional communities, but these past two years in NYC have been exhausting. I’m going to be 37 next month but sometimes I feel like I’m 80 or 90 years old.
Talking to People
I have been talking to people that are running intentional communities, and people that want to start them.
What resonates the most to me is the level of intimacy and trust required by the core group–usually 6-10 people–to acquire some land and start living together.
It seems like gathering an initial group of that size and starting a sort of “research project” is the way to begin.
As the group continues to meet, the shared values and vision for the community can be nailed down, and trust can deepen.
It’s ideal if the people involved have all known each other for some years, as you’ll need to pool your resources to buy a piece of property worth $100k+, and you’ll need to administer the finances together.
In any relationship, it’s the people involved that make the rules.