The Urban Commune – an idea whose time has come?

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On this blog, it is interesting to me that we talk about the environmental problems that face us.  We talk about new structures and new paradigms, and we talk about how to handle certain deep problems facing our society such as transportation — but to me one huge basic answer to all of these questions is the urban commune.

One of the conclusions that has been largely reached by several people on this blog is that the answers, some feel, do not devolve to the traditional issues of national politics.  That, in other words, to really solve the deep systemic problems inherent in the American political system is to address the local issues each of us face.

This is not an either/or — to say that we must address sustainable living and engender a better model for living is not therefore in direct opposition to the ideas involved in how to change our political system for the better.  However, a gradual realization has dawned that there is a yin/yang relationship in terms of top-down political action versus bottom-up action.  If we live in a certain manner as to make our government respond to that way of living, they will.  Most of us work for corporations.  Most of us have interests involved in basic living that are or may be at odds with what we think would be a better model of living for the future.  On the other hand, if our politicians have constituents who have already changed their way of living in some degree — that if they adopt, for example, community living as a way of life without their assistance, it would be more in our politicans interests to cater to those constituencies that have already been pre-created.

It strikes me that we talk very little about the most basic problem facing all of us — that is, how to live in such a way as to weather the crises confronting our society and how to emerge whole.

I have lived, very briefly, on a commune.  It is not my purpose, however, to put myself up as an expert of any kind on this subject.  My experience was long enough to gather and internalize some of the concepts, but short enough that I don’t consider myself well endowed to do anything on the level of proselytizing.

It is more my purpose to open a conversation on this subject.  If we on this blog wish to address New Structures, a new way, therefore, to address our problems, what can be more basic than to talk about how we live, and to think about and contribute our ideas about communal living as an opener to that very basic conversation?

It is my interest to talk about a specific variant of community living – the urban commune.  We have models we can look at and apply.  Rural communes do exist.  Small scale urban communities do exist.  What I am interested in asking is — how do we make a commune?  How do we make communal living more attractive?  What aspects of our current societal infrastructure are amenable to being modified to make community living possible?  In addition to how we make it ecologically sustainable, how do we make it socially sustainable?  What would it take to start a commune?  What is the value in a passive model versus an aggressive model?  By that, I mean, do we look at plans for community living in an isolated sense, not only how it is “better for you”, but could perhaps immunize you somewhat to coming problems?  Or do we also look at ways to both make this living style more attractive and spread it to others, either passively or aggressively?  Passively in terms of simply providing an example for how it could be done, or aggressively in terms of prescribing this solution for others?

The history of urban commune life has been replete with tales of rise and fall in miniature.  The same basic issues come up again and again.  There are many issues, from the most all encompassing ideological and lifestyle questions to the most niggling, basic questions, which revolve around the actual mechanisms for living.  Can these issues be quantified and qualified?  Communal living in an American context is replete with the woeful tale of individualism versus ideology, of community living versus individual choice making and autonomy.

Let us make no mistake: communal living is a form of communism.  It is impossible to even talk about urban commune living without addressing issues of ideology.  In an American context, we value, or perhaps have been sold, the idea that our society is structured in such a way as to enable individual choices in all things.

There is no model of community living that does not involve some restrictions on people’s lifestyles and lifestyle choices.  As I said, make no mistake, we are talking about sharing many things as a better model, both for purposes of sustainability and for purposes of security — that is, immunizing each member of a commune from some of the vagaries of the outside economy.  It is my opinion that to focus only on ecological sustainability is a mistake; we also have to consider how we can have a more attractive model or models of living.  We can talk about what we can do to both minimize intrusions on people’s choices to the bare minimum necessary, and also how to have many urban communities (a “community of communities”) that make such intrusions as least onerous in an American lifestyle sense as possible.

Another question to look at is, in a quite literal sense — how can we adapt or modify the current infrastructure that does exist so that it is compatible with community living?  What are the attractive features of urban commune living, and how do we dovetail such features with concepts of individual choice and autonomy and community democracy?

I believe it is possible to plot some of these dichotomies quite literally on a series of graphs.  For example, we might talk about relative ecological sustainability (RES) versus relative prosperity (RP).  We might also plot either of these two factors versus individual autonomy for each member of an urban commune (IA).

My question to the Docudharma community is, is this a conversation worth having?  It goes without saying that urban commune living would not possibly be a valuable topic to a person who values individual living past a certain point.  And it is for this reason that I wish to talk about how we can make urban communes an attractive choice, more secure choice for how to live as well as the bare bones topic of how to make it more sustainable and thus more secure.  How to be good to ourselves as well as Mother Earth ;).

If it is, we might look at some of these issues in detail in the coming weeks and months.  One of points is, when one talks about New Structures, as budhydharma puts it, what we are generally talking about is in cloudy, vaporous terms that nonetheless have a specific value.  We talk about how we can change our ways of interacting with each other, new communitarian values and political values.  However, when we talk about such new structures, is it not anachronistic not to take this term in its most literal possible way?  To me, the first thing I think of when I think of the word “structure” is “building”.  You have to forgive me, I am a literalistic sort — a programmer.  I know that it can also have to do with interactive models such as what budhy is actually more talking about.  But, in my opinion, the literal sense is also worth talking about.