communelifeblog posted: " by Raven Glomus When I lived at the Ganas Community, I heard someone tell this story: Two new folks join the community about the same time. One is someone who says, "Wow, this community is amazing. It's what I've been searching for a"
When I lived at the Ganas Community, I heard someone tell this story: Two new folks join the community about the same time. One is someone who says, "Wow, this community is amazing. It's what I've been searching for all my life. I want to stay here forever." The other one says,"This place is okay. I think I'll try it out and maybe I'll stay a year or so." The person telling the story (a long time member of Ganas) goes on to say that usually, the first person ends up staying a few weeks before they become disillusioned and leave, and the second one often ends up staying for years.
One of the problems with folks wanting to join a community is that they bring all these expectations with them. When someone begins the visitor program at Twin Oaks Community, they are given a little guide about life at Twin Oaks entitled, "Not Utopia Yet". This is a bit of a warning. No community is even near utopia. It says right in the guide: "We don't pretend that this is paradise, or utopia, and if that is what you really want you will have to look elsewhere..." Except that I don't think that there is an elsewhere.
Not "Not Utopia Yet" but a different book about Twin Oaks
Most communities have all the problems of the larger society, because they constantly have people coming and going. I have written about this before in a piece on this blog entitled "Aspirational Egalitarianism", which, while not as popular as the pieces we have on starting communes, still tends to show up in the top twenty-five posts even though I wrote it three years ago. The difficulty is that, because communities often aim higher, new members think they should be better than they are. This leads to disenchantment and departure.
Some folks assume that the problem is with the community they tried first and they go on to keep trying out communities. If they go into the new community with the same expectations, they are going to leave with the same disappointment. Eventually, one of two things usually happens. Most often, eventually they realize that there are no communities that are as wonderful as they want them to be, and they give up--and sometimes begin denouncing all the communes as 'frauds'. But sometimes, someone realizes that there just aren't any perfect communities, and that they can live with that, and they find one to call their home because it fits within some reasonable expectation.
I intend to write a piece soon on what I will call The Shadow Side of Community and look at all the stuff no one wants to talk about that exists in communities. Basically, as I said, communities have almost all the ills that the larger society has (and most people don't want to talk about these things in the larger society either). So, why join a commune if it's going to have the same problems as the mainstream? One reason is that the communes often aim higher and at least want to be better than they are. And, I think that they really are better than the mainstream in many ways. People share more and work together and think and talk about all these issues in ways that you won't find in your average setting. I think that communes and communities offer quite a bit (that's why I have lived in them all these years). You can actually get a lot out of communal living. You just need to lower your expectations.
Thanks for reading! This post was made possible by our patrons on Patreon. The Commune Life team works hard to bring you these stories about our lives in community, and that work couldn't happen without support from our audience. So if you liked this article, and want to help us make more like it, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/communelife to join us!
WordPress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment