Identifying the root of our discontent

I believe I know the reason we, as humans, tend toward depression, listlessness, boredom, discontentment, and any other label you'd like to assign the various negative states we exist within anywhere tribal-type communities have been abandoned. This isn't some miraculous revelation, nor is it an original idea, and I'm sure many of you have heard it before. We are depressed because we are not following a path natural to us according to our evolutionary heritage. Humans are meant to live in close-knit communities with other humans. This obsession with individuality has left us feeling lonely and unfulfilled. And when we do have close relationships in our current societal structures we end up placing all of our relational needs onto them and we wonder why they fall apart or don't fulfill our needs.

We think there must be something wrong with us and seek a suppression of the symptoms, rather than to fix the root problem. There is nothing wrong with us as a species, just with the way we've ignored where we came from and have tried to carry on with totalitarian agriculture and industrialized society when it obviously isn't working. Where we came from was tribal communities which worked with what they had accessible to them in their area of the world to live, eat, and create.

Working together in a tribal community gives you purpose, fulfills your social, emotional and your basic survival needs. No matter what you chose to do, hunting, small-scale agriculture, herding, gathering native food, there is a support system to back you up, and share the parts of the process that you don't participate in. So, if you have a garden, there are people to garden, people to prepare the food, people to make tools, teach the children their specialty, etc.... You share your work with them, they share theirs with you.

When there are problems between people (as there always will be), everyone is invested in working something out between those with the problem because, well, you all live together and must work together in order to survive. Patterns of behavior are adjusted over time within the community according to what works for them.

The community isn't fighting nature to produce more corn, for example, where corn doesn't grow well just because that is what makes the most money needed to buy the food which is held under lock and key. Instead they might graze goats because goats are native to the area and do well there, and provide them with the fulfillment of many needs.

The strive for bigger and better, the lack of reliable social support, the tie to money, the uncertainty about our jobs, roles within the community, and relationships, the ignorance to our evolutionary heritage, and the fight against the natural world around us leads to our depressed, unfulfilled state.

Useful Links, Topics for Discussion

Below are some links I find interesting and useful, as well as short descriptions about each of them. Check them out!

http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/ (Sign petition for Obama's Sec. of Agriculture choice...).

http://diginthedirt.wordpress.com/ (Thought provoking articles, good resources for the sustainably minded).

http://communalistmanifesto.typepad.com/communalist_manifesto/ (Another blog like mine).

http://www.yurts.com/ (Look at yurts made in the NW, good options)

http://tryonfarm.org/share/taxonomy/term/3 (Tryon is a sustainable community that works! I'm planning to visit, maybe in the spring. I don't like the publicity their farm gets, but there are things I do like. And why not learn from others' successes/ mistakes, and adjust accordingly?!)

And on and on... There are many, many more sites out there. This is just a start. Feel free to add good ones to the comments on this page. It will be a good resource page, as well as some jumping-off places for discussion. I'm going to also list some topics I'd like to discuss here. This will be useful to me, as I post new blogs, and will hopefully be useful to others as well.

Topics for Discussion:
-Totalitarian agriculture
-Humanity needing a whole community. (To fulfill different needs through different people, as opposed to expecting one or even a few people to fulfill all needs).
-Humans as a part of nature
-Humans as the final step of evolution?
-Education (teaching children, and adults, the things they need for survival/ enlightenment, as opposed to meaningless time wasting education.)
-Laws as arbitrary creations instead of evolved standards of behavior for a specific group of people
-Money (The trap. We all need strive for it to some degree in current society, and we become slaves to meaningless jobs, debt, etc...)
-Is the way humanity is living working?
-Vegetarianism (When eating meat is justified...).

*I'll add to this list along the way.

Stumbling Forward

So, I'm reading Ecotopia, by Ernest Callenbach.  It was recommended to me by someone on OkCupid who thought it reminded them of my ideas of an intentional community, which I explained very briefly on OKC.  Well, it does not represent my ideas exactly, but 35 pages into it, I'm intrigued.  It describes a sustainable community on a much grander scale than I've imagined.  In the book, the entire Northwest United States has seceded and formed its own nation.  How perfect!  Because most of the encountered problems in imaginings of an intentional, more "tribal" human community exist because such a community must, by definition, live at odds with the production driven modern world found in every direction.

The thing is, I'm not the person to lead such a secession, as I could never ask others to participate in the certainly messy process involved.  And, what are the chances such an effort would result in anything desirable?  I'd say the chances are slim.

So, what is this "intentional community" I'm proposing here?  I suppose it could be termed a "commune" just as easily.  Or even a "tribe".  Hasn't this been attempted before, you ask?  Aren't there such communities in existence even as I type these words?  Sure, it has.  Sure, there are.  And I'm sure there are many more knowledgeable folk than I to speak on such a thing from experience, from more extensive research than I have done.  To me, that is the point of inviting conversation.  To gain insights from others.  I do not claim to have all the answers, nor to I want to be in charge of such a community.  I'm just a person with ideas, passions, intuitions, and a desire for things to be different.

That being said, my vision as it currently stands is for a community to be started in a few years' time in the fertile Northwest United States of at least 20 people who believe that humanity is not meant to conquer the natural world, but to live in harmony with it.  These people believe that humans are a communal species which thrive in a socially tight-knit environment.  Communal gardening will produce the majority of the food needs for the community.  Education will be an ongoing pursuit for adults and children alike, and every person will be a teacher of their own favorite pursuits or talents.  Sustainability will include solar panels, wind power, and/or water power, composting toilets, vermicompost, etc....

Many things are up for discussion, of course.  Such as, where will this land be?  Who will purchase it?  Where will the money come from?  Will houses and community buildings be built from surrounding materials, or are pre-fabbed "yurts" a better way to go?

This is not a proposal for a utopia situation!  If the idea comes to fruition there will still be conflicts between people and growing pains during adjustment from this modern world we're used to.  People will give up, change their minds.  This has to be okay, as I cannot be involved in anything resembling a cult, where people have no room for free will.  People have different priorities, and I understand that.  I just cannot believe that this rat race lifestyle and the destruction of our world and natural heritage is the only way to be from here on out.  I see people desiring to make small changes, recycle more, etc....  But, without a change in mindset and basic lifestyle, we are on a ship caught by inertia, heading for the iceberg of our species.

Do I want to change the world?  I used to desire such a thing.  Now I just want a communal environment in which to inspire and be inspired, enjoy life, and possibly raise a family.  Thanks for reading.