Excerpt of a discussion

I've copied an online discussion of the book(s) by Daniel Quinn in the Ishmael series. I was asked my opinions and what I did/did not agree with in the book. Here it is...

I've read all 3 books in the Ishmael series. They make some great points about our society, our 'myths' we live by, totalitarian agriculture, salvationist religions, tribal ideas and communities, our education system, etc... I suppose one thing I take issue with is that the books suggest a change of vision as the solution for humanities' destruction of the planet. This would work, of course, but I don't really have hope that this is possible. I think what we "should" do as individuals is what we can in our lifetimes to be sustainable/responsible within our societies, or to separate ourselves from them as much as possible.

As far as hope for the future is concerned, I do think humans will have to destroy ourselves or come very close to destruction before we would be motivated to change our philosophies about the ways we live (i.e. believing we have the right/responsibility to change and control nature and that we are above the natural order). Does this answer your question? What are/were your takes on the book(s)? -Amara

A word about my struggling business...

This has little to do with an intentional community, other than the fact that if I'm successful at my massage business, I'm more likely to be able to follow my dreams. The word is that the more people that click on links to my website from other sites, the more I will pop up on searches for search engines. So, will you all click on the link, even if you've seen the site, and even if you don't live in Portland?! Thank you so much! Have a wonderful day!

Click Below!

Click Here for my website.

A Direction to Aim

Following any feelings of doom and gloom, my brain starts to work on next steps and plausible solution. So, here's the theory.... If I aim in the direction I want to go, I will meet people who feel the same way and learn things I will need to know along the way. In short, I will manifest my desired future in my life. Do I expect it to look identical to the vision in my head at this moment? If our ideas and expectations didn't evolve, wouldn't that mean we have closed ourselves to learning new things? I hope to learn until the day I die.

Paying off my current debt is a good start to being able to afford to buy my yurt, some land, and begin my farming. So I will attempt to make more money and save, save, save in an effort to follow my dreams. This feels a bit like immersion even more in the corrupt system in order to be able to separate myself from that very system. But, I don't see a way around this and I'm willing to accept it as a necessary "evil".

Also, and this is where I will meet those like-minded people, I will volunteer with an environmental clean-up or green energy effort, take environmental ed. classes and "survival" courses where I'm able (keeping in mind the previous goal of paying off debt).

Then there's my garden! I have a yard now, space, and raised beds I began work on this fall. So, I practice growing as much food as I can, in this northwest climate. Yummy!

So, there's a plan of action which will get my closer to my goal of an intentional community while using my time in the interim for preparation.

I'm tired

Honestly, I thought more people would be thinking the things I am and want to discuss them here. Honestly, I don't believe we are living the way nature intended. Honestly, I don't want to go off and live alone in order to get away from it all. Honestly, I'm tired.

How do I find what I'm looking for? Where is my intentional community, my tribe? Where do I go from here? I can't stay motivated on these things with no one to share in my journey, to inspire and encourage me. Would I be more likely to meet the person/ people I'm talking about in a small town/ community? Then what?! Wait another few years before real life begins?!

I can live with this life. It's not that I'm unhappy. There are good things happening. If I only knew that this was it, that I should move forward within the parameters of the life I have right now, I could give up on all of the other passions and dreams perpetually brewing just under the surface of my mind.

Anyone want to move away from the bustling masses into a yurt with me?

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.