0:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever wanted to join a commune? 0:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Better yet, have you ever wanted to start a commune? 0:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever wondered how communes work, or how they fail, which they seem to inevitably do? 0:27 [SPEAKER_00]: If your answer is yes to any of those questions, this episode is for you. 0:34 [SPEAKER_00]: The founder of the Communal Studies Association, Dr. Donald Pitzer, is with me today. 0:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Pitzer also founded the Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana and wrote the book on America's Communal Utopia's. 0:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Also with me is Jennifer Green, returning from the last episode. 0:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Jennifer is a history professor at the University of Southern Indiana and also serves as the school's reference and archives librarian. 1:08 [SPEAKER_00]: When I use the word commune, what comes to mind? 1:12 [SPEAKER_00]: You might think of huge farms, full of hippies, or religious fanatics, or cults of one kind or another, 1:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I realized at the beginning of my conversation with Dr. Pitzer that I really didn't have a clear sense of what this word really meant. 1:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked him to define it for me. 1:33 [SPEAKER_01]: There needs to be at least three to five people not related by marriage or look. 1:40 [SPEAKER_01]: And these need to share some contact 1:51 [SPEAKER_01]: and living right together, it could be this kind of online sort of relationship. 1:58 [SPEAKER_01]: But to traditionally, we would have said there need to be several people not related. 2:07 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a family as such of the legal problem families. 2:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And that those people need to be living together and sharing income. 2:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, the degree to which they do that is something else. 2:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Basically, a calm you can be entirely online that had never occurred to me. 2:31 [SPEAKER_00]: A calm you, it turns out, does not have to be a giant farm where everyone wears overalls and nobody wears deodorant. 2:40 [SPEAKER_00]: In case you didn't know, calm you and cults, which are often calm you and scorn bad, 2:49 [SPEAKER_00]: people are lonely or more isolated than ever before. 2:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And joining a group like this can offer a deep sense of togetherness and belonging. 3:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I think exactly right. 3:02 [SPEAKER_01]: The isolationism that people feel, the loneliness, none of that has to happen in the unity. 3:09 [SPEAKER_01]: And you can do this online. 3:11 [SPEAKER_01]: I am here in a paper I gave with one of my students one time. 3:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And so getting together now in the way we are, where you can actually see people and talk in this way, people are human, they want other contact. 3:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And so to overcome loneliness and the feeling of having lost self, where it's all this can be something that you really will almost give up your freedom 3:49 [SPEAKER_01]: a scholarship situation. 3:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Part of what interests me so much in the subject and probably some of what interests you is the potential for love and community in groups like these, which more often than not seems to turn tragic and dysfunctional by the end. 4:11 [SPEAKER_01]: I always caution my students. 4:13 [SPEAKER_01]: We're looking at communal groups objectively. 4:16 [SPEAKER_01]: and some of them are utopian or nearing utopias or wonderful. 4:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Others are just absolute, just hope years. 4:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Jim Jones was born in Indiana and his group in Indianapolis was not communal, but when they found got to San Francisco and that area, then they adopted this method of communal living and also a Jones found. 4:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I know I knew one of the survivors, Laura Cole, who produced a book and also came to contents and she told her story, she just passed away in the last year, but it can be a dystopia, and she still was delighted by many of the relationships that she had even a 5:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Fortunately, we come to the range than merely the tutorial on all the rich and led them into the deaths. 5:17 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think you have to be aware that what you're dealing with is a nothing of blooddening, when you just say communal, society and tension of community. 5:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Just as families or businesses can be good or bad, communes are just a different type of community. 5:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked Dr. Pitts or how someone might go about starting the good kind of commune. 5:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that you must everything must have an economic base. 5:49 [SPEAKER_01]: If you lose your economic base when you're a church or you're a government, you probably aren't blind to be biased in your law. 5:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that has to be a practical item. 6:02 [SPEAKER_01]: on people's minds, shall we begin it? 6:04 [SPEAKER_01]: If you're going to get together with other people, are these people just three-longers? 6:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Are they going to be willing to work hard if it's an agricultural little settlement? 6:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Free loaders will eventually destroy any organization and communes are no exception. 6:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Apart from economics, good leadership and good governance are also essential. 6:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And as with every other group, finding the right balance is also important. 6:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Even too much democracy can be a bad thing, as it can easily lead to chaos and endless debating. 6:44 [SPEAKER_00]: As some point, somebody has to step forward and make a decision. 6:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Then I think beyond the economic side, the leadership, the governance, 6:58 [SPEAKER_01]: and he has two and a half years there, never set up a proper governance system. 7:05 [SPEAKER_01]: That must be done. 7:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And they were so democratic and they were trying to respect women's rights and so on. 7:15 [SPEAKER_01]: They held leggings in which there were long debates in two and a half years, they wrote seven constitutions. 7:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So they were trying. 7:28 [SPEAKER_01]: but it was scattered, absolutely. 7:30 [SPEAKER_01]: It was, we were saying it in democracy right now. 7:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Democracy is a fragile system. 7:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And you must protect it. 7:40 [SPEAKER_01]: You must be careful. 7:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Don't speak. 7:43 [SPEAKER_01]: I've been in meetings where they said, it's total consensus decision. 7:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And what I noticed after a few minutes was, 7:58 [SPEAKER_01]: who, when they spoke, seemed to carry more weight. 8:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And there were some people who weren't speaking up at all. 8:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And others in one group of, I suppose, you'd call them deputies, in San Francisco. 8:13 [SPEAKER_01]: They would take them both as to whether they're both on their clothes that are in the block. 8:18 [SPEAKER_01]: How much of that can you do? 8:21 [SPEAKER_01]: And what I found in that group, for example, they had a charismatic leader. 8:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And that charismatic leader, when he spoke, carried sizeable weight. 8:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Some other people, when they spoke, it didn't seem to me that it really mattered much. 8:41 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think you'll have to be really attentive to the governments. 8:46 [SPEAKER_01]: How are you going to make decisions? 8:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And how is the workforce going to get done? 8:56 [SPEAKER_01]: have that down to a science, they have rules and regulations. 9:00 [SPEAKER_01]: When I first went to Israel in the 1990s, I should say in the 1980s, they had a rule that the children had their own dwellings, and they didn't even eat with their parents. 9:15 [SPEAKER_01]: They visited their parents, and they were beginning to question that. 9:25 [SPEAKER_01]: and they were beginning to wet the children while they're in sleep at home. 9:30 [SPEAKER_01]: That had not been their system at all. 9:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I call that developmental community and interact some of my visits to a book of which makes helped me to develop that idea. 9:43 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think you'll have to make rules. 9:46 [SPEAKER_01]: You'll have to have a structure. 9:49 [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't structure in the community, it's like a family. 9:54 [SPEAKER_01]: It can just run wild or there can be some purpose here and somebody is in control and there are times to go to bed and so on. 10:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, there have been communal groups, some of which didn't last very long, and I am visiting the land where they used to be, particularly hippie can do this. 10:24 [SPEAKER_01]: and nobody would look twice because that was your right and that was your thing. 10:30 [SPEAKER_01]: You would do your thing. 10:32 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think you have to be sure that if it's going to be a landed place that the landed cell is sufficient for the group that you want to have and that maybe 10:48 [SPEAKER_01]: There are adjacent areas that you can add. 10:51 [SPEAKER_01]: However, I should say that most of the communal groups now, intentional communities, are urban. 11:00 [SPEAKER_01]: They are not rural. 11:02 [SPEAKER_01]: The things that changed in the mid-20th century was that move from rural communities with a lot of land and agricultural base to people who are living 11:17 [SPEAKER_01]: apartments or in buildings that they own in cities. 11:23 [SPEAKER_01]: So from rural to terrible. 11:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And the other major shift was from total compsum and you share all in dumb. 11:35 [SPEAKER_01]: You really don't give them own clones that you add on to being capitalistic or having your own income 11:45 [SPEAKER_01]: you work at a job somewhere in the city, you donate to the community, what is necessary and expected, but you control your own finances. 11:57 [SPEAKER_01]: So these are major shifts and I think anybody who's going to begin to find a great that they would feel they would want to live close with because it's again like a fan. 12:15 [SPEAKER_01]: I can remember at the dynamic, when I get busy fair, which I'm doing often with students, and they would say, how do you get along with people day after day? 12:25 [SPEAKER_01]: I have to look at that man's face and working here at the mill every day. 12:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I look at him over the table and I'm eating supper. 12:36 [SPEAKER_01]: He really wanna do that. 12:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And so these people really that commodious, 12:44 [SPEAKER_01]: our colonialists. 12:47 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's a very serious decision and I appreciate what you're saying that there are people who are truly looking and there are people in communities who are looking for people to join. 13:01 [SPEAKER_01]: So whenever it is in your heart to join such a group, if you'll 13:14 [SPEAKER_01]: the foundation for the intention of the community. 13:19 [SPEAKER_01]: If you will come to some of the conferences, I think what you want to do is to invest yourself a little bit in this tradition. 13:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And the conferences will be a place that you can do this. 13:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Come to the Center for Communal Studies and it's our Bible collection. 13:38 [SPEAKER_01]: on the campus over the University of London and yet Jennifer Green knows the collection very well she was my assistant in the center for communal studies and then got her degree in library science and month mass using so she became the archival spirit so she would be willing to help. 13:57 [SPEAKER_00]: that's a personal invitation to you from the founder of the Center for Communal Studies. 14:04 [SPEAKER_00]: You should take him up on it. 14:05 [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to make that trip ourselves as a team in the near future. 14:11 [SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to make this trip yourself, or attend a conference, reach out to us, and we'll help get you started and connect you with Dr. Pitzer, or with Jennifer. 14:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Or visit New Harmony, or some of the other historic sites, like the Emanic columns in Iowa, talk to their people. 14:31 [SPEAKER_01]: They're not communal and a manner in the long work, but they have their religion, which goes on, and their faith is very strong. 14:41 [SPEAKER_01]: But there are people who can tell you, and it would be good, it would really be helpful 14:52 [SPEAKER_01]: before you just throw all the cards on the table or throw all of your resources into adventure. 15:00 [SPEAKER_01]: More of these have failed economically than have succeeded. 15:05 [SPEAKER_01]: There were thousands of communities during the hit the hero of 70s, 80s, and co-housing and became a major effort and the ethos, villages, and so forth. 15:17 [SPEAKER_01]: So there are plenty of community still existing, 15:21 [SPEAKER_01]: that can be joined, but we use directories and other such resources are there. 15:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And I would strongly urge people to think about that. 15:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And then think about the land that you might be on, or buildings that you might begin. 15:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Think of the people that you will be with. 15:38 [SPEAKER_01]: How are you going to govern yourselves, sounds? 15:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And how are you going to enforce, but find a government? 15:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And do you know what to have? 15:47 [SPEAKER_01]: A carersmatic read it. 15:50 [SPEAKER_00]: as important as good leadership and good economics are to success for group living. 15:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Having a clear vision for what you're trying to accomplish and getting buy in is just as important. 16:05 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it all depends on the vision. 16:08 [SPEAKER_01]: I think the people who are going into this and particularly if there is a charismatic 16:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And so you have to be careful how you assess that leader and follow that leader. 16:24 [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm thinking in the harmonious society for example, they did economics, rights, they did capitalizing rights, they knew how to grow produce, they manufactured whisky, 16:42 [SPEAKER_01]: and find beer, track their recipe for their beer, has then leaked the dish now in New Harmony and you can buy it in one of the restaurants there. 16:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Their vision was that everything is getting better and better. 16:57 [SPEAKER_01]: They were post millenium lists, which means the world has to get better and better and get perfected, then Christ can come back and set up the kingdom of God on earth. 17:09 [SPEAKER_01]: And that optimism, 17:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, they were German immigrants, anyway, many of them, and so a work was just central to them. 17:22 [SPEAKER_01]: When I went to Ipping in where many of them came from, in Germany, I heard from the mayor that they have a saying day, work and die. 17:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what the armament was did. 17:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And had Christ come back. 17:43 [SPEAKER_01]: They were the new Jews, and that New Harmony would be the center of the world. 17:52 [SPEAKER_01]: It would be the capital of the Kingdom on Earth, and when that didn't happen in 10 years, then George Rapp decided, we need to go back to Pennsylvania, harmony, Pennsylvania, and still a town. 18:05 [SPEAKER_01]: They heard that they had built, and so nearby there, but on the Ohio River, North of Pittsburgh, 18:12 [SPEAKER_01]: is economy, and they called it the divine economy. 18:20 [SPEAKER_01]: So that was going to be where Christ would come back. 18:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And he predicted at one time that it would be in 1828. 18:28 [SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to start predicting dates. 18:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was one of the major flaws. 18:34 [SPEAKER_01]: But they did get the economic side and the force of the religion 18:42 [SPEAKER_01]: carried them on because they were going to hit Christ on earth and his kingdom, and it was either going to be New Harmony or it's going to be, which economy. 18:53 [SPEAKER_01]: What they get wrong was to sell their souls. 18:58 [SPEAKER_01]: If you sell your soul to somebody with a vision, and it's always promised in the future, 19:12 [SPEAKER_01]: I love ice cream. 19:13 [SPEAKER_01]: I have my freezer filled with ice cream all the time. 19:18 [SPEAKER_01]: So it is here now. 19:21 [SPEAKER_01]: I have my ice cream and I eat it too. 19:25 [SPEAKER_01]: These people are giving up their ability to have more family in the harmony society. 19:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Their perfectionism drives them to this solidacy 19:41 [SPEAKER_01]: I believe that in the long run, not only many of the members, but even the son of George Rapinsel, Frederick Rap, who was their business agent and the mastermind at Capulence, he confronted his father and said, you are going too far. 20:06 [SPEAKER_01]: You are demanding too much. 20:11 [SPEAKER_01]: since he predicted that Christ would come back, there was a person who came from Europe calling himself the lion of Judah, and that he was the Messiah, and he led a third of the armors to waive from Armanic to Amadi Khan in Pennsylvania. 20:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Took them off, and they set up a couple of communities. 20:34 [SPEAKER_01]: One in Pennsylvania and one in Louisiana. 20:41 [SPEAKER_01]: because your draft was becoming totally good for it. 20:47 [SPEAKER_01]: There is a major downside there. 20:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think people, you can't be too careful when you're dealing your life, when your commitments, when your funds, it's like buying stock or becoming involved in our business venture. 21:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think people, sometimes move on if they're hard. 21:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's fine, all of us do that. 21:10 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think if you only crushed your heart, it's like a love affair. 21:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that works out, picking that doesn't. 21:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And there can be dire consequences. 21:21 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a very serious decision that you're talking about. 21:24 [SPEAKER_01]: If people really do want to live in a communal setting, but they might as well as find one that's really working in a way that they feel and what they would enjoy. 21:37 [SPEAKER_01]: join that. 21:38 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, by end, we'll cut into each other and be doing it all. 21:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Rabel then, starting a new venture. 21:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked if there was a reason that United States, in particular, has been home to so many communal groups. 21:55 [SPEAKER_01]: The United States is probably the most attractive place in the world and set up a communal group. 22:02 [SPEAKER_01]: because it's relatively fleeting, you can do this, and as soon as it was possible to incorporate, George Rapp did that for his harmonious society, because then the liabilities go to the company and so forth. 22:17 [SPEAKER_01]: So, in corporation is one of the major freedoms that we have here that permits little groups to form 22:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked if America did have, in fact, the most communal experiments of any country. 22:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, you can do it like this study. 22:41 [SPEAKER_01]: One of them does, and you had to light the fire, and it's in me poor people, and we really want you to wish. 22:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And I suspect that they've had more communal groups, in that sense, communistic, can the other groups, than any place else in the world. 22:57 [SPEAKER_01]: But if you're talking about this definition of voluntary 23:03 [SPEAKER_01]: that come together around the vision and that live in proximity for our online and share their lives in that sense. 23:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Then, yes, I'm Terry of the United States because of the freedoms of the here. 23:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And there have been thousands, there have been thousands of years and we have material on hermords of them in the Sanctuary of the United States archives that are here on campus in general, 23:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Not only do you have to get along with the people inside your group, you have to also get along with a larger community next door, being a bad neighbor to the general public is one of the shortest ways to care in T failure. 23:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing exists in isolation and even though you might want an isolated situation, it can't be. 23:55 [SPEAKER_01]: You marked the, you know, with the people on the outside and get things from them and maybe sell things to them or try to convince them to get on the isn't so that boundary of interaction is really very important. 24:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't handle that, it's like moving into the neighborhood and you don't really fit there. 24:18 [SPEAKER_01]: or whatever reasons, and the people don't accept you in that neighborhood. 24:23 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not a little work out there. 24:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked for examples of groups failing this test of neighborliness. 24:31 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to make sure I think that maybe a prime example is Jim Jones and the people's temple. 24:39 [SPEAKER_01]: If you look at their history, they're early messy. 24:44 [SPEAKER_01]: As it was preached by Jen Jones, effectively, in Indianapolis, was equality among the people. 24:54 [SPEAKER_01]: It was trying to get past racism. 24:59 [SPEAKER_01]: It was trying to preach love and goodwill. 25:03 [SPEAKER_01]: It was dispensing all sorts of benefits to the people in the area, food and clothing and so for it. 25:14 [SPEAKER_01]: The fact that Jim Jones became so big the coriola and eventually was delayed. 25:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But that movement down, law of coal and other people associated with the movement what became known as the People's Temple, were totally enmeshed in that vision. 25:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And as long as he preached that, and wasn't doing fake healings, 25:43 [SPEAKER_01]: and wasn't paddling kids that he'd stand up on the windowsill and all that sort of thing. 25:51 [SPEAKER_01]: He was in politics. 25:53 [SPEAKER_01]: He could deliver a crowd who was the major figure he went there. 25:58 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the kind of things, but at the time, he had so many of his people there. 26:05 [SPEAKER_01]: And I believe he sat on the platform, 26:12 [SPEAKER_01]: So the original message that Jim Jones preached was one of the Vanitarianism, was one of uplifts of the community, who are they would hug each other in the circumstances and so forth. 26:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the fact that he just became so dictatorial and he was all about him, the dentional. 26:40 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's really what brought that down. 26:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, the communal aspect, they had a place in the, was it called the Red words in Northern California, where they were living communally, even while they were operating the people's temple. 26:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And while I'll call them in her book, talks about going there, he insisted that you come up there, and so she was part of that. 27:10 [SPEAKER_01]: which, in itself, all sir was working for a lot of people, but you can't become as rapid as it is. 27:18 [SPEAKER_01]: With the armament, you can't become completely dictatorial, people will eventually be involved, even though they will say more a call with always synthesized. 27:29 [SPEAKER_01]: I love these people. 27:31 [SPEAKER_01]: I love Jim Jones in the time when he was rational. 27:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And so there is energy there that people 27:40 [SPEAKER_01]: particularly love. 27:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I think for all the hatred there is in the world, sometimes I'm accused being too naive and too utopian, but I really believe that love can live in the long, long, love can live in the long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long 28:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think love is the way people really can associate over the long periods of time and in positive ways. 28:21 [SPEAKER_01]: The people who come from places like Atlanta, Iowa, which continues as a community, or in the apartment, the ones where the faith that they established in their communal faith is still going full. 28:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And a manor is a wonderful, the seven manatella, and he's a perfect example. 28:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Descendants done the early members there. 28:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Talk about the, what shall I call it? 28:56 [SPEAKER_01]: It's an army arms that exists. 28:59 [SPEAKER_01]: It's almost an atmosphere. 29:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll come waterly that continues 29:07 [SPEAKER_01]: part and as a vital part, a living part of the heritage that came from their communal origins. 29:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And they prized that, I've been in services they have, and they still sit on different sides of the making houses, men on one side, women on the other side. 29:29 [SPEAKER_01]: They have 29:34 [SPEAKER_01]: one of the ladies from there has finished a translation of the writings of their founder and they stay with the ideas and those are eternal truths. 29:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Principles that very definitely work and ultimately they're based on love for one in their work and their love for love. 30:00 [SPEAKER_01]: So these people 30:04 [SPEAKER_01]: that side are the development of those columns. 30:09 [SPEAKER_01]: They are also continually very capitalistically oriented and if you go to the amount of colonies, you will come away with a lot of superwears and clothing and other things that you bought from them. 30:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not just the religious side, the effective capitalism came through as well. 30:35 [SPEAKER_00]: When I asked Jennifer about the most important concerns when it comes to starting your own commune, she echoed Pittsburgh's emphasis on good governance. 30:46 [SPEAKER_02]: If you're going to create the structure where your community can live with them, there's got to be a controlling mechanism, particularly in the early years and you could argue to grow that out, but in the beginning, 31:00 [SPEAKER_02]: Consensus decision making does not work very well. 31:04 [SPEAKER_02]: Eco villagers today are finding that out. 31:07 [SPEAKER_02]: All right, they started thinking, oh, we'll be conscious. 31:09 [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody's got one vote. 31:12 [SPEAKER_02]: We suddenly find that you can't get anything done. 31:15 [SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever been to a city hall meeting or a family meeting, you will have seen this coming. 31:22 [SPEAKER_02]: Technically, consensus just really doesn't work. 31:25 [SPEAKER_02]: So you would need that you would need a leader who was strong enough to attract people. 31:30 [SPEAKER_02]: Also, that leader's already got to have a purpose and probably a plane. 31:35 [SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, what's he using to attract people. 31:39 [SPEAKER_02]: And then he's got to be strong. 31:40 [SPEAKER_02]: They have to be strong enough to hold the structure in place while the foundations get laid to support whatever comes next. 31:49 [SPEAKER_00]: with leadership being such an important aspect of any group survival. 31:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I assumed that developing a Sussetian plan will be at the top of every organization's to do list. 32:01 [SPEAKER_02]: I can't think of a single group that ever designated a next, charismatic leader. 32:07 [SPEAKER_02]: Now the shakers, and I'm not a shaker expert, but Anali starts the shaker tradition. 32:14 [SPEAKER_02]: And that survives long after she's gone. 32:18 [SPEAKER_02]: But I think that's because she sets up a Council of Elders of a government structure that isn't dependent on her. 32:27 [SPEAKER_02]: If your structure is dependent on you, and I don't think you can pass the torch. 32:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe the ideal structure is a charismatic leader working within a tiny republic, a tiny oligarchy, or something like that. 32:42 [SPEAKER_02]: I think oligarchy'd be better than republic. 32:46 [SPEAKER_02]: I'd imagine that the common member of the Harmness Society had very little input and to what they were going to do and how they were going to do it when it was going to get done. 32:58 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the most interesting things that I learned was how much thought goes in to the actual layout of these communities. 33:06 [SPEAKER_02]: With the communal groups, there's the village model and then the village model is based on rings. 33:14 [SPEAKER_02]: So you have your main village in the center and you can actually have little rings within your community houses so the inner ring is where everybody lives and then there's an outer ring and that's where your garden is your vegetable gardens are and then there's a ring beyond that and that's where your animal husbandry will happen for everybody and then there's an additional ring outside of that's the natural bearer. 33:41 [SPEAKER_02]: So everybody's plants, their gardens are all around this peripheral. 33:47 [SPEAKER_02]: They're not in your yard. 33:48 [SPEAKER_02]: They're in this zone around the village. 33:51 [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's the homestead model. 33:54 [SPEAKER_02]: So dancing rabbit is the village model. 33:58 [SPEAKER_02]: And a bunch of people at dancing rabbit said, I don't want to have to walk all the way out here to feed my goats. 34:05 [SPEAKER_02]: 10 my vegetables. 34:07 [SPEAKER_02]: So they bought land adjacent and built red earth and that's a home setting model. 34:13 [SPEAKER_02]: So in the home setting model, red earth is one community, but you own your own lots, you have your own designated lots, and you do whatever you want on your lot. 34:24 [SPEAKER_02]: If you want to 34:30 [SPEAKER_02]: But it's the village model that makes me think about the harmonist and the shakers because yeah, there is now the reason for that is this because you want your animal waste out on the periphery, you don't want it in with your garden, there's actually a reason why, but that's the structure of the community so you and if you don't want to live in that structure, you're going to go another community dancing rabbit was set up that way from day one they knew they wanted to do the village model. 34:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked if there was any way for a commune to function with truly private property and private wealth. 35:08 [SPEAKER_02]: That's an interesting question. 35:11 [SPEAKER_02]: So immediately as soon as you own your own property, you've already created a division. 35:17 [SPEAKER_02]: All right, even if it's a land trust where people do own their own lots, but they basically live under our covenants, like a game of community. 35:26 [SPEAKER_02]: These are the rules if you want to live here. 35:29 [SPEAKER_02]: And if you want to sell your property, because you don't want to live here anymore, we have to approve and buy your property. 35:38 [SPEAKER_02]: Whereas if it's all communal, 35:42 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just, let's say, reasing space on top of the land. 35:46 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't own it. 35:49 [SPEAKER_02]: I think private land ownership can lead to a breakdown in a community. 35:53 [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's why I'm headed with that. 35:56 [SPEAKER_02]: I guess if I were looking at a community, I think communal land is the way to go, because everybody has to buy it. 36:05 [SPEAKER_02]: And if you want out, if one person takes their law in the middle of the community and sells it to an industrial company, the community's laws. 36:17 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, I can't answer your question directly as to provisions I have seen, because in modern communities, they are few and far between. 36:26 [SPEAKER_02]: although many of them do require that you have to buy it. 36:31 [SPEAKER_02]: There is a certain buy it. 36:33 [SPEAKER_02]: At Dancing Rabbit, you can make your living anyway, you want. 36:37 [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of people there who they allocate a lot of their money for internet because they work remotely. 36:45 [SPEAKER_02]: I got to talk to this couple. 36:47 [SPEAKER_02]: They do commercial editing for studios and California. 36:51 [SPEAKER_02]: So she said, when we sat down and became a member of the community, we knew that our priorities were this. 36:58 [SPEAKER_02]: So we don't worry so much about spending on this, that or the other, because this is our priority, which means that if we can't produce enough electricity from our own solar or wind, and we have to buy it from the community, we know that's an allocation where we're going to give up this over here and pay for that. 37:19 [SPEAKER_02]: where as another person would say, I don't even remember that. 37:23 [SPEAKER_02]: I'd rather spend my money this way and never have to buy from the community for that. 37:30 [SPEAKER_02]: They are very open. 37:31 [SPEAKER_02]: Almost all of them though, even the ones where you buy your land, you can't just sell it to anybody. 37:41 [SPEAKER_02]: The community makes sure a proven I think that is important for a community to survive. 37:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Jennifer and I ran through a few scenarios as to how corrupt leaders might use property and religious conviction to control and manipulate members. 37:58 [SPEAKER_02]: The fun building a Jones town, I'm starting with people. 38:04 [SPEAKER_02]: And in order to control the people, I have to come up with a system that's either going to inhibit them to the point where I can 38:16 [SPEAKER_02]: or I have to come up with a program that they're going to just so buy into it that it doesn't matter what happens. 38:21 [SPEAKER_02]: They're on the train to heaven or whatever. 38:23 [SPEAKER_02]: And then the land and the space means not it's the control of the people because I can take the space wherever. 38:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Sadly, this sort of thing happened all the time. 38:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And we've all heard horror stories, though they would take us beyond the boundaries of this conversation. 38:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to take Jennifer and Dr. Pitzer again for joining me. 38:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And I hope I can sit down with them again in the near future. 38:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening.
Show full transcript (322 segments)
