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About 4 years ago, I left a call out on the IC.org website to start an intentional community. I’d spent a couple of years researching communities, and noting that they fell into only a few subgroups. They were as follows:
With the term “Waifs and Strays” I was hoping to attract certain folks who fully understand.
After that, how can you live in close proximity to others living just as minimally? I'm not suggesting mud-hut living in Mauritania, but this idea, if actualized, is NOT intended to be a scaled down version of suburbia, either. I’ve thought twice about taking the ad down on IC.org. I'm still interested in the goal, and I’m still getting the occasional replies. I set up this forum to try to make conversation so we might perhaps get somewhere.
In the past four years, I’ve probably received about 200 or so responses. During the first year, I would write lengthy emails back. It was difficult to start dialogue. I discovered an awful lot of folks were only interested in coming once it was built and established. Not a whole lot of interest in participating, pooling resource, researching or helping to build.
To be honest, it’s quite understandable. If you’ve put a great deal into the initial stages and get abandoned in the process, you're stuck with more responsibility than you committed yourself to. I've experienced a minimal version of that, and it’s one of the reasons I stopped writing back to folks. Illness and underemployment have also contributed to my lack of response.
I'd like to find out who's still interested and what ideas you can add to the mix. I figured it would be best if folks got to know one another from the start and interacted in a forum. Some may perhaps connect and start their own community elsewhere. But it could be great to at least begin the process.
- Religious cults – Some, like the Anabaptist sects, aren’t as malevolent as others. However, none of these sectarian communities has a place for pariahs. They are collectivist. They create pariahs.
- Re-branded developer schemes – builders and financiers looking to attract those with money and good credit into fresh, new, faux-green communities for the eco-snob who wants to get a little further away from the dirty city and dirty poor people.
- Eco-political communes – They make their point about the environment, but they’re not making any advancements on humanity’s oldest tribal iniquities..cronyism, unequal distribution, in-fighting, and punitive sanctioning of the individual spirit.
- Trigger happy militia groups – I really need not describe them. They tend to make the news every few years.
With the term “Waifs and Strays” I was hoping to attract certain folks who fully understand.
- How little do you require to survive?
- How practical and industrious can you be with almost nothing?
- How little money can you survive on?
- How long can you survive with no money?
- If you’re not homeless, have you ever been? Do you remember how you got through it?
- How small of a space can you live in comfortably?
- How few appliances do you need, and could you handle manually operated alternatives?
- How can any talents, interests or hobbies you might posses be applicable to this minimal lifestyle?
- Will your current skills be nullified by this minimal lifestyle?
After that, how can you live in close proximity to others living just as minimally? I'm not suggesting mud-hut living in Mauritania, but this idea, if actualized, is NOT intended to be a scaled down version of suburbia, either. I’ve thought twice about taking the ad down on IC.org. I'm still interested in the goal, and I’m still getting the occasional replies. I set up this forum to try to make conversation so we might perhaps get somewhere.
In the past four years, I’ve probably received about 200 or so responses. During the first year, I would write lengthy emails back. It was difficult to start dialogue. I discovered an awful lot of folks were only interested in coming once it was built and established. Not a whole lot of interest in participating, pooling resource, researching or helping to build.
To be honest, it’s quite understandable. If you’ve put a great deal into the initial stages and get abandoned in the process, you're stuck with more responsibility than you committed yourself to. I've experienced a minimal version of that, and it’s one of the reasons I stopped writing back to folks. Illness and underemployment have also contributed to my lack of response.
I'd like to find out who's still interested and what ideas you can add to the mix. I figured it would be best if folks got to know one another from the start and interacted in a forum. Some may perhaps connect and start their own community elsewhere. But it could be great to at least begin the process.
