As many of you may know, I am very interested in the topic of community and how its relates to sustainability and wellbeing. As such, I spent a considerable amount of my solo-journey time in New Zealand exploring the intricacies, challenges, and successful approaches of several communities.
For one and a half months, I lived at New Directions Homestay, an organic and minimal-waste community for persons seeking alternative ways of eating and thinking. The homestay promotes a consciousness of our connection to the earth and the development of successful communication skills. It was a wonderfully welcoming and diverse community with members ranging from several home-schooled under ten-year-olds to a 74 year old woman publishing a book on the hidden power of using our non-dominant hand. Meals were always eaten together and we met weekly to discuss any relevant community matters.
Another place I visited was Tui Community. Tui’s mission is to promote education within New Zealand on the role and function of sustainable communities, by establishing a living, working example of an intentional community. It combines the essential principles of spiritual awareness, connection with nature and appropriate lifestyle, where residents and visitors can participate in a variety of educational and spiritual practices.
I also had several conversations with a couple from Canada who shared with me the lessons they learned from each of the five communities they have lived in, including OUR Ecovillage. While not a representative sample of all community types, a few trends are starting to emerge from all the information I am gathering, regarding both challenges and successful approaches to community living. I outline these below.
5 Reasons why Communities Fail
1) Lack of commitment. In our society today, people lack commitment to each other. When a problem arises, we just walk away. Just like many modern relationships, people “bounce” when things get difficult. Communities face the same challenge.
2) Mentality of scarcity. Understandably, everyone wants their own needs met. Communities often meet needs through principles of sharing. Some individuals may feel that sharing is an impingement on their space, their time, and resources.
3) All talk, no build: Sometimes, a group of people will become very excited about the idea of creating a community together but it will stay very much in the ideation phase. The group may be disorganized or lack real planning capacity.
4) Structure. People are different and like different things, including how their living space looks, feels, and operates. The design of a community space may not fit the preferences of certain individuals and create tension in that way .
5) Lack of a spiritual glue. People can easily come together when the going is easy and fun. Community cohesion without a deeper root, however, can easily splinter during rough patches.
6 Approaches to Improve Community Resilience
1) Healthy Communication. At the very core of most successfully relationships is the capacity for healthy communication. The same is true for relationships within a community. Most of the members at Tui Community, for instance, have been trained in Non-Violent Communication (NVC), which teaches that our communication should focus on four components: Observation, Feeling, Need, and Request. NVC assumes that all human beings share the same basic needs, as well as the capacity for compassion, and only resort to behavior that harms themselves and others when they do not recognize more effective strategies for meeting needs.
2) Core group. Depending on the size of a community, it may be helpful to have a core group of dedicated individuals who meet regularly to address issues that not the whole community needs to get involved with.
3) Design-led. Investing time in design and deciding on the ethos of a community before it is established can take a lot of preparatory work. But such effort can pay off in the long run as countless discussion over trivial details such as the shape of each window may be avoided. Members who choose to live there agree to live by the pre-established design.
4) Guidelines. While inclusivity is certainly a common value that many communities ascribe to, setting some parameters or filters upon admitting new members can help align lifestyles and values. NDH for instance, has a set of parameters that all new members are expected to live by. We live by a set of ‘harmonious living principles’ focused on communication, respect, cleanliness, conservation of resources, participation, and feedback.
5) Eat together! New research from Oxford has revealed that the more often people eat with others, the more likely they are to feel happy and satisfied with their lives. The dinner table can act as a unifier, a place of community. Sharing a meal is an excuse to catch up and talk, one of the few times where people are happy to put aside their work and take time out of their day.
6) Spiritual backbone. Spiritual can be a funny word for some people but it really just means that you believe there is more to the world than meets the eye, that is to say, more than the mere material. Many millenials believe Western culture is far too outward focused, glorifying material success at the expense of the things that really matter. Spirituality stresses the importance of attuning to our inner life in order to act more wisely in the world. For many, this allows interactions with others in a way that is less reactive, less harmful and more authentic to oneself’s true nature. There are certain virtues which have come to be associated with spirituality including compassion, empathy and open-heartedness. Communities in which members share sort of spiritual foundation are likely to be far more resilient and harmonious than those without.
Living in community has several benefits. It can fill sense of belonging, offer security, and reduce the cost of living. But as I learned both first hand and from others, it can also be challenging to create and sustain, especially in a context of a hyper-individualized world. However, deep down, humans are social beings and biologically designed to live in groups. The above approaches offer some insight into how to enable community living in the modern age. But I would love to hear from you. Do you have any experience living in community? What challenges or successful approaches have you noticed? Please share below!