Posted by: Jason Godesky | 04/02/2006

Hey, thank you for your post. You touched on a few of the things I’ve been thinking about lately, and I’d like to respond to a few things.

“At first I thought my old idea of living in an ecovillage might be the way but it soon became obvious that an ecovillage couldn’t absorb an influx of permanent visitors very well and it certainly couldn’t handle difficult security issues.”

I think I hear what you’re saying — because it’s difficult to set up an ecovillage, you’re looking into other options. I think that’s a good idea, but that perhaps the option you’ve come up with is not any less difficult. In fact, it seems prone to the same problems any ecovillage would be prone to, just on a *much* larger scale. Here, “success” might be your biggest downfall, in that you would generate tons of press and a widespread interest, unlike a relatively small ecovillage. I can see thousands of people in a collapse situation thinking to themselves, “Hey, have you heard about that self-sufficient town? Let’s go there.” If you’re going to attempt this option, I think you need to address your same criticism of ecovillages — how the town would handle a sudden influx of permanent visitors. Maybe you *have* thought of this, I don’t know, but I’m unable to see how this same criticism doesn’t apply. It’d be helpful for me if I could see where you’re coming from on this.

You might take what you’re saying (“True security comes from catering for the needs of all the people.”) to another level, meeting the needs of the entire island of New Zealand. But then you have the same exact problems, except on an even *larger* scale. Of course, if you could only save the whole entire world, there wouldn’t be any problem at all, so maybe you should make saving the whole world your focus. Except you and I *both* know that saving the whole world is an impossibility.

At this point, doesn’t it make much more sense to start on the smallest scale possible, and work from there? I personally can’t see any line of reasoning that would point away from this idea *except* for the idea that it’s everyone or no one — either everyone lives together in perfect harmony or everyone dies together in a hellish armageddon. This dualistic view of the future seems to be very unrealistic, and seems to be self-fulfilling in the “everyone dying in a hellish armageddon” category. I think you and I both would agree that collapse isn’t this simplistic.

And while you might disagree, I feel that it is more compassionate to let other people live their own lives rather than try to change or save them, “for their own good”. If anything, /this/ is what smacks to me of civilized behavior, the idea that we all need to live one way and that if others aren’t living OUR way we need to change them. Their “punishment” for not listening to you will be a collapse, and if they do listen to you, their “reward” will be survival.

I would like to say, though, that letting other people live their own lives does not mean we must callously write them off, either. I have discovered in my own relationships with others that the hope of saving people and the subsequent callous write-off (when they reasonably refuse to be saved) are two sides of the same coin, that of insecurity. If we can find a way to be secure in our own selves and in our relationships with others, we have neither the need to save them nor the need to callously write them off.

I personally think it is a sign of disempowerment and externalization to try to change others before we attempt to change ourselves. If I cannot change myself, even while knowing all that I do and *wanting* to change, how can I hope to change others who are in a completely different situation and likely do not want to change? To use your example, how many of the few thousand people in your area are caught in Nuclear Family Hell? I would suggest that relative to other people in your area, you’re one of the families most capable of change. How then can you expect others to change at any pace faster than you yourself can change?

So after all that, it seems we must come back to personal growth. Here, my own “plan” is to use the ecovillage as a way to get to the point of personal growth and connection with other people so that I can walk away/go more primitive from there. The cool thing about an ecovillage, in my mind, is that it gives people the time and the space to be able to grow. I wouldn’t dare think of ecovillages as anything approaching a permanent solution, but as a place to give yourself some space to grow they seem pretty unbeatable.

So rather than trying to “set up” (as in “create”) an ecovillage, have you looked into joining a previously existing one? If you feel you have not grown enough, it is likely because you’re running as fast as you can just to stay in the same place — Nuclear Family Hell. People can only grow when there is room for growth, after all.

It sounds a little bit like you’re imagining ecovillages (or maybe aspiring primitivist groups) as childless, relationship-less people in their 20s. While I think you might have a point about how these are the people who are most “free”, there *are* successful multi-generational ecovillages. So while you may be right not to expect “a community of childless, possibly relationship-less people to last long”, I’m not exactly sure who or what you’re characterizing here.

Regardless, it seems this is addressed by using the already successful ecovillages as “tribal incubators”. In this way, those childless and relationship-less people might form relationships and have children, all the while supporting each other in their personal growth. And what might emerge from this community are the strong bonds and will to live necessary for adapting to new and likely harsh environments. Try as I might, I don’t believe I can wish those strong bonds into place. It is already difficult for a very small group of people — I simply cannot imagine forming those type of bonds with an entire village. I would be lucky to learn everyone’s name.

- Devin

Posted by: Devin | 04/04/2006