Voices Across Boundaries Vol.1 No.3: Why Community?
New-Old Communities
Practical attempts at living lightly
by Walter and Dorothy Schwarz
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Not all of this recognition is new: we have long known that our ability to live and consume as we please has its downside in alienation from the natural world and the loss of community, tradition, identity and purpose. Now we have a new awareness: that a lifestyle dependent on ever-increasing consumption of raw materials, encroachment on finite natural resources and catastrophic emission of greenhouse gases is, as we now say, unsustainable.
Many millions of us know this but feel unwilling or unable to change the way we live. A minority has, however, adopted a different lifestyle and decided to follow the injunction of the green movement to live lightly on the earth. Some follow this call on their own or with their families and perhaps a few friends. Others have founded or joined intentional communities dedicated to a lifestyle they see as sustainable. Thousands of such communities, "ecovillages" and communes now flourish in many parts of the world, dedicated to a lifestyle that is sustainable socially, spiritually and ecologically. They have become part of a wider tradition of communal living which is as old as human society itself. Many new ventures began in "hippie" days in the 1970s but have grown away from that ethos to embrace the current aspirations to a simpler life with the added spiritual and emotional satisfaction that comes from living in a close-knit community.
While researching our book Living Lightly: Travels in Post-Consumer Society, we stayed for short periods at Findhorn in Scotland, one of the most influential "New Age" spiritual communities; at Auroville in India, associated with the mystic philosopher Sri Aurobindo; at The Farm in Tennessee, U.S.A., a secular community that has travelled far from its hippie days; at Crystal Waters in Queensland, Australia, the community dedicated to the theory and practice of Permaculture. In California we visited "cohousing" groups -- people trying to combine the benefits of community life with having their own individual homes. In the west of England we shared the lives of a group pioneering sustainable forestry, and another trying to make a living from production of organic vegetables.
Findhorn is a New Age community on the northeast coast of Scotland where some of the 450 residents talk with God, angels and nature spirits they call "devas" while others offer highly practical courses in the design and construction of "ecovillages" (ecofriendly communities). Findhorn’s spacious and beautiful meeting place, called the Universal Hall, its sophisticated publishing and Internet ventures and its accomplished hospitality have made it an important teaching centre in the theory and practice of sustainable and holistic living. Findhorn has been called the Vatican of the New Age.
Forty years have passed since Peter and Eileen Caddy grew amazingly large cabbages outside their caravan on a windy beach. Eileen conversed with God -- she still does and claims anyone can because God is within us. The caravan attracted pilgrims and fellow seers and a community grew up.
Like most of the new communities, Findhorn has been through a difficult process of adaptation, emerging from the personal dominance of the Caddys (Peter left and later died in a car crash) by evolving looser forms of governance, and facing its biggest problem: how to remain true to its spiritual origins while earning its living. The members make their living by giving courses and hosting conferences and through business ventures, while a wider Findhorn Foundation provides support and guidance.
The Farm in Tennessee began as a hippie commune after an exodus of biblical resonance. Two hundred and seventy students travelled out of San Francisco in a ragged convoy of decrepit buses and trailers known as The Caravan, in search of the promised land. A pied piper led them out -- Stephen Gaskin, their charismatic, LSD-tripping philosophy lecturer whose "sermons" were against authority, war and violence, in favour of love and -- here was the originality -- for going back to the land for hard work. That was a revolution: hippies who wanted to work, live frugally and renounce hard drugs (Gaskin renounced them too), meat and even coffee.
Once settled on The Farm, they invented a new model of alternative living, loving, giving birth naturally (Gaskin’s wife Ina May is an innovative midwife), growing food and helping other people. Without welfare or other outside help, the original settlers survived through back-breaking work, technical inventiveness and a determination to guide the world with their example of liberated communal living. Members took a vow of poverty, pledging to live on five dollars a day. Within four years the Farm had gained self-sufficiency in food and established a construction company with eighty settled skilled craftspeople. The settlers, now numbering more than 1,000, set up a school, greenhouses, a publishing company, grocery stores and machine shops. In the mid-seventies the Farm attracted 10,000 visitors a day.
By 1982, when membership had reached 1,500, the rate of progress grew unsustainable: at a stormy meeting it was resolved that only members who could support themselves could stay -- and they would pay dues. More than half the members left immediately; soon only a third remained.
Today The Farm survives through the business ventures of members, ranging from film and recording studios to the cultivation and export of shiitake mushrooms. While we were there we were moved to find that a dozen or so of the children who had left in 1982 had found the wider world unattractive and had come back, as teenagers, urging a return to the old communal values. As we left The Farm, this discussion was still in progress and the outcome uncertain.
Aurovillians are New Agers in revolt against the official rationalism of our time which they see as leading to disaster. The Mother, inspired by the vision of Sri Aurobindo, claimed that both she and he were avatars or divine saviours with supernatural powers. They and their spiritual followers feel vindicated by quantum physics, which accepts that the behaviour of matter at its most basic subatomic level cannot be predicted, and is indeed altered by the very fact of being observed. That is taken to mean that the formal distinction between matter and mind (or consciousness) has been abolished. Aurovillians vary in the degree of their fidelity to these doctrines but all feel that what happens in their community is vital to the consciousness of the world.
In the communities we visited we found some examples of visionary leadership and many successful experiments in living lightly that had succeeded on many levels. The cohousing communities in California impressed us because people earning a comfortable living in mainstream society adopted kinder values in their domestic arrangements. Often we saw deep contentment among members who had found a true refuge from a consumerist and excessively materialistic society. We also saw failures -- both individuals who failed to adjust and whole communities that failed to adapt to the hard requirements of survival.
No community had achieved the environmental sustainability of a true ecovillage. They fell short more often through inadequate funds than lack of will or knowhow. None had won freedom from worry about money, without which the good life is no longer possible. None can be sure that their children, when old enough to make their choices, will accept their parents’ priorities. None had found an infallible solution to the strains and conflicts of human interaction (in several communities we found a turnover in sexual partnerships among members that was too high for their own comfort). Often among the idealists we found social misfits who had come to seek refuge, but mostly the communities were well able to cope with them and indeed gained added satisfaction in the knowledge that the strong were helping the weak.
On a deep level these far-flung communities are themselves a single community. Like the religious houses of old, they share a common culture, or perhaps a counterculture: a traveller from any one can feel at home in any other.
| Websites | |
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Fellowship for Intentional Community: www.ic.org The Ecovillage Network: gen.ecovillage.org Findhorn: www.findhorn.org Auroville: www.auroville.org The Farm: www.thefarm.org Cohousing: www.co-housing.org |
Walter Schwarz was a foreign correspondent and religious affairs correspondent for the Guardian (London). Dorothy Schwarz writes fiction and teaches creative writing. Their book Living Lightly: Travels in Post-Consumer Society (1998) is published by Jon Carpenter. They live in Colchester, England.
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JOHN FRASER