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It’s a spooky Sunday afternoon, and you know what that means. Time for… 𝕋𝔸𝕃𝔼𝕊 𝔽ℝ𝕆𝕄 𝕋ℍ𝔼 ℂ𝕆𝕄𝕄𝕌ℕ𝔼
Let’s set the scene: I lived at a remote wilderness commune for three years. I don’t want to say which one, because I don’t want to attract the attention of its egregore. If you know the names of several communes in the USA, this is likely to be one of them.
It’s near the California/Oregon border, deep in the mountains. It’s 60 miles to a gas station, 100 to a Walmart. Our neighbor on every side was National Forest land for a very long way.
If you drive the paved roads out there (single-lane, rock face on one side, sheer drop on the other, graffiti on the rock declaring “BEGIN FREEWAY”) you can either take a 13-mile dirt road driveway that wants to eat your oil pan, or park and hike 5 miles up the mountain to get in.
Once you get there, you find an 1800s ghost town that was renovated by hippies in the 1960s and upgraded by anarchists in the 2010s. It’s a mishmash of ancient wood construction, microhydro power, goats, 5mil plastic greenhouse, greenhouse made from old windows. Very “solarpunk.”
The reason it’s on my mind this morning (aside from the number of mutuals talking about starting intentional communities) is that we used to have the dreaded “SUNDAY MEETING.” This was officially NOT RELIGIOUS but in reality it felt VERY RELIGIOUS.
SUNDAY MEETING was a tradition since the 60s, even though no one had been there that long. It was held irregularly, often on Sundays but not every Sunday. I don’t know exactly what it was like early on, although as the self-appointed librarian I did read the old meeting notes.
What it was like in the 10s was a horizontal consensus circle with a stack. Think anarchists, Rainbow, Occupy. We go around and check in with each person, then the Facilitator goes through the Agenda and the Stack Taker keeps track of who gets to talk next. FIFO model.
Whenever the old hippies came around, the “Greater Family,” they would revert to the old model where you pass a “feather” (problematic) or a “talking stick” (not better) around the circle and each person would share their “heartsong” (right?) on whatever the topic of the moment.
Both of these meeting styles, despite their egalitarian rationale, were very contrived and artificial. They would fail anytime something controversial came up, because people would revert to domination tactics of various flavors: emotional displays, poker-faced scheming, nemawashi.
Not that I was innocent! There was an ongoing social game in which people were Sorted into Houses. Yes, like Hogwarts. And I was in the Slytherin equivalent for sure.
As in many cases, infrastructure defines superstructure. There were only so many Cabins at this place, and you couldn’t build any more because then the Land Assessors would come out to assess it. And then they would notice that people were living in these “outbuildings.”
So we only had a few Cabins. And because of the steep valley fork we were in, there were only so many good flat spots to build a Cabin. So they were spread out in two directions at distances of up to a mile and climbs up to 700’ from the “Main House.”
And thus you would walk home with your cabinmates after after-dinner smokes and you would gossip and discuss how Our Team was different and better than Their Teams. Classic setup. Eagles and Rattlers.
Except in our case it was • the Gatehouse • the Gulch • the Meadow • the Love Shack • the Steam Bath • the Spider Dome. God, looking at them written down it is so ridiculous. We were like the Lost Boys. But it was all real and it happened to multiple generations of people.
𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 If you want to ask me questions about commune, this tweet is a good place to do it. brb
This is an excellent question! It turns out, there were many different reasons that people were there. But because we didn’t have a nuanced language to talk about that, those distinctions didn’t really come up until it was too late and the ad-hoc social cohesion would shatter.
This happened roughly once a year with various echoes and foreshadows on a monthly basis. It was like a good season of prestige TV. Except you couldn’t binge it and also the characters could ruin your life.
Oops, I meant to link this question. This is the good question
what was the point? like, was there anything you were all trying to achieve out there? or was just being out there the point?
— enantiomer (@bonkydog) May 2, 2021
So what was the point? There were a few common ones, with permutations:
I went for a combination of 3, 5 and 6.
(I had already had my romanticized view of the 1960s disillusioned by much experience with the Rainbow Family.)
Another good question. There were a lot of singular events that I really liked — big parties, magic rituals, long jam sessions, births and slaughters (goats, mostly)
So their semi-regular meeting sounds awful (many such cases) but what was the dopest group activity they did
— Prince Vogelfrei (@PrinceVogel) May 2, 2021
But the best regular event was spending all day making a huge meal, eating it together at a huge table and then piling onto a small porch to play music, smoke cigarettes and drink homebrew for hours. Just a heap of smelly people passing slobbery rollies and cuddling. Like dogs.
Speaking of dogs. We were supposedly a Goat Ranch because we had the infrastructure for Goat Milking and Storage. The Goat Committee would take the goats for Goat Walks. There was a Goat Manager. We had roughly 8 to 16 goats at any given time. But at one point we had OVER 25 DOGS.
And there was no Dog Manager. Each person would manage their own dog to their own criteria, adjusted by arguments with other dog owners and various treaties decided by internal dog politics. Non-dog people (like me) were considered to not have skin in the game, and ignored.
Excuses I have heard for why your dog is not following the rules: “Doesn’t know the rules” “Too stupid to follow rules” “Too smart to follow rules” “That’s my service animal” “That’s not a dog, it’s a dragon” “That’s my service dragon” “I don’t own this animal, it has free will”
Oh also we had like 30 chickens and somebody would have to feed them and (infrequently) muck out the coop. But they were all old, and no one was allowed to kill them, so we got like 3 eggs a day. And those would be earmarked for baking or for whichever babies were on the ranch.
Why we weren’t allowed to kill them? I HAVE NO IDEA. Some weird ideology or another was the rationale, but ultimately it was about power politics. Several groups were attempting to “vibe out” the other groups and take over the ranch for their friends.
So initially I went there because I was enchanted with Rainbow/Occupy-style autonomous zones, and I wanted to see if they could be made permanent. My ideal was “a federated network of horizontal, bioregional, low-energy locally grown autonomous zones” and I wanted to manifest it.
What I found, of course, was the Tyranny of Structurelessness. When you make the rule “no one has explicit power, we are all officially Equal,” you don’t get rid of power. You just force everyone to pretend that the obvious hierarchies don’t exist.
both of these meeting styles, despite their egalitarian rationale, were very contrived and artifical. they would fail anytime something controversial came up, because people would revert to domination tactics of various flavors. emotional displays, poker-faced scheming, nemawashi
— web weaver (@deepfates) May 2, 2021
It’s easy to say “of course” about this, especially with hindsight. But I don’t feel I wasted my time. That’s why it was an experiment! I needed to see this fail mode (several times lol) in case we humanity was missing a huge opportunity. Unfortunately, what I found was: nope.
Maybe among people with a strong shared cultural background, this type of organizing is possible. (See: Rojava, Chiapas) But in pluralistic American society, even a group of “radical leftists” couldn’t organize horizontally without creating secret wars and status games.
Why do people like capitalism and industrial society? Is it because they’re stupid and misled and don’t know better? Or is there something about market economics that allows it to scale to more people than a communally decided resource distribution can?
utopian community without economics is probably futile. utopian community has to be powerful and flexible enough for people to voluntarily adopt it at a speed greater than current economic system, otherwise it's just a zoo exhibit or reality show
— web weaver (@deepfates) May 2, 2021
This is why I have a weird sort of pride in being a “small business” now. Unlike in commune life, my value and contribution is not defined by how well I can empathize with people or say the correct shibboleths. It’s just defined by how well I sell books.
it's actually kind of fun being a merchant. despised by everyone yet they cannot gatekeep you. accountable only to your customers and their desire. i begin to understand why Hermes is our patron saint
— web weaver (@deepfates) April 20, 2021
POV: you just said the wrong shibboleth
To wind up, SUNDAY MEETING had several variations on the two main forms mentioned above, and a dissimilar strain you might call “conspiracy of leaders” which was not explicit but formed spontaneously near the kitchen stove once shit hit the fan
this happened roughly once a year with various echoes and foreshadows on a monthly basis. it was like a good season of prestige TV. except you couldn't binge it and also the characters could ruin your life
— web weaver (@deepfates) May 2, 2021
None of these forms were chosen democratically. They were all formed by strong-willed people, deciding on an arbitrary structure that “the people” must use to enact “the people’s will.” The democratic or horizontal structure continued to exist because it was a convenient front.
As different strong-willed people cycled through the place, the direction and intention of the community would change. Which, cool, better to adapt than to stagnate. But the lessons learned didn’t percolate back into the “Traditional Guidelines,” so the same problems would repeat.
The people that updated their beliefs the most — those of us who learned something The Hard Way — would leave the commune and its mindset behind. Our knowledge could not be backpropagated. The society was all fork, no merge.
When I think back to the times we sent cold emails to “Greater Family” saying things like “hey you learned herbalism here, can you send us your herb book for free?” 😆 No wonder they didn’t want anything to do with us. They left for a reason.
Much of it was very pleasant! I liked living way out in the woods part. But this was probably the most “urbane” version of homesteading, in the sense that we always had new people and goods. And still it was too few people. I’d rather live around strangers than busybodies.
Many things still yet to write about it: • magic classes • cars: crashes, towings, shootings, burnings • babbies and why you can’t have them • drought • plagues (multiple kinds, some repeating) • infrastructure • ghosts, possessions, shadow people, “Charlie” What do you want?
This concludes today’s Tales from the Commune. Send questions or comments, and feel free to mingle. Refreshments will be in the hall. Thank you for coming, you are now blinking manually, have a good evening.