The Fantasy of Intentional Community Living
Written 2000 / 2018
by: David Rich

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Have you ever wondered about living in an intentional community?

We cannot hardly tell you how many people we have spoken with who exclaimed their greatest goal in life is to form an intentional community way outside the city limits in order to have the land and privacy they would need to make it work out. That seems to be quite a common fantasy for many people in the more alternative lifestyles we've circle around. Mind you, they do not say they want to join an existing intentional community and learn what it takes to make somethingh like this work. They seem to want to have all the control to decide who is in or out and make most of the rules, or so it would seem. Having very little personal experience in what it takes to live in such an environment makes this little more than an unrealistic pipe-dream.

When ever possible we try to take the time to politely explain to them how they could look at this whole big metropolitan area as a huge intentional community, where we can choose to be as involved, or uninvolved as we choose. And choose whom to be involved with. We do not need to negotiate with the group to barrow the community van to drive into town to just go see a movie, go out to dinner, or just visit some friends. If we need to take some time off from the group for a month, we can do that without notice. We could take a couple years off if we want.

It is true that it is not as efficient as it could be to pool their resources together, but that has it's own problems that may not be worth the financial and emotional benefits. Even if it were, we see how most people will rise to the need, but if life is that efficient, they often drop to those absolute necessities of life and not be as productive as intended. So the quality of life does not tend to improve as much from those financial benefits. Pure communism is a fantastic concept, but history has clearly proven that it does not work out in the real world. Personal motivations tend to not inspired us to make it workout the way it should.

Face it; these people are driven by fantasies of lust and power. Those are just the qualities that pure communism is fighting against, so there is your paradox. When we feel these sort of drives, get involved and make this huge intentional community as good as it possibly can be. If they still need to be in control, and therapy is not their thing, then they can host their own gatherings. If not enough of the right people show up, keep trying to refine their organizational and promotional skills until it does work out and they can feel properly appreciated. (LOL)

Live LOVE

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Cool!

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dave@jezzball.com