I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

this is a follow-up of the previous thread
http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=404372


I am so tired that all I can do is watching alex jones and the like videos and fall asleep at 8pm... living of the grid is demanding physically, I tell you. But hopefully I will get used to this new existential pace very soon.... I do miss GIM!!!

ps: my yurt is the smallest one

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

More "POWER" to ya! :ok::coolbeer::adore::shine:
R.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

edit: just realized that I posted the same pic twice... here is another one... more later this week

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

good for you!!!

looks very nice there....

tell some of your experinces when you get time, like "things I miss"

or new adventures in learning a skill, etc

you can offer some rare insight...

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I have missed you and hope you still find some time here on GIM..

Please tell us about this community in more detail.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I second this!

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I second that second!

:565::565::565:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

It actually makes me happy to see you living your dream,so many talk about it(myself included) for YEARS without doing it.

The place looks beautiful.

Please more pics.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

:shine::shine::shine:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

The bedroom has something of an old English wattle and daub thatched cottage feel about it. There is so much to be said for walls that are not flat. Reflected light is soft. And of course the ACOUSTICS are perfect for diffuse reflections. Hard walls make for hard noises.

Good on yer m8:emotions16:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Oh man, I'm jealous-- actually I'm happy for you. You've made your dream a reality!

BTW feel free to stop back to post more info of living off the grid, or even one of the famous arguments in the faith section :biggrin:

Ah, but seriously, this thread really lifts my spirits. Thank you.

RJ

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

And mine, for which I also thank you. I also look forward to hearing more about your community.

Please don't keep us in suspense. :36_3_12:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Looks Very nice. I'm happy for you also.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

What's the history/future of the community there?

Any capitalist expansion plans?:smile:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Looks like a nice place to hunker down compared to your former location.

Best of luck in your new abode.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Well, you said you were gonna do it... and by golly, there you are.

I'm so happy for you... and can hardly wait to hear and see more.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

So let me get this straight.... Are you guys living in mushrooms in the shire???

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Just say no when they offer up the Kool Aid. Even a wurt dweller needs a bug out plan. Weird stuff for me, but best wishes to you.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Another chapter in the making of your life story.

Chasing dreams, that's what life is all about........your livin large Goldy.

Best regards .

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

You may be out of the city early but you beat the rush. Good luck!

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Wow, I'm so behind the times at GIM! I don't get around here much, so I didn't know you were doing this. Very cool. Did I miss the location, or did you not say?

Edit: read the other thread, and see that you're near Tucson -- I grew up there as a child, running wild and crazy in the Sonora Desert. I have a lot of good memories of that area.

Kudos to you!

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Good. This is very good G-Lady. :553:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Looks very cozy.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Looks like the smurf village. Beware of Gargamel aka the tax man...

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

An assumption is being made that the smurf village is paradise. Haven't any of you people ever lived in a commune, or even a large household? It is not easy to manage such a place. Who runs the place, how are decisions arrived at, who has veto power, are there factions, how much pay for field work, how are profits divided, who gets the fun jobs, who gets the scut work, etc. etc. etc. ?

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

to answer a few questions

first of, this is an eco-village with 100 ppl at this stage. and everybody is very diversified, helps at many levels. They all work their ass off because they believe actions/thinking/spirituality to shape reality, and thus are very passionate about what they are doing. The ego level is flying very, very, very low here. Tasks are non coercive since you are being asked what you are good at during the interview. Of course, they prefer diversified characters.

The founders start this endeavor living in a tipi with and 3 kids 20+ years ago and today are at the head of a 165 acre ranch. They are currently constructing a new building and douche/bathroom facilities which will be able to host more than new 50 members/interns.

they are a non profit org. Administratively speaking, they have their own financial and legal units. They have in-house architects and a solid IT dept.

50% of the community play a music instrument and all kids do play music instruments and sing (multi talented). 65yo and older members are fully being taken care of and each of them lives in a studio. There is a in-house physician.

They all have a good grasp about the sorry state of the world and you can engage any conversation involving the NWO without being taken for a nuts. There screen hard hitting documentaries every so often. From "the century of the self" to "money as debt" and "Monsanto materials", to name a few.

Sure, perfection doesnt exist... just like the yin and yang, there may be a few things that I may not fully agree with... but so far the upsides outpace the downsides by far...

that is all I can/will say for now.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

How's the sex though?

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Any reason it had to be Yurts?

Thermodynamically superior?

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Hope you didnt believe one minute that the 100ppl were sharing the 3 yurts. LOL. Actually they used to sell yurts and those are remaining samples... they are into sacred geometry (and cosmic vortexes, hence the choice of the current location 2 years ago) and understand the dome home concepts. However, there are several traditional buildings spread throughout the property.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Do you know who lives in the traditional buildings?

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

TPTB

mts...dammit

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

opps, traditional houses... my mistake

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Is your bathroom in a seperate building from your living space? It looks like traditional construction. Do they have community bathrooms like dorms?

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

singles must share bedroom space with 1 or 2 roommates... couples (with/out kids) get their own private room.

there are 3 splendid bathrooms across my yurt located in a traditional construction - and which must be shared by 10 ppl or so. Its ground floor level is for their retirees which all have their studio with shower, there ppl share a huge living room and kitchen as well.

They might have several bedroom configured as dorms in the new construction they are building though.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Goldissima,

To anyone paying attention, it is clear that wherever you go, you'll find people who are trying to improve themselves and the environment in an effort to help other improve their existence.

Also, wherever you go, you'll find people who would rather take potshots at those trying something different or different than they would want/dare to do.

As long as we have known you here, you have fallen into the former category.

And you have earned my admiration.

Illegitimus non carborundum!

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Looks like quite an adventure. Getting away from the workaday world, many say they want to, not many have the guts. Congrats.

Would like to see some garden/agriculture pics too!

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

thanks for the strokes...

I left NY without fanfare, although many knew that I would leave at the end of Augustus, I didnt say bye-bye to anybody in particular... because the decision was a very tough and scary one.

Toughness and scariness aside, this bold move was kinda depressing: I also sensed that it would be a long time before I return, or when I happened to let the gloom and doom take over, that some of them could even die from a flu for example. More rationally many were making fun of me, as they knew that I believed that the system could fall apart at any moment.

Now that I am starting to get used to be here, it feels good to have less worries (how to pay the rent, staying in the city when the martial law strikes, etc)... but I know that I need a plan B just in case. I have my passport and my $tash ready. Maybe costa rica will be the final solution if everything goes to shyt. The so-called great west is finished... :confused_m:

Best

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

just in case you were joking, I will nonetheless tell you that it is strictly family oriented. we signed a release form acknowledging this

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

More power to ya, Goldi...

My guess is your probably correct about that system collapse soon.

Ben & B.O. seem to agree on this.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

You know me, just kidding Goldi. But Geeeze, I don't know if I could make it:s1:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

God bless you Goldie.

You made it and I am happy for you. It's a major adjustment....I know I was a city boy at one time.

The stars are not on Broadway anymore they are in the sky now.:36_3_16:

I'm glad we met before you moved on.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Wow I had no idea you were in the process of doing this, but good for you! That's a huge step you made, but I think it's a good one. You know you have the support of your GIM family so if you start having 2nd thoughts or doubt if you made the right move, just read/post here. Congratulations! :ok:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

There's just something about communism....

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

an ecovillage is a communist concept?

communism/fascism go along with coercion. So far it does not seem to to be the case.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Yes, you're free to get up and leave, no?

Try that in your communist country.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Perhaps a better term, if you must attach a ideological name any gathering of people into a tribe with common purpose and intent, if I may be so erudite, would be Communalism. This (very simply) is the study of Social Ecology, which emphasizes Rational Municipalism. Neighbors working together to increase and enhance the quality of life for all involved. Certainly part of the reason this is developing because there are many people out there who need to feel a little closer to life than we do in this modern world. People want to get back to their roots, and tribes.

That is certainly open to, and I invite viewpoints regarding this, because it is something I have always esposed to, but never succeeded.

http://communalism.org/

Go to Back Issues and scroll down

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I didn't mean to hijack your thread, Goldisima, but this stuff if fascinating, as well as pertinent IMHO to what we are celebrating here.

It is so seductive...

More from Murray:

What is Communalism?

The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism

by Murray Bookchin

Seldom have socially important words become more confused and divested of their historic meaning than they are at present. Two centuries ago, it is often forgotten, "democracy" was deprecated by monarchists and republicans alike as "mob rule." Today, democracy is hailed as "representative democracy," an oxymoron that refers to little more than a republican oligarchy of the chosen few who ostensibly speak for the powerless many.

"Communism," for its part, once referred to a cooperative society that would be based morally on mutual respect and on an economy in which each contributed to the social labor fund according to his or her ability and received the means of life according to his or her needs. Today, "communism" is associated with the Stalinist gulag and wholly rejected as totalitarian. Its cousin, "socialism" -- which once denoted a politically free society based on various forms of collectivism and equitable material returns for labor -- is currently interchangeable with a somewhat humanistic bourgeois liberalism.

During the 1980s and 1990s, as the entire social and political spectrum has shifted ideologically to the right, "anarchism" itself has not been immune to redefinition. In the Anglo-American sphere, anarchism is being divested of its social ideal by an emphasis on personal autonomy, an emphasis that is draining it of its historic vitality. A Stirnerite individualism -- marked by an advocacy of lifestyle changes, the cultivation of behavioral idiosyncrasies and even an embrace of outright mysticism -- has become increasingly prominent. This personalistic "lifestyle anarchism" is steadily eroding the socialistic core of anarchist concepts of freedom.

Let me stress that in the British and American social tradition, autonomy and freedom are not equivalent terms. By insisting the need to eliminate personal domination, autonomy focuses on the individual as the formative component and locus of society. By contrast, freedom, despite its looser usages, denotes the absence of domination in society, of which the individual is part. This contrast becomes very important when individualist anarchists equate collectivism as such with the tyranny of the community over its members.

Today, if an anarchist theorist like L. Susan Brown can assert that "a group is a collection of individuals, no more and no less," rooting anarchism in the abstract individual, we have reason to be concerned. Not that this view is entirely new to anarchism; various anarchist historians have described it as implicit in the libertarian outlook. Thus the individual appears ab novo, endowed with natural rights and bereft of roots in society or historical development.1

But whence does this "autonomous" individual derive? What is the basis for its "natural rights," beyond a priori premises and hazy intuitions? What role does historical development play in its formation? What social premises give birth to it, sustain it, indeed nourish it? How can a "collection of individuals" institutionalize itself such as to give rise to something more than an autonomy that consists merely in refusing to impair the "liberties" of others -- or "negative liberty," as Isaiah Berlin called it in contradistinction to "positive liberty," which is substantive freedom, in our case constructed along socialistic lines?

In the history of ideas, "autonomy," referring to strictly personal "self-rule," found its ancient apogee in the imperial Roman cult of libertas. During the rule of the Julian-Claudian Caesars, the Roman citizen enjoyed a great deal of autonomy to indulge his own desires -- and lusts -- without reproval from any authority, provided that he did not interfere with the business and the needs of the state. In the more theoretically developed liberal tradition of John Locke and John Stuart Mill, autonomy acquired a more expansive sense that was opposed ideologically to excessive state authority. During the nineteenth century, if there was any single subject that gained the interest of classical liberals, it was political economy, which they often conceived not only as the study of goods and services, but also as a system of morality. Indeed, liberal thought generally reduced the social to the economic. Excessive state authority was opposed in favor of a presumed economic autonomy. Ironically, liberals often invoked the word freedom, in the sense of "autonomy," as they do to the present day.2

Despite their assertions of autonomy and distrust of state authority, however, these classical liberal thinkers did not in the last instance hold to the notion that the individual is completely free from lawful guidance. Indeed, their interpretation of autonomy actually presupposed quite definite arrangements beyond the individual -- notably, the laws of the marketplace. Individual autonomy to the contrary, these laws constitute a social organizing system in which all "collections of individuals" are held under the sway of the famous "invisible hand" of competition. Paradoxically, the laws of the marketplace override the exercise of "free will" by the same sovereign individuals who otherwise constitute the "collection of individuals."

No rationally formed society can exist without institutions and if a society as a "collection of individuals, no more and no less" were ever to emerge, it would simply dissolve. Such a dissolution, to be sure, would never happen in reality. The liberals, nonetheless, can cling to the notion of a "free market" and "free competition" guided by the "inexorable laws" of political economy.

Alternatively, freedom, a word that shares etymological roots with the German Freiheit (for which there is no equivalent in Romance languages), takes its point of departure not from the individual but from the community or, more broadly, from society. In the last century and early in the present one, as the great socialist theorists further sophisticated ideas of freedom, the individual and his or her development were consciously intertwined with social evolution -- specifically, the institutions that distinguish society from mere animal aggregations.

What made their focus uniquely ethical was the fact that as social revolutionaries they asked the key question -- What constitutes a rational society? -- a question that abolishes the centrality of economics in a free society. Where liberal thought generally reduced the social to the economic, various socialisms (apart from Marxism), among which Kropotkin denoted anarchism the "left wing," dissolved the economic into the social.3

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as Enlightenment thought and its derivatives brought the idea of the mutability of institutions to the foreground of social thought, the individual, too, came to be seen as mutable. To the socialistic thinkers of the period, a "collection" was a totally alien way of denoting society; they properly considered individual freedom to be congruent with social freedom and, very significantly, they defined freedom as such as an evolving, as well as a unifying, concept.
In short, both society and the individual were historicized in the best sense of this term: as an ever-developing, self-generative and creative process in which each existed within and through the other. Hopefully, this historicization would be accompanied by ever-expanding new rights and duties. The slogan of the First International, in fact, was the demand, "No rights without duties, no duties without rights" -- a demand that later appeared on the mastheads of anarchosyndicalist periodicals in Spain and elsewhere well into the present century.

Thus, for classical socialist thinkers, to conceive of the individual without society was as meaningless as to conceive of society without individuals. They sought to realize both in rational institutional frameworks that fostered the greatest degree of free expression in every aspect of social life.

II

Individualism, as conceived by classical liberalism, rested on a fiction to begin with. Its very presupposition of a social "lawfulness" maintained by marketplace competition was far removed from its myth of the totally sovereign, "autonomous" individual. With even fewer presuppositions to support itself, the woefully undertheorized work of Max Stirner shared a similar disjunction: the ideological disjunction between the ego and society.

The pivotal issue that reveals this disjunction -- indeed, this contradiction -- is the question of democracy. By democracy, of course, I do not mean "representative government" in any form, but rather face-to-face democracy. With regard to its origins in classical Athens, democracy as I use it is the idea of the direct management of the polis by its citizenry in popular assemblies -- which is not to downplay the fact that Athenian democracy was scarred by patriarchy, slavery, class rule and the restriction of citizenship to males of putative Athenian birth. What I am referring to is an evolving tradition of institutional structures, not a social "model."4 Democracy generically defined, then, is the direct management of society in face-to-face assemblies -- in which policy is formulated by the resident citizenry and administration is executed by mandated and delegated councils.

Libertarians commonly consider democracy, even in this sense, as a form of "rule" -- since in making decisions, a majority view prevails and thus "rules" over a minority. As such, democracy is said to be inconsistent with a truly libertarian ideal. Even so knowledgeable a historian of anarchism as Peter Marshall observes that, for anarchists, "the majority has no more right to dictate to the minority, even a minority of one, than the minority to the majority."5 Scores of libertarians have echoed this idea time and again.

What is striking about assertions like Marshall's is their highly pejorative language. Majorities, it would seem, neither "decide" nor "debate": rather, they "rule," "dictate," "command," "coerce" and the like. In a free society that not only permitted, but fostered the fullest degree of dissent, whose podiums at assemblies and whose media were open to the fullest expression of all views, whose institutions were truly forums for discussion -- one may reasonably ask whether such a society would actually "dictate" to anyone when it had to arrive at a decision that concerned the public welfare.

How, then, would society make dynamic collective decisions about public affairs, aside from mere individual contracts? The only collective alternative to majority voting as a means of decision-making that is commonly presented is the practice of consensus. Indeed, consensus has even been mystified by avowed "anarcho-primitivists," who consider Ice Age and contemporary "primitive" or "primal" peoples to constitute the apogee of human social and psychic attainment. I do not deny that consensus may be an appropriate form of decision-making in small groups of people who are thoroughly familiar with one another. But to examine consensus in practical terms, my own experience has shown me that when larger groups try to make decisions by consensus, it usually obliges them to arrive at the lowest common intellectual denominator in their decision-making: the least controversial or even the most mediocre decision that a sizable assembly of people can attain is adopted -- precisely because everyone must agree with it or else withdraw from voting on that issue. More disturbingly, I have found that it permits an insidious authoritarianism and gross manipulations -- even when used in the name of autonomy or freedom.

To take a very striking case in point: the largest consensus-based movement (involving thousands of participants) in recent memory in the United States was the Clamshell Alliance, which was formed to oppose the Seabrook nuclear reactor in the mid-1970s in New Hampshire. In her recent study of the movement, Barbara Epstein has called the Clamshell the "first effort in American history to base a mass movement on nonviolent direct action" other than the 1960s civil rights movement. As a result of its apparent organizational success, many other regional alliances against nuclear reactors were formed throughout the United States.

I can personally attest to the fact that within the Clamshell Alliance, consensus was fostered by often cynical Quakers and by members of a dubiously "anarchic" commune that was located in Montague, Massachusetts. This small, tightly knit faction, unified by its own hidden agendas, was able to manipulate many Clamshell members into subordinating their goodwill and idealistic commitments to those opportunistic agendas. The de facto leaders of the Clamshell overrode the rights and ideals of the innumerable individuals who entered it and undermined their morale and will.

In order for that clique to create full consensus on a decision, minority dissenters were often subtly urged or psychologically coerced to decline to vote on a troubling issue, inasmuch as their dissent would essentially amount to a one-person veto. This practice, called "standing aside" in American consensus processes, all too often involved intimidation of the dissenters, to the point that they completely withdrew from the decision-making process, rather than make an honorable and continuing expression of their dissent by voting, even as a minority, in accordance with their views. Having withdrawn, they ceased to be political beings -- so that a "decision" could be made. More than one "decision" in the Clamshell Alliance was made by pressuring dissenters into silence and, through a chain of such intimidations, "consensus" was ultimately achieved only after dissenting members nullified themselves as participants in the process.

On a more theoretical level, consensus silenced that most vital aspect of all dialogue, dissensus. The ongoing dissent, the passionate dialogue that still persists even after a minority accedes temporarily to a majority decision, was replaced in the Clamshell by dull monologues -- and the uncontroverted and deadening tone of consensus. In majority decision-making, the defeated minority can resolve to overturn a decision on which they have been defeated -- they are free to openly and persistently articulate reasoned and potentially persuasive disagreements. Consensus, for its part, honors no minorities, but mutes them in favor of the metaphysical "one" of the "consensus" group.

The creative role of dissent, valuable as an ongoing democratic phenomenon, tends to fade away in the gray uniformity required by consensus. Any libertarian body of ideas that seeks to dissolve hierarchy, classes, domination and exploitation by allowing even Marshall's "minority of one" to block decision-making by the majority of a community, indeed, of regional and nationwide confederations, would essentially mutate into a Rousseauean "general will" with a nightmare world of intellectual and psychic conformity. In more gripping times, it could easily "force people to be free," as Rousseau put it -- and as the Jacobins practiced it in 1793-94.

The de facto leaders of the Clamshell were able to get away with their behavior precisely because the Clamshell was not sufficiently organized and democratically structured, such that it could countervail the manipulation of a well-organized few. The de facto leaders were subject to few structures of accountability for their actions. The ease with which they cannily used consensus decision-making for their own ends has been only partly told,6 but consensus practices finally shipwrecked this large and exciting organization with its Rousseauean "republic of virtue." It was also ruined, I may add, by an organizational laxity that permitted mere passersby to participate in decision-making, thereby destructuring the organization to the point of invertebracy. It was for good reason that I and many young anarchists from Vermont who had actively participated in the Alliance for some few years came to view consensus as anathema.

If consensus could be achieved without compulsion of dissenters, a process that is feasible in small groups, who could possibly oppose it as a decision-making process? But to reduce a libertarian ideal to the unconditional right of a minority -- let alone a "minority of one" -- to abort a decision by a "collection of individuals" is to stifle the dialectic of ideas that thrives on opposition, confrontation and, yes, decisions with which everyone need not agree and should not agree, lest society become an ideological cemetery. Which is not to deny dissenters every opportunity to reverse majority decisions by unimpaired discussion and advocacy.

III

I have dwelled on consensus at some length because it constitutes the usual individualistic alternative to democracy, so commonly counterposed as "no rule" -- or a free-floating form of personal autonomy -- against majority "rule." Inasmuch as libertarian ideas in the United States and Britain are increasingly drifting toward affirmations of personal autonomy, the chasm between individualism and antistatist collectivism is becoming unbridgeable, in my view. A personalistic anarchism has taken deep root among young people today. Moreover, they increasingly use the word "anarchy" to express not only a personalistic stance, but also an antirational, mystical, antitechnological and anticivilizational body of views that makes it impossible for anarchists who anchor their ideas in socialism to apply the word "anarchist" to themselves without a qualifying adjective. Howard Ehrlich, one of our ablest and most concerned American comrades, uses the phrase "social anarchism" as the title of his magazine, apparently to distinguish his views from an anarchism that is ideologically anchored in liberalism and possibly worse.

I would like to suggest that far more than a qualifying adjective is needed if we are to elaborate our notion of freedom more expansively. It would be unfortunate indeed if libertarians today had to literally explain that they believe in a society, not a mere collection of individuals! A century ago, this belief was presupposed; today, so much has been stripped away from the collectivistic flesh of classical anarchism that it is on the verge of becoming a personal life-stage for adolescents and a fad for their middle-aged mentors, a route to "self-realization" and the seemingly "radical" equivalent of encounter groups.

Today, there must be a place on the political spectrum where a body of anti-authoritarian thought that advances humanity's bitter struggle to arrive at the realization of its authentic social life -- the famous "Commune of communes" -- can be clearly articulated institutionally as well as ideologically. There must be a means by which socially concerned anti-authoritarians can develop a program and a practice for attempting to change the world, not merely their psyches. There must be an arena of struggle that can mobilize people, help them to educate themselves and develop an anti-authoritarian politics, to use this word in its classical meaning, indeed that pits a new public sphere against the State and capitalism.

In short, we must recover not only the socialist dimension of anarchism but its political dimension: democracy. Bereft of its democratic dimension and its communal or municipal public sphere, anarchism may indeed denote little more than a "collection of individuals, no more and no less." Even anarcho-communism, although it is by far the most preferable of adjectival modifications of the libertarian ideal, nonetheless retains a structural vagueness that tells us nothing about the institutions necessary to expedite a communistic distribution of goods. It spells out a broad goal, a desideratum -- one, alas, terribly tarnished by the association of "communism" with Bolshevism and the state -- but its public sphere and forms of institutional association remain unclear at best and susceptible to a totalitarian onus at worst.

I wish to propose that the democratic and potentially practicable dimension of the libertarian goal be expressed as Communalism, a term that, unlike political terms that once stood unequivocally for radical social change, has not been historically sullied by abuse. Even ordinary dictionary definitions of Communalism, I submit, capture to a great degree the vision of a "Commune of communes" that is being lost by current Anglo-American trends that celebrate anarchy variously as "chaos," as a mystical "oneness" with "nature," as self-fulfillment or as "ecstasy," but above all as personalistic.7

Communalism is defined as "a theory or system of government [sic!] in which virtually autonomous [sic!] local communities are loosely in a federation."8 No English dictionary is very sophisticated politically. This use of the terms "government" and "autonomous" does not commit us to an acceptance of the State and parochialism, let alone individualism. Further, federation is often synonymous with confederation, the term I regard as more consistent with the libertarian tradition. What is remarkable about this (as yet) unsullied term is its extraordinary proximity to libertarian municipalism, the political dimension of social ecology that I have advanced at length elsewhere.

In Communalism, libertarians have an available word that they can enrich as much by experience as by theory. Most significantly, the word can express not only what we are against, but also what we are for, namely the democratic dimension of libertarian thought and a libertarian form of society. It is a word that is meant for a practice that can tear down the ghetto walls that are increasingly imprisoning anarchism in cultural exotica and psychological introversion. It stands in explicit opposition to the suffocating individualism that sits so comfortably side-by-side with bourgeois self-centeredness and a moral relativism that renders any social action irrelevant, indeed, institutionally meaningless.

It is important to emphasize that libertarian municipalism--or Communalism, as I have called it here--is a developing outlook, a politics that seeks ultimately to achieve the "Commune of communes." As such, it tries to provide a directly democratic confederal alternative to the state and to a centralized bureaucratic society. To challenge the validity of libertarian municipalism, as many liberals and ecosocialists have, on the premise that the size of existing urban entities raises an insurmountable logistical obstacles to its successful practice is to turn it into a chess "strategy" and freeze it within the given conditions of society, then tally up debits and credits to determine its potential for "success," "effectiveness," "high levels of participation," and the like. Libertarian municipalism is not a form of social bookkeeping for conditions as they are but rather a transformative process that starts with what can be changed within present conditions as a valid point of departure for achieving what should be in a rational society.

Libertarian municipalism is above all a politics, to use this word in its original Hellenic sense, that is engaged in the process of remaking what are now called "electoral constituents" or "taxpayers" into active citizens, and of remaking what are now urban conglomerations into genuine communities related to each other through confederations that would countervail and ultimately challenge the existence of the state. To see it otherwise is to reduce this multifaceted, processual development to a caricature. Nor is libertarian municipalism intended as a substitute for association as such--for the familial and economic aspects of life--without which human existence is impossible in any society.9 It is rather an outlook and a developing practice for recovering and enlarging on an unprecedented scale what is now a declining public sphere, one that the state has invaded and in many cases virtually eliminated.10 If the large size of municipal entities and the decline of the public sphere are accepted as unalterable givens, then we are left with no hope but to work with the given in every sphere of human activity--in which case, anarchists might as well join with social-democrats (as quite a few have, for all practical purposes) to work with and merely modify the state apparatus, the market, and a commodity system of relationships. Indeed, on the basis of such commonsensical reasoning, a far stronger argument could be made for preserving the state, the market, the use of money, and global corporations than could be made merely for decentralizing urban agglomerations. In fact, many urban agglomerations are already groaning physically and logistically under the burden of their size and are reconstituting themselves into satellite cities before our very eyes, even though their populations and physical jurisdictions are still grouped under the name of a single metropolis.

Strangely, many life-style anarchists, who, like New Age visionaries, have a remarkable ability to imagine changing everything tend to raise strong objections when they are asked to actually change anything in the existing society--except to cultivate greater "self-expression," have more mystical reveries, and turn their anarchism into an art form, retreating into social quietism. When critics of libertarian municipalism bemoan the prohibitively large number of people who are likely to attend municipal assemblies or function as active participants in them--and question how "practical" such assemblies could be--in large cities like New York, Mexico City, and Tokyo, may I suggest that a Communalist approach raises the issue of whether we can indeed change the existing society at all and achieve the "Commune of communes."

If such a Communalist approach seems terribly formidable, I can only suspect that for life-style anarchists the battle is already lost. For my part, if anarchy came to mean little more than an aesthetics of "self-cultivation," an titillating riot, spraycan graffiti, or the heroics of personalistic acts nourished by a self-indulgent "imaginary," I would have little in common with it. Theatrical personalism became too much in style when the sixties counterculture turned into the seventies New Age culture--and became a model for bourgeois fashion designers and boutiques.

IV

Anarchism is on the retreat today. If we fail to elaborate the democratic dimension of anarchism, we will miss the opportunity not only to form a vital movement, but to prepare people for a revolutionary social praxis in the future. Alas, we are witnessing the appalling desiccation of a great tradition, such that neo-Situationists, nihilists, primitivists, antirationalists, anticivilizationists and avowed "chaotics" are closeting themselves in their egos, reducing anything resembling public political activity to juvenile antics.

None of which is to deny the importance of a libertarian culture, one that is aesthetic, playful, and broadly imaginative. The anarchists of the last century and part of the present one justifiably took pride in the fact that many innovative artists, particularly painters and novelists, aligned themselves with anarchic views of reality and morality. But behavior that verges on a mystification of criminality, asociality, intellectual incoherence, anti-intellectualism and disorder for its own sake is simply lumpen. It feeds on the dregs of capitalism itself. However much such behavior invokes the "rights" of the ego as it dissolves the political into the personal or inflates the personal into a transcendental category, it is a priori in the sense that has no origins outside the mind to even potentially support it. As Bakunin and Kropotkin argued repeatedly, individuality has never existed apart from society and the individual's own evolution has been coextensive with social evolution. To speak of "The Individual" apart from its social roots and social involvements is as meaningless as to speak of a society that contains no people or institutions.

Merely to exist, institutions must have form, as I argued some thirty years ago in my essay "The Forms of Freedom," lest freedom itself -- individual as well as social -- lose its definability. Institutions must be rendered functional, not abstracted into Kantian categories that float in a rarefied academic air. They must have the tangibility of structure, however offensive a term like structure may be to individualist libertarians: concretely, they must have the means, policies and experimental praxis to arrive at decisions. Unless everyone is to be so psychologically homogeneous and society's interests so uniform in character that dissent is simply meaningless, there must be room for conflicting proposals, discussion, rational explication and majority decisions -- in short, democracy.

Like it or not, such a democracy, if it is libertarian, will be Communalist and institutionalized in such a way that it is face-to-face, direct, and grassroots, a democracy that advances our ideas beyond negative liberty to positive liberty. A Communalist democracy obliges us to develop a public sphere -- and in the Athenian meaning of the term, a politics -- that grows in tension and ultimately in a decisive conflict with the State.

Confederal, antihierarchical, and collectivist, based on the municipal management of the means of life rather than their control by vested interests (such as workers' control, private control, and more dangerously, State control), it may justly be regarded as the processual actualization of the libertarian ideal as a daily praxis.9

The fact that a Communalist politics entails participation in municipal elections -- based, to be sure, on an unyielding program that demands the formation of popular assemblies and their confederation -- does not mean that entry into existing village, town and city councils involves participation in state organs, any more than establishing an anarchosyndicalist union in a privately owned factory involves participation in capitalist forms of production. One need only turn to the French Revolution of 1789-94 to see how seemingly state institutions, like the municipal "districts" established under the monarchy in 1789 to expedite elections to the Estates General, were transformed four years later into largely revolutionary bodies, or "sections," that nearly gave rise to the "Commune of communes." Their movement for a sectional democracy was defeated during the insurrection of June 2, 1793 -- not at the hands of the monarchy, but by the treachery of the Jacobins.

Capitalism will not generously provide us the popular democratic institutions we need. Its control over society today is ubiquitous, not only in what little remains of the public sphere, but in the minds of many self-styled radicals. A revolutionary people must either assert their control over institutions that are basic to their public lives -- which Bakunin correctly perceived to be their municipal councils -- or else they will have no choice but to withdraw into their private lives, as is already happening on an epidemic scale today.10 It would be ironic, indeed, if an individualist anarchism and its various mutations, from the academic and transcendentally moral to the chaotic and the lumpen, in the course of rejecting democracy even for "a minority of one," were to further raise the walls of dogma that are steadily growing around the libertarian ideal, and if, wittingly or not, anarchism were to turn into another narcissistic cult that snugly fits into an alienated, commodified, introverted and egocentric society.
-- September 18, 1994

1 L. Susan Brown: The Politics of Individualism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1993), p. 12. I do not question the sincerity of Brown's libertarian views; she regards herself as an anarcho-communist, as do I. But she makes no direct attempt to reconcile her individualistic views with communism in any form. Both Bakunin and Kropotkin would have strongly disagreed with her formulation of what constitutes "a group," while Margaret Thatcher, clearly for reasons of her own, might be rather pleased with it, since it is so akin to the former British prime minister's notorious statement that there is no such thing as society -- there are only individuals. Certainly Brown is not a Thatcherite, nor Thatcher an anarchist, but however different they may be in other respects, both have ideological filiations with classical liberalism that make their shared affirmations of the "autonomy" of the individual possible. I cannot ignore the fact, however, that neither Bakunin's, Kropotkin's nor my own views are treated with any depth in Brown's book (pp. 156-62), and her account of them is filled with serious inaccuracies.

2 Liberals were not always in accord with each other nor did they hold notably coherent doctrines. Mill, a free-thinking humanitarian and utilitarian, in fact exhibited a measure of sympathy for socialism. I am not singling out here any particular liberal theorist, be he Mill, Adam Smith or Friedrich Hayek. Each had or has his or her individual eccentricity or personal line of thought. I am speaking of traditional liberalism as a whole, whose general features involve a belief in the "laws" of the marketplace and "free" competition. Marx was by no means free of this influence: he, too, unrelentingly tried to discover "laws" of society, as did many socialists during the last century, including utopians like Charles Fourier.

3 See Kropotkin's "Anarchism," the famous Encyclopaedia Britannica article that became one of his most widely read works. Republished in Roger N. Baldwin, ed., Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets: A Collection of Writings by Peter Kropotkin (Vanguard Press, 1927; reprinted by Dover, 1970).

4 I have never regarded the classical Athenian democracy as a "model" or an "ideal" to be restored in a rational society. I have long cited Athens with admiration for one reason: the polis around Periclean times provides us with striking evidence that certain structures can exist -- policy-making by an assembly, rotation and limitation of public offices and defense by a nonprofessional armed citizenry. The Mediterranean world of the fifth century B.C.E. was largely based on monarchical authority and repressive custom. That all Mediterranean societies of that time required or employed patriarchy, slavery and the State (usually in an absolutist form) makes the Athenian experience all the more remarkable for what it uniquely introduced into social life, including an unprecedented degree of free expression. It would be naive to suppose that Athens could have risen above the most basic attributes of ancient society in its day, which, from a distance of 2,400 years we now have the privilege of judging as ugly and inhuman. Regrettably, no small number of people today are willing to judge the past by the present.

5 Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (London: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 22.

6 Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Non-Violent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), especially pp. 59, 78, 89, 94-95, 167-68, 177. Although I disagree with some of the facts and conclusions in Epstein's book -- based on my personal as well as general knowledge of the Clamshell Alliance -- she vividly portrays the failure of consensus in this movement.

7 The association of "chaos," "nomadism," and "cultural terrorism" with "ontological anarchy" (as though the bourgeoisie had not turned such antics into an "ecstasy industry" in the United States) is fully explicated in Hakim Bey's (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson) T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (New York: Autonomedia, 1985). The Yuppie Whole Earth Review celebrates this pamphlet as the most influential and widely read "manifesto" of America's countercultural youth, noting with approval that it is happily free of conventional anarchist attacks upon capitalism. This kind of detritus from the 1960s is echoed in one form or another by most American anarchist newssheets that pander to youth who have not yet "had their fun before it is time to grow up" (a comment I heard years later from Parisian student activists of '68) and become real estate agents and accountants.
For an "ecstatic experience," visitors to New York's Lower East Side (near St. Mark's Place) can dine, I am told, at Anarchy Caf�. This establishment offers fine dining from an expensive menu, a reproduction of the famous mural The Fourth Estate on the wall, perhaps to aid in digestion, and a maitre d' to greet Yuppie customers. I cannot attest to whether the writings of Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem, Fredy Perlman and Hakim Bey are on sale there or whether copies of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, The Fifth Estate or Demolition Derby are available for perusal, but happily there are enough exotic bookstores nearby to buy them.

8 Quoted from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1978).

9 History provides no "model" for libertarian municipalism, be it Periclean Athens, or a tribe, village, town, or city--or a hippie commune or Buddhist ashram. Nor is the "affinity group" a model--the Spanish anarchists used this word interchangeably with "action group" to refer to an organizational unit for the FAI, not to the institutional basis for a libertarian society.

10 A detailed discussion of the differences between the social domain, which includes the ways in which we associate for personal and economic ends; the public sphere or political domain; and the state in all its phases and forms of development can be found in my book Urbanization Without Cities (1987; Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1992).

11 I should emphasize that I am not counterposing a Communalist democracy to such enterprises as cooperatives, people's clinics, communes, and the like. But there should be no illusions that such enterprises are more than exercises in popular control and ways of bringing people together in a highly atomized society. No food cooperative can replace giant retail food markets under capitalism and no clinic can replace hospital complexes, any more than a craft shop can replace factories or plants. I should observe that the Spanish anarchists, almost from their inception, took full note of the limits of the cooperativist movement in the 1880s, when such movements were in fact more feasible than they are today, and they significantly separated themselves from cooperativism programmatically.

12 For Bakunin, the people "have a healthy, practical common sense when it comes to communal affairs. They are fairly well informed and know how to select from their midst the most capable officials. This is why municipal elections always best reflect the real attitude and will of the people." Bakunin on Anarchy, Sam Dolgoff, ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972; republished by Black Rose Books: Montreal), p. 223. I have omitted the queasy interpolations that Dolgoff inserted to "modify" Bakunin's meaning. It may be well to note that anarchism in the last century was more plastic and flexible than it is today.

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist...MMNL2.MCW.html

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Yes, I suspect the ecovillage is a communist concept. Not having read the lease/purchase agreement, covenants/ restrictions, etc. I can only go on my instincts.

Your choice of words concerns me, "So far..."

Please tell us you have a bug out plan for the ecovillage. As stated before, not my cup of tea but best wishes for you.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

What a waste, who wants to join a commune full of hippies with no free love!??
:no_ma:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Who wants to have a "Days of our lives" everyone sleep with everyone drama fest in their commune? When sexual morality is observed, the functions of society will remain intact.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Trying to dictate how other people live their lives is not healthy.

Goldissima, good for you.
I like the idea of a community taking care of itself.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

to jump into your bandwagon, do you know that the entire planet is in communistic mode and sustained by ppl like you perhaps that still go to work everyday and pay their taxes, go from pay check to another?

although there is a main structure dictated FIRST by the potential of its individuals, such an ecovillage rather leans toward left-anarchy, if you care to stick to "labels".

yes, 'so far' because no ecovillage is perfect but this one has track records as it has achieved many goals already. The planet is on the brink and when the SHTF, many will regret not to have drunk some "cool aid"... unless you are fully financially secure (and could afford to leave the country), to adpat yourself to the situation that is coming there are/will be some compromises to make, I am afraid.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Communism (not a label) is not for everyone, myself included. I don't do well "following the leader". So far its working for you. I honestly think that's GREAT!! :5_1_120:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Gee whillikers -

This thread is starting to read like the

Mainline sociological analytical article

In the latest

New York Review of Books as

Filmed and presented by the producers of "Survivor."

I suppose I lived in what you might call a commune first

In the late sixties, in Southren Oregon.

Now, just checking the reality meter here:

1.) We all had jobs, or a way of making a living.

2.) We shared costs. Funny story here - one of the dogs
was a bloodhound named MacDougal. All of the bills and
the Sears & Roebuck account and a couple credit cards
were in the name of Michael MacDougal.........

3.) We had a massive truck garden, which put out so much
that we put the surplus in boxes by the side of the driveway
for friends and neighbors to pick up, as they chose, each day.
The truck garden was fed with fantastically aged turkey shit
from a local rancher, who couldn't wait to give it away - he
raised and sold 10k turkeys/year. That's a lot of shit.

4.) I started a cabinet shop in a couple beat up sheds behind
the main house. Soon we all became cabinetmakers.

5.) Didn't matter if you had long hair or short hair,
smoked dope or smoked salmon. All were welcome.

6.) The whole place ran on wood heat. Every year, we would borrow
the neighbor's deuce and a half and go up hiway 140, and cut and
split about 10 cords. The neighbor got a couple for his loan of the truck.

7.) There were plenty of all kinds of tools, guns, chainsaws, pulaskis
(the reason I mention pulaskis is we would bid on "wilderness"
trail building projects every year; gas powered tools were prohibited)
and we went out more than a few times in a kind of barnraising mode
when somebody had a big project or an emergency.

This list could go on for awhile.

Anyway, it was neither a project in social or political engineering.

Just a bunch of people having a very, very good time.

So don't overcomplicate it.


scyth

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

If your arrangement was such a good gig why aren't you still there?

My point is this; for better or worse, life IS complicated. Moving to a commune / communal living arrangement doesn't necessarily make the human experience less complicated, nor more fulfilling for that matter. Since Goldissima has made up her mind to be where she is, I wish her only the best.

I discourage others from doing the same.

The human condition being what it is eventually "the bloom falls off the rose" and "the blush wears off the bride". Many (most?) communes and cults end up harboring opression and depravity of one form or another over time, regardless of the best altruistic intentions of its members and or founders. While one could claim the same outcomes can and do occur living in 'normal" society, the problem is with cults/communes the abuses are sheltered from the larger society (by design). The checks and balances get out of whack. Access to outside help from family, police, and the law can be greatly restricted. When tensions run high, out come the firearms and cool-aid. Granted, Guyana and J. Jones is an extreme example but it illustrates how when things go bad, they can go very very bad. The upside potential for quality of life in cults/communes doesn't outweigh the downside. Life is complicated, no apologies. I'm all for people having a very, very good time.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I know where you are. Which means TPTB probably do also, if interested enough. I would suggest some circumspection - I'm glad for you, and I'm in a similar situation - though not is so much of a "communal" setting. No need to advertise too much, regardless of how proud (and you should be) you feel about your accomplishment. Discretion... will win in the end.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Obviously the OP knows she provided enough information about her whereabouts on this forum for a 12 yr old and access to Google to find out where she is. TPTB can find us all if they want to.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Very true. However... no need to help them along! :biggrin:

BTW, I liked your first post better... the one about the "church", the founder, and other information she deleted, before you edited it to the above one.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Yeah, agreed.

It wasn't you who posted the links and then deleted them. :signs14:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Nothing to be sorry about. I wish Goldisimma the very BEST in her new life... and hope she is left alone to become the best she's capable of becoming! Thus the discretion post.

Freedom and self-determination - that's what it's ALL about!!!!! :s9:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Wish you all the best as you walk the walk, goldissima.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

To be honest I think TPTB have way more important things to do than worry about where she is.

Goldi your now the 2nd woman ina few months that I know of that has done something like this. ANother girl I know went out to Hi and is living with 2 other women. Apparently killed their first rabbit and ate it recently, a first for all of them but they all overcame their fears and are doing very well.

Good for you for following your dreams!!! I wish you the best. It looks like a great place.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Well I for one will miss your enlightening posts that always seemed to enhance the conscious experience.
Helped develop a community in N.Z some years ago and it was the greatest experience as it develops self sufficiency such as gardening,looking after your transport,building and being part of a group is a good feeling.
In the end every one had to have their own space which was ok as we built on land and did our own thing plus still being part of the group.
Being part of a group situation is now foreign too us as everyone (nearly) has moved on in different ways,still own share in the land.
The experience is a great thing and if you are from the city then this is going to be of great benefit to you,I cannot live anywhere but in the country as there is a charm that is destroyed in cities.
We discovered eventually that living in the country not far from a small town with services was the best out come for us and indeed it has been.
I learnt enough from this to build a wonderful mud brick house where we raised our family and still live today.
You mentioned costa rica ,have you ever thought of ecuador as I know if I didnt live so far away that is where I would like to go if the situation arose.
Planning at the moment somewhere in asia where a friend is living as back up plan( its closer) ,Palawan island infact, going to visit soon and buy some cheap land by a beach.
What so you cant get the web where you are.

Anyway all the best.:wavey:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

QWAK,goldissima/SMURFETT, :wink: Have you turned BLUE YET?:questionm:questionm:cry1:

Doing somthing LIKE that was the original intent for what became "the DUCK NEST" -- it did NOT work out:signs14: -- too many COOKS spoil the SOUP and the full gamit of social interactions and EGO conflects made it OBVIOUS very fast that it would SNOW BALL and get very bad.:36_1_30::shine:

Last April marked 20 years for ME living in virtual SOLITUDE and to be perfectly honist I am not shure I could now live in a comunal situation.:dontknow:

My social skills have changed so much over time that when I do go to social settings I feel like an ALIEN from another planet just VISITING and observing the strange local customs and not understanding how the indiviguals fit in to the social fabric of what I am as an out sider observing.:confused_m::10_1_19:

The search for SANITY in an INSAINE WORLD :yes::10_1_19: HUMmmmmmmm:questionm:dontknow:

We live on the invisable BORDER LINE between SELF and ALL --- the AWAIRNES of this GREATER REALITY -- changes ones PERSPECTIVE of virtualy every thing and ALTERS indivigual relationship to ALL OTHERS and ALL that exists.:thinkey::yes::shine:

Thanks for sharing your ADVENTURE so far :yes: I look forward to seeing and hearing how it UNFOLDS for you!:yes::congrats::thumbs up

the DUCK :36_3_13::15_1_70v:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

again, central banking is the 5th plank of the communist manifesto and taxation the 2nd one... deal with it... here nobody pays taxes because this is a non profit org, it's a work exchange, every penny in re-invested and trust me it shows!!

here I can talk about zero point energy, the cold fusion conspiracy, economic debt slavery, etc without being taken for a fool. I doubt you'd be authorized speaking this way in a collectivist environment. The only common goal here is self-sustainability. Sure they have their spiritual beliefs which are not really my cup of tea since I rather lean toward buddhism-hinduism-taoism but maybe should I have chosen an ashram instead. But I made a search before getting decided and most of the ecovillages I was interested in are "born again christian" oriented... so I chose one that is more open-minded.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

my significant other and I are for sure more like you... it's the emergency to leave the city (any big city) that prompted us to take action.

We are planning to stay here for 6 months/a year or more - or find another community when we have gained valuable experience in the field of farming - In no way we see this step as definite. Nonetheless the community supports the merging of sciences and spirituality, so we do not feel much antagonism to our belief system here.

My main preoccupation is to find time to write my big time 400 page novel... if I can do that, I'd be happy for now.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

there is a Darwinist conspiracy that wants ppl to believe that the fittest always survive BUT wont teach them that "cooperative individualism" is key for mankind's survival... because of this, even "cooperation" becomes a synonymous of "communism".

divide to rule at its finest again.

Best!

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Noble -

�If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for all of Paris is a moveable feast.�
Ernest Hemingway (1950)

To answer your question, it was this very beautiful girl

Way North in Portland...........

And my life is, still, a moveable feast.

scyth

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

That reminds me of a joke.

Q.Why are there so many beautiful trees lining the main streets in Paris?

A. Because the German Army likes to march in the shade. :smile:

I've never been to Paris but I 'd like to visit some time. Some say women rule the world. But more like your adventure -- it's the love of women that rules the world.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Noble -

Then there is that thar Spain.

Paris is like Oklahoma.

I've lived in Paris, but not in the big O.


scyth

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Hi Goldissima,


I am sincerely happy for you. Your setup looks very good. congrats!

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Cool.

Do residents arm themselves in the community?

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Glad to hear you're enjoying your new digs, goldissima. Looks like a swell place with a bunch of nice folks. I think you made a wise move, you'd definitely much better off there than NYC by a long shot - no comparison really.

We just closed on our 500+ acre property in east Texas, which is also owned by a non-profit. Our property is unimproved and has only had the open areas used for hay/livestock grazing, so we're starting from scratch. We're got a couple of ponds (we call 'em tanks in east Texas) on the property and we're going to put in several more. We're going to be doing the community supported agriculture thing like your group is doing, plus we're going to engage the community at large with respect to gardening/protein production. >90% of the community will be off grid, and most likely nearly 100% of the households will be off grid. Our goal is to be 100% off grid, generating our own power with waste oil.

One of our goals is to set an example for others to follow in setting up similar self-sufficient communities which support the community at large and vice versa. Any input you have regarding this based upon your experiences there where you are would be greatly appreciated. No need to re-invent the wheel.

Please check your messages.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

How's the winter panning out?

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

This holds true for every human situation, not just communal living. For Goldissima this may prove to be one stop on a journey; it certainly seems like a good space to recharge after leaving the megalopolis.

Gaillo, worrying about TPTB is a futile exercise, since by their very nature you have no control over them. Better to focus on what is in your power to affect, like your own preps.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Goldies situation reminds me of a sci fi book I read long ago.

It may have been Ursula La Guins book although I could not say for sure.

The protagonist was a woman that live in a society that had many different life style choices.

Some were communal, some were more like what she describes which I'd label (if labels are necessary) neo tribal.

It is a life style I would love to try at some point.
You have a stated goal, certain basic rules and other than that, you are free to stay or go as you choose.

I would love to hear the ongoing saga about this.:shine:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Hats off to Goldissima !

Most places in the USSA (United Socialist States of America) one is not allowed to live as one chooses. Everything from building codes to child care is codified by local/federal entities.

Few here realize that most parents/children would be subject to family break-up by bureaucratic gestapo social "services" for simply living in an alternative dwelling.




+p

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I've always been a little perplexed by the goldissima worship here. This is just my opinion but I find her to be one of the most closed minded, arrogant, disingenous and maybe even hateful posters here. Truly one of the most lost souls here.
There is certainly something grotesque about the American "real housewives" culture but to me this is equally grotesque to the opposite extreme.
All any of us have is this moment right now - nothing more is promised. Living your life in anticipation of TEOTWAWKI just seems like not living life to me.
The rat race isn't all bad. Nothing wrong with enjoying or even feeling blessed by modern conveniences. Not everyone is sheeple - some people are just family, friends, neighbors and they aren't all bad. To each his own but I'll take my suburban/semi-rural rat race life over a yurt in an extreme HOA, communalistic, borderline cult any day.
That's not to say that I don't find much of what she posts interesting and I guess I even wish her well - I just don't understand the pedastool.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Tecumseh -

I find your avatar in interesting contradiction to

Your comments.

There is some code you subscribe to

Which counters "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?"

Or perhaps grades it as to exactly

Who has what degree of freedom to choose their own life?

Me, just out of high school, I built an 8' x16' cabin

Way out in the woods of Southern Oregon.

Lived there for several years.

No electric, no vehicle access, little castiron wood stove.

Hauled water by hand, on foot.

No locks.

One of the best times of my life.

Oh yeah, Tecumseh. A wiki quickie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh

scyth

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I had the pleasure of meeting Goldissima in person. She is sweet, intelligent kind and considerate. I was only in her company for a few hours and I found her to be honest, open and real. She has a mind of her own and it plays to her strength.
I find Tecumseh's comments way off base.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

In my mind, ecovillage is distinctly not a communist concept. The manner in which ecovillages are structured vary greatly from one community to the next. A few may have communal income sharing arrangements, but I suspect this is fairly rare. Most that I know of have a diversified economy where individuals are responsible for their own livelihood. Personal property is respected. Some places people own their homes outright, in other places the community may own the buildings. In others there would be long term leases. So you have a wide range of financial arrangements. While ideology may lean one way or another depending on the community, there is usually a strong respect for individual beliefs, be they spiritual or political.

Yes, there is typically some agreement to sharing of resources for mutual benefit, but nobody holds a gun to your head. It is more about a shared commitment to sustainability as a lifestyle than a particular political or economic model.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Like I said to each his own.

I'm entitled to my opinions like anyone else is - I don't agree with you.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Yes, you are entitled to your opinions.... just so long as you don't attack other posters.

And yes, you attacked Goldissima.

I don't see where anyone is worshiping her. She just happens to have been an active, interesting and real poster for the past several years.

She has shown a certain sort of bravery to share her real life experiences with us, both materially and spiritually.

And since she doesn't seem to be around much these days to defend herself, I'm calling you on your bullshit.

You had no right to attack her at all...:36_1_30:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

The community Goldissima is in has some of the features commonly but mistakenly thought of as socialist/communist. The defining features of soc/com systems is top-down hierarchy. No matter how often "the power of the people" is said, orders come from the top and are handed down in a rigid hierarchy; and without exception privileges and exceptions increase the farther up the chain one stands.

If Goldissima's group had an "executive counsel" or some other stratum that made binding decisions for others, then she would be in a communist (small C) village. But while there seem to be some binding pre-conditions for living there, they seem to be made only to reduce conflicts that have torn apart many other intentional communities. That it's currency is work itself isn't feasible on a larger scale, but as it does not restrict wealth or other wealth accumulating activities outside the community, it uses a standard that is as immutable as any precious metal currency.

So it isn't quite Galt's Gulch, but it seems like a very agreeable model for a community.
-----
Tecumseh, I have no dog in this fight; I don't know Goldissima's history and have interacted with her the same way I would with anyone else within a thread. Having said that, I have to agree that your posting comes off as a personal attack; you should apologize.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I didn't attack anyone. I expressed an opinion. Its funny how some of you are such defenders of free thought and expression until you find an opinion that you don't agree with.

I was engaged briefly on a thread with goldissima where she was arrogant and closed minded. I posted to her that she was expressing hatred and she thanked my post - which is evidence that she either agreed (and was hateful) or was disenguous as I stated.

I was more intrigued that on a site that generally seems to value liberty and independence there was such apparent infatuation with cult like communal living where the community is valued more than the individual - the exact opposite of liberty.

If any of you think living in a yurt under communal rules is great and makes you happy - more power to you. It is far from my definition of living free but as I said - to each his own.

I'm pretty honest with my opinions - I tend to think that a person who posts thousands of post on this site is not a happy person - nor are they truly "off the grid". I thought it was funny to see a Google t-shirt on someone so determinned to "live off the grid" - maybe the irony was intentional.

Some of you would be better served by taking your own advice since many of you hold "sheeple" in the same contempt that I hold Goldissima.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

QWAK,Tecumseh --- "JUDGE not lest YEA be JUDGED!" -- :shine: It works both ways and people are seldom aware they are doing it. :thinkey::shine:

Each life is about DISCOVERING SELF and how self relates to the ALL:yes:, your perspective is valid as is goldissima :thinkey:-- perhaps it was how you phrased your responce and the hard edge which you are inclined to use.:dontknow:

To be totaly free one must be totaly independent :thinkey:and NO ONE actualy IS :452: she is finding her COMFORT level between group dependence and her personal INDEPENDENCE as we all are -- as are you.:yes:

the DUCK :15_1_70v:

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Tecumseh -

"I expressed an opinion."

Sorry, but you didn't.

"I find her to be one of the most closed minded, arrogant, disingenous and maybe even hateful posters here."

That is an absolutely personal attack on a person you apparently

Have no previous relationship with or personal knowledge of.

Now, proceeding on to the word "sheeple."

It is a single word expressing a derogatory opinion

Of a perceived class or clade of people in a given culture.

I have heard the descriptions yuppie, redneck, homeboy, cracker,

Baptist, catholic, democrat, republican, proletarian, communist,

White trash, trailer trash, survivalist, jewboy, liberal, gun-nut

Valley girl, hippie, and several hundred more

Used with the same flavor of invective.

Those are not personal attacks.

However, they demonstrate a fairly closed minded

And usually inaccurate wholesale condemnation of

A group of people generally based

Upon prejudice rather than perception.

Finally, I have found a remarkably high level of

Mutual personal respect on this board

Since I've been here

And have no intention to see that degraded.

Thus my comments.


scyth

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Fair enough Gold Duck - I'm the first to admit that I can be less than charming.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I don't have a dog in the race either .............

I just wanted to say that Ducks Post was a good one.

Good one Duck :ok:

that being said,
Tecumseh, you have the right to your opinion. But sometimes opinions should be keep to one's self.

Your last post was a good one too.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I have to agree with Tecumseh. I've never gotten the Goldissima worship either. She posts youtube videos and now she's in a yurt.
Good luck!

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Have any of you read "THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS."? While a valuable part of this forum, I do not see her being worshipped, so much as appreciated. A female member on this board putting up with all of our crap is a rare thing indeed, just like women on the moon in the aforemetioned book, She stands out because here she is one of the boys and 100% all American woman at the same time. Only unicorns and talking golden ducks are more rarely seen.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Wait-we HAVE a talking gold duck!

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

What's unique is that Goldissima has her roots in Europe and immigrated here, yet many perceive her to be 'American'.

I'm very grateful for what she has contributed here at GIM (which is substantial, as opposed to her detractors lol) and wish her only the best in whatever endeavors she chooses to pursue.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

This thread should be closed. Calling out members is wrong.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

I wonder what would happen if someone wanted to have a gun and live there? would they get kicked out? would they call the police and kick you out? what if you wanted to listen to rap music real loud? Can you get voted out?

It would be so nice to just lay around and relax for a few months, but I think I wouldnt be able to live there for very long after that.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

'Alternative' intentional communities can get very weird, so imo how life is 'regulated' in an IC largely depends upon who's on the top of the food chain in the IC and what sort of 'government' they have in place (if any).

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

What you say is true. Having met Goldissima I am tempted to come to her aid and thus reveal information to defend her character. I won't do it out of respect her and this forum.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Rap music = crap music.

If you are the type who thinks his right to listen to loud crap music supercedes another's right to peace and quiet then you don't belong in any sort of community.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Earphones should allow you to keep your music loud while not bothering others.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

Is one of the reasons I moved to the hills


Anyone heard from Goldie latley?

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

And we wonder why the females leave this board so quickly.

Sad.

Re: I am off the grid!! (with pix)
 

For a while, long ago

I lived in a Quaker community.

They lived by consensus.

Which could be a grueling process.

Days and days of back and forth.

But at the end you were solid.

I left that community,

But kept consensus with me.

Use it to this day, in business, with my neighbors,

With my wife and family.


scyth