A Commune:
Let's design a new(?) type

[Last updated October 29th, 1997]

Here's a sinister little clip from The Grapes of Wrath about the economy game in case you wern't already in the mood to be interested in the rest of this document :)

Commune: 4. a close-knit community of people who share common interests. 5. a place for group living and sharing of work and income by people seeking radical personal changes.

Table of Contents




Is this for you?:

There's a bit of reading ahead. I want to gather a group of people that are genuinly interested in this, so I don't want to skimp on words if it will help make sure I'm only getting responces from people that honestly feel a passion for this type of life. So here's a "teaser" to let you know if you're the type of person that might want to keep reading the rest of this. (By the way, I know this stuff sounds a little ideolistic, but isn't that the point of going off and starting your own microcausm instead of trying to integrate it into our current social structure?)

In my life I would like to meet a group of people that:

If you think you'd like this sort of life then listen to me daydream about what I'm thinking for a while and if it's similar to your daydreams, then PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE contact me!! Or better yet, we could get some sort of public dialogue going on so more people feel comfortable joining in.
You can try chatting here since I also run that site and it has an activism chatroom dedicated to this topic.


What I already have set up:

Nothing, zilche, nadda. In fact, I really don't even have any information about the way communes are currently done. Heck, I don't even know if what I'm describing IS a commune for that matter. All I have is this dream of how life could be that burns in my mind and won't let me accept the life everyone is telling me I should be wanting.

Though, I guess at least I have a little knowledge that may be helpful to this since I'm slowly learning how to live off the land. (Anyone interested in this might want to do that as well. Learning any new trades at all would bring us that much closer to being able to survive without dependance on outside influences).


A little about me:

I should tell you how I live so you know my perspective. I'm 21 years old (for all that matters) and to be honest, I live quite well. I live in the maritimes of Canada so we don't experience war or anything like that. In fact, people are generally quite pleasant. None of us make a dime and that fact hasn't hindered us from having food (we live on a farm) and a roof over our heads etc. Heck, I am even able to find many free ways to access the INTERNET of all things. So it's quite easy to live quite well here with only a little money here and there. (though you might not get that impression from everyone. In fact, I'm sure you might never heard that said again. the situation certainly isn't IMPROVING with time).

I dislike that people are measured by their occupation. I find it confusing that we've created so many jobs that don't need to be done (and are often even harmful to the world) for people that don't really want to be doing it, purely to maintain this complex game we play called the Economy. Why should people mortgage away their lives for tasks that don't need to be done in the first place? There are soo many posative things they can be doing with their lives that would make them feel happier and more fullfilled. But since it possibly doesn't involve aquiring money, they have to flip burgers instead. I want a world without economic games. Where each person can do whatever it is that makes them feel the most fullfilled to be doing. And everyone in their community supports them and is supported BY them.

I love nature. I've been trying to learn as much as I possible about the plants and trees and such so that I feel a little safer in the world and less dependant on the rest of society for survival. (When did the days when survival knowledge suddenly stopped being important enough to pass on from generation to generation happen?).

I think were this desire partially started for me was with my walks in the woods. I soon realised there are only so many places I'm allowed to walk, and that there are many restrictions on being there. Like, I'm not allowed to sleep there over night etc. It botheres me that there is no where you can walk for days or months on end without running into many houses everywhere and becomming a tresspasser. It bothers me that any of us think we own the earth in the first place. It bothers me that we often own it to give us legal "rights" to detroy it. Why am I more afraid of running into landowners and hunters when walking then I am of running into wild animals? So I guess I kind of want to make another country altogether in a way. But since that's completely unlikely, let's give this a try...


How exactly do I plan on carrying this out?:

Intro:Well, I don't know all the legal/financial information entailed in this. I was hopeing that by making this homepage I would finally be brought in contact with people also interested in this that might have better knowledge on this. And know how the laws etc vary from country to country so we'd know where the best location to start this might be. Anyhow, I'll just use generic ideas for now untill we can start discussions and give it more details together. We can discuss where we'd want to live, and how close we'd want to live to other towns and how big we'd want to give our community room to grow to, together. (not to mention how on earth we plan on getting the finances to get the land in the first place).

I was hopeing we could find each other via the internet to start with, and then through whatever other methods come up later on. And once we have spent a great deal of time discussing what we want to acomplish and if it will work (I'm not one to take huge risks .. though I guess you wouldn't know it from what I'm proposing. Big changes, yes. Big risks, no. I like to know what I'm getting into before I step into it)... anyway, after we've descided how to go about things, we could somehow aquire (completely legally, I have no intention of ever breaking and laws of whatever country we happen to be in in order to achieve this) some land (preferably in the middle of nowhere) that we could build our homes and farms etc. Preferably in a spot where we could get more land if we found later that there are a great deal of people wanting to join. (hmm.. I should probably find some established communes and learn from them how the economics of this work).

Homes: I really don't want to be ripping down a forest in order for us to live there. It would be nice if we could at least half-camp it. (I would be willing to live under the stars in any case.. Just have to wait to hear from others to see what they would want). Perhaps one main building where we can store our foods and equipment etc through the year and perhaps have a couple levels so we could sleep in there ourselves if it becomes too cold outside but for the most part (those of you like myself anyway) might sleep outside or in tents or whatever other unobtrusive sort of homes might be built. Though this is all a moot point. I wouldn't want anyone to live in anyway they arn't comfortable living. The idea is for all of us to GAIN freedom, not to lose it.

Food: Ideally we'd be able to grow all of the food we require ourselves. I imagine this some form of hydroponics would be required througout the cold seasons if we chose an area that has cold seasons (which I kinda hope we do because personally, I like the variety and would burn up in an area without cold seasons). I guess we'd have to dig a deep basement so we could have an area that would always be cold enough to store things without, or with very little help from, electrical cooling units. (unless some of us happen to want to maintain some sort of financing from the rest of the world that would help pay electic bills.. either that or we happen to be somewhere where we can make very efficient use of solar/hydro/and wind powered electricity. (which would be wonderful, but I belive solar panels are incredibly expensive to buy, non?). As far as who works on the fields, well.. hopefully most people that would read this and think that this is something they want to be a part of, would also be people that would want to volunteer to help till/harvest the fields anyway, so if there are people that really don't want to do this, hopefully that won't be a problem and they can be free to pursue other things. (though, this, obviously is something that we would pretty much HAVE to have a certain amount of people doing ...so if it turned out that not enough people were willing to help.. I don't know, maybe we could just try to get the others to do it in small shifts or something? I guess it's something we'd have to discuss together).

Fun: Just so you know this place hopefully won't be all work work work, Aside from there hopefully being enough people to take turns doing whatever chores might need to be done, to allow others to take time to themselves to do what they wish, I would also like there to be celebrations and such as well. (hopefully we'll have some musicians and storytellers among us as well. That would be nice). What celebrations would be apropriate? I assume whatever ones you're used to that you want to keep doing along with whatever new ones seem appropriate to create to celebrate our new life together.

Education: I think education should always be free everywhere anyway. Hopefully we will have enough people of varying skills that we can teach each other most of what we are curious to know. It would be wonderful if we had a few registered teachers amoung us as well. Then we would be legal to do our own schooling if we have some children among us that are legally required to be in school. (of course, if would be nice if we could find a way to get them back and forth to a public school if they want to meet more children their age ... though.. without cars, I'm not sure how that would be done effectively everyday unless we chose to live very close to a populated area). I think it's very important for people to pass knowledge on from generation to generation without depending on schools to do the work for you (because, let's face it ... how many effective education systems do we have on this planet at the moment?). (I love learning and teaching, so even if there's no one else that can do this, there's at least one person that can helppass on a few trades ... or learn about other trades we need to know to help pass them on as well).

Government/Laws: So who runs this show anyway? I know from my words it sounds like I'm looking to create a new place that caters to MY every whim. But really that's not the case at all. I have absolutely no desire at all to be in charge of anything. My words so far reflect my interests for the simple reason that so far, I'm the only person I have to talk to about this, so my interests are the only ones I have available to reflect. (though I hope that I've made most of my words generic enough to allow most people freedom to their endevors even if they are very different from my own). We can modify our outlook on how we go about things together once there is more then just me working at doing this. I would like to see all the governing that's done concerning constructing this life, to be done by ALL the people involved it (well.. unless they honestly have asolutly no interest in having a say in how things are done. As I said before, I don't want to make anyone do anything they don't want to). Of course, whatever quidelines we chose to live our lives by, we would have to live within the laws of whatever area we are living in as well. Don't want cops banging down our door some evening and taking away everything we've worked for.

Love: This may be more of an extraneous thing to mention, but I want to mention it anyway. It's another advantage I expect there to be in community living. How many of you come from broken homes? How many of you have gotten into relationships with people just to get OUT of that broken home? Or perhaps gotten into a relationship, not because you truely loved them, but because you just wanted SOMEONE to love you... ANYONE. (though, people seldom ever seem to realise when they are doing this .. and may not even want to admit it to themselves even later on after the relaitonship has run it's course and left you were you started). How does this relate to a commune? Well. I think that perhaps if you live in a community where everyone is always there for each other and everyone cares about how each other is doing and you know that any one of them would be willing to do whatever they can to help you if you were feeling lousy, perhaps we wouldn't be as inclined to jump so haphazardly into relationships. Becuase we would already have the support and attention we need anyway. So people might tend to go into relationships more because they really have a strong love for them instead. Or maybe even don't feel they they need anymore then the wonderful relationship they have all around them with the whole community and are honestly completely happy to live their life without entering a relationship of that nature. (I know there are many people that belive this to be completely impossible and that you simply CAN'T have lead a complete life if you didn't find someone to share it with. I am not one of those people. I think love can be wonderful. But I don't think your life is failed if you don't happen to run accross it).

Connection with the rest of the world: I would like it if we were able to bring ourselves to a position where we were not only able to help ourselves, but perhaps even able to help people outside of our community as well (if, of course, the WANT our assistance, that is). In the form of perhaps offereing shelter to the homeless or running a sort of foster home (pending whatever legal requirements we would be required to fullfill to do that) or to just do volunteer work whereever else people need help. Or even just doing road-side cleanups to help reduce pollution a little. All little things like that make a world of difference. (I don't want to push our ways on anyone else though. I mean, who's to say what the right path for a persons life actually is? Is the strictest of sences, do we _really_ know that there's anything more right or wrong about just going on a free-for-all killing spree then there is to helping people in need? Well, obviously I belive that's NOT the path for me. And I belive that there are many other people that don't want that path either. Which is why I want to start this commune. But the point is, I don't want to assume our way is the best way for EVERYone. So I don't want to be a door-to-door religion or anything. I only want to offer our help to people that are asking for it. (and it's not like there's a shortage of people asking help from anyone and everyone, eh? So we could easily fill our time with that alone (though, we should probably take out a bit of time to make food as well eh?))

Accepting new members: I would prefer that we could accept anyone that wanted to enter, simply on principal (after, according to what I wrote in the first section, we're supposed to respect each others differences, etc eh?). On the other hand, what about people that want to join that, themselves do NOT respect differences or maybe even promote hate (or do anything else against the few general guidlines listed in the first section). That seems like it would be completely defeating the purpose of starting our own community. One would think that people with prejudices against others wouldn't want to be in a place that's free of those prejudices since more likely then not there would be people there that that person would have a prejudice against ... but then again ... well... this is more of a tricky matter and one that I think we should discuss together before I talk much more about it.


Let's talk about this!:

If you've read through all this and your dreams seem to be very close to this, then let's talk! I won't see talking as being any sign of obligation to carry through with this. I mean, I don't even know if *I* will be able to carry through with this at this early stage. Right now I just want to find as many people as possible that share these ideas. I mean, even if we never end up creating a commune together at all, (or even if we do, but many people just don't feel like joining us), then it's still great to know people like this just for the sake of possibly making new friends if nothing else. (besides, we can use all the help we can get right now concerning ideas and problems to anticipate etc). So please don't pass idly by if you have any interest in this. I know it's easy to just move on and keep surfing the net as if you never read this, but we could really use the help. (if only in having someone start a conversation about this for others to join in). If you know of a commune like this that already exists, then PLEASE tell me about it. I would love to be a part of it.



We have a group of people having email disscussions about this currently (I belive this is where most of the communicating will probably be happening), so if you want to join in the discussion just let me know and I'll add your email address to the list (you can just ask at any point if you later change your mind and don't want to be part of the conversation anymore and i'll take you off the list).



Anyhow, thank you very much for reading this far. If you want to find out more about me in particular I suppose the best way to do that would be to go and see the rest of the homepage I've created (NS GLBT Stuff, link listed below). I hope this has inspired some people if nothing else.

Contact: emcinnis AT hotmail DOT com
Back to the NS GLBT Stuff homepage.