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This is the community to talk about communities and learn how we can make communities better - create the ones we would like to see in the world, and improve the ones we happen to be in.

This group operates under the understanding that by being raised mostly in authoritarian structures of some kind or another we have unlearned a lot about healthy equal-to-equal relationships and healthy self-ruling communities, but it's still out there somewhere. Let's get this power back and collect knowledge here! Examples of what could go here:

Personal stories: your experience matters. Let's learn from each other's successes and failures (no, they were not really failures, they were learning experiences!)
How to create/maintain a community
How to solve conflict
Differences between physical/online communities?
Different communities: local, hobby, mutual aid, based on origin, ...
Multi-generational communities: pass on the poison or plant seeds?
Split or stay together? When fundamental values collide

Be kind to each other, we are all learning.

More mods welcome!

founded 1 year ago

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schmorpel

Welcome to a community where we talk about communities (self.community_community)

submitted 1 year ago by schmorpel to c/community_community

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Note that communities doesn't just refer to the hippie variety. Community is also: your family, your village, your online friends, your class. Community are the neighbours next door. When I moved into my new home my neighbours came and brought food - and I realized that I really didn't know enough about communities anymore, so I'm here to learn.

A village community is different from an online community. You cannot just change it from one day to the next. Not every expectation in a village might agree with you: there is a soft pressure from some people to join some of the religious festivities and have the priest bless your house, not so much my thing - but it limits full integration and makes that I remain foreign.

I moved into the first community of the hippy/punk variety when I was 17, and even though it appeared a continuous failure at the time (all the conflict, all the people arriving and leaving) it did keep me alive and sheltered and in good spirits for 4 years and the place is still in the hands of a group, not one person, till today, yay.

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[–] schmorpel 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess it's more often than not a mix of both. My first commune experience happened in Germany, where lack of resources wasn't really a thing back then. We went dumpster diving (because we were too young and urban to know how to garden), did some jobs, got some money from the state ... The communes I see happening now are mostly young people moving out to Southern Europe and wanting to homestead. A lot are very disappointed with their first commune experience and give up after a short time. And in that case it's often a mix of all of those things: lack of resources, the steep learning curve of handling a homestead in an unknown climate, learn a new culture, handle the difference between expectation and reality, and then get on with others you maybe only just met through all these problems.

But also, more resources are available (back then in my commune days there was no internet or we were too Luddite to start using it). Online you can find dire warnings like my paragraph above, but also information about when to seed carrots, how to milk a goat, how to organize and moderate a community meeting etc. So you do have more and more places succeeding and doing land restoration, permaculture and agroforestry.