Living Together: A Year in the Life of a City Commune
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Living Together: A Year in the Life of a City Commune
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For many, the idea of a commune is to work on creating utopia. The range of ideologies around this concept is vast. Unlike the American decision-making process, which typically caters to the rich, in consensus an effort is made to listen to the quietest voice. Any member of a consensus group can block a proposal, but emphasis is on editing a proposal until everyone is comfortable with the outcome. Even though we agreed on a few basic ideals, it could be time consuming to reach consensus on many issues.
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Imagine Moonbeam, the vegan Neo-Pagan, attempting to reach consensus with Mr. Ed, the libertarian cholesterol junkie, on whether or not we should buy more meat from the neighbor's farm. Imagine Raincloud, the Anarcho-Tribalist, trying to reach consensus with Chrome, the Anarcho-Capitalist, on if we should save up for eco- friendly buildings or a state of the art new office building.
The most difficult thing for me was that I really wanted a cat and couldn't get anybody to agree to raise the limit on how many cats we could have. Concerns were raised about the local bird population and its reaction to cats.
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Luckily, a stray cat showed up at one of the houses and we decided to keep it there as a secret cat. I still wanted my own kitty, but in Babylon it seems that the most verbally aggressive person tends to get their way. Although consensus meetings sometimes made me want to angrily crush tofu, I much preferred it to the insensitive culture I experience in New York.
Communication is important to communards. Once a year every member of the community must speak one on one with each member to appreciate them and talk about any conflicts that may be taking place. A good percentage of my friends practiced nonviolent communication NVC , a style of communication that deals with expressing feelings and needs without judgement.
The passive-aggressiveness and back-talking I observe on a daily basis in New York disturbs me. If Babylonians aren't asking me about cults, they're asking about orgies. In the s there was an explosion of communes and they have a reputation for following the trend of free love from that time period. Free love is just one of the ways that people looked to escape the oppressive societal expectations people face in Babylon. The flower children of the '60s sought a more peaceful and healthier existence, especially during the Vietnam War, when many were looking to escape the draft.
Many were inspired by the kibbutz communities of Israel. To answer the question you all want answered, yes, free love does still exist. But now it is called polyamory. Americans crave the sensationalism of sex, drugs and rock and roll, and I know that's what you want to hear from me, so I'll give you a little bit. Polyamory literally translates to many loves. I know people in the commune who maintain multiple romantic relationships. I identify as polyamorous, but I am definitely not the most poly person. When it comes to radical relationships there are so many variations.
Some people have primary partners, but still agree to each other sleeping with other people -- secondary partners.
Growing up in a commune | Society | The Guardian
On the commune I had a primary partner and everyone else was a fling. I couldn't handle having more than two serious relationships at the same time, which is my current situation. I call people who date multitudes of people and make it look easy "Polyglamorous. Even the children on the commune who come from traditional two parent families are surrounded by brilliant adults, so they really learn a lot young.
I remember processing grapes to turn into jam, when one of the children came in and began talking to me about the injustices of the American prison system. This is quite different than the children in Babylon, who just want to talk to me about Disney's Frozen. Recently I was at a bar in New York and I drunkenly made out with this guy. This is within my agreements with my partners. However, with later conversations it appeared that the other people present during this occurrence assumed I was cheating on my boyfriend.
I also found out that my make-out buddy was cheating on his girlfriend. It was shocking to me that everyone assumed I was monogamous.
Living together; a year in the life of a city commune. [Mike Weiss] on www.farmersmarketmusic.com . *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Living Together: A Year in the Life of a City Commune [Mike Weiss] on Amazon. com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Living Together, Edition.
I made the foolish assumption that if he had a girlfriend they had spoken about having an open relationship. Polyamory is so common on the communes that if I were seen at a party making out with someone other than my primary partner, no one would think I was cheating on them. With regular communal meals and weekly meetings, Sandberg says the close-knit community at Osho Leela attracts a certain type of person. Then they turn to something like this. As research shows that loneliness and social isolation is spreading across the UK, and as rising costs continue to squeeze households, more communities built on a shared ethos and a supportive neighbourly unit are sprouting up.
Meanwhile, a number of housing cooperatives have been set up across the UK, where a group of like-minded people come together to buy a property — something they would never be able to do individually. Coates, 60, is himself a commune veteran after spending more than 40 years in such set-ups, starting with squatting in London after he left school.
In , Coates and 14 others set up not-for-profit eco cohousing development Forgebank , located just outside Lancaster, with each member putting down a deposit to create a community of 15 houses on a plot of land. Now expanded to 41 homes, every month each household pays their rent or mortgage, as well as a service charge which covers community facilities such as running a cooperative food store.