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Collective Agrarian Utopian Fail
Dec. 29th, 2008 02:11 pmI have a bunch of friends who live in various kinds of intentional communities, and I have the highest respect for those (both the people and the communities). It's the way of the future, really it is, so much better than any number of other arrangements. But boy does the movement attract nuts on the internet. Let me run down the list of things that will make me fail to take your plan to start an intentional community seriously.
If you talk glowingly about how you and your friends share things like money and function as a collective to support each other, but have never held a job or had money of your own to share, if you personally are hopelessly insolvent, then I don't believe you will ever club together with friends to buy that farm you're dreaming about and live happily ever after. If you do win the lottery and buy the farm, I predict that you will be broke and hungry there.
If you speak of the childcare that you and yours provide for your friends, for free, so that no one will have to pay to leave their baby with strangers, I believe one of two things: none of you have full-time jobs, or none of you have children.
By and large, if you talk about farming to support yourselves, I am a mass of distrust and suspicion. I especially don't believe you if your current source of income is any of the following: eBay, etsy, web design, small personal handcrafts, a book you haven't yet written or sold, or nonexistent. If you have never had so much as a window box on your fire escape, I don't believe you. If you have not thought about what it is you might grow, what kind of land you need in order to grow it successfully, and how many man-hours of labor it will take to do it, I don't believe you. If you are making these plans from the middle of an urban area you have never travelled outside of, I don't believe you. Additionally, if you describe yourself as severely physically disabled or "germaphobic", I disbelieve. I get that physically disabled people can do a wide variety of things, but if you can't go outside in full sun, can't identify poison ivy without feeling it up, can't weed or heft rocks, or feel the need to disinfect yourself after touching dirt, farming is not a good lifestyle choice for you. (For extra bonus disbelief, if you describe disabilities that should render you unable to type these plans onto the internet, if you are blind and deaf and suffer from severe carpal tunnel in your one remaining hand, your collective is doomed.)
If your plan involves more than 20 people, and will be financed by fewer than 10% of those, I don't believe you.
If a key player in your plan is someone you have been dating for less than three months, I don't believe you.
If your plan involves going "off the grid," but you are on the internet every day, I don't believe you.
If you talk glowingly about how you and your friends share things like money and function as a collective to support each other, but have never held a job or had money of your own to share, if you personally are hopelessly insolvent, then I don't believe you will ever club together with friends to buy that farm you're dreaming about and live happily ever after. If you do win the lottery and buy the farm, I predict that you will be broke and hungry there.
If you speak of the childcare that you and yours provide for your friends, for free, so that no one will have to pay to leave their baby with strangers, I believe one of two things: none of you have full-time jobs, or none of you have children.
By and large, if you talk about farming to support yourselves, I am a mass of distrust and suspicion. I especially don't believe you if your current source of income is any of the following: eBay, etsy, web design, small personal handcrafts, a book you haven't yet written or sold, or nonexistent. If you have never had so much as a window box on your fire escape, I don't believe you. If you have not thought about what it is you might grow, what kind of land you need in order to grow it successfully, and how many man-hours of labor it will take to do it, I don't believe you. If you are making these plans from the middle of an urban area you have never travelled outside of, I don't believe you. Additionally, if you describe yourself as severely physically disabled or "germaphobic", I disbelieve. I get that physically disabled people can do a wide variety of things, but if you can't go outside in full sun, can't identify poison ivy without feeling it up, can't weed or heft rocks, or feel the need to disinfect yourself after touching dirt, farming is not a good lifestyle choice for you. (For extra bonus disbelief, if you describe disabilities that should render you unable to type these plans onto the internet, if you are blind and deaf and suffer from severe carpal tunnel in your one remaining hand, your collective is doomed.)
If your plan involves more than 20 people, and will be financed by fewer than 10% of those, I don't believe you.
If a key player in your plan is someone you have been dating for less than three months, I don't believe you.
If your plan involves going "off the grid," but you are on the internet every day, I don't believe you.
