Community Building

Preamble

“As an individual I can and do achieve much.  But my aspirations and the path along which they lead are beyond my abilities alone.  In community I find fellowship, am challenged to go beyond, and receive the support to do so.  In community, we work together to create the next world, a world worth inheriting.  In community, we achieve magnificent things – as we are all magnified by fellowship:  the bond of a shared vision and the mutual effort to make it manifest.”

What is Community? 

A community is a group of interacting people, living in some proximity (i.e., in space, time or relationship).  For the purposes of this wiki, "community" will refer to a social unit larger than a household that shares common values and/or interests, has social cohesion[i], and has as at least one of its purposes an intent to respond to the challenges arising from “The 3 Es” as conceptualized in Dr. Chris Martenson’s Crash Course.

Why is Community important?

Human civilization, as currently constituted/organized, is now well-into a crisis period brought on by ignorance and/or misunderstanding of certain constraints and flaws.  These limitations are gathered under the umbrella of what Dr. Martenson calls “The 3 Es” in his Crash Course, and as time marches on the pressures brought to bear by the 3 Es will continue to wreak havoc with attempts – especially by developed countries, although developing countries will face growing difficulties too – by the governments and peoples of the world to maintain the current economic and social paradigm. 

As actors on the world stage (e.g. governments, central banks) become increasingly desperate and their actions increasingly irrational, the most rational course of action people can take will be to prepare to do for themselves:  to increase their self-reliance – to become more resilient so as to better endure the effects of the continuing shocks to the economy (joblessness, currency devaluation), deteriorating infrastructure (roads/bridges/etc., electrical grid) and disruptions to just-in-time delivery systems (most especially food and fuel).

When it comes to self-reliance, no man is an island.  The number of individuals who can do it all for themselves is so vanishingly small as to be statistically insignificant.  People who organize themselves into communities dedicated towards lifestyles focused on increased resilience will fare far better than those that try to go it alone (or simply continue ignoring the growing signs of coming economic, social and environmental dislocations).  Pre-existing communities (e.g. church congregations) that decide to turn their attentions to increased resilience will fare even better, having already done the more time-consuming work of organizing themselves into a commmunity.

People are going to need each other in ways that have been ignored or forgotten for a generation or more. 

People have a real hunger for fellowship and community. In this world, where social interactions are mediated by technology, and where communities have become too atomized, people feel more isolated than they have in generations. Surely technology has a role to play in organizing and communication (witness the online community at Chris Martenson’s website [http://www.chrismartenson.com/forum]), but the real solutions are to be found and implemented through face-to-face interaction and by people working side by side. So much time and money has been invested in creating walled-off little worlds (whether literal – gated communities where people tend to prosecute their social lives in isolation from the greater world – or figurative – folks hemmed up inside the cocoons created by Facebook, Twitter, and immersive big-screen TV entertainment centers). A similarly herculean effort will be required to build communities resilient enough to thrive in the coming years. 

For the purposes of this wiki, the focus will be on creating a community with the aim of increasing the community members’ ability to adapt and thrive in spite of the ongoing challenges posed by the 3 Es.  Those that already have a cohesive community in place should – in addition to this wiki – make good use of the “What Should I Do?” [WSID_at_new_website_URL] series at [new_website_URL.com].

Key Principles

Sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies thought of human association as being of two varieties: Gemeinschaft (usually translated as “community”) and Gesellschaft (meaning “society” or “association”).  He felt family or kinship bonds were the perfect expression of the former, but that other forms of bond, such as identification with a particular place or belief, could lead to Gemeinschaft.  Whereas Gesellschaft is more particularly arrived at by pure self-interest, Gemeinschaft comes out of a communal network and shared social understanding.  While no particular group will be purely one or the other, communities that organize to meet the challenges of the 3 Es will tend towards Gemeinschaft.[ii]

Certainly, one can move forward on the path to resilience when community is motivated mostly by self-interest (“I help you put a solar hot water heater on your roof, and you give me ten quarts of canned tomatoes.”), but the further down the spectrum towards shared beliefs a community is, the more cohesive it will be, the more effectively it will add resilience, and the more gratifying it will be to be a member.

Further, the greater the overlap of beliefs around which a community is organized (for the purposes of this wiki, let this be described as a community’s “tightness”), the greater the value of the social capital of that community.  Social capital[iii] can be defined as the value of social relations and the role of cooperation and the confidence to achieve results.  If a community is organized around resilience, well and good.  If it also has a common religious faith as an organizing principle, its cohesion and tightness will be all the greater.  The tighter a community is, the more effectively it will act to serve its members.

It has been observed that communities go through stages as they form, grow and mature.  Several conceptual frameworks exist to describe them.  Organization Theory divides the process into five stages:  Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Transforming.  M. Scott Peck’s model () has roughly parallel stages named Pseudocommunity, Chaos, Emptiness and True Community.

Key Facts

• Everybody Craves Community: humans are social animals.  The individual who does best in relative isolation is a rare thing.  We have an innate need for social contact, and it’s rare to hear anyone these days opine that one of our culture’s problems is that people are too connected in community – in fact, the opposite is generally heard.  So as one goes about efforts to create and foster community, remember this.  People will want to respond to one’s efforts, given the right approach and enough time.
• Start Now:  Community Building is not a quickie undertaking.  It takes time to develop familiarity with other people, and even more time to build strong bonds of trust.  Don’t try and figure out the perfect strategy.  Just pick one Community Building activity and go do it.
• Start Small:  Rare is the situation in which an individual (or small group) attempting to foster a larger, tighter community is able to swiftly attain their goal.  Most people are overscheduled and under plenty of stresses and since humans are hardwired to give nearly all their attention to Problems Immediately At Hand, folks may not allocate precious time to community activities – at least not right away.  Don’t be discouraged if first efforts yield a small number of people, or a large group that doesn’t seem to cohere at first.  Just keep on taking a step, and another step, and another step.  Remember the exponential function:  get two people involved, and then they’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on…
• “Community” Is Not the Same As “Friends”:  One should not limit one’s hoped-for future community network to a circle of friends.  Certainly, in a perfect world everyone in a given community would be best of pals.  This is not a perfect world.  The non-perfect-world ideal should be concerned with knowing that members of a given community are standup types:  competent, hard-working, conscientious and stable.  One doesn’t even have to necessarily like them – but one ought to be able to know one can trust and rely on them in crisis.
• Be Patient:  The Community Building process can’t be rushed.  People let down their guard and develop trust at their own speeds, many of which can be grouped under the heading “Glacially Slow.”  Know that seemingly slow beginnings will likely lead to quicker development as time progresses and bonds deepen – and more helping hands and minds come onboard.
• Take What People Offer:  No matter how small the effort or commitment someone is willing to give, take it.  One never knows where it might lead – and a small step is better than none at all.  Conversely, be cognizant that someone asking for assistance or participation in something – no matter how small a thing – is potentially an opening for Community Building.
• Actions Lead to “Drafting”:  One’s own actions are the essential thing for drawing other people into efforts to foster community.  Nothing says one believes in something better than putting one’s own hind end on the line.  Act!  Similar to racecar drivers sliding in behind the leader, a number of people will watch one’s efforts and a certain fraction of them will decide to pull in behind and follow one’s lead.  This will mean that one’s resilience-related activities will eventually be repeated with others;  people will watch one’s early efforts, think it over, and then ask for help in doing the same for themselves.  This is a true staple of Community Building.

Key Practices

Community Building is not complicated, but it is time-consuming.  Events such as potluck dinners or other shared social activities will tend over time to create a shared sense of group identity.  Since this wiki is focused on 3 Es-oriented communities, some additional activities that can both foster community and push forward group resilience are shown below.  They have been grouped under a number of different conceptual categories, and a number of activities appear under two or more headings.

Yes-We’re-Planning-for-SHTF

Under this heading fall activities that overtly acknowledge that great shifts in the way our society prosecutes its day-to-day way of being are coming or already underway;  generally, one undertakes such activities with people who are cognizant of and preparing to deal with the challenges posed by the 3 Es.

• Long-Term Food Storage (or: LTFS, see also: Food Storage Made Easy, and A Good Experience Buying LDS/Mormon Food
• Transition Towns
•  “Emergency Preparations” days (sure, tell them it’s a gathering to put together Hurricane Preparedness kits or Earthquake/Blizzard/Ice Storm kits if SHTF talk might make them shy away. See this)
• Organize showings of Crash Course DVDs and/or other DVDs that are awareness-raising (i.e. “The Power of Community:  How Cuba survived Peak Oil”, etc.)
• Open house at the local gun club
• Homeschool
• Food-purchasing co-op
• Co-operative broiler chicken [per JasonW’s request I will be expanding my “broiler chicken harvest day” post from the Definitive Permaculture Thread into a WSID piece, so this hyperlink should connect to that URL, whatever it turns out to be] / layer chicken efforts [current link to Woodman’s WSID piece = http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/raising-your-own-chickens/49527 but this will need updating with re-launch]
• “Get-Out-Of-Dodge Bag” (a.k.a. “GOOD Bag” or “Bug-Out Bag”) assembling days
• Working together to make a home more energy-efficient [http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/how-increase-energy-efficiency-existing-home/57039] (e.g. adding weatherstripping to every exterior door, replacing or augmenting existing insulation, installing a solar hot water heater)
• Community Gardens and/or intensive home gardening efforts that are undertaken in a collaborative way (i.e. community members take turns helping each other with their individual gardens)

We’re-Just-Being-Thrifty

Under this heading fall activities with the characteristic that they save money (or other scarce resources).  They can be enjoyed with anyone that desires either of the above outcomes, but may also lead to conversational opportunities vis-à-vis the 3 Es.

• Community Gardens and/or intensive home gardening efforts that are undertaken in a collaborative way (i.e. community members take turns helping each other with their individual gardens)
• Heirloom Seed Banks
• Food-purchasing co-op
• Skill-sharing “teach-ins”
• CSA [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Supported_Agriculture]
• Crafts Days (soap-making [http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/making-soap/50453], candle-making, knitting, etc.)
• LTFS
• Co-operative broiler / layer chicken efforts
• Working together to make a home more energy-efficient (e.g. adding weatherstripping to every exterior door, replacing or augmenting existing insulation, installing a solar hot water heater)

Let’s-Make-Some-Money

These activities are centered around the opportunity to make some scratch.  Whether or not they tend to draw individuals cognizant of or open to the 3 Es is intrinsic the these activities.  But individuals interested in items (ii), (iii) and (iv) could well be interested in discussing and learning about the 3 Es.

• Annual yard sales for street/block
• LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LETS]
• Co-operative broiler / layer chicken systems
• Community Gardens and/or intensive home gardening efforts that are undertaken in a collaborative way (i.e. community members take turns helping each other with their individual gardens) – with the specific intent of then selling some or all of that produce at a farmstand or farmer’s market.

​We’re-Civic-Minded

These activities are bread-and-butter Community Building activities.  However, just because an individual is community-minded does not mean they are cognizant of the 3 Es, or taking action to meet the challenges they present.  But when actively building community, one ought to cast a wide net.  One never knows where or when a key contact might be made (or when a currently “mundane” contact or friendship morphs into a deeper level of trust, especially as might pertain to 3 Es-related “Lightbulb Moments”).  It cannot be overemphasized that the more nodes in the web of one’s network, the more truly valuable connections that will tend to develop in time.

• Town meetings
• Community gardens
• Get involved in local politics/school board/local orgs
• Volunteer Firefighter
• Boyscouts [http://www.scouting.org/] / Girlscouts [http://www.girlscouts.org/] / 4-H [http://www.4-h.org/]
• Neighborhood watch [http://www.nnwi.org/]
• Barn-raising-type community projects
• Charter school / Home-school (un-school)
• Block parties
• Youth sports leagues
• Food purchasing co-op
• Organize showings of CC DVDs, etc. [is there a forum thread to which we can link regarding “How To Show The Crash Course?” or the like?  In a quick search at CM.com I didn’t turn up any.  Maybe this could be a WSID article for Ckessel to write?]
• Skill-sharing “teach-ins”

Let’s-Eat-Together!

So much of the human experience is organized around eating that it naturally supports Community Building efforts.  An activity that dovetails perfectly with this fact is gardening and/or raising livestock, from chickens to goats and beyond.  Some folks grow their own food for the pure pleasure of working with nature and watching things grow.  Some garden because it’s cheaper to grow one’s own peppers when organic peppers are $3.99/lb. at Super Stop & Shop.  Some grow their own because they want assurance that the food is local, clean and natural.  And some garden because they worry about the food supply.  Whatever the reason, all of these activities are rich soil (if you will) in which to cultivate community.

• Community Gardens
• Gardening Clubs
• Cooking w/stored foods (i.e. how to dress up freeze-dried “beef stew”) [http://beprepared.com/recipes.asp_Q_ai_E_1_A_c2r_E_tn_A_name_E_Recipes]
• “Second Thanksgiving”, and similar types of potluck dinners
• Food-canning days [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning]  [Have we tried to get FullMoon to write a WSID on canning?], see also Extending the Harvest in Your Home Garden  [http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/extending-harvest-your-home-garden/51656]
• LTFS
• Food purchasing co-op
• Co-operative broiler / layer chicken efforts

Ice-Breaking

This is ripe ground for 3 Es-related Community Building:  making initial contact with individuals about whom one knows nothing, most especially one’s neighbors (but not limited to same).  Depending on where one lives, one’s neighbors as a group may be utterly clueless and/or deep in denial, but these activities will help to start creating connection amongst the folks with whom one shares geographic proximity, and from there a greater appreciation of the 3 Es on their part can begin to happen.

• Make cookies and go door-to-door and give them away (as a pretext to meet the neighbors, a.k.a., the “Safewrite Gambit”), or do the same with extra produce from one’s garden (or eggs from one’s hens).
• Block parties
• Yahoo Groups [http://groups.yahoo.com/] / Google+ [https://plus.google.com/] / Whatever message boards (or e-mail lists)
• Food-purchasing co-op
• Scouting/4-H
• First Friday-type gatherings (description of the “First Friday” concept found in linked article)

Spiritually Centered

One of the beauties of a group with a common spiritual center is that it is already a cohesive community.  If it is fully-manifested, it’s community-ness is actively engaged in caring for both its own members and various folks outside its bounds.

• Fire circles
• Church congregations

Further Resources

• The Crash Course (full version): http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse
• The Crash Course (short version): http://www.chrismartenson.com/page/crash-course-one-year-anniversary
• The Crash Course en Español: http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/espanol
• The Crash Course auf Deutsch: http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/deutsch
• The Crash Course en Française: http://jcbonsai.free.fr/cc/
• Audio & video interviews with Diane Leafe Christian (see bibliography, below) can be found at http://www.dianeleafechristian.org/multimedia.html
• Community Building forum thread at CM.com: http://www.chrismartenson.com/forum/community-building/15712
• Becca Martenson (Chris Martenson’s wife):  “Dealing With a Reluctant Partner” (hard to build 3 Es-related community if one’s partner is not on board): http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/dealing-reluctant-partner/49618
• Dealing with marital or relationship stress caused by disagreement over the 3 Es: http://www.chrismartenson.com/forum/depression-and-marriage-problems-taking-red-pill/33400
• The Definitive Agriculture/Permaculture thread at CM.com: http://www.chrismartenson.com/forum/definitive-agriculturepermaculture-thread/15715

Glossary

• 3 Es, The: The 3 Es are The Economy, Energy and The Environment.  Human civilization, as currently constituted/organized, is now well-into a crisis period brought on by ignorance and/or misunderstanding of certain constraints and flaws.  These limitations are gathered under the umbrella of what Dr. Martenson calls “The 3 Es” in his Crash Course. 
• Chickens (Broiler): Broiler chickens are raised for meat as opposed to laying eggs, and are an excellent 6-8 week project a community can undertake.  For more on the ins and outs, check (see [link to eventual piece from me re: broiler chicken raising/harvest) [return link]
• Chickens (Layer): Not as well-suited to group effort, adding egg-laying chickens to one’s life can, however, bring about some collaborative efforts in building the henhouse or running fence.  (see http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/raising-your-own-chickens/49527) [return link]
• Crafts Day: Gathering to teach/learn/practice a craft-type skill as a group is an excellent Community Building exercise, and doubly so when the skill is resilience/3 E-oriented. [return link]
• “Emergency Preparations” Days: A day spent as a group putting together an “Earthquake Kit”, “Hurricane Kit” or “Blizzard Kit” for each individual/family is not only a very good idea and a fine Community Building event, but it also may open discussion of the 3 Es (and related subjects). [return link]
• Food-purchasing co-op: Often, an LTFS day requires the bulk purchase of food items through a food purchasing co-op (such as UNFI [https://www.unfi.com/]), but a co-op can make very real financial sense (purchasing family-size amounts at wholesale/bulk-rate prices) for ongoing everyday purchase of bulk items (and in many cases, things such as shampoos, vitamins, etc.). [return link]
• “First Friday”: A recurring, no-RSVP-required social event held for the simple purpose of gathering folks together.  May have an organizing principle (e.g., Bridge Night, Bowling Night), or may just involve getting together to talk and hang out.  See this piece:  “Case Study in Community Building” [http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/building-community/47502]. [return link]
• Fire Circle: Gathering to simply sit around a fire and talk, in some cases with specific guidelines (i.e., everybody has to check in with how they are, no interruptions, don’t offer advice unless solicited, etc.). See this piece:  “Case Study in Community Building” [http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/building-community/47502].  [return link]
• Get-Out-Of-Dodge Bag (a.k.a. “GOOD Bag” or “Bug-Out Bag”): A small kit (generally contained in a small daypack-sized bag) designed to allow one to survive for ~ 72 hours in case a sudden emergency forces evacuation, or one is stranded at a location distant from home without the usual means to return.  [return link]
• LTFS: An abbreviation for Long Term Food Storage.  For the purposes of this wiki, LTFS is food stored in such a way that it can be kept ready for use for extended periods of time – from years (i.e., canned goods, home-preserved foods) up to decades (freeze-dried or nitrogen-preserved food).  See this [http://www.chrismartenson.com/forum/successful-food-storage-day-9-familes-4-tons-5-hours-lessons-learned-recommendations/27519?page=0#comments], and also Food Storage Made Easy [http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/food-storage-dummies/55478]     [return link]
• Safewrite Gambit, The: Baking cookies or the like, then giving them away to neighbors as a means of contriving to break the ice and engender an ongoing conversation/relationship with same. [return link]
• Second Thanksgiving: A potluck dinner hosted on the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving, where all the participants bring their leftovers and/or cook something special for the occasion.  An excellent way to foster a community feeling that can be summed up as “Thanksgiving I celebrate with my [blood] family, and today I celebrate with my other [chosen] family.” [return link]

Bibliography

• “Finding Community” by Diane Leafe Christian.
• “Creating a Life Together” by Diane Leafe Christian. 

Both of these titles are full of excellent advice & information.  Although they tend towards the “crunchy granola” end of the spectrum, they are quite useful as references on what to do and – just as important – what NOT to do.

•  “The Different Drum:  Community Making and Peace” by Scott Peck.

Peck stresses Non-Violent Communication [http://www.cnvc.org] as a key skill in creating and maintaining a harmonious community.

•  “The Six Stages of Awareness” [http://www.chrismartenson.com/martensonreport/six-stages-awareness] is a short piece by Dr. Chris Martenson detailing the stages individuals tend to go through while coming to grips with the 3 Es.  Useful to anyone, of course, but within the context of Community Building, a thorough understanding of these stages will allow one to recognize where in the process other individuals are.  This will allow one to more effectively engage them in constructive ways – or to know when to give someone time/space, a crucial skill in one’s efforts to foster community.
•  “The Power of Community:  How Cuba survived Peak Oil”, a documentary DVD, is available here [http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php].