It exactly reflects our own thinking here in Trièves, France, as well as the way we intend to operate. In fact, we started the initiative because we knew the communaity was already here.
Cheers

Most succesful, modern communities work partly because ‘members’ can drift in and out of them when it suits them. I’m a member of a few communities including family, tennis club, road I live in, residents’group, special interest groups and various academic/work Almer Maters.

When I had my own IT business my main community was all over the world. I had no contact with my local community as I was forever leaving it and returning to it in the dark.

Communities should facilitate free association. Our Saturday morning Farmer’s Market does just that.

People rally round a cause. People in my town rallied round when the Council wanted to trash our ancient cast-iron lampposts. An instant communty was formed to organise a campaign to save them – which after three years was wildly successfull. See SEAL page at http://www./westealingneighbours.org.uk

Transition is a huge cause and the growth of my local Transition community is both sensitively ‘stage managed’ and ‘organic’, and it’s impressive.

You can ‘force’ rhubarb but I don’t think you can ‘force’ communities.

The retired, professionally qualified and concerned Middle Class can be very effective individually, and in groups they can change the world. They are society’s best hope.

Planners, property developers and urban design types don’t seem too good at facilitating free association in public space – in fact the public space is rapidly becoming private, public space (See ‘Ground Control’ book by Anna Minton).

I have been retired now for over 5 years and my children have left home. I will stand as an independent Councillor in my town in May. If I’m successful I’ll no doubt discover what UK local government thinks about organising communities – never mind discovering what they make of Transition.

The Transition Towns Totnes project happened because of Totnes community. Was built on years of experimentation, research, education and organising.

you might say the community organised TTT

in most places, organising is of a very different kind, its around television, supermarkets, cars, jobs, debt. Some of these communities harbour transiton types.

But, in most of the world, in most communities, peak debt is more important than peak oil. Wage slavery crushes lives.

Transition is a dream, Change We Can Believe In.

How can you be green when you are in the red ? If you are so indebted or so poor that you can barely survive, a voluntary powerdown isnt possible. You are already down.

have said this before, in the Global South, which I dont think Totnes really has – i.e. really, desperately poor – Transition means power ascent, and more consumption.

We need to reduce the overconsumption in the Global North i.e. the rich and increase the underconsumption of the Global South i.e the poor.

Raj Patels Stuffed and Starved

It used to be called equality

Yes, there are. See:
http://www.ic.org/qic/directory.html#wimmin-only
http://directory.ic.org/2274/Maat_Dompin
http://www.riverridge.info/
http://directory.ic.org/2097/Chester_Creek_House_Womens_Collective
http://directory.ic.org/1350/Owl_Farm
http://directory.ic.org/563/Huntington_Open_Womyns_Land_HOWL
http://www.campsisterspirit.com/452.html
http://www.wemoonspirit.com/

And those are just the ones I’ve heard of.

From experience with Transition Cambridge, I completely agree that a few very motivated people who are willing to see their ideas through, no matter what and whether or not other people help very much, are the mainstay of a lot of our activities. I’ve also noticed that at least some of these ideas get catalysed at events where people get to talk to each other but without a specific agenda e.g. parties, meals etc (for example, a chance meeting at an event organised by a different organisation will hopefully be the start of our new topic group). On the other hand, repeated e-mails asking people to give us their ideas, to start up new groups or get involved with existing ones don’t get a huge response. We get a small and steady stream of newcomers and most of them have been on the low-carbon journey for a good while, and see Transition as a way of getting more engaged in actually doing something. For a while now we’ve been aware that what holds us back is having enough people who are willing to “lead”, by which I mean to do a lot of the hard work and spend the time organising etc (and we are lucky enough to have quite a few such people, which is why there’s quite a lot going on). There is no lack of people wanting to help/volunteer, but often we don’t really know what to ask them to do – we need people who’ve got an idea they want to see through, and just need a bit of support to make it happen.

A couple of thoughts. One – men are raised by mothers, at least the first, most formative years, in nearly every culture. That is where the first changes need to come. As far as I can tell, Barbie is still popular, and seldom with boys. Girls still emulate their mothers – unless Mom works in the workplace, and the daughter (or son) don’t get enough time to learn a complete and functional home culture (rituals, traditions, and values), let alone community values.

Most men grow up with less personal world view to choose their role in the family and community. Like many women, they *know* (as opposed to yearn for) only the culture they were raised in. I understand the anger around constrained social and familial roles. But like the stricture to “hate the sin and love the sinner”, I think it horrendously important to be sure your anger at society doesn’t splash over onto any man or woman (you know, those women that keep raising men, generation after generation). Most haven’t chosen whether to reinforce or oppose specific cultural normatives.

At one point, I considered that a man takes a wife, and forms a family – as a luxury. No man needs, economically or individually, a wife or family to survive. Nor woman, neither. The industrial age introduced the concept of the “executive” wife, where the wife is caretaker of home and family, an expression of conspicuous consumption as in “See how wealthy and important I am, that I have a castle and wife and family and servants and bright shiny ornaments and doodads!”.

Now I have come to the conclusion that the family – partnered adults – is the unit of culture. This culture is formed by adopting rituals, traditions, and values to guide and nurture themselves. This family culture is formed from what each adult chooses from the family and community they were raised in, or consciously choose. The family interacts with extended family and community not as individual adults, but as a family, each adult acting within their perceived family role. A community perceives the family roles and interacts differently with parents than unpartnered adults.

What roles and responsibilities are appropriate to each gender? I don’t know. As far as I can tell, just about every variation has been tried, and met some success. I do recall reading that “no rebel is every truly happy.”

When the topic of sustainable community arises, the picture that most often occurs to me is the blacksmith. The blacksmith exists as a pure service to the community. There is no place or path for personal ambition, for one that makes and repairs needed iron fittings, shoe horses, tools, etc. A community is much poorer for the lack of a blacksmith, once the concept of China-built doodads filling the local hardware store fades from memory. Bound at once by the needs of others and the drudgery of her/his craft, is the blacksmith slave, servant, or treasured asset?

It is personal ambition, I think, that is the greatest destructor of community, and likely family, too.

The last time I read about women, well, actually, husbands and wives, coming together to put up vegetables, can fall produce – was a Mormon canning operation. The congregation owned a canning setup, and families scheduled days to share the work of preparing and canning food. This was last year, and I can think of few more patriarchal organizations than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons.

In terms of a sustainable community I can think of few things *more* important, than making the raising of children – choosing mates and forming families – a fundamental aspect of the core community culture.

I think advertising and marketing act, strongly, to destroy an individual’s ability to think things through, and divert motivations toward self-aggrandizement and a need for conspicuous consumption. The result is an “I only win if you lose/if I have better stuff” mentality that you seem to abhor.

I cannot think of any cultural model that doesn’t abuse various members. Women I have known have been brutal, petty, unbalanced, spiteful, generous, thoughtful, and effective leaders (usually not the same person). What little I know of history tells me that matriarchal societies tend toward about the same frequency and degree of brutality and unfairness as others. I do not believe in utopia.

What I do believe is that respect for self and others, integrity and honesty, and honor – expressed in rational terms – can be the basis for most any sustainable relationship.