By Thomas Grzybowski, originally published by Resilience.org
The accelerating enormity of human impact upon earth's systems is understood and evidenced to be unsustainable for continuing human progress. Here we envision the kind of community where people may continue to lead a joyful, sustainable lifestyle. Intentional sustainable communities are to be based upon a behavioral norm which we call the "Community Transaction". The Community Transaction would be the new basis for a different type of economy - an economy not based upon our abstract nominative markets. There will indeed be market-places, but these will be places where Community Transactions are conducted in a socially understood environmental context such that economic externalities are vastly minimized.
The exploration of Utopian ideas is not a new endeavor. An important attempt at social reorganization was applied with common ownership of economically productive property. Looking back at such examples and toward the future we can also see how the practical results of a more shared organization of property would be at best tangential to the environmental crisis we face. Sensibly, and from experience, any society focused upon property would continue to live in pursuit of more property, wealth, and power - thus driven to increasingly pollute the living environment. We maintain here that the focus must be upon what we do rather than what we have. Understanding how the root causes of our existential crisis lie in our behaviors, our individual and social behaviors, we can move to address the all-important role of culture in the creation and maintenance of sustainable communities.
In order to minister to the heart of our destructive relationship with our environment we must proceed to identify and employ the arts of habilitating a sustainable life-structure supported by a robust yet evolving culture. Somewhat like an insurance company, shared resources of living community deal with individual contingency while maintaining the bank of cultural knowledge - the "community consciousness". The community consciousness can be seen as the enclosing medium which transports the necessary information flowing from person to person and generation to generation.
As we employ some of the analytical framework of Lewin(4) and Bourdieu(1), we can say that various stimuli acting upon, between, and from within the interacting life-spaces of community participants can induce changes within the field of community consciousness itself.
By examining individual behavior in the context of this framework, our concept of a "sustainable community" probes the pervasive tension between actions motivated by each individual's desire to prosper versus the actual behaviors which would contribute to the health of the community body. We can see how our everyday personal behavioral norms, which exist and are staged in the enactment of our wider social customs, habits, and legal processes, lead us to diversion from sustainable practices and out of connection to our actual living environment. In the pursuit of stability and sustainability these tensions must be resolved. However, the tension between individuals' behaviors in carrying out internal motivations consistent within their personal life-space, in concordance with the community values attached to practices and objects as expressed within their life-space, and the behaviors which could actually contribute to the health of the community body is largely fueled by the values instilled into each participant's life-space by the community consciousness itself!
The key to finding how a sustainable community can work would describe a way to positively alter the encompassing field of community consciousness from within. We are proposing here that a sustainable community can functionally embody an advantageous ontology of value. A community knowledge of value as expressed by our sustainable community would be the actual living network of participants as knowledge-bearers, each and all behaving with a high degree of coherence with beliefs constantly fortified and updated within the evolving community. Life activities informed with this kind of knowledge are the concrete building blocks for sustainable community. We propose that the "Community Transaction" is the primary mechanism producing this material. (2)
Practically, throughout our lives and throughout recorded history, many of our most important social interactions revolve around exchanges. Commonly, economists state that "price" and "cost" in transactions essentially describes the "value" of the elements of exchange. However - and this is of key importance: with every transaction something born-of and composed of human life itself is exchanged. Note that most interpersonal transactions do not even involve material objects!
It is precisely at this nexus point that the motivations of the people participating in an exchange within the context of their community (the community consciousness) are brought together such that the relative values of the "things" of human life are expressed. Here the value-legitimacy of the values embedded in the "habitas" life-space of the participants are described, tested and defined. Consequences following from the exchange then produce further value information which may in fact contradict some aspects of the instantiated values expressed by the preceding exchange. When absorbed by the community consciousness, resolution of these discrepancies can work to better contextualize the community consciousness within the overarching environment.
Informed and informative assessments of value come about cumulatively through community interactive life-experiences engaged in ongoing living/transacting processes. Community Transactions become the relational micro-mechanism which works to align the community with its ever-changing situational macro-environment. In the earlier essay "Making Community" cited above, it was proposed that real determination of value comes forth generatively as something of a "value-gestalt" held by the community consciousness. Connections between ongoing instances of life exchanges (the Community Transactions) and subsequent consequences feed back to the life space(s) of engaged community members and so also feed back to inform the community consciousness. Thus we see here that the most important task for the sustainable community is to maintain a domain for living where this flow of value-information is distributed such that force for change can be induced into the overarching community. These adjustments to the community consciousness (and the norm-building process) are the fundamental means by which the community space can shape itself in response to internal and external forces.
The community consciousness maintains a library of life-information including normative behavioral process information. The sustainable community develops and prospers when the Community Transaction works openly within the community consciousness to inform the active library. The sustainable community requires that transactional relationships surface a maximum amount of information of all kinds, including costs to the living environment, to be transparently available to all parties in order to then produce useful value information back from the activity. Only the behavioral norm of generously sharing information within the community can achieve this. Living in a fellowship of sharing information holds no room for the sequestering, obscuring, or falsifying of relevant information, as such behavior comes directly at the cost of maintaining our sustainable community. Yet one can readily see the difficulty here.
Currently in our mass society, "market transactions" are conducted in the hope of obtaining material benefit, often at the relative expense of others both inside and outside the transaction. Yet without question the vast majority of people endeavor to improve their material living conditions as well as social status by "profiting" from such transactions. During this kind of transaction oftentimes certain elements of information may be made unavailable, obscured, or falsified - negatively impacting the calculus of value determination by one or all parties. The motivation for maximizing profits drives these destructive behaviors.
However, in the sustainable community, behavioral processes inculcated in each participant's life-space must stress openness allowing communication of all salient information, including all associated costs. But even that is not enough. The working rules of behavior for Community Transactions must be held to be of the highest importance within the community consciousness and cannot be allowed to drift out of priority over time, even as aspects of the over-arching world itself change with circumstance.
Actualization and protection of the Community Transaction process within a fellowship of shared information necessarily puts boundaries upon the size and functioning of the sustainable community. It is believed that during human evolution people lived in small, close-knit groups, or tribes.
Cooperation was the norm, as a necessity, with subordination of individual aims and preferences to the needs of the community. This state of organization was almost certainly not perceived as a kind of subjugation, nor even a source of stress. Solidarity of mind and behavior within the community was deeply inculcated into the young as they developed in participation with community life. Thus the daily expression of community consciousness in our early cultures was coherent to each and all members - simply as a condition of survival. We must seek to do much the same here on a somewhat larger scale and with more buffer-space and flexibility in function."
Transactions would be performed as rooted in an internal understanding or 'gestalt' perception by each individual of the information held in the community consciousness - this as well as the individual's knowledge of the circumstances of the transaction. Community Transactions and the consequences of these transactions will provide empirical verification of the value-nature of transactional behaviors in the evolution of the sustainable community culture. The community of fellowship lives in a network of exchange relationships intercommunicating the "news" of transactions and their consequences, providing value information to the community participants. It is this feedback, as it flows from the nexus-point of the transaction and reviewed by the community over time, which will substantially inform the community consciousness and maintain the community firmly in the context of the evolving world.
Lest all of this seem completely abstract and academic, there are some readily available real-world examples which can serve as models to aid our design. For instance, in the late 1700's through the early 1800's, there were many small "hill-town" communities scattered throughout New England, and there arose the mythos of the "Yankee Trader". The Yankee Trader, traditionally, would not seek advantage in a trading situation or transaction, but instead would seek to negotiate a "good deal" for both parties. In its origin there were two reasons behind this norm - one being that the trader would have had to anticipate continued living in tight harmony with his fellow townspeople, often relatively few in number and isolated in geography, with many of these people being actual relatives and friends. The other factor being the influence derived from strict Calvinistic teachings, where God was overseeing every behavior. One can readily see how misleading and cheating your fellows would have been rather rare under these circumstances. Here the ritual of the hand-shake held more meaning than anything written on paper. One can also project our understanding of this normative behavior to see how community members within these small hill-towns would have been loath to undertake projects contrary to the community interest in general. Here we see an example of "moral" and "responsible" exchanges of goods and services in commitment to a close-knit and religious community. Some forms of Anabaptist and Mennonite communities, as well as that of the early Israeli kibbutz may serve as other examples(3). Yet a number of other examples may be found here(3).
We have found the anchoring of a self-reinforcing base for an ongoing ontology of a set of sustainable values founded upon the seemingly subjective social norm-informative component fully as real as a stone in the field. The processes and customs lived-out by individuals and teams in this environment will inherently involve active participation in the day-to-day functioning, decision-making, and operation of the community as it moves forward. Each Community Transaction can be seen as a kind of communion in fellowship with the community. Where this can be realized, each transaction will bring something artistic or sacred to it. These events will be instrumental in the sustainability and prosperity of the community.
People who undertake a sustainable way of living in trust with each other can properly be termed "Friends", and the transactions themselves will resemble a form of sharing. Members of this form of community will be able to realize their true being by engaging in the creation and sharing of the material, artistic, and spiritual "things" of the community as the things of living life. The life of the community would be centered around norms and rituals involving Community Transactions and attendant attention to the information employed and to be gained.
Our physical marketplace would resemble swap-meets of devoted hobbyists, but the "hobby" would be about conducting the very best possible exchanges for all concerned. Some transactions will give rise to outstanding consequences, much like when the gift of a guitar to a young person leads to the growth of a talented and popular musician. Exemplary exchanges would be noted and celebrated in stories and song, becoming part of the mythology of the culture. One cannot underestimate the importance of such resources in the library of the community consciousness.
In the same way, multi-person enterprises in our Community-Transaction communities will strive to identify their concrete goals and activities with the life of the community. Enterprises carried-out by lone artists and teams will resemble long-term projects conducted in genuine connection with all circumstances of the endeavor. Contributing individuals and teams can directly influence the community, thus gaining honor and status to their names. In such a community, without the accumulation of wealth as a measure of social status, we will see hierarchical organizations come to be disfavored and "partnership" relationships prevail. Teachers of the ways of such community - the seers, stewards and chaplains of this place would find greatest honor.
Living in this way there will be little separation between what is art and what is a material consumable thing; the product of all transactions will be joined in the life of the community. Members of such a fellowship will be able to realize their true being by engaging in the creation and sharing of the concrete material, artistic, and spiritual "things" of community -- in the pleasurable acts of faith where each of us brings something different to the common table. Virtually everyone wants what is best for themselves and others - and such celebration of life together should be more than enough as we give each other the authentic things of our world.
As sustainable communities prosper, where friends and fellows find authentic joy in living in this way, potential members will be attracted. As new participants engage in the norms of sustainable community, their positive life-experiences will bring reinforcement to enshrine the Community Transaction into semi-sacred ritual. And further, with a growing commitment to mutual-good/common-good exchanges we may well see a widening influence to creation of new such exchanges, forming networks of sustainable communities - ultimately resulting in a wide-spread sustainable culture engaged in a new way of living.