Driven by various forces, society has taken a turn toward us versus them. The culture war rages, and the sooner you pick a side the sooner you are welcomed into a tribe that hates Those Other People.
Picking a side in the culture war is the easy route. Or at least it seems easy at first. It is warm and welcoming, and every social signal tells you to do it.
I argue that choosing this route is actually giving in to the corporate overlords, the elites, the real enemy. As Matt Taibbi documents his book Hate Inc. there is money to be made in hate. Not to mention, when we hate each other our attention is drawn away from those more insidious forces that actually determine the direction of social institutions.
But as soon as you pick a side, you realize you are giving up some of your freedom in return for belonging. As you eschew groups of Other People, you limit your potential capacities to build diverse and robust social capital.
You can’t build a diverse and inclusive community with ideological preconditions.
I am interested in drilling down on the messy ways in which we can navigate the treacherous waters of localism, of building community in place and across difference. We are in a dangerous moment where people are scared and cagey, and there are real forces of power at work in the migration of people, real estate, economic pressures and access to land.
I’ve done research on people who have built robust communities of practice, and have some lessons to share from their successes.
These individuals find ways to leave ideology to the side, to the extent possible. Their relationships are first built around solving shared problems. They are extremely creative in finding ways to navigate the overlapping Venn Diagram of their own projects, and they work together in that space. The find ways to keep the peace despite strongly held differences, over time.
When it comes to homesteading, localism, community, defense etc. you can’t imagine all the ways in which I share neither ideology nor approach with others. I don’t publicly lead with those differences, because my project is to find ways to amplify shared goals.
I am not naïve enough to think that everyone will get along at all times. I agree it can be helpful to publicly litigate some differences, as long as it comes from a place of mutual respect and support of one another’s projects. I also respect the fact that people have hard lines drawn on certain ideologies, or individuals with whom they simply aren’t going to have a relationship.
But my sense is that we are on a slippery slope with those hard lines, which keep shifting and putting us into smaller and smaller social circles in which we feel comfortable. In the days of small communities, low migration, and social stability being with people who share most of your same ideology might have worked. This is not the world we live in now.
Finding solutions to the wicked problems we face is messy. There is no purity in it. Not only the relationships, but the practices too. We are in wild and difficult territory of experimentation. Despite all this, we should do it. In fact, we don’t really have a choice. Build diverse community, be tolerant of wild experimentation, cheer people on. Please don’t die on your high horse.
Presence is to stay present and not futurist, it is better a future that arrives, than one that is more difficult, merely because imagination created an escape plan, the escape from self to live with another version of ourself.
We are imbedded in a culture to consume, this idea to find better places, is an ability to ‘buy better’, yet perhaps realize, the cost of better, needs more cost to keep it better.
Somewhere like Scotland, is littered with the history of better, thousands of broken castles, still the ruins of today, an ego of building better without sharing, and then the collapse of the bureaucracy unable to maintain the gains and promise of protection.
It is such an old story, yet repeats every day in the rent of human capability and not the capability of friendships beyond walls.
Nature does a sponge, accepting, changing, shrinking, expanding, living with the flow of life, with no absolutes.
It was never about the buildings, it is always about the friendships to be free of burden and demand from others and our lived patriarchy to assume more and learn less, all while admiring the advertised leadershit model.