Communal Tragedies

We've all heard of the Tragedy of the Commons, where people don't take good care of common resources because they assume the responsibility for a shared resource is not also fully theirs (or because they don't have good systems for sharing responsibility, or because they only want the benefits and not the responsibility). But there are 8 other tragedies that are not as well known when people seek to live in intimate community.

The first is what I'll call the Tragedy of Artistic Freedom. People have different ways of expressing their creativity. The problem occurs when people assume that their way is "what needs to be done" and expect other people to have the same ideas about what they want to do. If I have a certain amount of time in which to express my creativity, then the work will expand to fill that time. I will do certain things that I may consider necessary, that someone else might think are silly, inefficient or arbitrary. If someone else is under my authority and they need to express themselves differently, then they will feel burdened and unfree. I have harnessed them to my plow instead of setting them free. I may think they are lazy, or unreliable.

The solution is to free people to contribute in ways that are most meaningful to them, while having a minimum of agreed upon tasks that everyone wants to happen. Ideally people's gifts can be matched to the community needs, so that artistic freedom can flourish. This contrasts with a socialist vision where everyone works in the community business or factory. If everyone can work at something they enjoy and are good at, then not only artistic freedom, but deep interdependence and efficiency can happen. Alternatively, if people's gifts can't all be matched to community needs, there should be enough free time where people pursue their passions even if the community does not benefit directly

The second tragedy that makes people not want to live in community can be called the Tragedy of Unrealized Communion. Humans have a need to transcend their ego and merge into a higher collective, whether it be nature, a spiritual world of ideas, a mystical union with a beloved, union with other musicians, singers, game players, dancers, or simply people sharing a nurturing activity. Some come into a community looking for this experience only to find that the fear of others prevalent in the mainstream culture is also there in the community, and instead of mystical union there are monotonous meetings, drudgery and power-politics.

The solution is to give high priority to creating ego-transcending, communion-producing activities. In the US, the supposed land of individual freedom, most people only want to be around each other to have sex and/or when they are drunk. Communities where people enjoy each other have lots of activities, such as dancing, singing, playing music (not for show, but for communion), friendly, spirited discussion, study groups, workshops, and common work where banter and laughter abound. I suppose protest fills this role for communion for some.

The third tragedy may be called the Tradgeoff (attempted pun) Between Communion and Freedom. Groups have to figure out ways of ensuring smooth communication and operation, what sociologists call normative behaviour enforcement.  This can be done through carrots or sticks externally, and more effectively through internalizing beliefs and norms. I don't know if this Tradeoff is a law of sociology. I seem to remember that Ben Zablocki in The Joyful Community thought it was. A corollary might be that the free spirits leave after a while, and the control freaks stay in a community that lasts. I would like to believe that it is possible to have communion while respecting other people's needs, especially the need for autonomy/freedom, aloneness and communion with God, nature or other people. What would make this possible seems to have been articulated and lived by Jesus long ago and maybe others. It is not something that one could believe, but something that must come from each person's soul, in a holistic way. It is something that is rare, but I have seen glimpses of it in at least two intentional communities.

The 4th tradgeoff is one that is found in nature between progeny producing activities and activities that further the interests of the current generation. Children in community take much resources and can’t give them back till many years later. Mothers instinctually get satisfaction from children, but not only do the children drastically reduce the mothers’ capacity to build infrastructure, in the post feminist era, the fathers also take a big hit. The result is that the infrastructure gets built very slowly or not at all, and in order to gain more safety and comfort for the mothers and children in the short term, the community moves more towards the mainstream culture or dissolves altogether.

The solution is to send the men ahead first to build infrastructure, perhaps with a few women who are either menopausal or willing to wait for children.

The fifth tradgeoff is between families and community or families and individuals, or families and other families. The need of families to focus much energy on their children has already be mentioned. But there are other needs that families have such as spending quality time together. This is a generalization of the artistic freedom tragedy, where the tradeoff is between individuals’ differing needs, or between the needs of individuals and the community (which is not just the sum or average of the needs of the individuals in it).

The solution could be to make the distance between the family needs and the community or individual needs as small as possible. And when this has been minimized, to have discussions about it when conflict between needs arises, so that people could make good tradeoffs, instead of wreaking either the family or the community.

The sixth  tragedy is when the community is either too liberal (and therefore not cohesive enough) or too conservative (and therefore not joyful and dynamic enough). A good mix of the two is necessary in order for the community to be “in the zone”, or in a state of “flow”.

The 7th tragedy is when people don’t bother to study what the obstacles to community are before joining or starting an IC, not just the ones mentioned here, but also the tragedy of the commons and the ways to address it such as Ostrom principles.

The 8th tragedy is the tension between wanting to do what is in the best interest of the group, but not be taken advantage of. This is similar to, but not quite the same as the tradeoff between individual liberty and communal cohesion. Game theorists are well aware of this dilemma and they have simple models for it. Their conclusion is that if the group is to be maintained, there has to be trust developed, but trust is not enough. There also has to be a way to monitor and punish freeloaders, or people who break the trust. The balance between being generous and being taken advantage of is hard to achieve. If one wants to make sure that one won't lose the energy put into the land and infrastructure in case the group decides to kick one out, or shun one, or just do something totally different than what was agreed upon, one needs to have private ownership of some of the land and infrastructure, or be able to be compensated if one has to leave. However, now the temptation is to not be to dependent on the other members of the community, who also have private ownership of some land. That temptation is hard to resist especially in the environment of the global economy, and then we're back to status quo, individual land ownership with very little communal interactions.

Most groups at this point go to far in the direction of not enough interaction with each other, and too much interaction with the global economy.

We can address this by either not allowing private ownership,  or requiring the commitments we asked for in the mission statement