Small Scale Utopia

[Elder Iptuous]

Requia,
are you thinking about it in the way that John Robbs is with his advocating us to 'Tribe Up'?

[Captain Utopia]

I barely want to participate in the greater american theater.

And while the reality of it may turn out to be kind of harsh, I think the idea of living off-grid is really romantic

I'm not trying to take the piss, but looking at the last few years of car/suv adverts as part of a bigger trend, it makes me wonder if implanting the impotent desire to get away and live off-grid is not part of the greater american theater? Script: "You may be shackled to your debts and family, but at least you can own (with monthly payments, natch) a vehicle which could potentially when you are able to start the process of eventually beginning to find the time to take you somewhere off-grid. Then you can take pictures/proof of your exploits with your new digital SLR and foist them upon your office colleagues come Monday morning."

I'm not really interested in the merits of small town live vs big city life

I'm interested in whether it'd be possible to start an entirely new society WITHIN our society

I think the seeds of it are there - niche communities which support the livelihood of members who make a living creating specific costumes or sci-fi models and props or getting your character up a few levels in WoW. You know, stuff which would have seemed pretty far out ~ten years ago.

I guess looking at the religious compounds in the US, if there's a revenue stream, then you can do pretty much anything. Trolls for Hire?

[Requia ☣]

I'll have to look him up, but 'Tribe up' certainly sounds like what I have in mind.

[Elder Iptuous]

FP,
It's not being imprinted by the adverts as much as it is a deeply rooted thread in the American psyche that the ads are exploiting.
damn near everybody has their story of their great grand parents roughing it out on the great plains or whatnot overcoming great hardship and beating nature into submission in exchange for eventual prosperity and freedom. (relatively)

now we sit on our ass in cubicles and think, "i want to journey into the fronteir"

[Requia ☣]

Requia,
are you thinking about it in the way that John Robbs is with his advocating us to 'Tribe Up'?

Do you mean John Robb of the global guerillas blog?  I haven't been able to access it for a couple weeks now.  Hard to check.

[LMNO]

As much as I want to say, "damn the Man", I really like indoor plumbing and electricity.

[Elder Iptuous]

Yeah. that's the one.  (thanks Cain!)
I've read several thing by him talking about the advantages of forming "tribes" for the sake of resilience, and the structures and commonalities of such

[Elder Iptuous]

As much as I want to say, "damn the Man", I really like indoor plumbing and electricity.

"the Man" isn't necessary for indoor plumbing or electricity...
especially in these days of miracles and magic.

[LMNO]

I CAN HAZ QUANTUM PLUMBING?

[LMNO]

Also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso

[Cramulus]

As much as I want to say, "damn the Man", I really like indoor plumbing and electricity.

I don't think that living in a relatively self-contained community means forsaking these luxuries of modern living

some luxuries would have to go, like you probably wouldn't own a car so much as you'd share one, but I don't see why we couldn't still have communal phones and wireless internet or whatever.

that's the reason to start a society within this society, rather than go rough it in somolia

[Requia ☣]

As much as I want to say, "damn the Man", I really like indoor plumbing and electricity.

There's a reason I never liked the farm version of starting your own community, and want to know how to do it within the city.

[LMNO]

It sounds like what you're proposing is usually called, "living in a co-op."

[Reginald Ret]

co-ops are good.

[Cain]

Requia,
are you thinking about it in the way that John Robbs is with his advocating us to 'Tribe Up'?

Do you mean John Robb of the global guerillas blog?  I haven't been able to access it for a couple weeks now.  Hard to check.

How do you manufacture a strong community that protects, defends and advances the interests of its members?  You build a tribe.  Tribal organization is the most survivable of all organizational types and it was the dominant form for 99.99% of human history.  The most important aspect of tribal organization is that it is the organizational cockroach of human history.  It has proven it can withstand the onslaught of the harshest of environments.  Global depression?  No problem.

If you are like most people in the 'developed world,' you don't have any experience in a true tribal organization.  Tribal organizations were crushed in the last couple of Centuries due to pressures from the nation-state that saw them as competitors and the marketplace that saw them as impediments.  All we have now it is a moderately strong nuclear family (weakened via modern economics that forces familial diasporas), a weak extended family, a loose collection of friends (a social circle), a tenuous corporate affiliation, and a tangential relationship with a remote nation-state.  That, for many of us, is proving to be insufficient as a means of withstanding the pressures of the chaotic and harsh modern environment (D2 in particular).

The solution to this problem is to build a tribe.  A group of people that you are loyal to you and you are loyal in return.  In short, the need for a primary loyalty to a group that really cares about your survival and future success. 

So how do you build a tribe?  A strong tribe, in this post-industrial environment*, isn't built from the top down.  Instead it is built organically from the bottom up.  A simple tribe starts with cementing ties to your extended family, a connection of blood.  The second step is to extend that network to include other families and worthy  individuals.  A key part of that is to build fictive kinship, a sense of connectedness that leads to the creation of loyalty to the group.  That kinship is built through (see Ronfeldt's paper for some background on this):

    * Story telling.  Shared histories and historical narratives. 
    * Rites of passage.  Rituals of membership.  Membership is earned not given due to the geographic location of birth or residence.
    * Obligations.   Rules of conduct and honor.  The ultimate penalty being expulsion.
    * Egalitarian and often leaderless organization.  Sharing is prized. 
    * Multi-skilled.  Segmental organization (lots of redundancy among parts).
    * Two-way loyalty.  The tribe protects the members and the members protect the tribe.   If this isn't implemented, you don't have a tribe, you have a Kiwanis club.

The development of fictive kinship will likely be key to the development of resilient communities (as it is already for global guerrillas).  We can already see this process at work in the UK's Transition Towns movement with their story telling, honoring elders, re-skilling, and leaderless approach (see the 12 steps).

*Nationalism is a form of fictive kinship manufactured/bent to serve the needs of the state during our industrial phase of economic organization.