Life Happens In Local Communities.
Let’s go back to basics for a moment. Let’s reflect on a simple story.
Suppose a group of friends decides to start a new community in the countryside of a specific region (it could be anywhere in the world). Let’s say it’s a group of 30 families.
They buy land in the same area and help each other build houses and all the facilities necessary for survival. And from the beginning, the whole group – all thirty families – talks a lot and decides everything together. The assumption here is that since everything is going to affect the whole group, everything should be decided together.
They even select a central space in the area for their meetings and social gatherings. Every weekend they meet and make all the necessary decisions. Children and young people also have a voice in the meetings, to make sure their needs (a place for sports, play, etc.) are properly included in the group decision-making process. The whole group makes decisions about the water system, the energy system, communication, roads, transportation, health, education; about production, principles for bartering, problem solving of all kinds. The process always focuses on the well-being of all the members of the community, of all 30 families. There is no exclusion of any kind. And the community evolves …
Slowly the community becomes the ideal place for living that all thirty families had dreamed of together. They are all very happy. Gross National Happiness is at a maximum …
Since they are not isolated from their friends who did not join the group in the “adventure,” each member of the thirty families starts to share with those friends their stories about how and why they’ve become so happy …
The consequences of that sharing are predictable, right? Yes, the other friends now want to join the community as well. And they start to come. And the community grows…
And grows. And grows…
Soon, the weekend meetings are not effective anymore. There are too many people. The community has a problem: it’s more difficult now to reach a genuine consensus, and decision-making processes are slower. As a result, other problems develop…
How can they solve this new problem created by growth?
There’s a lot of discussion and many suggestions. Finally, a consensus emerges: since it’s not possible anymore to hold a meeting in which the entire community participates, groups of families from the same region will now choose a representative. And so the weekend meeting becomes a gathering of the representatives.
From here, you can probably imagine how the story evolves. The epresentatives become overloaded with work – during the week they are supposed to interact with the families they represent, while also being productive members of the community. So, they make a proposal: they want to become fulltime representatives and be compensated (with a salary?) so that they can “make a living”…
In the beginning, this new arrangement works okay. Later, however, distortions appear: there are conflicts of interest, power plays, the representatives become distant from the represented (from lack of genuine interest on the part of representatives, lack of deep dialogue, etc.), and much more. Instead of making decisions by consensus, the representatives also start to make decisions by voting. More and more people become dissatisfied. “Gross National Happiness” declines…
The local economy also struggles with the same issues of scale. It used to be enough to produce for the small group of people who started the adventure, but as the community grew, larger and larger production processes seem to be required… Gradually the economy becomes professionalized and grows away from the community needs.
Over time, another kind of logic replaces the links between the community and the needs that their economic activity was satisfying in the first place. The search for wealth of the new production system takes the place of the wealth of the whole community. Before long, new rules are created so as to facilitate the effectiveness of emerging production institutions. “Gross National Product” becomes an obsession…
The values of the community are transformed day by day… From the search for each-family evolution and the search for the common good to more egotistical objectives, from a concern for the well-being of all living beings and the environment to a concern for better conditions for growth, economic growth… From cooperation, solidarity and mutual help to competition. And, awkwardly, community members seem unconscious of the change process…
Now, let’s go back a step. Let’s imagine a different development of our story from that point on.
Other friends want to join. Yes, they are welcome. But rather than make the first community grow, they are invited to start new communities in the vicinity. And so it goes. And the whole region grows…
Now the region has many communities of 30 families. And they are all doing well. The different communities even collaborate, join forces, have joint celebrations, even produce things together, etc. A natural process of self-organization evolves. Each community maintains its own identity, develops its own forms and degree of contentment.
The “organic” process of growth that existed in the original community remains intact. Each small community focuses on how their economic activities meet their local needs. The needs of the community. Of every member of the community. Total inclusivity, no exclusion of any kind. They trade and cooperate with other communities, but the local residents remain the owners of the production capacities and keep the power on how to make the rules so that the “natural laws” that were very alive in the beginning are kept intact, undistorted… The production and the trading system continues as sound as in the beginning.
Now, what would happen if someone had the idea of creating an organization to coordinate/orchestrate the various self-sustaining communities of 30 families?
Once again, maybe that institution made up of representatives of all communities would work, creating more cooperation among the communities, more synergy, etc. But distortions might appear in this case as well. Even many distortions. The process of coordination could start to happen apart from the communities. The coordinating institution would grow, more and more, and become even larger than the sum of its communities. The communities could gradually become disempowered. Paradoxically, the life of the communities could appear to take place away from the communities.
The most important decisions would be made in the “virtual” domain of control, coordination, bureaucracy … It is a strange process … But, it all happens across generations. Each new generation is born into an existing system that already embeds the distortions. And the way things work seems to be natural…
It does not seem necessary to elaborate further on the details and ideas implied in these stories.
These stories are a way to help us reflect more deeply on the system (political, economic, social) around us. If we cannot understand the basics about life in communities and abstract from them to the larger whole, we will get lost in millions of details. Everything will look fuzzy, confused. Or, on the contrary, crystal clear: the distorted system will look natural, normal, logical. At that point we are blind, asleep, locked in a vast illusion…
Now let’s go back to the reality of today. Can communities become fully empowered and take back control of their own destinies? Can self-organizing processes make the whole (of many communities) evolve more naturally and considerably more effectively than centrally controlled processes?
If power were returned to communities, would life itself become less artificial, and more natural? More in sync with natural laws? Closer to Nature? And only then, truly sustainable?
Author:
Oscar Motomura is the founder and C.E.O. of Amana-Key, a center of excellence in management and governance located in São Paulo, Brazil. Motomura is also a member of the International Council of the Earth Charter.
Oscar Motomura is the founder and C.E.O. of Amana-Key, a center of excellence in management and governance located in São Paulo, Brazil. Motomura is also a member of the International Council of the Earth Charter.
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