Мы строим деревню / we are building ecovillage: сообщество

community

ivanovishe 22.11.13 в 19:59

In this book I have mentioned the word “community” many times and when I had already written all chapters I understood that this theme requires the individual explanation. The community - what is it? What I mean? Now I’ll try to reflect on this subject.

Yanne 19.04.14 в 09:50

In this text I use the words “community” and “commonalty” as synonyms. Both of them descend from the word “common”, which means: “relating to everybody or everything, concerning everything”, “collective” one. According to the etymological dictionary of the Russian language this word appears from the word “to pass around”* and have the meaning “the thing, which was passed around”, “an area, plot, the borders of which were determined in such a way”, and further - “people, who used the definite plot of the land in common”. There are also versions that primary the word “common” could denote the settlement, “round village”.

* In Russian the words “community” and “commonalty” sound like “soobshchestvo” and “obshchina” correspondently and correlate with the common word “to pass around” - "obchodit`".

Yanne 22.04.14 в 15:17

In fact, now I can’t say that I write about the settlement. Because there is no ready settlement for the time present. But there are “people , who used the definite plot of the land in common”. There is the banya where one family is wintering; there are tents, where we live in summer; there are different unfinished buildings; there are common events and common labour; there are constantly coming people from various cities; there is a web-page in the Internet and user accounts in social networks, where video and photo appear; there is a common property. In other words there is a Community which builds its own village… its own eco-settlement.

Yanne 23.04.14 в 15:41

So then, the public resources which we have:

Yanne 19.04.14 в 14:33

Land. For agricultural purpose. Officially it is registered for common share ownership of 10 people. The other participants for today don’t have legal confirmation of their belonging. But we have in plans to create accepted form of “non-profit partnership” in Russia, which allows giving equal rights to everybody and at the same time to exclude the opportunity of land speculation (nowadays this variant is used by most settlements as the most convenient, I will not go into juridical details).

Yanne 23.04.14 в 16:32

Property. We have common instruments, buildings, constantly updating library and the warehouse with clothes and shoes of every sort and kind, which everyone who wishes can use.

Yanne 23.04.14 в 16:35

Economics. We have common money, which we use for common needs. Common incomes and expenditures.

Yanne 23.04.14 в 16:37

Events. Together we organize the actions (for example festivals, training workshops). They can bring profit, give us the opportunity to grow in cultural experience and learn something new. Also, if there is a necessity, we solve personal problems (for example, a building of somebody’s house).

Yanne 24.04.14 в 14:37

Management. We have got conventional form of self-management, which helps us to solve all current organizational problems. We consider “the settlement council” to be the main management organ. All decisions are accepted on the assumption of 100% agreement of all council participants. There is also “the Council of Elders” which covers more technical questions, for the solving of which there is no need of participation of all settlers.

Yanne 24.04.14 в 15:24

Self-consciousness. Certainly, I would write that we have the idea, but, as you remember, I have already complained that we have not got any special idea. That’s why the word “self-consciousness” suits here. I mean that we are aware of our belonging to this deal. We fell that we do something common.

Yanne 24.04.14 в 15:36

I can not ignore the fact, that today the word “commonalty” has, as I consider, not very good reputation. And in general, all that concerns different ideas about something “common” triggers many people’s nervous buzz, because in our country people still can not understand: what does to who belong and who is for what responsible. Either all belongs to rich people and nothing to poor. Or otherwise: all belongs to poor, and because all are poor, then all is common. Then everything became private again. There is nothing common. Well! How can you not confuse in it. Then innumerable communes: religious, idea`s ones, without ideas at all…Various. As well - commonalities. They say one thing then another. In short, many generations of official figures have done their utmost to make people to lose clear understanding of the word “commonalty”.
Although, it is said, that this idea and way of living is one of the most ancient.

Yanne 25.04.14 в 05:55

I will not discuss this theme a lot, I’d better focus your attention on the fact, how the majority of the eco-settlement is organized from this point of view. I think that only healthy enlightened people can live in the commune of pure form, otherwise there will be chaos. Or there is the need for some totalitarian lieder, who will manage everything, but then it is not the deal, because of which we’ve gathered together. As a right decision we’ve come across the idea to make the form, which is the most widespread in the settlements today: “ancestral home” + “commonality”. It means, that besides the common life mentioned above, there is also an individual life. It gives the opportunity to combine strong points of both constituents. There is the sense of modern eco-villages in this combination.

Yanne 26.04.14 в 14:27

I dislike the word combination “ancestral home”, because it at once reminds of belonging to the followers of the Anastasia`s movement (see books of Vladimir Megre). We don`t belong to this movement but now I can’t find the better synonym for this word combination. But the most important thing is that for us according our regulations this word means that besides the common territories every family of the settlement has the right to use from 0.3 to 3 hectares of the land for personal life: for the garden, for building of the house, for getting animals, in short for everything (which is not in conflict with regulations and with somebody).

Yanne 29.04.14 в 11:02

Ancestral home denotes exactly that individual space, which is necessary for the most of people for the happy life in the commonality. The human is arranged in such a way that he or she needs to have something private, there is even a special instinct and we Soviet people, still have the memories about what consequences had our grandfathers when somebody tried to deprive them of their private property.

Yanne 25.04.14 в 06:02

Well, what we’ve got in individual use:

Yanne 24.04.14 в 15:37

Private property. If you’ve built your own house or something else it is yours or your descendants, the only restriction is that you could not sell it freely.

Yanne 24.04.14 в 15:40

Property. Every settler of course has its own things.

Yanne 24.04.14 в 15:43

Economics. Every family independently determines where it will take money for its own maintenance.

Yanne 24.04.14 в 15:46

Events. Every family can shift freely and determine what to do.

Yanne 24.04.14 в 15:47

Management. Every family solve its own internal problems by itself, if it doesn’t not need any help.

Yanne 24.04.14 в 15:48

Self-consciousness. Every person chooses in what he or she do believe.

Yanne 24.04.14 в 15:50

As you see, all is natural and reasonable. I have enumerated it mostly for the emphasis of attention to the fact, that in all aspects of human life we can find two points of view: common and private. And it is very good when the person has access to both of them.

Yanne 25.04.14 в 06:12

At present people are more or less OK with property, but the commonality life is poor, and probably nowadays we have the increase of the interest towards commonalities because people have got one more instinct called “common”, which is not least important than the “personal” one, and we shouldn’t forget about it.

Yanne 29.04.14 в 11:10

I have already told that the community is the necessary condition for the eco-settlement, and it is simultaneously the main distinguishing feature. For example, there is no real community in a dacha community: everybody there lives separately. In a village there is also no community, people have isolated, although everything there is not in such disrepair as in cities, where people don’t even know the names of their housemates.

Yanne 26.04.14 в 08:14

Frankly speaking, I’ve engrossed in conversation so much that became tired. I played the ocarina (it is clay flute), drank hot tea, read what I had written to Natalia, went out for firewood…And there were such stars in heaven! Very deep cupola. A lot of constellations. By the way the Orion has greatly moved the west. It is because the spring is coming. There are no frosts nearly the week. And the whole day today is the real spring drip of thawing snow. It's no accident: the March has begun. My psychotherapy teacher used to tell that the therapeutist must be weakly clever, in other words - clever, but not very much. Slightly. And now I’ve remembered him…And understood that it is bad to put on airs so much. Community is when you are here, the phone is ringing and you are asked what tasty thing to cook, when you will make a visit. Community is when you can go for traveling somewhere and somebody instead of you will settle in the banya and will read the book, which you were reading yesterday. Community is when your friends prepare to make a visit and ask what food-stuff do you need. It’s when suddenly you receive a letter or a parcelwith something funny. When you know that if it will be need, somebody will water your bed in the garden. When you are sure that despite your loneliness now in summer everything will be fill up with children`s voices and laughter. Something like that.

Yanne 29.04.14 в 11:33