Sara J. Stevens

March 30, 2019

Instructions

   During my time in the Literary and Historical Utopias class, and throughout my readings for the course, I began to wonder how a person or persons would create and build a utopia. I disregarded this as fanciful thought. While beginning my research for this post, I came across several websites and videos that made claims to show how to build a utopian community. This struck my interest. Utopias and utopian communities, I know, do not generally last; even literary-based fictional utopias. In class we have discussed many reasons for the failures of both historical and fictional utopian or intentional communities. My question is not how to maintain a community; but how do you go about the initial startup?

   The first question I had to ask myself was, what are the conventions of a utopian society? We have talked at length about this topic in class. So, who do we allow in an intentional community? The answer here seems simplistic; those who are like-minded and are wanting the same goals. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, the answer was women who were cut off from the rest of the world through natural disasters. According to Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC), you want to filter in the right people, and filter the wrong types of people out. FIC believes in order to do this you need to assess the “expectations, hopes, and aspirations of the group” (Fellowship for Intentional Community). This statement, to me, means finding people who share a common outlook on how the world should look; similar to that of the 2004 movie Stepford Wives. The FIC asks prospective members to figure out what they want in a community. From there, they have an exercise, with questions to discover their group’s values; this even comes with directions on how to do this along with a material list and steps to separate people into groups based upon their beliefs. Maitri House, an urban intentional community, founded in 2008 in Maryland, has an attached list of questions to help those looking to establish an intentional community. The attachment is a list of questions, not unlike FIC’s; created to determine what type of community is best and the goals and values they are looking to establish. The questions created by Maitri House range from, number of people to “why types of practices or shared understandings will we adopt to address the conflict that may arise from differences (age, race, income levels, culture…)” (Maitri House). Maitri House, like Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia, understands that different cultures and races, may have conflict and looks to mitigate that by addressing them in the process of establishing the community.  Both FIC and Maitri house, go into detail on selecting people for the communities. Money Crashers, an informational and educational website, offers a view on another convention; the living arrangements.

   “Communal Living and Cohousing Types and Benefits of Intentional Communities,” is an article whose focus is on the living arrangements of intentional communities. The article proposes communal living is a more economic way of living. According to moneycrashers.com “People who live in cohousing arrangements can save money, share chores, enjoy group activities, and form lasting friendships”. The website, does not propose the community members share their land, resources or income, only that they share living space. One Community Global, a website whose authors created as a blueprint for creating a utopia, “we are operating as a sustainability think tank to demonstrate and build 7 different communal living mini-village models of 15-100 residences….” (One Community). One Community states these communities would be spread across the globe. Communal living seems to be the current convention for the living situations of future utopian and intentional communities. This brings me to the financial aspect of the communities.

   In the past, intentional communities, such as the Oneida Community, have established some sort of industrial trade in order to fund their community. The community projects, attempting to establish a utopic vision, I have previously mentioned, do not directly address how these communities are to be funded. One Community, does offer links to donate and mentions consultants and partners in the organization. My assumption is that the start-up for these communal living projects will be funded by those who are wishing to establish residence in those communities. I feel this could be problematic for the future of any community begins like this. They do all believe in a self-sustainable community based upon agriculture; however, without any direct capital coming in on a regular basis, they seemed doom to fail as Brook Farm did.  Other conventions of utopic communities that were not directly addressed were: the raising and caring for children, how the communities are to be governed, and how to procure the land in order to build these communities.

   Most utopic and intentional communities fail. The websites I reviewed made no mention on how their communities were going to differ from those of the past. One Community seemed to be the most through, regarding instructions on how to build a utopia. They all made mention of their ideals and want for a self-sustained, low-environmental impact community, where all of the inhabitants are of the same ideals. If you are wishing to build your own utopia, the websites I have mentioned, are a great place to start. The ideals presented, are indeed, utopic; but leave a lot of unanswered questions.         

Works Cited

“Communal Living & Cohousing – Types & Benefits of Intentional Communities.” Money Crashers. Retrieved from URL https://www.moneycrashers.com/communal-living-cohousing-types-benefits-intentional-communities/.

“Creating an Intentional Community.” Maitri House. Retrieved from URL http://maitrihouse.org/?page_id=253.

One Community for the Highest Good of All. Retrieved from URL https://www.onecommunityglobal.org/creating-utopia/.

“Setting Community Goals and Values in a Vision Statement.” Fellowship for Intentional Community. Retrieved from URL https://www.ic.org/wiki/starting-a-community/.