Intentional Communities
My most recent rabbithole is into intentional communities. I have joked with my friends about starting a commune for years now, but never really took it seriously - it was in the back of my mind to one day take it more seriously, and then one lazy wednesday when I was hitting a new low, a new frustration with life, new existential dread, I said those two words that always precede a deep-dive into some fascinating new topic. “Fuck it”.
So I researched. I discussed the idea with Claude, first, because it’s always good to get the validation and optimism machine to validate your delusion so you can motivate yourself to actually pretend that this is something you’re capable of for a while. I found Diggers and Dreamers, a UK directory of intentional communities. I found the Foundation for Intentional Community which is a good “jumping off point” for other material. I ordered 
Creating a Life Together
▾
Find this book: Open LibraryBookshop.orgWorldCatGoodreads and set to reading it.
What I’ve learned so far, is that there are essentially three axes of intentional community.
On the one axis, we have social cohesion - from low-cohesion communities that have a lot of formalised structure and don’t require much self-governance (e.g co-housing) to full-cohesion communities that run on a form of sociocracy and require a high degree of social cohesion in order to function (e.g communes).
On the next axis, we have environmentalism - low impact communities like ecovillages and off-grid homesteads on the one end of this axis, and at the other end you have urban co-living projects that are in many ways just as impactful as traditional living. There are communities available across this spectrum.
And finally, the last axis is spirituality. At the bottom end of this are non-spiritual communities, either explicitly atheist and exclusionary of spiritual members, or slightly up from that there are “accepts all faith” communities which are non-spiritual as a community but do accept members who bring their own spirituality to the experience. And at the other end are spiritually-focused communities - churches that have started out with “safe haven” projects that have grown into intentional communities, for example, or pagan communities that come together to discuss their spirituality regularly.
There are further properties worth considering but they aren’t as important as those fundamental axes. For example, some intentional communities are set up specifically to support individuals with extra support needs (there’s one close by to me that’s meant for adults with learning difficulties, and volunteers and staff are there to support the members rather than simply to help maintain the community). Another property is the “maker” culture - some are heavily into craftsmanship and creativity which can be appealing as a property.
Unfortunately, the databases of intentional communities that exist don’t plot these axes very well, and the result is a poor experience for anyone who is looking to learn more about the specific kind of community they’re interested in. The search space is broad, and the search tools unhelpful. Of course my ADHD engineering ass wants to go out and build a better database now, but I already have a graveyard of unfinished projects, adding another one to the pile may not be the best idea right now.