Beyond Free Schools: Community
(Page 9 of 11)
November/December 1970
By Jerry Friedberg
We don't have any rules, assignments, work-rotations, schedules and such but deal with needs together as they arise, paying close attention to our feelings rather than theories. We value spontaneous-ritual, work-play and joyful madness.
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Some important background data. Each of us contributed what he could to the purchase of the land and initial operating funds. Our resources have continued to come not from any one person-nor even a majority from one person—but from many. Not in this nor in any other way does the life of the community depend upon or revolve around any one or two individuals.
Our group came together on the basis of interweaving relationships-in some cases going back many years-and in many cases involving previous living and working together. We moved to our farm only after we had spent a good deal of time together as a group, mostly on weekend work projects, encounter and Gestalt therapy sessions, playing together and much more. Lots of self-selection in and out of the group took place before we took possession of our 37 acres. Only half the people involved in those months of preparation and exploring actually came to settle our land. And, of course, the previous Lorillard experience was critical.
All of us have had previous experience using encounter group and Gestalt therapy approaches in dealing with personal and communal problems and growth (as was done at Lorillard). At the heart of what we're about is a strong commitment to working on radical personal and social change with the help of these approaches.
We find lots of structure repugnant and resist any attempt by anyone to impose anything on anyone else. But that doesn't mean there are only two choices: Authoritarian structure and chaos.
We are highly libertarian but we do come together to coordinate, to make consensual decisions and to develop day-to-day structures which remain flexible, personal and experimental. Similarly with leadership. Despite our bad experiences with imposed pre-structures and engineered leadership in our society generally, we reject only that structure and leadership which is in fact unwanted. We do not reject that which emerges spontaneously, feels OK and remains flexible, non-coercive and our own.
We're concerned, too, with outreach. Baking and selling bread at the weekly auction in town, participating in a local crafts fair, meeting and spending time with neighbors and beginning to run workshops in personal and social change are some of the things we are starting to do. We expect to be doing more as enterprises emerge.
Economic sharing, communal decision-making and working together have proved virtually no sweat. And, as the whole work-play distinction tends to blur, strikingly much of the work is a joy. Our pockets freed of little appointment books, watches, wallets, keys and other such stuff—days freed of appointments, schedules, duties—there is instead time and space and things that need doing by whoever feels up for them . . . a sense of options day-to-day. Everyone is pitching in, working hard, not working hard, working it out when a need isn't getting met, not sweating it . . .
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