A new way of living

Eco-spiritual communities are springing up across Australia and the world. They are a response to a rise in global and domestic conflicts, an oil crisis, an environmental crisis as well as a perceived crisis in food security. They also seemingly seek to address the local disparities in the distribution of wealth.

Added to this there appears to be a general feeling of isolation and alienation that has been running alongside modernism and our ever-expanding materialist lifestyle.

For many the notion of a homogenous community is perceived as being missing in the landscape: but the homogenous community is a fantasy, it does not and cannot exist.

Undoubtedly, there is a need to restore the integrity of human activities on the planet, especially in relation to development and human rights, but while the eco-spiritual communities are taking on the roles of micro-production, self-governance and the dissemination of generally disqualified knowledge[s], are these communities suitably placed to be part of the solution to a multi-dimensional global crisis or will they become part of a much greater problem?

In other words are these eco-spiritual communities a way of liberating populations from transnational exploitation and the modernist values of mass consumerism or are they re-inventing feudalism and/or new elites?

What is an [eco]-spiritual community?

The eco-spiritual community blends environmentalism with spirituality as the basis for a purported healthy, sustainable, self-governing and self-determining community group.

It is an environmental and spirituality consciousness mix. The “spiritual” community is not new. Historically, spiritual and religious communities have existed around the world whereby most have followed a particular religious order such as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism so on.

Today, there are many New Age variants all competing for a spot in the local and global markets. The current eco-spiritual trend generally embraces all beliefs as long as they can claim to be spiritual. The idea is to have an open and inclusive framework that allows the individual to define their own idiosyncratic form of spirituality.

It is a model that was largely developed from one of the earliest eco-spiritual communities that of Findhorn in the United Kingdom. Findhorn was started in 1962 by Peter and Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean. Findhorn was a social experiment based on the idea that people could live in a different frame of consciousness that would improve their well being and thus the state of the world.

Findhorn was conceived in a Cold War climate with its threat of a nuclear holocaust. Consequently, Findhorn became decidedly non-political. It devised a code of conduct called the Common Ground whereby each member made a commitment to active spiritual practice and to work for the greatest good.

The Common Ground code itemised 14 protocols for self- improvement; they included service to others, personal growth, integrity, respect, honest communication, reflection and taking responsibility.

There is a great emphasis on non-violent change and the adherence to leaders who follow a path of passive resistance: people such as Gandhi. Findhorn is indicative of a number of communities that have attempted to opt out of a mediocre society and its monopoly capitalism. However, the nature of capitalism is universal and such communities find themselves, of necessity, equally embroiled in capitalism.

Findhorn for example, still operates in the UK. It holds workshops, festivals and offers accommodation and retreats in much the same way as many other New Age businesses. A “Festival of Sacred Dance, Music and Song” at Findhorn will cost the participant between £525 and £725 depending on income. While Findhorn has to support itself and may not be making exponentially high profits in relation to its costs it does support a particular lifestyle for a particular chosen elite.

A similar example can be seen in The Manitou Arbor Ecovillage [MAE] at Comstock, Michigan. The Michigan collective arose because people came to the decision that it was “difficult to live life, make good decisions … without some guide to remind us of our better selves and our deepest commitments”.

It was a shift away from politics and towards a spirituality centred on the earth and a sustainable ecology. The Michigan group consists of people from all walks of life who believe that in order to survive we have to significantly change the way we live and work on this planet. This means that any form of development must honour the earth and acknowledge a spiritual bond with all its life forms; it must celebrate life above all other interests and objectives.

Clearly, this has not happened within the current political framework and many people have lost faith in the political processes. This loss of faith in political process has led to a new paradigm of self-contained villages and communities with their own processes based upon a self-conceived spiritual ethics.

Eco-spiritual communities vary considerably in structure and how they earn their income. Some eco-spiritual communities exist on acreage in remote parts while others are being constructed in apartment blocks such as the one in central Los Angeles with its 55 residences amid the chocking smog and hostile city sprawl.

The lifestyle usually evolves around organic farming and good waste management as well as the elimination of energy dependence on fossil fuels. An even more essential component is sharing with and caring for every member of the community. Rituals of natural healing are common place, as are community arts and the creation of rituals and sacred space. Eco-spiritual communities are the latest vogue in communal idealism.

Communal idealism and/or communal autarky?

Eco-spiritual community development generally proceeds from the top down whereby a small group of people will decide on where, when, who and what will take place within their group.

They will often revitalise struggling towns and hamlets. They present as people who have made a commitment towards nourishing themselves and the planet by living in harmony and by regarding all living things as sacred. They reject politics and maintain the power by using processes of mediation and conflict resolution that fall within the boundaries of their codes and Covenants.

Many community members will be running New Age businesses and contributing to the overall growth of the group. All these activities fall within a distinctly quasi-religious and bourgeoisie framework and are underscored by the aim of converting new members into the group.

Within the eco-spiritual groups there appears to be the tacit assumption that by making decisions collectively and along the lines of an agreed Covenant there will be more ethical and egalitarian outcomes. However, there is no independent critical evaluation of the provisions for the group outside the Covenant. There is no place for the dissenting voice. The peoples’ right to criticise or deviate from the group is outside the mandate and such individuals find themselves quickly ostracised.

One of the central roles of government and Western style democracy is to ensure that there are checks and balances to protect peoples’ rights, especially the right to speak and live freely. Any kind of decentralisation tends, in principle, to work against representative democracy; at least it makes it harder. There is a wider separation between administrative laws, people and bureaucracies within decentralisation. Micro-decentralisation makes the problem acute.

In a postmodern society with so many free floating discourses and an economy that is making life tough many vulnerable people become very attracted to the new cultural and quasi-religious/spiritual ideologies. These ideologies fulfil basic human needs. They espouse love, nurture and security but it is paternalism not egalitarianism that drives these communities and entry into them comes at the cost of self-actualisation and concomitant physical and intellectual freedoms. In addition, they serve to erode the already depleted infrastructure and services of their struggling hosts.

Eco-villages have featured prominently in two of the more influential publications on their development: The Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World Report 2008 and the United Kingdom’s The Ecologist July 2008 (see here). Ecological sustainability is necessary for human survival and small scale eco-communities can have a lot of appeal. However, the depoliticisation of any community acts to hide knowledge and cover abuse. All communities must be accountable to the society at large.

Eco-Towns

In Britain the notion of the eco-village has grown into the eco-town. These towns are minus the spiritual component. Nonetheless, the plan to build eco-towns has seen mass demonstrations outside the British Parliament. They have been called “rural ghettos of the future”. The focus here is on the disruption of an already quiet rural lifestyle by developers. Britain’s Telegraph described it as a protest of “rich peasants”.

Eco-towns and eco-communities have also drawn criticism from a number of economists and social theorists who warn against communal autarkies [closed authoritarian and totalitarian groups]. Small eco-communities are also eligible for government funding. There are already many small farmers gaining government subsidies while the rest of the world’s population are left to starve.

Reforming agriculture to solve the global food crisis

London’s Financial Times writer, Martin Wolf, sees the perceived global food crisis as an opportunity to reform agriculture into small self-sustaining holdings. Paul Collier, who wrote a reply on Wolf’s weblog, has noted that this would impact greatly on those countries that are dependent on imported food, especially Africa. For Africans the eco-village model is a catastrophe. Collier suggests the most effective way to increase food supply is by “replicating the Brazilian model of large technologically sophisticated agro-companies supplying the world market”. Collier writes:

Unfortunately, large scale commercial agriculture is unromantic. We laud the production style of the peasant: environmentally sustainable and human in scale … In Europe and Japan huge public resources have been devoted to propping up small farms. The best that can be said for these policies is we can afford them. In Africa which cannot afford them, development agencies have oriented their entire efforts on agricultural development to peasant style production. As a result Africa has less large scale commercial agriculture than it had fifty years ago.

We need to ask, is there really a food crisis? Last year the Western world dumped millions of tons of food because local producers could not compete with imported produce. It would appear then that the problem of a perceived global food shortage is not one of production but one of distribution.

To this end, Paul Collier concludes his lengthy post by saying “we need stronger, fairer globalisation, not less of it”. Further, while most would agree that we need to be more environmentally conscious with each person doing their best to improve ecology and reduce waste, we also need to make governments and businesses more accountable not withdraw from the system so they can abrogate their responsibilities. We can care for each other in whatever system we choose to live in but it seems logical that we can care for the world’s poor much better in an open society.