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Nate Hagens Podcast 156 - Christian Sawyer: The Great Simplification in Action: Building Resilience Through Local Communities

tl:dr - A group in S Az organizes seasons of work parties, where 2(?)x/mo during build season a crew descends on a member's place and spends the morning getting work done, then they have lunch. It's an area with opt-out building codes, so some of the projects are hyperadobe/natural building, but also help with gardening/food systems or whatever else the host/owner wants. Positive effects are community bonds, distributed resilience networks, teaching<>learning feedback loops in the network, access to specialty tools and expertise, moneyless schema, etc.

The whole discussion, framed through Hagens' lens of the Great Simplification, hit tons of notes of interest to ERE-folk looking for freedom-to inspiration.

(I particularly liked when Nate asked ~"how are you able to pull all this off? you seem busy" and Christian responded ~"I spent 3-4 years really focused on myself, on healing and therapy, on getting my own house in order" and I thought yes!! Affix thine own o2 mask first, exactly!).

Personal reflection: I suspect this work party distributed community would be difficult to get off the ground near QH (my place in SoCal) due to lack of people with similar interests, but I bet it could happen in the Joshua Tree alt/permie communities 2hrs away (if it doesn't already). I bet it could happen near MH (@theanimals, Fairbanks) for a lot of the same reasons it works in S Az (lack of codes, many people come to the area with broadly similar ideas).

Way cool. Let's do it. Can't wait to be there first one. Planning on May!

I didn't listen, but ...

I suspect this will not develop community as such. As far as I see it, the number one prerequisite for community is REGULAR and SPONTANEOUS meetings. (This is also why the goal is to keep ERE City within a fairly small diameter and preferably w/o people building 6'+ fences around their properties.

I would grant that this will build a network but I don't see a network as being identical to a community. Indeed, the above definition sounds a lot like the standard professional conference. People go to meet and learn and organize a bunch of projects. The problem with that is that this tends to happen in the context of "getting a project done". Many will come just for that and not connect outside of the project at all. It's similarly to the difference between colleagues and friends. One might see colleagues every day, but they typically go with the job. Once one leaves the job, one also leaves the colleagues.

One thing I've found a bit sad over the years is that some forumites have treated the forum in a fairly transactional manner, that is, used it as a means to get free advice and support. Once the mission was accomplished, they just left w/o paying it forward. I'm not sure this can be solved. My point is, this is not really what I would expect from a community although it just may be that I'm too naive in that regard.

Also, I fear that this particular "structure" hinges just a bit too much on "one single person" who will be in charge of organizing, offering up a place, teaching, and paying the bills. This, again, is not what I associated with community.

tl;dr, have opinion anyway, huh? I'd be interested in your thoughts once you've listened to the episode... your post misses the mark of what Nate and Christian actually discuss. [eta: although, fair enough, my original post title was maybe misleading... let me adjust that]. Don't mean to be harsh, but don't want people turned off or distracted by a misunderstanding.

I'd just note that the work party structure is not being conceptualized as *the* praxis that spontaneously creates 'community' ex nihilo. Think of it as one practice among multiple relevant to the general thread of community cultivation; the episode is a look at one practice amongst many. It also seems to be working well enough for those folks for the past three or so years they've been running the work party seasons.

AxelHeyst wrote:(I particularly liked when Nate asked ~"how are you able to pull all this off? you seem busy" and Christian responded ~"I spent 3-4 years really focused on myself, on healing and therapy, on getting my own house in order" and I thought yes!! Affix thine own o2 mask first, exactly!).

I really liked this episode, and I think this is a valid observation, but generally those who have the genes or character-training for "conscientiousness" tend to over-prep before engaging in activities such as "forming community" or "dating" or "retiring", while those who are more lacking in the genes or character-training for "conscientiousness" tend to under-prep. For example, the story of Martha and Mary in the bible is reflective of the problem inherent in over-prepping vs. simply being present to the needs of others in the moment. Under-prepping is more of an Old Testament lesson, Noah and the Flood, comes to mind. There is no significant gender difference in the Big 5 trait of Conscientiousness (recently re-worded as Industriousness and Orderliness), but when combined with the higher levels of Neuroticism and lower levels of Extraversion associated with female gender, this trait contributes to the #1 reason single women choose to not date or engage in relationship formation, which is being stuck in "over-prep" mode or phase.

Anyways, my impression, perhaps ill or hastily formed, is that Christian was more towards an innate under-prepper who experienced personal growth by training/extending himself towards more prepping (house cleaning) rather than vice-versa. I would also note that he described starting the community by growing out from existing social circle, and that his SO was quite engaged in this process. My point here being that "community formation" is definitely an activity in which one learns a great deal from feedback while engaged in the process, so over-prepping can be especially killer in this realm.

The problems that building code present to the particular sort of community formation endeavor attempted by Christian's group are very real, and I have experienced them myself. At the other end of the spectrum might be problems presented by crime or similar. These might be generalized as "territorialism" and "chaos-creation", or even more generally as "power play and competition." The fact that "building codes" are meant to be protective on some level is irrelevant, because it's analogous to how a Rooster doesn't want any other cock to look out for his hens. However, this in no way implies that every individual human Building Code Inspector/Authority is most likely to behave in such a manner. For example, my second sister and her husband just purchased a 5000 sq. ft church building centrally located in a small town and the building code guy is cutting them a lot of slack in terms of usage, because he wants the town core to remain vital.

jacob wrote: As far as I see it, the number one prerequisite for community is REGULAR and SPONTANEOUS meetings. (This is also why the goal is to keep ERE City within a fairly small diameter and preferably w/o people building 6'+ fences around their properties.

Yes, but this is not sufficient. There has to be a level of mutuality of skin in the game or shared dependencies or inter-dependencies. The lack of these interdependencies or shared dependencies is why neighbors in the city do not have to come to know each other. IME, the easiest and likely most "natural" (in terms of human pattern language) means by which to form community is to engage in mutual care for the young. This is why joining a church used to be sufficient, but is not so much anymore due to very few children and lots of old folks in most congregations. The neighborhood elementary school is now more the center of community in many U.S. realms. Another example would be that barn-raising parties weren't primarily about a shared interest in construction skills and technique; they were about mutual recognition of the great importance of sheltering the dependent livestock on which the human families were also dependent.

The problem with some less than highly functional post-modern community groups isn't that they focus on community-first because "extroverts", it is that the "dependent babies" are too internalized, so they function like babies-helping-babies rather than adults-helping-other-adults-with-babies. I mean, there's nothing wrong and it can be helpful to engage in this manner at times, but a therapeutic support group is not the core basis for a functionally sustainable community anymore than a hospital ward or a rubber-matted playground or a heated greenhouse. However, this is not to imply that complete denial of personal vulnerability and/or denial of the very real babies in the community (example, the species of bird dependent on the water-shed on which the adult humans are also dependent, except not really because Modern affluent humans who can drive a car or fly in a plane to some other neighborhood) is likely to contribute to positive functional community formation either. IOW, the perception of shared inter-dependencies almost certainly requires some level/form of commitment to the community, but maybe just akin to the length and "skin" of an early U.S. Homesteading Grant.

Any "purpose" that is not "just pimping" has some kind of "baby" embedded in it. Generally or stereotypically, the "purposes" of men are more likely to involve "justice for baby" and the "purposes" of women are more likely to involve "care for baby." For example, dealing in used books was one of my "purpose"s because when I was a child I felt sorry for all the very good books that nobody checked out of the library very often. It's not necessary or likely for a community to share the exact same purpose or "embedded baby", just a desire for engaging in "mutual-help", especially in ways such as "barn-raising" or "getting a break from toddler-care and extending same service to other" that promote efficiency, resilience, or sustainability. For example, you can be otherwise the most under-baked, under-prepped human imaginable, but if you commit to teaching 20 kids how to perform the standard American algorithm for multiplication, you are well on your way to becoming part of a community. OTOH, you can be extremely well-prepped, but if you only commit to increasing your net worth on the anonymous stock market (towards being more prepped for what???), you are likely moving orthogonal to community formation. This is pretty much what happened to my uber-multi-millionaire friend and it was pretty sad that he was down to just me to hold his hand when he died.

Surprisingly, I watched the whole video (an hour is a big ask at least to me).

I really enjoy those types of events and if I were in that part of the world I would show up. You are around interesting people and something is getting accomplished, the meal you share is after a hard days work. All of the wu-wu stuff is kept on the back-burner.

What builds community is people needing each other (as in, we aren't going to survive this if we don't work together) . While I applaud what Christian is doing one has to be very careful on not contriving an outcome. Who am I to say it isn't a roaring success though? Sounds like it by most metrics but I am curious if he didn't organize everything whether any of this would still occur?

Personally, I would love to be able to visit and work with people of various skills. Spend a few days or more with a beekeeper, then a blacksmith, a weaver, etc. In turn, I could offer up carpentry or garden skills or whatever. But man, it would take exactly one asshole to ruin everything, one accident, one lawsuit, one socially unadjusted person to fuck everything up.

Love the concept though.

I can fill in some gaps here as Christian was one of 25ish of us who initiated this group in January 2022.

The main form of community cohesion as 7W5 notes is indeed the feelings of reciprocity towards the group and perhaps more selfishly the enjoyment of the known benefits of positive social engagement.

There’s quite a bit of sub-community niching down within the group that more closely fits your description Jakob - ie. musicians, women’s groups, food growers, natural builders, etc who gather quite a bit more regularly than the “work parties”.

There is also tighter community based on geographic closeness as theorized - IE Mike, Bruce, Heather and Garth are the people from the group I’d call in an emergency or more casually to see if they could watch the house for a couple days or want to meet for an impromptu hike or build as we live within reasonable proximity. It’s worth noting that while I like these individuals a great deal I would not necessarily say they’re my closest friends within the group yet there’s certainly more feeling of communal bond.

As far as a singular linchpin to the group’s continuance - the organization is a bit of a hive at this point using discord as the main thoroughfare of communication. I often see unfamiliar names posting at this point as the group has taken on a life of its own. When a member disappears for 6 months people check on them but nothing grinds to a halt regardless of the individual.

As per the “one asshole to screw it up” theorem - there was indeed such a test alluded to in the podcast - one of the original members was revealed to have physically assaulted his significant other - there was a group discourse called and the conclusion was reached that the individual be expelled from all “formal” group activities -gatherings of any kind, communication channels, etc. The victim was supported in all ways until they ultimately chose to relocate, group members remain close friends with them.

The inertia of the group is such that it likely continues on well beyond the founding members, this point is discussed from time to time but not given much analysis. There’s very little direct energy towards maintaining cohesion these days. Things seem to have hit critical mass around year 2 - long enough to have worked at everyone’s homes at least once - whether that was necessarily the threshold for perpetuity of the community I’m not sure.