I keep imagining a spectrum on which a new village might fall prey to outmoded ideologies. I actually think the landscape is more complex than a simple one-dimensional spectrum, with many dimensions of varying importance. But the simple spectrum looks something like this:

Unsustainable (ex. Chicago Suburbs) <-----------------> Hippie Crap (ex. Auroville v.1)

We saw an interesting talk at JLF by a guy who grew up in Auroville, moved to the US, then moved back to Auroville as an adult. He made a very strong case against "intentional communities" and although he didn't say anything revelatory, it was helpful to hear him call out the ideals which repeatedly fail in Auroville and other intentional communities: getting rid of money and adopting a subsistence or favour-based lifestyle is objectively a bad idea, for example. I think just about any isolationist ideals will fall under this umbrella.

It's possible to plot any given concept along this spectrum if we look at it a little more abstractly:

Outsourcing <-----------------> Isolationism

(Again, this clearly isn't the only conceptual spectrum. There's planned-vs-organic, revolutionary-vs-incremental, etc. But this spectrum really flags the traps of past experiments.)

I think one of the bigger mistakes we could make early on would be adopting some radical construction techniques. If there's one thing I've learned from working on the cabin, it's this: Having a functional home base is GREAT. Those initial aspects of the hierarchy of needs can be captured with some measure of independence: water, sewage, energy. But we should expect these things to require a lot of external help. Digging a well? Hire a bore well machine or an earth mover (depending on the well depth). Sewage is pretty flexible, but expect that you'll prefer the comforts of home over humanure or a pit toilet before attempting those things. Energy is either the grid or solar from China. During construction, it might be a diesel generator.

Of course, if we lean too far in the direction of "outsourcing", we're again just building summer homes or suburbs: Buy land, hire contractors, connect to grid power, and forget about the consequences of anything we're doing. There's a balance to be had, here, and I think this is where the conversation is the most valuable: Where do people want to be on this spectrum? Is positioning ourselves on the spectrum something we want to try to do collectively or would each home choose its level of independence (from grid services) on its own?

There are aspects I lump into "the grid" that most people don't, traditionally: food, clothing, bedding, furniture, etc. Some of these intentional communities from the 60s and 70s really pushed hard to avoid external consumption of any kind. Personally, I find this a little silly. But I'm sure many people think a goal of a modern, energy-independent village is also silly (I don't).

Curious what other folks hope to get out of this, or if this is even a spectrum that matters to everyone.

<3

-steven