March 8th, 1997
COMMUNITY
By Jackie Giuliano
"Fear is your friend . . . It is a basic instinct of human survival - physical,
psychological, spiritual. We need to have an acute sense of what threatens our well-being.
. . But fear's danger signals get muffled when we develop a pattern of denying and
suppressing our fears. By not paying attention to specific fear signals, that energy gets
diffused into a generalized paranoia, a perennial low-grade alarm fever that pervades our
lives. . ."
Gabrielle Roth, Maps To Ecstasy, Nataraj Publishing, Novato, CA, 1989 http://www.eastwest.com:80/html/Shamanism.htm
There are so many environmental and social problems that face us today. Air, water, and
soil pollution pervade our lives. Toxic materials are virtually everywhere, causing
cancers that we feel we can do very little about. People who live and work in and near the
inner Los Angeles metropolitan area lose at least 20% of their lung capacity during their
lives due to air pollution.
But there are solutions to EVERY one of these problems. Some solutions are technological
in nature, requiring a filter here or a chemical additive there, but the majority of them
are not. Most solutions are of a highly personal nature that require a close look at our
values and our expectations of life. These solutions usually require that we NOT do
something.
If we changed our consumption and living habits, so many things would change.
I moved this past weekend into a house with my fiancée. The new home is big - three
bedrooms, a nice backyard, and a garage that has been converted into a studio. We are
getting a good deal on the rent and are excited at being able to live together and to
spread out. As I set up my new office, I have been shocked at the tremendous resources
that exist just in my little room.
As I look around me, I am appalled. From left to right I have a laptop computer on a
table, borrowed from work - with CD ROM, floppy disk drive, external high capacity disk
drive, a fax machine, my primary desktop computer tower, backup power supply, microphone,
20-inch computer monitor, goddess statue, cellular phone charging in its cradle, FAX
telephone line switching device, telephone answering machine, two-line cordless telephone,
and a color computer printer. Each one of these devices represents so many people using so
many resources. The environmental and social impact of each one of these devices could be
argued, but I think a larger issue is at hand.
Why do we feel we have to surround ourselves with so much stuff? What am I afraid of?
Through the experiences I have had in my personal and professional journey over the last
few years, I am realizing that the events that have most challenged my perceptions and
ways of thinking have been the workshops I have attended and presented that required a
group of people to live together for a few days.
Sometimes the setting was a wilderness retreat center, miles from cities. At other times,
the group was housed at a hotel in or near a major metropolitan center and shared meals
and work time.
Part of me hated each of these experiences. I felt my boundaries being invaded, my privacy
challenged, and my personal RIGHTS ignored. Each time I also realized that there is a part
of me that is afraid - afraid to expose myself, afraid to share, afraid to be seen. Each
of these experiences has led me to believe that, for the most part, we lead very isolated
lives. We are isolated not only from the natural world but also from the richness of what
we can offer each other.
How many of you know the names of your neighbors? How many of you feel that you are trying
to live in community? I am feeling more and more that not living INTENTIONALLY in a
community setting, not being responsible for more lives than just our own, intensifies our
fears and keeps us on a toxic treadmill.
Last week I decided to take my Environmental Science class from Antioch University to a
part of Los Angeles where some people are exploring what it may mean to live in a
community. They are trying to understand what it means to be responsible for themselves
and, to a certain degree, for each other, and to live sustainably.
Eco-Village, http://alumni.caltech.edu/~mignon/laev.htm
founded by Lois Arkin in 1993, is one of many attempts at creating definitions for words
we have either ignored or taken for granted, such as community, sustainability, safety,
security, responsibility, and commitment. The Communities Directory, A Guide To
Cooperative Living, lists over 600 intentional communities world wide.
I suspected that this visit would challenge all of our perceptions. I knew that we people
of privilege with our homes, cars, extra money for toys and entertainment, and our
cultural legacy of growing up in relative isolation would feel our fears rise as our
fundamental definitions were rocked. Yesterday's discussion about the trip in our
classroom confirmed my suspicions - dramatically.
Eco-Village is a dream slowly becoming an embryonic reality. It is hardly a village.
Rather, it is a group of six intentional neighbors who live in two fourplex dwellings
across the street from each other in a "not-so-good" neighborhood three miles
west of downtown Los Angeles. They grow 20% of their own food, in soil that has been
analyzed and found to contain levels of lead, and attempt to get the rest of the
neighborhood interested in intentional living.
Their neighbors are about 500 people representing 13 ethnic groups from very low to
moderate income levels in these two city blocks, covering about 11 acres. Most of the 500
have very little to do with those Eco-Village folks who garden in their front yards and
walk around the neighborhood being nice to each other.
The non-profit organization run by members of the group recently purchased a 40-unit
apartment building in the neighborhood. They plan to make it into a permanently affordable
cooperative housing project within 2 years. They want to conduct an
"eco-retrofit" of the building over the next 10 years. They are in the beginning
stages of trying to understand how to make the inner city a sustainable urban community
where people feel safe and at "home."
But we are so afraid. Half of my students were extremely upset when they heard that
children are allowed to roam freely on the street and to be out playing into the evening.
They said it was irresponsible and reckless. They spoke of kidnappings and fast moving
cars, all realities in our world, to be sure.
But the WAY they spoke of these things was of great interest to me. The outrage they were
expressing seemed to be coming from a place of deep fear. It appeared to reflect what I
have observed in most of us who grew up getting our information from sensationalist media
and post-war bred parents.
Some of them spoke of how uncomfortable they felt in the Eco-Village office. It was
"cluttered, dusty, and gave the impression of deep poverty," one student
proclaimed. He said that people who saw this on tours would not want to aspire to live in
this kind of "squalor."
I found this very interesting and reflective of my own feelings that have lessened over
the years as I have explored alternative living styles. Our culture has taught us that if
your living space is not new looking and tidy and shiny clean, it means your are
"poor" - and poor is bad. Poor seems to be defined by our culture as meaning you
can't afford the shiny things that advertisements have to offer, things you are supposed
to need to survive like new cars, furniture, and home electronics. You must aspire to
attain these things in order to feel successful and secure. Visiting a thrift store is
considered by many as evidence that you are poor and can't afford new items.
We have a great fear of being poor. I have seen many people who don't have anything new or
anything electronic but are living in a close connection with the natural world. These
"poor" people have lives so rich, a family commitment so deep, that it has
brought tears to my eyes as I fear I can never shed my own culturally implanted fears.
Another student observed that she was impressed by the courage shown by the Eco-Villagers,
courage to take those baby steps toward community. One student said she had thought that
her neighborhood was a community. After all, they have a block party twice a year. But,
after the trip to Eco-Village she realized that she really didn't know the names of her
neighbors.
I am beginning to believe that the most serious issue before us today may be our fear of
taking full responsibility for our participation in the problems - fear of exposing
ourselves to the challenge of being vulnerable among our neighbors.
To be powerful may not mean that for me to be strong, you have to be weak. To be safe and
secure may not mean that my walls have to be higher than yours. To be powerful and safe
and secure may mean that I have to share with you all that I have, and that I have no
walls or locks to keep you away. Maybe we just need to garden together, side by side.
I applaud the efforts of Lois Arkin and the countless others around the world who are
working to redefine what it means to live together and to shed our fears. And I applaud my
students and the rest of us who are trying to understand our fears, and transform them.
Gabrielle Roth wrote in Maps to Ecstasy, "We don't have to fear fear itself. We need
not be embarrassed or immobilized by our fears. We need to give them appropriate attention
and expression as they arise. Then the energy of fear is properly released. . . Fear
properly channeled yields wide-awake engagement."
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