Discuss: Where Have All the Joiners Gone?

You can hope that your community will grow more interdependent, or you can pro-actively make it happen.

(What part of my long comment is giving this website heartburn… more to follow… this is a silly way to have to post something...)

The intentional communities movement (http://www.ic.org) has been re-born lately. Those who dabbled with “hippy communes” of the ‘60’s are now getting serious about it. From the mainstream (co-housing developments) to the radically sustainable (ecovillages), people are coming to the realization that re-localization is not just a good idea, it’s a basic law of nature that has been violated only because we are sitting on top of this extraordinary pulse of ancient sunlight.

To that end, EcoRealityCo-op (http://www.EcoReality.org) is seeking new members to forge a new beginning. We are in the process of integrating hundreds of acres of public and private land into a single Permaculture design, where people will live in clustered housing within speaking distance of each other, and grow their own food and produce their own energy.

We are primarily interested in people who have about half the equity of a typical North American suburban home to invest, but people with less who have outstanding skills are also welcome. Click the “Join” link (http://www.EcoReality.org/wiki/Join) to get on our Advisory Council and email list. It costs nothing.

Have you not read Harvard Professor Robert Putnam’s follow-up study on “Bowling Alone”?

His conclusion: We’re not joining clubs anymore because of RACIAL and CULTURAL DIVERSITY; that is, the DIVERSITY MOVEMENT has been destroying communities’ natural, collective means to getting along.

Read my essay about BOWLING ALONE:

http://bowlingaloneinamerica.blogspot.com/

Deacon Elurby seems to think that encouraging us to become a more culturally diverse society has somehow destroyed a sense of community. What poppycock. The one year that a did bowl in a bowling league back in the 80’s our team was made up of both blacks and whites. We were great friends. Now I live in a community with a large number of Latinos. We get along. Good grief. Bigotry has no place in a discussion about developing real community!

Attn: Peggy

It’s NOT MY STUDY that has concluded that the Diversity Movement is ripping apart communities across America.  It’s LIBERAL Harvard Professor Putnam’s study (notice that major new media buried his findings after he had published them!), and which study’s conclusion he had publicly admitted to withholding because he didn’t wish to negatively influence public debates about illegal immigration--before the congressional elections!  So, you’ve tagged a well-respected, and leftist, college professor as “BIGOTED”.  Dear Peggy, you’re an EMOTER; that is, you F-E-E-E-E-L that your personal experiences are proof enough to uphold your views on race and culture, which use of REASON, if effected by you, might cause you to begin THINKING about how racial diversity badly impacts communities’ SENSE OF COMMUNITY.  Name-calling is the first “argument” of the uninformed.

Peggy has every right to share about her personal experiences. This is not a court or university debate. I’d blame a lot of other factors before I’d start in on race.

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Attn: Dennis Mitchell

Peggy wasn’t “sharing” but NAME-CALLING!, couched within her opinion about race and community. 

Again, name-calling is the first “argument” of the uninformed.

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