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Maintaining Community
Some rambling thoughts on the Seeds of Action immersion
When I think about the few days spent in the village of Bereznik, during ‘Seeds of Action’, what do I think about? What is it that I would like to carry forth in time?

I think of people, of snow, and of an icy river.

Stepping out of the train from Moscow straight onto the crunchy snow by the side of the tracks in the early morning. A driver barrelling down the frozen road much too fast for my taste, trees whooshing past on either side of the car. Crossing the hanging bridge. Finally entering the ‘klub-house’ and finding a space to sit among dozens of people passing a cup of tea around. Some familiar faces. The cup reaches me: ‘Warmth, melting snow, confused.’

I think of the immediate resonance. The consciousness of being on a journey, together, through the dark and possibly to the end of hope. The loving kindness, respect, tolerance, courage and humility, everywhere embodied – humbling. The evenings in darkened rooms, souls laid bare in grief and ancestors summoned from the mists of memory. Songs, dances, and tears; eternal cycles of death, love, and rebirth; standing on the earth, and tasting it; wild primeval games of wrestling, pushing, shoving and tumbling; a small biscuit bird still in my coat pocket.

A rare oasis in time and space. A deep, loving, fruitful respite in good company, before returning to the never-ending onrush of dopamine and adrenaline in our hyper-connected, hyper-separated lives.

Perhaps it is meant to be just that: a fleeting ‘gathering of the tribe’; a reminder of what is possible. Memories like talismans to hold onto in the dark days ahead. Brief and heart-warming fireworks of hearts and souls.
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This would already be much.

Or perhaps it can be more. Can these ties between us, strong and rich with feeling and meaning, be allowed not to wither into nostalgia? Can I find ways to go deeper, and follow the call of curiosity? So many people whose personality, wisdom, talents and work I had no time to discover; so many unfulfilled possibilities.

The image that comes to my mind, when thinking of carrying this into the future, is that of an orchestra, or a choir. In music as in song as in friendship, an essential element is the willingness to stay, to support, to make it keep going without exhaustion; without the bitterness of duty.
Memories like talismans to hold onto in the dark days ahead.
So now that the singers have dispersed, can the song still be sung? Can the community go on? And what’s a community, anyway?
Social science theorists tend to see the word as referring to two main kinds of groups: some are brought together by place, and others by intention. Territorial communities are rooted in a certain place – village, neighbourhood, town, nothing too big; relational communities are those that have to do with people’s skills, interests or affinities.

One could say that in Bereznik, we, Seeds of Action participants, arrived and formed our own community; a spontaneous bubble of ideas, feelings and connectedness, in the midst of the place-bound, and long-standing – though declining – community that has been present for centuries in this little village.

A community can take so many shapes and forms. But there is one feature that scholars seem to agree all communities share: a sense of belonging together.
Sociologist Etienne Wenger distinguishes three main ways to belong:

1. Engagement: through our active involvement with other people – be it living or working together, or at least maintaining frequent interactions as we deal with the outside world and try to make sense of it. Typical examples can include a family living under the same roof, a street gang in the same ‘hood, or even an online group of people discussing societal collapse.

2. Imagination: we can also belong by envisioning ourselves to be part of a much bigger picture than the current time, space, and people we know. Nations, for example, are communities of imagination: I may know many French people, but I will never know all of them. And doctors, environmental activists, or watchers of Game of Thrones may also feel a sense of belonging, as people who share certain practices, habits, symbols, and experiences.
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3. Alignment: finally, we may also belong by consciously modelling our action on that of other people, in order to be part of something much bigger. It can be as simple as dressing a certain way, when following a certain fashion; or as sophisticated as adhering to certain rituals, as part of a certain religion. Joining a demonstration is also an act of alignment. Alignment connects and magnifies the effects of our actions: by aligning what we do on the actions of others, people build cathedrals, or topple governments.

None of these modes of belonging is superior to the other – and every community can be cemented together by these three modes to various degrees. Sometimes, a community can see its dominant form of belonging replaced by another: for instance, a national community normally rooted in imagination can shift toward alignment in times of war.

I think that during our immersion, engagement is what kept us together. We gathered, and each of us brought there our own experience, ideas and feelings. And those gifts – physical or not – that we brought with us helped us to learn from one another. For a few days, we joined forces to make sense of the world, share stories, and study the dark clouds that loom above us all.

And then we have left Bereznik. Each of us has returned to our respective corner of the Earth, carrying the memories, knowledge and inspiration sparked by this intense time of mutual engagement. Has our bubble been left to drift away, and disappear into the atmosphere? Should we try to preserve it? And if so, how?
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Perhaps our community – in other words, this delicately tangled ball of threads that has come to connect us – may preserve some of its meaning and integrity for some time, in spite of the distance between us and the loss of physical interaction (engagement) by becoming a «community of imagination»: we could imagine ourselves to be the «Seeds of Action community», and feel that we still belong together thanks to the memories that we share.
But memory is a never-ending act of re-creation.

Without new memories to keep this imagination alive, this sense of belonging will be short-lived. In the same way, if a person leaves her homeland and starts living in a different country and culture, never speaking her native language or seeing her countrymen, her sense of belonging to her native culture will probably start to decrease.
And keeping our sense of community alive simply through alignment of our action seems difficult: we didn’t have the time to form any political party or religious cult while in Bereznik, in spite of Andrew ordaining new seed priests and priestesses!

So the main way I can see for us to maintain our community, if we wish to do so, is through renewed engagement. In fact, this is already happening to some extent: some of us are carrying forward ideas and intentions that were explored during the immersion, such as the bio-dome blueprint or the plant adaptation projects; and some of us will continue to collaborate to organise other immersions, conferences, online courses, and so on. But these are teams of people, who don’t represent our whole, original community. For that community to maintain its existence in time, it likely needs a new space for exchanges and interactions to keep on happening among all (or most) of us, not just in these teams mentioned above.

To do so, since the Internet still exists and telepathy doesn’t seem like a widespread skill among us yet, we have two choices:
1. An online space.
2. An offline space.

Choice #1 can be done in a number of different ways, but basically it’s about having a virtual conversation space that each of us can connect to.

Choice #2 probably means something like all of us moving back to Bereznik so we can live there together in peace and harmony!

Let’s imagine we decide to choose one of these two options, or maybe a hybrid of the two, in order to maintain our community.

First of all, an important thing to consider would be the question of why we want to maintain this community: if the immersion is over, and we had a good time in mutual learning and inspiration, haven’t we already achieved what we set out to do? Should there be a new common purpose for our community? If so, what?

Besides, although it’s a painful thing to remember, we should keep in mind that although the word ‘community’ is nearly always used nowadays to speak of positive aspects of life in society (at least in English), this warm and fuzzy glow surrounding the word may cause us to forget that no community is ideal. And how could it be, since individuals themselves aren’t perfect? People may be part of a community because they have no other choice; or out of practicality. But its members don’t necessarily coexist in peace, mutual harmony, or in a supportive and loyal way: some communities may be riddled with conflict and misery. And of course, strong identification with a particular community is also at the root of such things as racism or wars! I’m happy to say that the people I met during this immersion are among the kindest, most thoughtful and generous I know. Nonetheless, there is always the possibility that unhappiness may also arise from trying to maintain our community.
This brings us to a second important question: the how. If we decided to maintain our community, and carry it forward, how should we try to do so?

Here, I mean to go beyond the practicalities of the ‘online’ or ‘offline’ options – which are far from straightforward, as negotiating the use and shaping of a common space (be it physical or virtual) is no easy challenge, particularly among people from different cultural backgrounds.
In fact, I believe that maintaining a relational (or intentional) community is an art, a subtle and demanding practice which can only take place as a form of ongoing social learning; and like any art, it requires from any practitioner a fair amount of humility, and a strong desire to learn.
I’m a novice myself, and would never pretend to have all the answers – particularly since every community has to figure things out for itself. However, I have lived for short periods of time in various intentional communities, and have been trying to learn a few tricks that tend to help ‘make things work’, as well as patterns that ‘make things worse’. So I’d like to briefly mention some of these patterns to avoid.
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First of all, any community can fall prey to a well-known trap: the trap of old habits. In the words of Etienne Wenger, ‘the danger of community is that it can become hostage to its history, its established ways of doing things, and the attendant identification with the group. When that happens, communities can become closed and inward-focused; boundaries still and impermeable; and past successes a blinder to new possibilities.

So a first obstacle to avoid would be to stay stuck in the forms that became familiar to us during the few days in which our community was born and active. Some of these forms may suit us for now; but none should become set in stone.

Another pattern would be that of rigid hierarchy. In any group of people, some members will be more influential on the group at a given time than others. This can be due to the intensity of their dedication to the community; their skills and intelligence; their perceived moral superiority; their familiarity with the history of the community and its members – or deeply ingrained socio-cultural factors (hello, patriarchy!). This cannot be avoided. And because in a community cemented by mutual engagement (as opposed to imagination), decisions have to be taken that affect the whole group, the more influential members will tend to find it easier to have things go their way, on a regular basis, power structures cannot be avoided; and likewise, hierarchy – a situation in which some people are considered more important than others – is unavoidable.

But this does not mean a community should pretend that none of its members are more influential than others; quite the contrary. As feminist activist Jo Freeman famously argued, based on her experience of participating in radical egalitarian groups, the surest way to create injustice in a group is to function as if power doesn’t exist. The reason? Because aiming for the absence of explicit decision-making structures (what Freeman calls ‘structurelessness’) actually makes it more difficult for people without power and influence to call to account those who end up taking decisions – usually just one person, or a small clique. Indeed, how can you criticise the leaders of a group that calls itself ‘leaderless’?
Нow can you criticise the leaders of a group that calls itself ‘leaderless’?
It is true that power can to be destructive. But that tends to happen when it is tacit, and concentrated. Acknowledging the presence of power, and explicitly linking it with accountability to the group, is the first step toward distributing it more widely; and distributing power then enables every member of the group to be honoured and respected for their contribution to the whole group. Positions of responsibility can be allowed to shift from one person to another, and those who hold those positions can then be overseen by the rest, appreciated for their talent, and their mistakes acknowledged. And anyone may be able to ask for a change in the rules of the game. In this way, the group will still have hierarchies, but instead of being hidden and rigid, they can be made visible, fluid, and empowering – so the group isn’t ‘leaderless’, but ‘leaderfull’. Finding the best way to come to that result is a whole different can of worms of course. Consent or consensus-based mechanisms and Sociocracy seem to work rather well, from what I’ve seen.
The group will still have hierarchies, but instead of being hidden and rigid, they can be made visible, fluid, and empowering – so the group isn’t ‘leaderless’, but ‘leaderfull’.
Another thing to avoid is the reproduction of harmful social-cultural patterns – or ‘micropolitics’. As Nonty expressed very clearly during her talk at the immersion, almost everyone who grew up within the environment of the global industrial society is infected – to various degrees – with the germs of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, racism, anthropocentrism, and other manifestations of a story of separation (from self, others, the living world, etc.). This pervasive and harmful mindset of ‘modernity’ is within us, whether we want it or not; and it is so pervasive that most of the time, the only people who see it are those who most directly and visibly suffer from its manifestations. Preventing this mindset from materialising in our thoughts, words and actions, and uprooting it from our subconscious, can only be a slow and ongoing process of self-acculturation. For most of us, I suspect it is a never-ending endeavour.

When a group starts experimenting with such processes, at first, it might seem burdensome. Why not just ask everyone to be nice and show ‘good will’ so that things may work? But we shouldn’t forget the poisons within us, and which bubble up in our ‘natural’ patterns of behaviour. The ways in which we are in society have structure, although it tends to be invisible.
Making this structure explicit, and orienting it toward better shapes, is necessary if we want to avoid being slaves to the true burden: the pain, the separation and the oppression that each of us carries in his or her heart. This is what is killing us and our beautiful planet, and it may kill a community too.
Finally, another set of patterns which pervades our lives is the unilateral control mindset.

According to decades of research undertaken by organisational thinkers and facilitators Chris Argyris, Roger Schwartz, and others, when a person is under stress or feeling threatened – no matter the age, gender or cultural background – that person will almost always tend to think and act from a mindset that aims at controlling other people and the outcome of a situation. In practical terms, this means doing such things as hiding any information that may not be supportive of one’s claim or point; not making one’s reasoning transparent; not testing one’s assumptions; and generally, trying to win, and save face.

Just like the two other set of patterns mentioned above, this type of mindset is subconsciously embraced even by people who express a commitment to openness, tolerance, and introspection. It’s the autopilot. And it tends to bring about destructive conflict, lack of trust, and deep misunderstandings. Here, too, it is a very widespread and normal behaviour that can doom even a community in which everyone has the best intentions.

Again, the first step is to recognise these subtle patterns within oneself. Then, they can be transformed into a Mutual Learning mindset. Compared with the unilateral control mindset, this one relies on completely opposite values and assumptions. Instead of winning and being right, what’s important is to be compassionate, curious and transparent. Instead of assuming that someone I disagree with is wrong, I’ll assume that person sees truth from a different angle. And instead of blaming others, I start suspecting I may be contributing to the problem – and I’ll take steps to solve this problem together with others, while testing my assumptions.

This all sounds very easy, even obvious. In fact, most of us think this is already the way in which we behave. Except we don’t! When angry or under stress, we tend to forget these good intentions. Therefore, this mindset should be consciously practised on a day-to-day basis, and members of a group should mutually remind each other to do so – gently, of course. I am convinced that it is best suited to help make any conflict a source of improved trust and understanding, instead of discord and resentment.
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That’s about it. In presenting these sets of patterns, I’m probably just barely scratching the surface of what a community needs to learn in order to last in time as a group, be it online or offline. And perhaps create a positive impact in the world.

Maintaining the Seeds of Action community, this fragile bubble that was born in a tiny village in the middle of the snowy Russian countryside, will certainly not be easy. But perhaps our hearts and minds, and our creativeness, will help us find some way to do so. All I hope is that in our attempts, we will pay attention to some the forms and patterns that tend to surface from the shadow-side of our cultural and even biological heritage, hard-wired into our brains. The memories of this gathering are worth every effort we can make to carry our sense of belonging together into the difficult times ahead of us.



Author - Dorian Cave
Design - Anna Koroteeva