Pole shift?

In recent months there's been an sharp uptick in inquires from reporters, wondering if interest in community living is on the rise as a response to the current economic hard times. The quick answer is a resounding "Yes!"

FIC has experienced a 25% increase in web traffic over a year ago—now up to almost 2000 per day. Fully 75% of those visits are to our online Directory, which is the #1 source worldwide for finding out who's doing what and where, in the world of intentional communities. This is our bread and butter, and a lot of people are stopping by our Directory snack shop for a bite of sustenance.

A deeper question is how close are we as a society to major economic upheaval? Who knows. I first started thinking seriosuly about the possibility of major economic collapse as a college junior in 1970, when campuses were on strike in response to Nixon's Cambodian misadventure, as part of our failed strategy in Vietnam (styled euphemistically as an "incursion"). Remember Kent State? I do, and I wondered that spring if colleges would be open for business again the following fall.

College classes did indeed resume that fall, and every fall since then. I've been listening to periodic predictions of catastrophic economic upheaval ever since: the OPEC oil emarbgo in 1973; the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; the Battle in Seattle and WTO protest in 1999; The World Trade Center bombings in 2001, Now it's the sub-prime mortgage scandal, Peak Oil, and Transition Towns. I've been listening to forecasts of impending doom for nearly 40 years. Will it really happen this time? I don't know.

Yet I want to share a story that spurred me to write this blog. I had a phone conversation yesterday with Don Hollister—a long-term friend who was part of the collective that first conceived of Communities magazine in 1972. He lives in Yellow Springs OH and does organizing for the Democratic party. He's been a believer in community for decades and been touched by the writings of Arthur Morgan and his advocacy of Small Community as a foundamental building block of a healthy society.

Don and I were discussing FIC fundraising and he wondered if the rising interest in community living could be characterized as a sea change, analogous to the surges we experienced in 1965 and 1990. I admitted that it might be, but that it's often difficult to discern clear trends in the early stages of change (and I related my caution about predicting major upheaval after becoming inured to such forecasts the last fours decades).

Then Don realted that his insurance agent was talking with him the other day and had asked him (apropos nothing that Don had said) if he'd seen the article on "Thrift and Shift" in the current issue of Yes! magazine—an alternative publication devoted to reporting on positive futures. It had got the agent to thinking about our cultural addiction to materialism and the need to get off the consumer merry-go-round. Don was impressed. He figured that if a life-long insurance agent in southwestern Ohio (Hint: this is not a hotbed of countercultural thinking and insurance agents as a class are not known for their forward-thinking attitudes about societal change) was starting to ask soul-searching questions about the meaning of life, that this might be a sign that the Humpty-Dumpty of consumption may be teetering atop a Berlin Wall with severe foundational cracks. And all of Madison Avenue's hoarse cries and admen may be unable to keep Humpty from being Dumptied. (Have I got enough matephors in there?)

While I can't be sure of what the immediate future will bring, I'm all together confident that community—and increased collaboration—will be the best response. It will be a good choice if the current recession is just a hiccup (and we're only talking about moving the flag pole 30 feet to the other side of the green); and it will be a great choice if it's much worse (and we're talking about a pole shift—civilzational change the likes of which no one alive has ever witnessed).

I figure if insurance agents in southwestern Ohio are talking, I'm listening.
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