Community Building
We’ve been building and maintaining a community of trust for nearly 40 years as the basis for developing a humane future society. A healthy community organism sees its members supporting each other, with reinforcing feedback loops, where we develop a sense of the communitarian self – a higher level of order in which the individual is part of a greater whole. All of life lives in community, and by restoring it to humanity, we create societal vessels that help us overcome our collective trauma of separation, reconditioning ourselves from fear to trust.
“Community is not just a sentimental dream of young people, but the next stage of human evolution. The people of the future will live in community.”
DIETER DUHM
What We’ve Learned
- All of life co-exists in community. Our original community is not the family, but the tribe. Community is the social vessel that embeds all aspects of human life, including the family.
- Community is the natural breeding ground for trust and for living an ethical life of truth, mutual support, participating responsibly, and respecting and caring for the Earth and all beings.
- Being separated from community is a reason we’ve become mistrustful, violent and ill. In our patriarchal history, communities were violently destroyed by imperialist rulers around the world. We must restore community to cure our historical collective trauma and bring peace back into our lives.
- Individuality and community complement, not contradict, each other. True individuality is a community venture that develops through the diversity, exchange and feedback possible within community. Genuine communities aren’t collectivist or conformist, they consist of people who say what they truly think and feel.
- To be sustainable, community mustn’t depend on charismatic leaders, but must develop authentic grassroots democracy. It’s true that strong leaders are often needed to initiate a community building process, but communities evolve through members becoming able to collaborate, while conscious of what really drives them. To make decisions democratically, members need to engage in character work and share a strong common goal.
- Community building is a constant adventure – a process of reconditioning from fear to trust. Trust must be built consciously. Those building community must be ready to make themselves visible to each other and to face each other’s truth, especially in love and sexuality. The more people see each other in what truly moves them, the more they will trust each other. Seeing is loving.
- Community needs a common goal that is bigger than the personal interests and needs of its participants. As the I Ching says, “It is not the private interests that create lasting fellowship among men, but rather the goals of humanity.”
Learn More About Community Building
Read our study texts below and sign up for one of our Introduction Weeks to get a first insight.