From: kingdon@east-wind.org (Jim Kingdon)
Subject: Communities magazine out
Content-Type: text
Original-To: co-ops
Organization: East Wind Community, Tecumseh, Missouri, USA
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 22:52:44 GMT
Content-Length: 3325

A new issue of Communities magazine has recently been published (those
of you who saw Geoff's communities workshop at the NASCO institute
already know this).  This is the first issue under the management of
the Fellowship for Intentional Community.  Here is a summary of the
contents (it's hard to summarize, being mainly a long list of short
items about a very diverse set of communities):

* One item I thought was interesting was Arthur Deikman's four basic
cult behaviors:

- Dependence on the leader to provide you with what you want and take
care of your problems and troubles
- Compliance with the group ... a more or less unconscious process of
doing what the group wants and not doing what it doesn't want.
- Devaluing the outsider so that outside opinions that differ from the
group's can be written off, dismissed.
- Avoiding dissent--avoiding those things that would question the
rightness of the group's opinions or beliefs.

This is relevant to the Fellowship partly because some of the
communities which they consider to be part of the movement are pretty
cult-like (IMHO), and also because even if we're not, some people
probaby assume we all are.  Deikman is quoted as saying "a cult is
less a matter of direction than intensity.  Looking at cult behavior
in that way, you find areas where one or more of the four basic cult
behaviors are quite manifest in lots of different groups . . . The
focus for me is not so much which group is a cult and which is not,
but how much cult behavior is present in the operation of any
particular group."  And of course this applies to churches, civic
clubs, the miliary, and large corporations, as well as what we might
usually think of as cults.  He is the author of _The Wrong Way Home:
Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society_ (which I
have never read).

* There are items about various community activities--businesses
(solar cars, building, agriculture, and others), a school, political
action.

* There are additional updates to the _Directory of Intentional
Communities_.  These are the listings from the 2nd and 3rd printings
plus a list of phone numbers and addresses for communities which
aren't in any printing of the directory.

* There are two articles about co-housing communities which have
already been built (as far as I know, the only 2 in the US):  Muir
Commons in Davis (?), CA, and one in Bainbridge Island, WA.

* There are a bunch of neat comics by Jonathan Roth of Twin Oaks
Community in Virginia.  I won't try to describe them, but I think they
are pretty funny and they are quite well done.  They are, of course,
about community.

* There are a few blurbs for the 1993 Celebration of Community at
Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.  The idea is that this
is supposed to be a big deal, with lots of people.  Activities
mentioned in the article include: Forums for Seekers, Forums for
Communitarians, children's activities, Native American Elders program,
Community Spirit program ("experiential, interactive, and
participatory structures" and "small 'family' groups"), Art and
Festival program, and FUN committee.  For more information, write: '93
Celebration of Community, 615 First St., Langley, WA 98260.

For more information on Communities magazine, write Communities, Route
1, Box 155, Rutledge, MO 63563.
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