Why I Live in an Intentional Community

(and why I advocate that others do the same)

by Dave Bonta, Founder of Rah Rah Community

Despite all the bad news these days, which can be truly depressing, I can’t help but think of how or little intentional community could help with solutions for nearly all of the problems the negative news media highlights. “The BBC News-hour” on NPR is a good example. A sense of helplessness and frustration with “the way things are” is usually the outcome from learning about the catastrophes and atrocities from the UK’s worldwide network. Listening to how struggling people in other places lack shelter, fresh water or other basics of living makes me think how I wish they could share the security and freedoms we enjoy. Often they will report on situations in the USA that are similarly disheartening, while apparently offering few solutions. People everywhere are having an awful time, trying to survive. It would seem as if we are at a point in human history when there is no longer any kind of security. But in our little community we are finding a form of security that is disengaged from high costs. It is sometimes difficult to explain to our family and friends that we are trying something a little different here, and it’s not all that radical, but seems to work. These days there seems to be no relief, no “cushion” for the perpetual shocks. Between homelessness, war, famine, climate disasters, political instability, loss of civil rights, and other inhumanities, billions of people on this planet are experiencing “Hell on Earth”. Add to these troubles the latest pandemic, human & drug trafficking, and other acts of exploitation and it becomes very difficult for me to listen to the news for long. I do listen, because I feel to be aware of it is the least I can do, but it can break your heart to hear of it after a while.

By nature, I tend to want to try and “fix things” when I am faced with a problem. The things that are reported daily seem perplexingly “unfixable”. The suffering seems to go on year after year, generation to generation. When I try to distill the chief reasons for this ongoing parade of tragedy I usually settle on “Greed and Indifference”. But how do you solve that?

There are a lot of times when I hear of a supposedly “unsolvable problem”, however, I think to myself: “This is another example of a problem that living in a situation like ours would solve.”

I hear about unaffordable housing, which is now considered as the most important issue to many Americans. The housing crisis is reported to be even more important than the recent issue of “The big lie” in the last election and the possible end of our very Democracy.

I think of how easily affordable our housing situation is here at our community. There is no crisis. Together we own the property and there is no bank of mortgage lender to throw us off.

Our smaller homes are affordable, built with local materials and not subject to artificial price hikes from speculators continually “mining” the value up to “What the market will bear”. Once the “banksters” and the speculators are cut out of the action, affordable housing is much easier to accomplish. Other problems too, from Seniors losing their “Zest for living” while warehoused in Nursing homes, to childcare being “unaffordable” and “inaccessible” for so many. The solutions to these two problems are clearly self-evident, when people of like mind choose to follow a “Golden Rule” style of governance, together. When I hear about those issues and others, I think: “Another problem that could be solved with Community.” As I think of on it, more and more of what plagues the World could be resolved by living in small, sharing, caring neighborhood communities, where people live together by choice; not just by happenstance, or by economic considerations being the weighty decision forcer.

I’ll give a couple more examples. Mutual benefits in our village go beyond just asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar!

The cost of propane and oil are going up again. That form of energy is not friendly to our environment and climate, and ultimately may lead to our very extinction. We choose and use solar energy as much as possible for thermal and electric utility needs, but where we can’t use that, we use fuel wood from the woodlot and harvest the fuel together. Wood warms you twice as Thoreau observed, but in our community we get the added warmth of socializing together as “many hands makes labors light” as we take security in our comfort together.

Other amenities of life are easier to procure with community. Here is another example. Why do we all need “our own” lawn mowers, hand & power tools, garden implements & woodworking machines? Can we share? Can we contribute to a library of tools and a fund that covers these things? All of us contributed to the tool shop and the greenhouse and our monthly fund covers maintenance and replacement if anything needs to be replaced. What about washing machines and dryers too? And freezers….maybe even cars! You quickly get the idea. When people work at ways of sharing, the benefits of “not personally owning things” becomes increasingly manifest. We share the land and the work, as best we can- we live in a security that few could realize on their own. It is not just a security in economic stability, but a security in having people around who care about each other. These neighbors, whose lives are enriched for your being among them and in turn, enrich your life too. Community is about looking after each other in friendly association. Turns out, this association is neither forced nor coerced, but flows freely and naturally. So, be it homelessness, or child care or food insecurity or dealing with the indignity and incapacities of growing older, we find strength and solace in our little group’s village. It is a more desirable way to live, I feel, but not everybody is ready for it or is able to do it. They may have misconceptions based on things they have heard and/or harbor deep rooted insecurities, or dependencies that may need professional counseling & intervention.

At this point, we are still screening would be members for our community, but the long hope is, that once our village has reached its carrying capacity, we can use our strength to help “spin off” other villages in other places. I will work and advocate this for I truly do believe that this may be part of what needs to happen to address greed and indifference and thereby make the World a little better for our being here.