We have a couple of rooms opening up in our house, right now, so, perhaps more than usual, I am thinking about what I’d like our community to look like.

Community is a funny thing. Sometimes it doesn’t gel, in spite of all predictions, likelihood, and work. A group of folks who are great, as individuals, doing great work in the world, have their values in alignment, get together and simply cannot get along with each other. Sometimes folks who get along fine as friends try to live together and discover that their values are not in alignment. Sometimes one or more folks have emotional wounds or personality patterns that the community simply cannot hold, and those prove divisive, tearing the community apart.

Sometimes, though, community shows up where you don’t expect it to, in spite of all expectations to the contrary. A group of very different folks find themselves working or living together, and friendships and community develop as they discover that their values are more in alignment than they thought. Sometimes, the project they are working on is bigger than a lifetime, and their descendants continue to live and work together, the greater vision taking precedence over whatever individual differences they might have.

A community could be small, in a house, tribe, or village. It could be larger, like a suburban neighborhood or a district in a city. As Psychosynthesis has become more mainstream, we are now having discussions of self-as-community, and of internal family therapy, referring to the multiplicity of subpersonalities in all of us, to greater or lesser degree, and who get along with each other to greater or lesser degree, the macro in the micro.

What are the elements which allow a community to gel? Are they are predictable? Can they be designed for? Adam Brock, a Social Permaculturist, points out that many movements and organizations which “should” work out often don’t because we forget that they are composed of individuals who have their own personalities and motivations, conscious and unconscious.

If you were going to design a community, what would you include? What have your experiences been, of living in community with other Humans, or others of any species? Have you seen communities thrive, fall apart, drift through mediocrity? All of the preceding, at different points? What would the ingredients of your ideal community be?

Design your ideal community, at Red Rock Coffee, this Friday, 9 February. We often go to dinner afterwards, maybe we will this week, too.