I have lived in “intentional communities” and attest that mature and self capable men and women of all ages can and do live excellently in compact (from [augmented] single home suburban dwellings of a dozen *or more) to ranch style configurations.
It is truly a new level of human excellence. The Epicurean garden of our age.
This has never worked without the WORK involved. People clean, people have a forum for regular discussion, people have responsibilities, and people come and go.
If you want a better life sometimes you have to game up with a better self.
* Once 20 in a single Venice Beach home (close enough to the beach.) there were old VW buses parked in the back yard and rooms with bunks, people paid $400-600/mo. It was wild yet it was civilized. Obviously city shut it down after years working well. It all comes down to good house rule and willful participation.
> It is truly a new level of human excellence. The Epicurean garden of our age.
> This has never worked without the WORK involved. People clean, people have a forum for regular discussion, people have responsibilities, and people come and go.
> If you want a better life sometimes you have to game up with a better self.
I think it’s funny to hear the concept of teaming up with other people, putting in the work, sharing responsibilities, and having discussions among the community unit is described as “a new level of human excellence”
Because this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household. Many people do this. A lot of this thread feels like single people reinventing the concept of family to fill a void. That’s fine, of course. The funny part is being it described as a new and novel form of human excellence
> Because this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household.
Actually, not at all. A co-living arrangement of adults (or WG for Wohngemeinschaft, as we call it in Germany) is not well advised to work like a family household. A family has someone being the father, someone else being the mother and then there are children. While some WGs might stabilize into such a pattern for a while, it is certainly doomed to fail and end in drama. It's more like a team at work - which infamously isn't a family either.
actually, i disagree. being a family should be more teamwork than it often is. in other words families would work better if they work like a team. that includes the children. it's a bit of both. in teams you too have people who are weaker in some aspects. in a good team, you help those people and support them. in a family you should give everyone a chance to contribute and participate in decisions. mother and father are not predefined roles. the parents should work as a team like senior developers, they act with authority because they have more experience, and they include their children like you would include junior developers.
I was talking about the virtues described in the parent comment, not a specific German Wohngemeinschaft
> this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household
It's describing what it's like to do so well.
IME, most people do not approach family with sufficient intentionality to achieve what sunscream89 describes. At best, they settle into a comfortable set of unconscious agreements and patterns that work OK for each other. At worst, those patterns cause constant friction that eventually tear them apart—or cause them to go to therapy and start adding intentionality to the relationship(s).
> It's describing what it's like to do so well.
And the comment above is describing the absolute best case communal living arrangement
> IME, most people do not approach family with sufficient intentionality to achieve what sunscream89 describes
In my experience, most roommates don’t do anything even close to what sunscream89 describes.
However most families at least make an attempt be a family, not just roommates.
A family is completely different.
I have a large family, this is nothing like even a functional family. Nothing.
I have lived in over three intentional communities (some others were too casual). From elaborate roommate situations to full on company town.
Working and living together in the “Epicurean dream” is intentional community, one lost to main stream awareness. And that is a form of excellent living!
I guess there are those who find living and working for others the natural way, and those who would live and work for themselves (as a community).
Uh, that’s a weirdly cynical take on it. They’re not “reinventing” the concept of a family, they’re choosing their family. I’m not sure why that’s so strange to you versus, I guess, raising kids in some sort of isolated nuclear family type environment?
The closest that I've gotten to this sort of arrangement was in a large cabin in the woods without electricity or running water where, signified by two shot glasses with rounded bottoms and a jug of moonshine passed around, there was always someone awake and tending to the property.
My task was to carry water so that it could later be heated for drinking/bathing (sponge-bathing really).
The location and (lack of) amenities served as a filter, so it's not something I think could be easily reproducible.
Once I lived in a desert commune that was like this. Frown on boozing (or over boozing) otherwise everyone was as wildlander as one can imagine.
Location for this was everything. Live like a well stocked savage in a pristine removed wonder of the world.
Community was around for so long there were prepper’s stocks spanning decades.
Btw, MREs do die. And they’re nothing worth living on.