Why Intentional Communities Fail (part 1)
The desire to live in community is something countless people share, and yet very few intentional communities succeed. Why does this basic human need seem so hard to achieve?
If we cast our view back over the totality of human existence, as a species we have lived in small, intimate communities for 99.999% of that time. Even in recent millennia once many humans began living in cities, that strong sense of community remained, until very recently with the advent of capitalism and modern transportation.
So given the fact that we have nearly always lived this way, why does it seem so hard for us contemporary people to achieve, and maintain? While modern society does throw up a lot of hurdles, economically and governmentally, even when those hurdles are overcome most intentional communities still end up falling apart.
The fun part of building community is dreaming, envisioning, and manifesting what we want. But if we don’t consider the sober reality of past community’s failures, we are doomed to repeat their mistakes.
Diagnosing the Problem
When most people examine this issue, they tend to focus on the surface manifestations of community failures such as flawed decision-making, a lack of effective conflict resolution, and economic factors that cause conflicts over money. While this is a fine place to start, many communities have addressed each of these things and still end up imploding because of interpersonal dynamics.
This problem can seem so intractable that often people throw up their hands and conclude that living in close-knit communities is impossible because of “human nature.” But how can this be considering that the vast, vast majority of our ancestors all successfully lived this way? Sure, they made mistakes and encountered difficulties at times as well, but it was the ones who were able to keep their communities healthy and functional over millennia that survived — leading to us being here.
Believing that the problem is “human nature” is projecting the toxicity and dysfunction of our particular culture onto all of humanity. Because the sad truth is that those of us desperately seeking community are living in a culture that expresses community in shallow and downright toxic ways. And as a result, most of us are wounded around community in one way or another.
Either we grew up in a religious community that felt oppressive and taught us to hate ourselves and blindly obey authority, or we were brutally bullied in school by our peers as children, or we experienced job after job where we had no agency and witnessed malicious workplace gossip. Almost none of us have experienced a healthy version of community, anywhere in our lives.
So those of us building or entering an intentional community are coming into it with a great deal of emotional wounding and baggage. We desire egalitarian power dynamics where everyone steps up into leadership, but that feels foreign to us and even terrifying when we try to put it into practice. So we inevitably find ourselves falling back into the dysfunctional subconscious patterns that were laid down from our past experiences.
Those of us living in modern society have also internalized a toxic, unhealthy worldview as a result of the natural process of enculturation. In my last post I wrote about the concept of wetiko, the psycho-spiritual sickness that infects entire cultures and leads to colonialism, war, genocide, slavery, and oppression. This is a case of the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm: the disease of our culture infects the mini alternative cultures we try to create, because we bring into them the same cultural worldview of the dominant culture.
The only way to create something truly new, that doesn’t succumb to the toxicity of the culture we were born into, is for each of us to examine and transform our worldview — explicitly rejecting the toxic beliefs we had internalized, and the behaviors that those beliefs inevitably give rise to.
How Can We Achieve This?
Those of us who have been involved in social justice efforts are probably familiar with the idea of intentionally becoming an anti-racist, through examining our own beliefs and behaviors and consciously dismantling our internalized, subconscious racism. This is the same process I’m describing, only applied more broadly.
It makes sense that if we want to create a functioning, lasting community that based on egalitarian power structures, we would need to dismantle the internalized orientation toward hierarchy and authority that society has gifted each of us with. If we want to create communities that can deal with conflict in a healthy way, we need to transform our own internalized patterns of dysfunction around conflict, that were patterned from our families of origin and the dysfunctional communities we grew up in.
Just as with anti-racist work, I believe it’s helpful to understand two core principles here. First, to understand that each and every one of has internalized dysfunctional beliefs and patterns that will harm our chosen communities if not address. None of us are immune to this harmful impact of the dominant culture, no matter what we might think of ourselves.
The second principle is understanding that this will be a lifelong pursuit. There will always be something more to work on, and none of us will ever “arrive” at a place where all our internal work is done. This is vitally important because it keeps us humble, knowing that no one is better than anyone else in this way. There is no “success” to be achieved. There are only different levels of experience with it — but the work is ongoing for all of us. So we are all in this together!
Now, the “how” of how to do this work is more complicated. One way that communities can begin is by drafting a list of beliefs of principles that clearly describe the worldview that everyone is choosing to live by. Only with that clearly outlined can we ever hope to live in a different way, because otherwise we won’t be able to identify when our actions are reflecting unconscious, unhealthy beliefs rather than the healthy ones we are consciously choosing to live by. And only when we can notice and identify this correlation can we ever hope to hold ourselves and each other accountable in this way.
Another important piece to this work is healing the wounding around community that each of us carry. This means noticing when our wounded inner child gets triggered in the course of community life, learning what that feels like, and then addressing it with effective tools rather than bypassing. Such tools must necessarily involve engaging with the wounded part of ourselves (rather than “overcoming it”), and inner parenting (which means us giving that part of ourselves what we needed then and didn’t receive) in order to transform our inner experience of those traumatic moments.
The Shadow Side to Humanity
A third element in this shared inner work is dealing with the impact of personal and collective shadows. This is a complex area of personal work, way beyond the scope of this post, but it’s vitally important to mention because of the profound way that people’s disowned shadow parts affect personal relationships and community dynamics — all the way up to the level of entire cultures, as we are seeing play out politically as we speak.
The shadow is behind all projection, as well as mob mentality, the rise of gurus and cult leaders, and conspiracy thinking. It plays out in ordinary life whenever a group of people gang up on someone and ostracize them, when a child is considered the “black sheep” of the family, and when pop stars get attention and veneration far beyond what any human actually deserves.
In community, our disowned shadow parts will inevitably make themselves known and cause havoc. It’s not a matter of if, but when. And all of us, without exception, have a shadow! Our shadow is made up of all the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected and denied as being “us”, usually in childhood as a result of unhealthy messages about how we need to be in order to have value and receive love and acceptance.
It rears its head in personal relationships when we find that a person inexplicably repels us — or conversely, attracts us very strongly. It is present whenever we demonize other people beyond just calling out bad behavior, or when we fall obsessively in love with someone we barely know.
In the first instance, sometimes called “dark shadow”, we are projecting aspects of ourselves (or inner capabilities) that we refuse to acknowledge because they do not match the person we think of ourselves as being. In the second instance, which can be called “bright shadow”, we are projecting qualities onto the other person that we subconsciously desire to embody but feel that we can’t for whatever reason.
In both cases, our own projections become a filter through which we see other people, interfering with our ability to see them as they truly are. Moreover, the shadow causes us to act in ways that are otherwise completely out of character — for the precise reason that our shadow exists outside of our ego, or sense of self, because it is the part of us that has been explicitly defined as not us.
The shadow exists in our blind spot, so when it takes over we are completely unaware of what we are doing, to the point that we literally won’t remember saying or doing things that we objectively did do. Because of our inability to see the shadow, it is the area where we are unable to match our perceptions with reality. And even worse, our shadow behavior is inevitably toxic because of how these rejected parts of us become wounded from the rejection and twisted from their true nature (just like Gollum in the cave).
We can see the shadow at work on a cultural level in everything that is toxic and twisted, from the toxic power dynamics of superiority behind racism and sexism, to the perversion of sexuality into pedophilia. It even drives political movements, when they are divorced from reality (such as white men feeling like victims) and steeped in hatred and violence. It is the reason why every attempt at social progress experiences a violent backlash, as those who cannot and will not acknowledge their part in the problem lash out at the marginalized groups struggling for equality and justice.
In communities, people’s personal shadows inevitably collude with and reinforce each other, manifesting in malicious gossip and scapegoating. Anytime a charismatic and selfish leader gains an undue amount of power and influence, the shadow is at work — not just within the charismatic figure but within everyone who puts them on a pedestal and grants them power they don’t deserve.
The only way to stop this from happening is to learn how to identify personal and communal shadows, and how to transform and integrate them back into the individual and collective psyches. There are a variety of ways to do this, but unfortunately most are of limited effectiveness because they approach the shadow intellectually rather than emotionally.
Having clear community standards of conduct as well as structures that make space for everyone’s voice to be heard and considered equally serve as bulwarks against the shadow running amok. This requires a commitment to honesty and vulnerability, to bringing up issues as they arise so they can be openly addressed, as what is not brought to the light of day will fester in the darkness. This is not easy to do, and most people will avoid this if given half a chance, so it must become intrinsic to the workings of the community — and participation in it can’t be optional.
There are more elements to the collective effort of building the foundation for lasting, thriving communities. I’ve only touched on a few here, but I believe that these are the most important things that every community should consider, if they want to avoid the same fate as so many that came before them.
If you have anything to add to this discussion, please share your thoughts! This truly is the work of our time, healing the wounds of the past so that they don’t get passed onto future generations.