I don't share the disdain for agrarian intentional communities.  People are doing their best to take charge of their own food supply, based on the food they eat -- which, for most people, is grains -- and their (mistaken) perception about what is good for the earth -- which, for most people, is vegetarianism. 

And the successful ones I know of tend to not be vegetarian, because pigs and chickens do a great job of converting waste into bacon and eggs.  Family farms didn't have "compost piles"...they had hog pens and chicken coops.

Obviously a self-supporting Paleo intentional community would primarily involve raising animals, not growing grains!  I don't know of any intentional communities based on a ranching or pastoral model...but with the increasing demand for grass-fed beef, it's an interesting possibility.

JS

Also, if I had no kids, spouse or parents (all of which I DO have).... oh boy. Yeah, it's fun to think of what we would do, how we would all wander through the world working for food or accomodation or some little salary in a little country 99% of the world doesn't even know about. But this is not everyone's situation. However, those who are in that situation... I hope they take advantage of it and don't waste too much time planning. Life's short after all 😀

My only real connection that roots me to an address right now is my four footed pack mate, an elderly adorable feral mutt who adopted me on my travels in Mexico years ago.  As long as the one who I affectionately refer to as my Wolf Cub is still with me, I will have a fixed address.

The Wolf Cub does travel well on road trips with me but I wouldn't want to put him through plane flights.  We are planning a road trip from San Diego to Chicago via route 66 this fall.   That should be fun.

"Teach your way around the world" sounds like a great plan...and if you lack personal attachments that would stop you from doing it, I recommend you do so!

JS

It seems to me that one of the important aspects of living your life like a Gnoll is being mobile, not being tied down to one location.

I feel like I am working on this by stages in my life.  Just sold off a huge house and rented a condo.  The next time I want to sell off all my furniture and get a smaller furnished place.  Next get my "worldly goods" down to what will fit in a camper and head out somewhere.  When I'm done with North America, I could store the camper and get on a plane.

Everywhere I have gone in the world, I have been offered jobs teaching English (I used to be a professor before retiring).  One of these days I might set off to "teach my way around the world", stopping however long I felt like staying in any one country.

Stop in and share your thoughts whenever you're ready...we'll be here.

lifesnotfair:

I've also thought quite a bit about possible compromises and midpoints between full-on "intentional community" and the (broken) standard suburban/urban mode of isolated nuclear families.  Have you looked into cohousing at all?

JS

It's not that I don't like the idea of intentional community...I dream of someday living in proximity to people who actually share my values. 

However, I've seen, visited, and been involved with enough intentional communities that I know how difficult and time-consuming it is to create one, let alone have it survive its founding members...especially with a group of independent thinkers, such as gnolls.  (It's much easier when everyone is a member of your cult!)  And the legal system discourages such cooperation at every turn...mundane things like building codes and zoning mean that it's nearly impossible to live as we choose in anywhere that isn't the middle of nowhere.

Meanwhile, living in community is a skill, and it requires a solid time commitment to learn and maintain.  Hunter-gatherers spend an inordinate amount of time talking, talking, talking, in order to smooth out social friction.  Just like none of us could survive if we were dropped in the Kalahari, because we didn't grow up learning the skills required to make weapons and hunt, none of us have the skills required to live together in community.  As for myself, I've been living alone for so long that I'm not sure I'm capable of making the required sacrifices.

I'm not saying it's impossible.  I'm saying it's very difficult -- and at least at first, we would spend much more time dealing with new problems than being in the community would solve.

But yes, increasing your independence is the first step.  Without it, you have no decisions to make!

JS

But sitting and writing about being sad wont help. So I too was looking for ideas, solutions. Hence why I brought up at least ONE idea, although mr. Stanton doesn't seem to like it very much. But in my view, some type of community is at least better than my current situation. And let me reiterate my current situation is not "bad" by modern standards.. I have almost finished paying our tiny little 90 square meter appartment (90% paid for, remember we're 29). I have two beautiful kids, work at a family company that is doing well financially... in other people's view I should be jumping and screaming in happyness. And I understand, it's a matter of perspective of course. Those in deep debt would give a limb to be in my position. Don't get me wrong, I'm not rich, but I'm doing decently in that regard. Yet I feel so "empty" when I look at the big picture.

Why do people discuss different technologies of TV screens? I was made fun of because I bought too simple a TV (because my previous one, which was one of the "old", big ones, got broken). People discuss their phones and the sh*t they do (mine is as simple as they get, no internet on it either, no messaging and it''s off 95% of the time). What is it with the car thing? Funny, as a younger man I was a car fanatic and even had some nice (300zx, Supra...). Now I see it as nerga. People walking in malls "shopping" in these huge stores, paying ridiculous prices for little pants and shirts and hats and purses... lol, are we really this stupid? 3 thousand bucks for a hat? Or a WATCH? The other day I was reading about a town in greece where people is supossedly quite healthy, long-living, and not very stressed, and one of the things they said (at least an old guy who was interviewed) was that they didn't care much about the time in there. LOL. Yet others pay thousands for a piece of metal in their wrist. Did Grycka wear a watch? Haha.

But this is life in the city, it seems. People's idea of fun is going indoors, malls and shopping centers. Even entertainment has to be PAID for, which is ridiculous.

I don't know why I feel this is an appropiate place to type this rants... sorry if I am bothering anyone. I just thought anyone who comes here would actually kindof understand. 🙂

Anyways (yes, to conclude on another note)... I do agree with J. Stanton, that living simpler is key to all of this. Whatever the solution is, what he suggested in his last reply here is great and I agree 100%. The more "independent" one is, the better chances of doing what you like (whatever that is). I guess I need to keep thinking.

I think the "second step" is increasing our independence, financial and otherwise.  (Paul's post about "satisficing", above, is aimed at that goal.)

Financially, it's impossible to take any concrete steps when you're tied to a job and a commute and huge monthly payments…and while you don't need to have enough savings to quit and never work again, you need some sort of cushion (whether through a combination of savings, lack of expenses, or both) that lets you try out new life pathways that aren't guaranteed to produce a regular paycheck.  If your constraints are "I must find another regular paycheck, as large or larger than my current paycheck, within commuting distance of the house I own", your life will be very, very limited.  In contrast, whereas if your constraints are "I can do almost anything for nine months, after which I'll either have to go back to work or be generating some money…though less than half of what I would need with a mortgage and a leased SUV", you have many more potential choices.  And if your constraints are "I can do absolutely nothing for five years if I want", your future might be so wide-open that it gives you option paralysis!

eddie:

Actually, I think there are two steps immediately after "understanding the problem".  One is becoming more independent, as above.  The second is "make more gnolls".  The more gnolls there are, the more resources with which we can make progress,

JS

I think the key is to become a satisficer.

We spend our lives chasing more and more. We get jobs that require us to spend more on nice suits, good shirts, watches, have the right cars and so on ... and then we find that our hourly rate has dropped significantly when we find ourself in a hotel room on our own the other side of the country and really just wonder if the pay rise was worth all that.

If we can dip just under that bar and get to do some truly useful work in simple appropriate clothes without a posh watch and in a twenty five year old car that you truly love driving, that would be about right. Yeah, I've got this game sussed 🙂

Thereafter, drop hours, move off into something you truly love doing and make that your thing ... make that your thing and teach it, motivate others, guide others ... that's my next step.

The first is nerga, and ditching everything that is not genuinely useful. Push out everything that binds you to something pointless. Drop everything except that which is not used regularly, if not daily, that truly improves your life.

Individuals can do this. Communities which might spring out of like-minded people are so few and far between that I fancy they're quite literally pipe dreams at present.

But, the human frame is born to do that ... to dream ... to chase the fantastic and make it happen.

my wife and i had a long talk about this thread last night the same day that i read it and it depressed me. i've been feeling the same way for some time now, a feeling of "there's got to be more to it than this" and not in a suicidal/depressed/not happy with my career kind of way either.

just thought i'd jump in and say we understand and feel this way too.

if we or you work out a solution lets make sure we share!!

The problem with forming a traditional "intentional community" is that the entire model of individual property ownership is fundamentally agrarian.  Unless your name is Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, you probably don't have the money to provide enough land to support a hunting-based society...and you couldn't afford the property taxes if you did.

That being said, there are transitional possibilities that involve locating next to large tracts of public land.  I think this makes the most sense...we don't need to build anything, we just want to hunt there 🙂

Another approach is treating "civilization" as the new savanna.  Actual hunting and gathering is difficult (though it doesn't have to be time-consuming)...it's why we have big brains in the first place!  And none of us learned to hunt or gather as we grew up: we were trained to do algebra and read French and other skills that aren't useful on the African savanna, but can be useful in "civilization".  Meanwhile, tying yourself to a mortgage (literally: mort gage, "death pledge"), and being stuck either with one employer or a succession of soul-destroying commutes, is becoming harder and harder to swing to one's financial advantage, let alone one's health and sanity.  Instead, think of yourself as a forager, using your personal and career skills to "forage" for money and survival needs...and instead of trying to create a stable "home" (which will be contingent anyway), embrace the transitory nature of modern life and live lightly so that you're mobile enough to take advantage of opportunities wherever you find them.  Your tribe, your pack, becomes more of a virtual fission-fusion thing at this point, as the logistics of moving around a big group are extremely complicated.

I admit, however, that if I could afford (or otherwise engineer) a way to live closer to the ground, in community with others who shared this knowledge and whose dream wasn't fundamentally agrarian, I would love to be part of it, because I (like you) have always felt that need for community.  Probably I need to think outside the USA-shaped box.

Of course, if you read TGC carefully, you would realize that all this eventually comes to a dead-end without a re-engineering of what it means to be physically human.  But we must start somewhere.

JS

Thanks for the welcome, I smile back at ya. 🙂