Strategies for creating healthy, mutually supportive, local, communities

​Assumptions

Community means people we associate with and feel connected to by a common purpose or aim. Local means within an hour's drive.  Mutually supportive means being interested in each other and willing to spend time doing things together that benefit one or the other or both.  Healthy includes spiritual, emotional and physical health, or respect for our spirit, our lifestyle, and our physical well-being.  

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Strategies:  

 

Regular meetings - mostly in person, occasionally on video.  Comprehensive meeting protocols to assure that meetings are engaging and efficient and decisions and expectations are clear and followed up.  

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Cultural: Conversational explorations to harmonize worldviews and core beliefs to give us confidence in our ability to work together.  Respecting the differences and practicing tolerance for differing beliefs.  Always speaking from one's own experience.  Using I statements and not being concerned about what you think other people believe.

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Justice:  Silence is not consent and active consent is key to creating a just society. Actively participating in recognizing and adjudicating harm by having a fair grievance process, and eventually a Jural Assembly based on Commonsense Common Law.  Acknowledge our right to the capital our capacities warrant. 

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Economic:  Develop associations of consumers to help us to articulate our needs and desires and prompt the development of businesses that serve our conscious choices, for example, real CSAs.  Develop the ideas and methods we need to assure that sole proprietors and cooperative businesses are properly capitalized and the prices include everything necessary to assure that social or environmental costs are not externalized.

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Summary

Respect the differences in our beliefs and emphasize the ideals of love and freedom so our culture will be healthy.  Replace "silence is consent" with active participation in decision making at all levels to give us a just society.  Acknowledge and implement our right to the capital our capacities warrant to give us an abundant economy.  Replace rivalous tribalism with collaborative holism.