Intentional Communities

Hello everyone! Sorry I took a little bit of a break for Thanksgiving, and I hope every one of you had a wonderful holiday! 

I wanted to talk a little bit about something I knew existed, but never really looked into. Intentional communities are groups of like-minded individuals who come together usually on communally owned land and share all possessions. Generally, emphasis will be put on being self-sufficient, by growing food, raising animals, using alternative energy, like solar or wind, digging wells and making items to sell for money. There are a few different categories that fall under the title of an intentional community, secular, spiritual, ecovillages, communes (which means the same thing smh), and communities that take in addicts for a safe place for rehab or sober living.

There were a few specific places that caught my attention. The first was permaculture.

Permaculture is a type of farming that is not only organic and sustainable but is also designed in patterns that are modeled in nature. It is eco-friendly and beautiful. Created by Bill Mollison in 1978, he first coined the term and wrote books teaching others how to adopt this philosophy in their own gardens. Since then, and especially now, people have adopted it not only for their individual gardens but in community gardens, where room and board (generally in a yurt) is free if you contribute to the garden and the community. I find the ideas of creating a sustainable and organic lifestyle such as this to be beautiful and I hope that this catches on so that we can better feed our families. As well as, to take better care of the earth that we were blessed with.

The next community that caught my eye was Freetown Christiana in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Freetown Christiana is considered a micronation. Which, according to Wikipedia is an entity that claims to be an independent nation or state but is not recognized by world governments or major international organizations. Christiana was created in 1971 when it’s people squatted in an old military barracks in Copenhagen. The city is largly anarchist and does not observe the laws of the region, instead created it’s own. The laws in Christiana are simple and to the point, no hard drugs, no violence. There are a few more but that is generally the rule of thumb.

Even though, they do not want hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines in their city, they do have a very successful marijuana and hash trade. The city is famous for Pusher Street, the street where most of the sales of pot and hash are located. There has been quite a lot of controversy over the sales of these drugs, mostly because of the violence brought on by rival organizations outside the city walls. The biker gang Bulls***t, (really I didn’t make that up!) took over the drug trade in the area and so clashed with Christiana, culminating in a man being cut up and buried beneath the floor of a building. They have also seen trouble from Hell’s angels, as well as the Danish government who wanted this drug trade shut down over the years. Seriously, I don’t know who wouldn’t find this place fascinating! 

The next community that I found interesting was The Bruderhof Communities.

Bruderhof, which means place of brothers in German, was started in Germany by Eberhard Arnold in 1920. It is a Christian community that is run on the example set by the Apostles found in Acts 2 and 4 in the Bible. They share everything and all money goes into a common pot to be used for the needs of the members or for the running of the community. They are Anabaptist and were inspired by The Hutterites, though they have some different beliefs on certain things. 

The community had to flee the Nazis during WWII, and ended up in England. They now have communities in America and many other countries around the world. 

They do not watch TV or use the internet in their homes. But some of the members do have smart phones and they run a website and social media accounts. Some also have vlogs about their lives. They seem closely related to the Amish, in the way that they live separate from society, but they use electricity and drive cars. I think these groups are very interesting but I could never put roots in one place that is so separate from the world. Besides, I would miss Starbucks! 😉

Well, that is the end of my research for now, I hope you have enjoyed reading about these places as much as I have enjoyed writing about them!