This is part of a series of articles in regard to building an intentional community. You can find all chapters here. Also, this is a draft, a point of starting the conversation so i encourage you to get involved.

They say a strong community needs a strong leader. I say otherwise: a strong community must have no leader. How can we organize? How can we have cooperation, peace and a sustainable social construct?

Lets first deal with the issue of a leader.
Any type of hierarchical organizational system involves only one spot at the top and when there is only one spot there will be a social incentive and politics involved. The social incentive will not promote great people but the one that need recognition and love power. Politics is not a system meant to promote the best candidate but the one with the best rhetorics and great abilities to manipulate. With such a system great people will not have the time for shady deals nor the need to prove themself.

So, we have a bunch of people, no leader, a lot of decisions to take, troubleshooting, naturally there will be misunderstanding and chances of chaos. So we need to organize in one way or another and for this we need sociocracy, non violent conflict resolution and facilitating.

Before we implement all of this we need a very important mindshift. We need to give up bad social behaviors like being right, convincing others, crushing the opposition, material accumulation, egoism and hiper individualism, voting, majority ruling, shaming, judging, noninvolvement, etc. With a fresh and healthy mindset we can start. So lets do it!

Sociocracy is a non hierarchical, distributed governance system. Unlike other systems, there is no leader, and decisions are made by consent. There will be founders, new and older members but no one will have more power than any other member of the community. For any task dedicated groups are created called circles. The circle consist only of people that either are involved in implementing the solution or people that are proficient in regard to that task. So we might have an agriculture circle, a construction circle, a land management circle, an education circle, a public relation circle, a mission circle. In each circle everyone has a voice, everyone speaks the same amount and when a decision is made, everyone decides by consent. All voices are heard and the decision must not be the best one but the one that everyone is comfortable with. If a circle needs something from others a representative is tasked to approach it and ask for advice or help. When everyone trusts that all the other circles take responsible and sustainable decisions, then your activity and the activity of your group will be more focused and you will make better decisions free from the burden of the decisions that other circles make.

In any group there will be misunderstandings and conflict. To manage this type of situation we can resolve the situation by approaching the individual that wrongs you and if that is not working slowly we take it patiently to a next level. We start from the idea that both partie have good intentions and search for a resolution. By direct approach, talking, and compassion we can reach an amicable resolution before it escalates.

When the two parties can’t see a solution agreeable to both of them, a facilitator is approached by both sides, someone that is trusted to be impartial and has no stakes in the issue. This is not a judge, nor will it pass a ruling, it’s only task is to guide the two sides, to help them hear what the other side is saying, feeling, experienced.

So actually what is needed for a sustainable community is well organized circles that have clear domains, a system of communication and of conflict resolution and skilled people that will facilitate all of this.

Cover photo by fauxels from Pexels.