Are there any viable LATOC communities out there?

[wordnerd]

I don't know anything about them - but I do have this site bookmarked
http://www.ic.org/
http://directory.ic.org/
Intentional Communities

[mule]

To those who wish to learn farming via animal power:

I have had experience with the anabaptist folks in the past and currently have business dealings with many.  Mennonites, old order or otherwise as well as Amish will help you if you but ask.  Be sincere and tell them what your needs are and be aware that their time is valuable and their work days are longer than machine based farmers.  They regularly farm and log with horse drawn equipment as well as repair and build same.

[terra-ist]

So, it's 10 months since I asked this question and have moved to Monteverde in Costa Rica, but I'm not convinced this will be a secure place ATOC. So I'm still looking.

The places people talked about so far were all in the US and I can't live there. I know about the ic.org site and have even lived on one of the communities listed, but it's not easy to figure out from listings whether they are attempting to be viable post oil. Mostly they're isolated and car dependent. The 'community' I lived on was more like a rural subdivision - nothing collective was happening. I think a lot are like that. That's why I asked for help in finding somewhere.

So is anything happening yet? It doesn't seem like any transition towns are really approaching anything like viable. It seems like it's mostly a small proportion of the population that is involved and they're not becoming seriously prepared. Am I wrong?

[IndianGirl]

try http://www.auroville.org/

Not exactly latoc...but sensible, and devoted to a return to the earth philosophy. Also multi racial - 2/3rd of the pop is non Indians ( american, europeans, aussie's)

[ralfy]

There are lots in poor countries. For example,

http://www.psdn.org.ph/sdvillage.ph/community.htm

[IndianGirl]

Ralfy,

don't u think its insensitive and plain bigoted to call them "poor countries"? Agreed we don't have a mountain of debt as big as America...and agreed that we don't have employment problems like u..but do you have to call us poor?

You did the same thing in you 200 million poor post..again same opinions in the medical tourism post...do you have to show the world what an ass you are?

[ralfy]

I would like to agree with you, but the numbers go against such. For example, I'm writing from the Philippines, which faces the following problems:

50 percent of students cannot complete basic education. Half drop out by the end of primary education, half of those remaining drop out by the end of secondary education. The No. 1 reason is poverty.

40 percent of children are undernourished, and the country has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the region.

There are more problems, from health care (less than 10 percent of doctors work outside cities, and the country has one of the lowest percentages of national budget allocated to public health care) to internal security (something like one police officer for every 100,000 citizens, and most soldiers lack basic equipment such as combat boots), and the country has a poverty rate ranging from around 40 percent of the national population (according to the government) to 60-88 percent (according to non-government organizations).

Worldwide, we see similar problems. For example, from what I remember, only around 20 percent of people in the world have sufficient access to one or more basic needs, such as potable water, electricity, and health care. Around two-thirds of the global population survive on only a dollar or two a day. Most are barely able to complete basic education. Infant mortality rates remain high in the poorest countries, and lifespans much shorter than average. Wars are becoming more savage as more civilians are caught in the crossfire or die of disease or starvation.

And yet for all that, poor people have managed to survive as much as they can, especially in rural areas, and even as they face all sorts of problems, including not only lack of basic needs but also drought, floods, and all sorts of human threats, including corrupt soldiers to subversives demanding a revolutionary tax to bandits and hench men of landowners.

It's not that I mean to be sensitive, but these are facts that one can easily discover by reading various publications, such as UN Human Development Reports. And to those who live in developing countries, these are facts that are very difficult to ignore, even if one lives in enclaves like business districts and suburbs.

I am also aware that it makes me sound like an ass (even though I'm part of the middle class in a poor country) but most members of this forum are part of the middle class or of industrialized countries, and it might be helpful if we can remind ourselves that what we fear most people around the world have lived for decades. For all we know, we might even have to learn to survive from them.

[WeedEater]

         Bumping thread to check on later
 

[ellen45]

While it is true that many of the "ecovillage" model communities I have looked into seem a little idealistic and impractical, they are STILL way closer to living a life that would be feasible post oil.  The journey to sustainability is just that, a journey.  Some communities are a little farther down the path than others and others are on the wrong path altogether (buying too much into expensive houses, overly techie power sources, $45,000 hybrid cars) still at least they are working as experiments into what is working and what isn't.   We have lost a lot of knowledge and infrastructure to support simple lifestyles, weird as that may sound, and it takes a while to make the changes necessary.  Some communities,  for instance, are doing great at living virtually without fossil fuels but not so great at raising enough grain/legumes to feed their populace.  Others are terrific at producing food but they are still too dependent on cars and fossil fuels.   

But if and when TSHTF, I'm guessing your odds of surviving would be a lot higher if you were associated with an established community that at least was making progress in this areas than scorning them because they're not perfect and going it alone.

[the Black Hunter]

We farm with horses ala the Amish, and in fact have some Amish-built equipment and harness.  We train these horses ourselves.  We don't own a tractor.  We believe the ones who will survive the future will indeed be the ones who have community, which - because we have none -  means community building unless you are one of the established anabaptist groups mentioned.

At one point my partner and I were investigating the idea of offering ourselves, our animals, our gear, our skill and our knowledge as a sort of "post-oil technology package" that could simply be plugged into the appropriate intentional community.  We thought - and still think - that this would be a tremendous asset to any forming community geared towards post peak survival.  I sent out inquiries to a number of communities.

The response?  There hasn't been one.  Not one single reply from any of these places.  Not "no thanks", not "we'll think about it", not "tell us more", not "we hate animals", not "get lost"... not nothing.  Not impressive.

My impression is that most of these places have only the slightest selective clue about what we are facing.  They are not, in my mind, truly ready to get serious.  As for us, we are exploring other avenues for finding folks who are.

[WeedEater]

Black Hunter,

It's an interesting situation, one that as a newbie, should be less perplexing, but I've made multiple attempts at maintaining survival clubs over the years, and none of them have worked out for longer than a period of months.  I feel like this is something a sociologist or anthropologist should be able to answer:  What is the missing ingredient to forming community?

[Chesyre]

    What is the missing ingredient to forming community?
   

collapse is the missing ingredient , until it happens there will be no community worth a fuck . even the ones now in western lands have the hidden luxuries of cheap fossil fuels.  as long as the JIT system can roll no need to armed patrol the tater patches.
society of fossil fuel/fiat addicts needs to hit bottom before it can recover, it will be a long dark bloody fall to the bottom of the gorge too.
 got savage ruthless amoral friends ?

[WeedEater]

yeah, Chesrye, I guess that's it, the life or death seriousness of it.  I'm dealing with that in an employment issue.  Wanna live or not?  Those are the true deciding factors....too bad we won't be able to trade cheerful insults about it when it comes to that!

[FarmTeam]

We have found much the same situation as Black Hunter and the rest.... we have offered our homestead as a hub, we have offered intern positions, and (to both) the lack of response is deafening.  I like to think that means that lots of people are planning ahead and have already taken the steps they need to... I like to think it means that they just do not need us... but I fear the reality is that most will not begin to plan until the collapse is upon them...  and I pity those.   Its going to be hard enough with planning and foresight... without it I do not think many will thrive.  Our own community is strong enough, maybe... but we still want to gather more like minds.  Greetings from south central Wisconsin..... time to get back to prep work now...

[nicekitty]

The ideal that DH and I have is to become part of a sustainable community, but there are so many hitches to get over.  One is money/work.  While we'd love to work only on the farm, that is just not viable until you have paid off the mortgage on said farm.  So, we had to be living in an area where I could transfer to.  We bought some (relatively) cheap land in that sort of area, but that is about as far as we've been able to get, to date.  We will have to build a house/cabin/shack out there, and our choices of exactly how simply to live are constrained by local and national building codes.  For instance, we can't build anything unless there is a road to it.  Any idea how much 1.5 miles of road costs?  Yeah, bit of a problem. 

Then there are the wishes and concerns of my Mom, who has gone in on this project with us.  She is a little afraid of having anyone else on 'her' land.  We have to respect that.  The land around us has not come up for sale, and even if it did, we could not afford any of it right now.  We don't know of anyone willing to move to our area to start from scratch, partly because there is not much work, and what does exist will involve a fair bit of commuting. 

Neither of us is very interested in joining any of the sustainable communities we've heard of to date - many are far too hippy, and some / a lot seem to tolerate / encourage smoking dope, which I have no use for and don't want to have anything to do with.  As the Black Hunter mentioned earlier, a lot of the environmentally-based ones would have a fit over us killing deer/ cows / chickens for food.  The ecovillages I've seen in our area are still working off the same basic concepts of our broken society - just that the 3,500 sq foot house is solar-powered. 

So, we've mulled the idea over, and have sort of shelved it for now.  We're focusing on getting things going for the four of us, to start...