Why are so many ICs ghetto and full of bums?

Why do they build ramshackle buildings that are unstable and ugly? Why do they let the hours and days go by without working or building? Why don't they maintain what they have? How can they expect to survive on charity, asking for donations and kickdowns to get by? Where the hell is the work ethic? Do they really think that a lazy way of life is sustainable? Or are they just trying to fake it as long as possible?

 

And if you think this is aimed at anyone, you are wrong. These things seem to be practically universal among hippies and ICs.

 

Even the successful ones. Go to ic.org right now, and you can find a place where twin oaks is asking for 8 grand to work on an outdoor kitche. Wtf guys? You are one of the most successful communities in the country. Why the fuck can't you budget and earn and work to build your own damn kitchen? Do you really think that asking for a handout is a respectable or sustainable way of life? It is so disillusioning for me. So disappointing to see that of all these people that dream to live the same way I do, they can't be hard working and responsible enough to make their own way, and make things that are nice and that last.

 

Questions like this from lower perspectives are to be expected, and its very much ok. To explain, one must first understand what levels of consciousness are, and they rage from very ill to perfect, ignorance to all knowing. All of us started at the bottom somewhere in cosmic history, however it is more likely a matter of the great forgetting, but that's another story. Anyway, to explain, when a conscience is well developed,we discover there is a natural flow of taking and giving, this flow is the grace of God. These souls are well aware that the only approval they need is that of their God the creator. The master key to all God's graces is within each and every soul. The trick is to overcome the challenge of finding the key, and its is you who "chose" the level of that challenge.

For any soul wishing to gain a better understanding ( perspective) I, or better put "we" are more than grateful to assist you. ( message or email any time ) God bless you all, live well my friends.

 

Nothing like some easy questions!

I don't want to imply that there aren't lazy sloppy people living in buildings made of tar paper stretched between old car bodies, but here is a different story that might apply to one or two ICs you've seen or heard of. And I'm exaggerating, just a little bit, hope it makes you laugh!

Many IC were started on a shoe-string budgets - the land was hundreds of thousands of dollars which nobody had, but somehow they scraped it together so there was no money left for anything else - things like building materials were scrounged (or 'borrowed') rather than bought, contractors were unaffordable, and people did the best they could with what they had. Sleeping in the back of a van gets old, even when you are 22.

And, look, we are in a forest, who needs asphalt shingles or siding - we can cut up these dead trees and make beams and planks and make cedar or redwood shingles - I saw some guy at Museum do that, people did it for hundreds of years, let's go to the library (or research it on the internet at Starbucks.) Its easy. ​

Right! Shingle are easy if you have the right kind of clear grain wood that is seasoned and you have a froe and know how to use it, and a sharp chainsaw - you get really good at 'riving' after 40 or 50 hours of practice - and then you have to figure out how not to split the shingles when you nail them on, and the result is that your first building looks like the squirrels had a fight and left behind a big pile of huge wood chips. Even though you've mostly figured it out, and only lost the tip of one finger, you Never Want To Do That again, so when you build the next building its 'no more post and beam' so let's try 'cob' - and you go through the learning curve from the beginning again, and the next building looks like two eight year olds found a huge mud puddle. And so on. And since each building is 'brittle' and 'fragile' no one will touch them until they have to - 'the roof wasn't leaking until you started to fix it!' So nothing gets fixed or repaired until "we have the money to tear it down and rebuild it from scratch" - which means "never."

So the reason we all moved here together is so that we don't have to wear heels or neckties to work and be in a cubicle or stand behind a counter, but, hey, we have to pay real estate taxes and pay for health care and car insurance (hopefully no mortgage!) - we bought land in the middle of nowhere - beautiful, unspoiled, sort-of affordable but no local economy as well - but so 'for the good of all', some of them commute long distances to dead end McJobs they hate and when they get home they are too exhausted to do anything or fix anything.

But that is just 'temporary'. Don't worry, Our commune is going to have a business, right?

Organic farming? If you didn't grow up on a farm or in a garden, you probably have no idea how much hard work it is - there are dozens of reasons why all those people left rural America and ran to those factories and cities! But, hey, its quiet and pretty, and then when you take your 30 pounds of beautiful organic radishes to the roadside stand to sell them for 39 cents a pound you will earn enough to buy one bundle of shingles. Yes, you could grow organic arugula under contract for the gourmet restaurant at the tourist destination 147 miles away - if you know how to do that level of farming (greenhouses, cold frames, etc to extend the season, pick everything very young and cosmetically perfect) and you know how to create and negotiate those deals. And then you have to be ready for the potato bugs or the big drought or the attack of the were-rabbits.

You can have a restaurant - health codes and sanitary inspections and grease traps and commercial ranges and customers and yelp reviews .... any idea what the failure rate is for new restaurants?

Or you can make something, manufacture something unique and in demand and that isn't already being "hand made" in China or Vietnam or Indonesia and imported. But if you make $1 per beeswax candle before taxes, and the mortgage is $1,000 per month and gasoline is $3.65 per gallon .... how many candles would a wood chuck chuck at you before going to work at McDonalds for $8.95 per hour?

Unless you've started and run a small business, its just ... hard. And running a small business is hard anyway. And the economy has been tough.
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So, yes, lots of communities are broke. And sometimes it seems like it is easier to get donations (charity) than to earn money.

And if you read carefully the history of many of the old, established, famous communes, you'll see in the fine print that there came a day of reckoning in the late 70s or mid 80s when they all sat looking at the bank balance (zero) and the bills, and finally someone said "OK, I know how we used to do it, but if we want to survive, we have to do it differently. If you don't work, you don't eat, let's work out a system of job assignments and time cards and ...."

Yeah, sometimes, its like that.

And if you look at the data, what you'll see is that something like 90% of all ICs fail, most with the first two to three years, and its the rare one that lasts 10 years.

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Where I live, our family business does pay the mortgage and a bit more, and is slowly growing, and for the past 16 years we have slowly been remodeling and rebuilding all our buildings and regrading our roads and installing insulation and double pane windows and bringing buildings modified by amateurs up to electrical code, fire code, health code. Its a lot of work, and it has cost us a lot of money. But its worth it.

 

Thank you George.

You are right about the hardships and difficulties. I have tried to sell produce, it is hard. I have built things and realized the better way to do it only after I was done. There is a steep learning curve. It's not for everyone.

What I have seen more of in my researching and visiting ICs is that there isn't a lot of work ethic. I see people that think they can live a leisurely life. And you can't blame a lack of ability to do the work, when it is simple jobs that aren't done.

I think it's partly the hippie pot smoking mentality. It makes you complacent. I wish I could find an IC with the openmindedness and love of hippies, and the gritty calloused 12 hour day work ethic of an old farmer.

 

Hmmm...I'm on one, the people are total phony-cons, they run multiple boards and leach people with phony "crisis!" "Fund raisers" - but they're really old bullshit hippies who can't make enough off their over priced dope.
Raunchy. But the members are good people.

 

Cause communism mostly appeals to lazy people... when all the communists get together you start with lazy and then have a system that encourages it even more.

 

Our farm is completely different, but we're on a more "independent sharing" style. Buncha poor people helping each other and kind, fun company.
But I have life-long farming and primitive skills, a master anvil smith and more ~ I agree it is hard for people, but they can learn and adapt fast like their ancestors did.
It is the people who want an "unfair" deal that are most let down. It's really hard to be the "talking about stuff town hippy" when the content and natural man is what is called for.
Remember, in the forest, no one will sit and listen to your philosophy or wisdom. They will only wonder where a man's hands who possess's it are.
The thing I hate the most, is "cult of personality" communes and "intentional" communities. The former's guru runs out of bullshit and magic all too soon and the latter are pits of "committee dykes and dithering men" spending endless hours "talking" about life and how everybody should act and for all the life and nature around them, missing it completely in vain, competative, empty "pc kindergarten". The hell of the "utopian dictator or dictator-ess" who tries to solve imagined things by making others fucking miserable.

But, you can go together into the forest and find great beauty and peace. For years. I was the last to leave rosewood and I will be among the first to walk on it's sattelite farm here.
We had to leave where we were because the inbreds and redneck's were starving out and turning their society, if you can call it that, cannabalistic. No one cares either.