In the history of Life@Arcosanti we have a culture that has developed. While we see the possible negative implications of the paternalistic rule of Soleri and its imprint on the culture, we also see that despite this some interesting things have emerged. One of these is the way in which we used to come together in these special events designed to focus the whole site's energy on a barn raising type clean-up or project.
The truck that would bring the bronze could not reach the foundry directly so we use to have to move the bronze from where the truck could drop it off to where the foundry. Just about everyone on site would take a break from their everyday work and come together to form a human chain. We would call it chaining the bronze and oftentimes it would descend into harmless but fun horseplay.
Another aspect of people synergies at Arcosanti we Camp Clean-up. This is where we would come together on a specified date and time and help clean up camp. A lot of the problem was of the increasingly transitory nature of Camp. That is the focus of the project shifted away from it and focused above the Mesa. Regardless things we might let things slide a bit too much and finally someone in a leadership position like David Tollas would make a call for a synergy to clean up and fix camp. No could ever say no, but sometime we would have to fine tune the date and time.
One of the great things about synergies was that it was a get a lot done with a lot of people attacking a problem. So there was a psychological effect of people coming together as a community to solve a problem Disputes would inevitably arise but what usually prevailed was a common spirit to work together and get things done. I believe that many of us felt that there was at a very basic level this realization of Bucky Fuller's idea of how to re-create natural dynamic relationships in human systems - Synergy!
References:
The definition of Synergy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synergy