Communities of Necessity, Choice, and Purpose

“We human beings are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.”

Dalai Lama XIV[1]

“Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life.”

Albert Einstein[2]

“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without interrelation with society, he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality.”

Mahatma Gandhi[3]

“Man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community.”

Cark Jung[4]

In the worldview of deep sustainability, we do not live or walk our path of purpose alone but in relationships with others. Everyone is interconnected with everyone else. Everything we do affects others, and everything others do affects us—sometimes negligibly and others critically. In the metaphorical maze of reality through which we walk, the actions of others open and close doors to pathways of opportunity for us, and our actions open and close doors for them. We are, “at any one and at the same time, both solitary and social beings.”  We co-create our individual and collective experiences of reality in relationship with others—in communities.

We are born and nurtured to adulthood by the actions of others. Our physical and mental survival throughout life depends on others. There is hardly a moment in our lives when we do not benefit from our relationships with other people. We share in their pleasures, comfort them in times of sorrow, and seek to improve their conditions of life as they seek to improve ours. Our sense of self-worth, in large part, depends on the respect and affection we receive from others.

Those physically or mentally isolated from family, community, and society cannot realize their oneness with the universe or suppress their egotism or self-centeredness. The harshest of human punishments, other than death, is solitary confinement—complete aloneness. We are social beings and cannot in the long term exist without community. The sustainability of human life on Earth depends on the sustainability of communities.

Communities of Necessity

When I was growing up on a small family farm during the 1940s and 1950s, we still had strong rural communities. Farming communities of those times were interwoven networks of people who knew each other mainly out of necessity. Many of the essential tasks on family farms couldn’t be accomplished by a single farmer or farm family. Farming was a community affair, by necessity.

One of my early memories is my grade school teacher letting us kids go outside to watch the steam engine that powered a threshing machine move slowly down the road. Men with teams of horses followed the big machine from farm to farm. Crews of up to forty men and boys were needed to thrash grain and fill silos with silage and barns with hay. Each farmer provided their share of farm equipment and labor. My Dad’s share was first a team, then a tractor, a wagon, and labor, as there were three school-age boys in our family. Haying crews tended to be smaller because there was less equipment involved, but it still took a crew—a community. The men and boys worked hard, but a lot of “horseplay” and socializing also took place at these gatherings. There was a feeling of belonging—of social connectedness.

The “farm wives” also renewed relationships during these times of harvest. Several women and girls would gather at the host farms on harvest days to help the hosting wife prepare the noon meal for the harvest crews. The tables might fill and empty with two or three settings of eaters to get everyone fed, the women and children eating last. The farm women also had their own groups or social clubs that gathered periodically to make quilts and comforters to keep their families warm in winter. They also helped each other to can fruit, make jams and preserves, or cut up meat and make sausage on butchering days. The work was often strenuous and sometimes tedious and tiresome, but the varied conversations helped pass the time and maintained social connectedness. 

These communities of necessity were interconnected through local churches and schools. Everybody knew everybody in their own churches, as well as most folks in the other churches nearby. The parents of kids who went to school together all knew each other through school sports and social activities. Visiting on Sunday wasn’t limited to kinfolks but also included neighbors. People visited and passed the time of day at the local country stores and barber shops, filling stations, and farmers’ cooperative exchanges in nearby towns.  “Giving someone a hand” wasn’t limited to helping during emergencies, but was given any time someone “needed a hand.”

These communities not only helped rural people make a living but also gave them a common sense of purpose and brought fullness and meaning to their day-to-day lives. They had responsibilities to fulfill in their communities. What they did or didn’t do mattered, not just to them but to others. Personal relationships back then, as always, were difficult to maintain, and disagreements naturally arose. But country folks knew they needed to “get along to get by.” They weren’t going to move away and live somewhere else simply because of a difficult relationship with a neighbor, and neither were their neighbors. The challenges of community, as well as the rewards, added a sense of purpose, meaning, and quality to day-to-day rural life.

But “times changed” in rural America. The industrialization of agriculture removed the physical and economic necessity for community-based farming. Individually-owned field choppers replaced the big silo crews, individually-owned combines replaced the big threshing crews, and inexpensive hay balers replaced the big haying crews of my youth. Sharing work with other farmers was no longer necessary. Farmers were free to harvest their own crops, whenever they chose, rather than wait their turn to be helped by neighbors. Even on farms without their own harvesting equipment, the work-sharing groups were far smaller. Modern kitchen and household conveniences also eliminated the need for farmwives to share housework and homemaking tasks. Factories made many of the things farm families had previously made from scratch more affordable. Farm families may have had more free time, but fewer reasons to spend it with others in their local communities.

Social circles in farming communities narrowed still further as farms grew larger and surviving family farms became fewer and farther apart. With fewer farm families, many rural schools were consolidated into larger schools, and rural churches struggled to survive. With improved roads and cars, farm families bypassed the country stores and even nearby towns to shop in larger stores elsewhere. Relationships became fewer still as the people grew older and their kids left the community to raise their families elsewhere. Rural kids who grew up and chose to “stay home” were often labeled as not being among the “best or brightest.” Some were “bribed” to stay home by the promise of inheriting the family farm or the family business in town.

New rural residents were likely to be immigrants desperate for work or people fleeing the cities for a variety of reasons. Some picked fruit or harvested crops for industrial agricultural operations, and others worked on the large “factory farms” that replaced most family farms. Some new residents were simply trying to escape the high living costs in cities. The new and remnant residents of rural communities may be decent, hardworking, caring people, but they have no shared commitment to a common vision of the future. The relationships that have survived are transactional rather than social. Eventually, most people in rural communities didn’t bother to get to know their new neighbors because they didn’t think they needed to. Communities were no longer necessary, and the sense of community was lost.

Contrary to popular belief, this loss of community was not inevitable. It is the logical consequence of a society that gives economic individual self-interest priority over the common interest of people in communities and societies.  Personal relationships have been systematically replaced by impersonal market transactions—buying and selling—in the pursuit of economic benefits that arise from greater economic efficiency. The social value that arises from a sense of personal connectedness and belonging has been maligned and belittled as nostalgic or ignored—“longing for the good ole days that never were.” Actually, “they were good,” in general, even when “times were hard.”

Most people in today’s rural communities no longer share in the good times of others, comfort each other in times of sorrow, or seek to improve each other’s conditions of life. Their sense of self-worth is diminished by the lack of respect and affection received from others. They are mentally isolated from society and thus cannot realize their oneness with the universe. They submit to egotism and arrogance in their search of self-worth. But they are still social beings and their way of life is not sustainable without community.

Wendell Berry summarized the current plight of rural America in a letter to the book editor of the New York Times: “The business of America has been largely and without apology the plundering of rural America, from which everything of value—minerals, timber, farm animals, farm crops, and “labor”—has been taken at the lowest possible price. As apparently none of the enlightened ones has seen in flying over or bypassing on the interstate highways, it’s too-large fields are toxic and eroding, its streams and rivers poisoned, its forests mangled, its towns dying or dead along with their locally owned small businesses, its children leaving after high school and not coming back. Too many of the children are not working at anything, too many are transfixed by the various screens, too many are on drugs, too many are dying.”[5]

My story is one of rural America because that is where I grew up and where my professional interests have been focused since. However, unrestrained economic extraction and exploitation have had the same destructive effects on both rural and urban communities. The good-paying jobs in inner-city factories during earlier stages of industrialization allowed people to meet their material needs through economic transactions rather than rely on personal relationships of earlier urban communities. Over time, machines replaced workers, and factories moved to rural areas where there were no labor unions to protect workers, and people were willing to work harder for less pay.

People in the inner cities were left not only without jobs but also without communities. Some fled to the suburbs. Others were trapped in inner cities by racial discrimination and an inability to adjust to employment opportunities elsewhere. Some remaining inner-city youth seek community by joining gangs. Some resort to sexual promiscuity in search of caring relationships, even if only superficial and fleeting. Single parenthood, a frequent result, ensures there will at least be a child to love, who hopefully will love in return. Others turn to alcohol or drugs to escape the loneliness. Others live quiet and lonely lives of desperation. Many of those who succumbed to the epidemic of loneliness once lived in vibrant, interconnected urban communities of once-thriving industrial cities. Rural communities have simply been led down the same path to social disconnectedness that urban communities took before them.

A 2017 Wall Street Journal article calls “Rural America the New Inner City.” It began, “For more than a century, rural towns sustained themselves, and often thrived, through a mix of agriculture and light manufacturing. Until recently, programs funded by counties and townships, combined with the charitable efforts of churches and community groups, provided a viable social safety net in lean times. Starting in the 1980s, the nation’s basket cases were its urban areas—where a toxic stew of crime, drugs, and suburban flight conspired to make large cities the slowest-growing and most troubled places. Today, however, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows that by many key measures of socioeconomic well-being, those charts have flipped. In terms of poverty, college attainment, teenage births, divorce, death rates from heart disease and cancer, reliance on federal disability insurance, and male labor-force participation, rural counties now rank the worst among the four major U.S. population groupings,” below inner-cities.

The difference in timing of the economic extraction and exploitation of rural and urban communities may explain much of the rural/urban cultural and political divide in the U.S. Those in urban communities hollowed out by economic exploitation and then abandonment have a more direct experience and clearer sense that their communities were destroyed by the large industrial corporations that first built and then closed factories, leaving them without jobs and without the means of meeting even their most basic needs without jobs—without communities.

They may blame the government for allowing the factories to close or not protecting their communities from the crime, drugs, and urban flight that followed the closing of the factories. However, they are more willing than most in rural communities to see the government as a means of helping them meet their basic needs so they can rebuild their communities and restore a desirable quality of life. They understand that what happened to their communities was not their fault but the result of a betrayal by the corporations that abandoned their community and a failure of their government to stop it. They still don’t seem to understand that the substitution of economic transactions for social relationships made them vulnerable to exploitation, and without community, the exploitation will continue.

Rural economic exploitation has been less direct than urban exploitation. The corporate agri-business establishment has framed the loss of family farms and the decay of rural communities as an inevitable consequence of a competitive market economy. People in rural America are told that government efforts to maintain competitive markets, protect the rural environment, and promote rural community development represent government interference in free enterprise rather than legitimate government responsibilities. They feel the government forces them to pay taxes that mainly benefit people who live in cities.

Those in rural communities are more likely to blame the government for the economic decay and social degradation of their communities rather than blame economic exploitation by agribusiness corporations. Some farms and local businesses thrived, while others struggled and failed. Those that failed were owned by people in the community, not some big corporation. The large farms and local businesses that have prospered are locally owned and operated. Those who have failed are left blaming either themselves or the government for their failure. The community is left blaming themselves or their neighbors for their inability to succeed. Like those in urban America, they don’t seem to understand that as they met more of their needs through economic transactions and less through social relationships, they made their communities increasingly vulnerable to economic exploitation.

These glimpses of the transformation from personally connected local communities to impersonal transactional economies provide insights into both the promises and challenges in creating sustainable communities for the future. Regardless, reversing the current culture of economism will not be won’t be quick or easy.  People are dependent on their corporate jobs to pay off education loans, housing loans, and auto loans, and make investments in the stock market for retirement. Those who are less economically secure, but are still not cold, hungry, or homeless, are even less willing or able to risk challenging the economic status quo. Even with the growing public awareness that something is fundamentally wrong with today’s impersonal transactional society, life still seems too risky or precarious to challenge the economic status quo.

In addition, most people in the U.S. and other so-called developed nations have enough food to eat, even if much of it is filled with calories and lacking in essential nutrients. They have comfortable places to live, even if they are heavily mortgaged.  They have more than enough clothes to wear and cars to take them where they need to go, and can afford at least a few luxuries, like eating out and taking family vacations. Even if they are lonely and depressed most of the time, they are too comfortable to risk changing the economic status quo. They have never experienced or developed an appreciation for the value of relationships or the necessity of community.

Communities of Choice

Most of today’s communities are communities of choice rather than necessity. People today may not be able to afford to live anywhere they might choose, but most people have some choice about where they want to live and who they want to relate to. Sociologists have identified several different kinds of communities based on the different reasons people choose to relate to others. They include communities of place, which are made up of people who, for various reasons, choose to reside in specific geographically defined places.[6] Communities of interest are groups that come together because of shared interests. Communities of practice are composed s of people with common professions or avocations. Communities of circumstance include people brought together by specific situations or occurrences. And, communities of action are formed so people can do things together that they can’t do individually. However, none of these are communities in the sense of previous rural and urban communities.

There are many definitions of community. One I like is: “[a group of] individuals who share a common interest, background, or purpose that gives them a sense of cohesion."[7] Another is “a group of people that care about each other and feel they belong together.”[8] Taking something from both, I define a community as “a group of people who know and care about each other and share a common sense of purpose.” Most communities of place today are not actually communities but just groups of people who have chosen to live in specific places for reasons that are unrelated to the other people who have chosen to live there. They don’t even know each other and thus can’t care about each other personally or even know if they share any common sense of purpose. It is difficult for people who don’t live in the same “places” to get to know and care enough about each other to form a real community.

Intentional Communities. However, there is a growing number of communities that people have chosen to create or join to live near and relate to like-minded neighbors. These new communities are trying to regain the sense of caring and personal connectedness that was lost as economic transactions replaced social relationships. All of these communities might be called intentional communities. They are intentionally formed and joined because of common interests with other people who live or will live there.

I once asked someone involved in the intentional community movement how an intentional community is different from what most people think of as community. She responded that most people choose where they want to work and then find a community to live in that will allow them to work there. People in intentional communities choose a community of people they want to live with and then find a way to make a living that will allow them to live there.

Intentional communities are characterized by common interests and shared values, and most are connected to specific places. They are communities of circumstance in the sense that they were established to address environmental, social, or economic concerns associated with contemporary ways of thinking. All are communities of action in that they are attempting to bring about change. Some are active agents of change, while others provide examples for the rest of society to follow.

The Foundation for Intentional Communities provides insight into the nature of their movement. The following are quotes from their website:[9]

“We believe human society has the potential to support the well-being of all people and the ecosystems of which we are a part, recognizing that the well-being of one depends on the well-being of all.” “We estimate there are a total of 3,500+ intentional communities in the United States alone. Our aim is to support and promote these communities as pathways towards a more sustainable and just world.” 

“We face an overwhelming and inextricably intertwined set of challenges. They are all results of mutually reinforcing systems, operating on a global scale, that perpetuate harm and foster violence. They include: Social isolation, division, disconnection, & trauma. Inequality, injustice, oppression, & exploitation. Climate disruption and ecological system collapse.”

“Because of their integrated, place-based nature, intentional communities provide unique opportunities to address a variety of issues in a holistic way. As places for sharing lives, resources, land, and purpose, they provide and maximize an interconnected set of ecological, social, and economic benefits. As a movement, intentional communities have unfulfilled potential to: Support the well-being of the people who live in them; Support each other; and support the shift the world needs towards cooperation, justice, and resilience. People need community. Communities need people.”

A subgroup of intentional communities that are organized and function with a shared purpose of ecological regeneration call themselves ecovillages. 

“An ecovillage is an intentional, traditional or urban community that is consciously designing its pathway through locally owned, participatory processes, and aims to address the Ecovillage Principles in the 4 Areas of Regeneration[10] (social, culture, ecology, economy into a whole systems design).” [11]

“Ecovillagers tend to actively work to build trust, collaboration, and openness between people, and to make sure they feel empowered, seen, and heard. Ecovillages often provide a sense of belonging through community relationships, common projects, shared goals, and social processes, but do not demand that everyone is the same – unity and strength through diversity is important to the ecovillage movement.”

“Ecovillages aim to build or regenerate diverse cultures that support people to empower and care for each other, their communities and the planet. Many actively engage with practices that encourage people to feel deeply connected to each other, to the planet, and to themselves. Celebration, art, dance and other forms of creative expression are often embraced as central to thriving human life and communities.”

“Ecovillages aim to access food, shelter, water and energy in ways that respect the cycles of nature. They aim to integrate humans with the rest of nature in ways that increase biodiversity and regenerate ecosystems, and that give people a chance to experience their interdependence with systems and cycles of life on a direct and daily basis.”

The Post-Carbon Institute promotes sustainable communities through relocalization. Relocalization is defined as “a strategy to build societies based on the local production of food, energy and goods, and the local development of currency, governance and culture. The main goals of relocalization are to increase community energy security, to strengthen local economies, and to improve environmental conditions and social equity.”[12]

Transition Towns is a movement that is attempting to restore ecological integrity and social equity to communities by relocalizing and personalizing their economies. The movement began in the United Kingdom in 2006, and by 2021, there were 1200 Transition group community initiatives in over 40 countries.[13] The following quotes are from Wikipedia.[14]

“The terms transition town, transition initiative and transition model refer to grassroots community projects that aim to increase self-sufficiency to reduce the potential effects of peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instability through renewed localization strategies, especially around food production and energy usage.”

’Transition Town initiatives provide spaces for experimentation where citizens can build community resilience and pioneer alternative environmental, economic and social solutions. This includes the (re)discovery of (new combinations of) old and new skills and services to increase socio-ecological and socio-economic independence, and experimenting with permaculture design principles for urban farming and local food production, cooperative production of renewable energy, time banks and other complementary currencies.”

Eco-municipalities are a similar relocalization movement that focuses on local governance as a means of facilitating the development of sustainable communities. The following quotes are from Wikipedia.[15]

“An eco-municipality or eco-town is a local government area that has adopted ecological and social justice values in its charter. The development of eco-municipalities stems from changing systems in Sweden, where more than seventy municipal governments have accepted varying principles of sustainability in their operations as well as community-wide decision-making processes. The purpose of these policies is to increase the overall sustainability of the community.”

“Large scale social movements can influence both community choices and the built environment. Eco-municipalities may be one such movement. Eco-municipalities take a systems approach, based on sustainability principles. The eco-municipality movement is participatory, involving community members in a bottom-up approach.”

“The distinction between an eco-municipality and other sustainable development projects (such as green building and alternative energy) is the focus on community involvement and social transformation in a public agency, as well as the use of a holistic systems approach. An eco-municipality is one that recognizes that issues of sustainability are key to all decisions made by government.”

Bioregionalism expands the concept of relocalization beyond single communities to include networks of communities that share a distinctive ecological region large enough for internal biological and ecological processes to meet many, if not most of their basic economic needs.  

John Thackara, in How to Thrive in the Next Economy,[16] defines a bioregion as:

“A ’life place’ that allows the regeneration of soils, watersheds, and biodiversity… that is definable by natural rather than political or economic boundaries. A bioregion reimagines the man-made world as one element among a complex of interacting, co-dependent ecologies: energy, water, food production, and information. Bioregionalism is not about returning regions to some pristine natural state that existed before human intervention. Instead, it seeks to create thriving human communities and economies that function in harmony with the natural ecosystems upon which they are ultimately dependent. Bioregional economies allow the regeneration of soils, watersheds, and biodiversity.” [17]

Vital Communities is a bioregional organization based in White River Junction, Vermont. Their mission is to promote the civic, environmental, and economic vitality of the Upper Valley region [of the Connecticut River]. The Upper Valley bioregion spans 69 distinct towns and cities within two states. The region has no single dominant metropolitan area.” The following quotes are from their website.[18] 

“Vital Communities engages Upper Valley people, organizations, and communities to create equitable solutions to our region’s challenges. Our staff specializes in convening for change: bringing people together to size up and address our challenges. We have evolved as a hub of initiatives, resources, and working groups in such areas as business vitality, food and farming, energy, transportation, climate change, leadership, housing, and outdoor learning.

Intrinsic to this work is a steadfast commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion so that people of all backgrounds and life experiences are involved at every level; and an ongoing acknowledgment that our office is sited and our work takes place within the sovereign homeland of the Abenaki Nation and People.”

These are just a few examples of communities that people have chosen to establish, live in, and further one or more of the ecological, social, and economic principles of sustainability.

Some have focused more on environmental stewardship, some on social equity and justice, and others on alternatives to today’s extractive and exploitative global economy.

The ecological and social communities of choice referenced above appear to reject most of the assumptions of the contemporary worldview. However, none of these communities expresses a commitment to the purpose of deep sustainability, which is human flourishing, betterment, eudaimonia, or happiness. Their emphasis is on more sustainable relationships, trusting that positive relationships will somehow lead to human flourishing or happiness.

They go beyond the contemporary worldview that humans are independent individuals and accept that humans are inherently social as well as individual beings. They reject the conventional worldview of insatiable consumer demand and limitless economic growth but seek to maximize economic well-being within the ecological and social limits of sustainability. They focus on achieving sustainability through a steady-state economy, which limits growth but views social and ecological sustainability as constraints rather than positive objectives. It's impossible to know the extent to which individual members of intentional communities are committed to the principles of deep sustainability. However, none of the communities in the examples above reflects a commitment to helping community members or the shared communities in finding and fulfilling their unique purposes within the higher order of things on earth.

Communities rooted in the principles of deep sustainability are committed to helping people, individually and collectively, to make unique contributions to the inherent goodness of the Earth. Deep sustainability is based on the premise that it is not a sacrifice to care for others and take care of the Earth, that caring and sharing make our lives better. The ecological and social templates or prototypes of intentional communities may prove useful, but the motivation and management of authentically sustainable communities will need to be rooted in a deeper commitment to a higher purpose and to principles of rightness and goodness in our relationships with each other and with the Earth.

Religious Communities. Some of the most successful and enduring communities of choice have been religious communities. While religious communities are generally not founded on the ecological, social, or ecological principles of sustainability, they may provide valuable insights into why some communities have been able to sustain themselves over time while most have not.

Many of the early communities in the U.S. were established by groups of settlers from Europe who migrated to the U.S. to escape religious persecution. While those born into religious communities have strong motives to remain, they are free to leave if they choose to do so. Most modern-day religious communities disband once the leader dies or falls from grace, but some religious communities have endured for decades and even centuries.

Amish Communities are perhaps the most widely known among enduring religious communities.

The Amish lifestyle is regulated by the Ordnung ("rules"), which differs slightly from community to community and from district to district within a community. There is no Amish central governing authority. Each Amish community makes its own decisions, and what is acceptable in one community may be unacceptable in another. The Ordnung is agreed upon – or changed – by the community of baptized members, and takes place before a twice-a-year Communion ceremony.

“Bearing children, raising them, and socializing with neighbors and relatives are the greatest functions of the Amish family. Amish typically believe that large families are a blessing from God. Farm families tend to have larger families, because sons are needed to perform farm labor. Community is central to the Amish way of life.”

“Working hard is considered godly, and some technological advancements have been considered undesirable because they reduce the need for hard work. Machines such as automatic floor cleaners in barns have historically been rejected as this provides young farmhands with too much free time.”

Bruderhoff Communities are nondenominational Christian communities that were established in Germany to in response to the rise of fascism in the 1930s. They fled Germany have since established dozens of individual communities in Europe, South America, the U.S. and in other parts of the world. The following are quotes from their website. [19]

“We are a community of Christians who, inspired by the early church, share all our money and possessions. We believe that God wants to transform our world, here and now. This takes a life of discipleship and commitment; when you truly love your neighbor as yourself, peace and justice become a reality.”

“We believe Jesus calls us to dedicate every day of our lives to him, not just Sundays. In community, all aspects of life can be acts of worship – working together, sharing a meal, or singing together. None of us owns anything personally and everything we need — food, housing, health care — is provided for us. We believe our way of life is a compelling answer to society’s problems, with its emphasis on wealth and self and its resulting isolation, conflict, and inequality. In our life together, the welfare of the oldest, youngest, and weakest  is a shared priority, family life is treasured, meaningful work is available for everyone, and there is time for laughter, friendship, and children.”[20]

Religious communities accept that we are also spiritual beings and that our purpose for living ultimately comes from the highest level of existence, from God. However, religious communities prepare their members for a better world after death, whereas sustainable communities work toward a better world for the living, trusting that a purposeful life is the best preparation for death. Religious communities adhere to the belief that God created Earth, and the living and nonliving things of the Earth, to meet the earthly needs of humans. Deeply sustainable communities adhere to the belief that humans are coequal members of the Earth’s integral community. Religious communities advocate the Golden Rule. Deep sustainability extends the Golden Rule across generations and includes the other living and nonliving things of the Earth.

We should treat the Earth and its inhabitants as we would want to be treated if we were birds, fish, wolves, rocks, trees, or oceans, not necessarily as we would want to be treated as humans. Every living thing on Earth takes life from and gives life to every other living thing. Everything on Earth provides substance for and is sustained by everything else. Whatever we choose to do and not do matters, not only to the physical, mental, and spiritual reality we experience during our life but to the spiritual reality after life. Deep sustainability is “a religion without ritual”—the religion, or belief system, that must guide deeply sustainable communities.

So religious communities do not conform to the tenets of deep sustainability. However, the experiences of enduring religious communities suggest that a strong commitment to a set of shared principles, a priority of personal relationships over economics, meeting the basic needs of everyone in the community, and investment of time and attention to nurturing those of future generations, may well be essential for communities committed to deep sustainability.  

Communities of Purpose 

Communities of purpose recognize that we each pursue our life’s purpose in relationships with others, and community provides the means of doing so together. Communities of purpose encompass all aspects of life and are therefore more inclusive than communities of place, interests, practice, and action. In Chapter 4, I wrote, “The greatest challenge in achieving sustainability is to develop and sustain positive relationships with each other and with other living and nonliving things of the Earth.” The greatest challenge is to create communities of purpose committed to the principles of deep sustainability. 

The basic principles of tenets of deep sustainability include the following: The Earth and Universe exist for a positive purpose within the higher order of things. Humans are on Earth for the purpose of making unique contributions to the inherent goodness of the Earth. Communities and societies allow humans to make collective or communal contributions that cannot be made individually. Social and ethical relationships with each other and the Earth affect every aspect of human life. Sharing with others and caring for the Earth give purpose and meaning to human life on Earth. Communities of purpose, created to sustain sharing and caring relationships, are essential for human betterment, flourishing, and happiness.

In Chapter 1. I wrote, Authentic sustainability “is guided by an overall purpose and set of principles that must be expressed in different ways to accommodate the unique ecological, social, and economic environments in which specific individuals and organizations function. Thus, each community must fulfill its unique purpose and walk its own path of sustainability. But all must be guided by a common set of principles toward the common purpose of human well-being, flourishing, or happiness.

The Japanese developed the concept of Ikigai to help people find their purpose in life. The first question is “What are you good at?”—what are your innate abilities and aptitudes? The second is “What do You Love?”—what are your passions, ambitions, and aspirations? The third question is “What does the world need?”—what can you contribute to the greater good of humanity, the Earth, and beyond?  The fourth question of Ikigai is “What can you be paid for?”—how can you make a living? Your avocation is what you are good at and love to do that the world needs done. Your profession is what you are good at and can also get paid for doing. When you can make a living doing things you are good at, things you love to do, and the world needs done, you have found your Ikigai—your purpose in life.

The basic problem with the Ikigai paradigm is that contemporary societies prioritize what people can get paid for doing over what the world needs, what people love to do, and even what they are good at. Instead, earning money or making a living should be treated as a means of doing something the world needs rather than a proxy for the purpose of life. Doing something you are good at and love doing defines your unique potential to contribute to the greater good by doing something the world needs done. When people’s basic economic needs are met, they can focus on finding what they are good at and love doing that the world also needs to have done. They can focus on fulfilling their unique purpose.

Communities can ensure that the basic economic needs of all are met to the extent that they are met for any.  They can also ensure that everyone has the economic and political freedom or sovereignty to make their own choices. Community members can be valued for their unique contributions to the overall quality of life in their community. Since there is no objective means of measuring the value of social and ethical contributions, all can be granted equal inherent worth. The only requisite is that each contribute whatever they can. Community members will then be free to do the things they are good at and love doing that also contribute to meeting the needs of their community. The community will then be focused on meeting the needs of society and humanity. Community members will be free to meet their need for contentment and happiness by realizing their potential and being the best persons they can be—by living with purpose.

The conventional worldview denies or ignores any purpose in life beyond seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. They rationalize the existence of humanity as the result of a genetic mutation during a mechanistic process of biological evolution. They conveniently ignore that if life has no purpose, it doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do, there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, and life and death are meaningless events that punctuate meaningless lives. If this were true, their pronouncements that life has no purpose or meaning would be meaningless. I doubt that anyone seriously believes that life has no purpose or meaning. Since they can’t prove that it exists, they assume, also without proof, that it doesn’t exist.

The worldview of shallow sustainability implicitly assumes that there is a positive purpose for human life on Earth. Otherwise, there would be no logical reason to be concerned about its sustainability. However, its advocates tend to focus on specific ecological, social, and economic parameters within which human life on Earth can be sustainable, with little attention to why humanity is worthy of being sustained. Humanity is often viewed as an inevitable threat to the sustainability of life on Earth rather than a keystone species or essential component of the Earth’s biological ecosystem. They believe that it is morally wrong to extract and exploit, and morally right to conserve and protect, but give little attention to the logical motivations for doing so.  

 Those who hold the worldview of deep sustainability believe that humans are on the Earth for a positive purpose; that we are meant to contribute to the greater good. We sense that our lives have meaning when we transcend the physical reality of the universe and connect spiritually with the absolute reality beyond. However, we also gain a sense of the purpose and meaning of our lives through our personal relationships within communities, societies, and the larger wholes of which we are a part. People would be free to express their sense of connectedness in day-to-day lives that have purpose and meaning in communities committed to the principles of deep sustainability. In communities guided by the principles of deep sustainability, people are free to make their unique contributions to the greater good of humanity, the Earth, and beyond.

Margaret Wheatley is an American writer, teacher, speaker, and management consultant. In preparation for the “2011 Big Learning Event” at the University of Wisconsin, she was asked to write about “three things to which you are paying attention.” She wrote that after a 3.5-month spiritual retreat for reflection: “I was able to both appreciate and see more clearly (I think) what’s happening in America right now.

• A growing sense of impotence and dread about the state of the nation.

• The realization that information doesn’t change minds anymore.

• The clarity that the world changes through local communities taking action—that there is no power for change greater than a community taking its future into its own hands.”[21]

The sense of impotence and dread about the state of the nation in the United States has continued to grow since Wheatley’s remarks in 2011. After the federal government’s recent withholding of funds, cancelling contracts, and budget cuts for climate change mitigation and other environmental and social programs, there seems to be little hope of significant government support for sustainable community development initiatives, deep or shallow. Confronted with a constant barrage of misinformation and outright lies, including from the highest level of government, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between valid information and corporate or political propaganda.

So, where is the hope for the future? It is even clearer today than in 2011 that positive change must come from the community level, where people know who to believe and trust, where people care about each other and are committed to taking the future into their own hands. As Wheatly concluded, “Global change always begins from small local efforts that then connect with other small local efforts; after many years of hard work, of experimenting and learning together, these small efforts may suddenly emerge as a powerful global system of influence.” I agree with Wheatley, there is no greater power or hope for change, for authentic sustainability, than the power of community.

Sustainable communities must be communities of choice and necessity. In other words, we must choose to make the necessary changes in our ways of thinking and living if we are to avoid a civilizational collapse. If we wait until nature and society have become so depleted and degraded that we are forced to depend on personal relationships to survive, the Earth will then support only a small fraction of today’s human population. We must make the right choices, by necessity. The question is, how do we create deeply sustainable communities of purpose before it is too late?

End Notes

1. Dalai Lama XIV,  Goodreads Quotes, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/31335-we-human-beings-are-social-beings-we-come-into-the#:~:text

2. Albery Einstein, Social Being Quotes, AZ Quotes, https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/social-being.html 

3.  Mahatma Gandhi, Social Being Quotes, AZ Quotes, https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/social-being.html 

4. Carl Jung, Social Being Quotes, AZ Quotes, https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/social-being.html 

5. Wendell Berry, “Southern Despair,” New Your Times Review of Books, Reply to Nathaniel Rich, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/05/11/southern-despair/

6. Horntvedt, J. (August 23, 2021). Five ways to think about community. University of Minnesota Extension, https://extension.umn.edu/community-news-and-insights/five-ways-think-about-community 

7. Tuller, J. (August 11, 2023). The Meaning of “Community.” The University of Nebraska, Institute for Agricultural and Natural Resources, Rural Prosperity Nebraska, https://ruralprosperityne.unl.edu/meaning-community#:~:text 

8. Pfortmüller, F. (Sept. 20, 2017). “What does “community” even mean? A definition attempt & conversation starte.  Medium, https://medium.com/together-institute/what-does-community-even-mean-a-definition-attempt-conversation-starter-9b443fc523d0 

9. Foundation for Intentional Communities, https://www.ic.org/foundation-for-intentional-community/

10. Global Ecovillage Network, The Ecovillage Map of Regeneratikon, https://ecovillage.org/ecovillages/map-of-regeneration/ 

11. Global Ecovillage Network, https://ecovillage.org/

12. The Post Carbon Institute, What is relocalization? https://www.postcarbon.org/relocalize/ .

13. Urban Arena Wiki contributors, "Transition towns," Urban Arena Wiki, , https://wiki.sustainablejustcities.eu/index.php?title=Transition_towns&oldid=4101 (accessed April 12, 2024).

14. Wikipedia contributors, "Transition town," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transition_town&oldid=1194254999 (accessed April 12, 2024).

15. Wikipedia contributors, "Eco-municipality," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eco-municipality&oldid=1133771290 (accessed April 12, 2024).

16. Thakara, J. (2015). How to Thrive in the New Economy. London, Thames & Hudson.

17. Thakara. p 29.

18. Vital Communities, Our Mission, https://vitalcommunities.org/about/ 

19. Bruderhoff, “And they had everything in common,” https://www.bruderhof.com/

20. Wikipedia contributors, "Amish," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amish&oldid=1216655878 (accessed April 12, 2024).

21. Wheatley, M. (June 2011). The Big Learning Event, University of Wisconsin-Madison.  (par. 13) https://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/Wheatley-The-Big-Learning-Event.pdf