Hello and welcome to Live like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Inman Erwin. And today we are having a conversation about something that I think really takes the things that we talk about on the show all the time and sort of like builds like a emotional or philosophical or dare I say, vaguely spiritual landscape around them, or mythological landscape even. And that's the idea of the commune. And I'm really excited about this. It's a presentation that I've seen before and I am excited to see what everyone else thinks of it. But before we get to that, we're a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts. And here is a jingle from another show on the network. I know the kind of pain you're feeling, Alex. I once had it myself.

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Hello. This is our jingle for our podcast, the Grounded Futures Show. This is the show where we discuss topics ranging from climate change to identity, to how youth can gain new skills to thrive amid current and ongoing disasters that we are collectively facing. We are your hosts, 1 gen Z, Liam, and 1 gen X, Carla, and we think we all deserve to thrive now and not in some distant utopian future. Yeah, but that's in the future. Oh, I hate the future. Yeah, we're with Bolin. Grounded Futures is a larger project, so check that out over at grounditfutures.com. And we're back. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. If you'd like to introduce yourself with your name pronouns and anything you want to tell us about yourself as a person or a thinker.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Love the show. Long time listener, first time caller. My name's Ash. I don't know how to introduce myself. I use he, him, and I've been a part of radical revolutionary social movements, et cetera, for about the last 15 or so years. And yeah, that's all I have to say for now.

Hell yeah. So I guess kind of to really just start out in like the barest, like the barest frame or idea. Like what. What is a commune?

Great question. I mean, maybe the first thing I want to get out of the way that I feel like I especially have to mention in a kind of American context is what I don't want people to think of, at least not immediately, is like a back to the land hippie commune where people do weird semi culty things or New Agey spiritualities, or have really toxic Isolated polyamorous situationships that blow up their project.

Although this is not your grandma's commune.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although those things could of course, fall under this definition to some degree. I just, I think the history of like or like the word in America especially tends to kind of immediately call back to the back to the land movement, which is also not to dismiss the back to the land movement. It's actually like a very, I think, cliched or like stereotyped, for lack of a better term, period in kind of American counterculture history. I think it's often downplayed the role that it played in revolutionary and social movements in the US in the 60s and 70s. For example, at the time, it was the largest reverse migration from cities to urban area or to rural areas in I believe, American history. It's something like 2 million people went from the cities into these rural places in a matter of just a couple of years. I think that's a lot of people, which is really wild to think about. So it is a period and a movement that should. That we should be studying and revisiting and understanding both its successes and its failures. But all that is to say that what I mean by commune is something a bit older and a bit. Something that has gone across many eras in many places as a kind of loose, vaguely defined idea. I mean, the next thing we might think of immediately is the Paris column where Paris became a kind of workers, temporary workers society for a short period in the 1800s. But then there's also many examples throughout history, especially in regards to the workers movement. So that's my disclaimer.

Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like. Okay, so I guess what other kind of historical examples can we think of as communes? Like, there's obviously the Paris Commune is like the. Oh, fuck, I forget what they called it. What was like the free state that Makno and them started in Ukraine. Yeah. Is that a commune?

I don't remember. Yeah, they did start. You know, I think there's. I'm not as versed on the. On the Makno. Ukrainian history. I know a little bit about it, but. But they are, like, often seen as like one of the longest lasting, I think, kind of semi stateless autonomous societies, at least in the context of a kind of like worker leftist tradition of some kind, where they had kind of a large economy, like somewhat facilitated by workers councils for a couple of years. And yeah, I think some of them were organized into communes. I. I wish I knew that history a little better. I mean, kind of more modern examples. Is like, you know, the communes in Rojava in North and East Syria that people might think of. That's the basis for a lot of their decision making. Governmental structures are communes of around 300 people in either neighborhoods or villages. There's a Oaxaca commune that arose in oaxaca, Mexico in 2006 after student and teacher movement kind of exploded into other sectors of society. And it became, you know, like they chased out the authorities for time. You have, you know, I think where I kind of more trace where I'm starting to like make a direct reference or why I think it's kind of contemporarily relevant is the word kind of coming back into vogue and kind of appearing across several movements, in short, success, succession, starting in the Arab Spring and the declaration of commune in Cairo at the ousting of Mubarak. And then you have, you know, Occupy Wall street shortly after with the declaration of the Oakland commune during the Occupy movement. And you. We've seen this crop up a number of times. Of course, Rojava is somewhat connected to that lineage, although it's also obviously very much more embedded in the Kurdish struggle. And so those are the kinds of more images that I would like people to kind of conjure up when I say the word. And I have this kind of like, you know, I've given this talk on a kind of somewhat modest, haphazard attempt at drawing out that idea a little bit based on some writers who have done a lot more research than I have and trying to kind of identify at least the kind of. The term I often use is existential, the kind of existential aspects of it, how we might see it in reference to the things that we're doing, where we are, however modest they might be.

Yeah, I guess like before we kind of get into I guess like what inspired thinking about what a commune is or isn't or what is the kind of, I guess, theoretical framework for thinking about this, which is a conversation that I almost never want to have. But I actually think you do a very good job of explaining it, which makes me actually want to talk about it.

Well, that's good. I guess there's actually a few starting places for me. One is just like the kind of everyday of kind of coming up and existing and being a part of anarchist and anti state communist politics and milieu's and subcultures for the last 15 years. It's like I just feel like we make kind of passing jokes about the commune all the time, you know, meaning, maybe meaning in various ways, in various contexts. Meaning like Our groups of friends, that our friendships are based on some sort of political outlook or ethical outlook about the world. And the ways in which maybe a lot of us tend to live in these kind of group, communal, collective houses, these things. You know, maybe not, you know, I don't know if I'm getting older now, so I don't know if like the 21 and 22 year olds are living this way as much as maybe some of us who came up in the kind of anti globe to Occupy Wall street era. But it was like a really standard kind of, or felt like a very standard way for us to live. And it felt very like connected to our, our politics and like, was like us attempting to, to live our politics in a certain way. And so that, that's one starting place is the kind of just like subcultural kind of colloquial ways in which we make reference to this thing and wanting to define it better and understand it better and understand its history and understand like, and take it seriously as not just like a joke that we make totally. And then the other place, kind of primarily, at least theoretically where I start from, is kind of a passing line in this book to our friends by the invisible Committee where they, you know, the invisible committee have theorized a lot about communes to some degree. And a lot of what they're doing is really based on a lot of other historians and philosophers. But they have this line about the commune being existential because it's territorial or something. I don't remember it off the top of my head. And it was just like a line that stuck with me that I don't even think they took all that seriously. And so it's just something that I like, I wanted to develop this better and queer for American context and kind of take it, take the commune seriously as something that we should, as something we should practice and theorize more deeply.

Yeah, I think this was the line. A commune is both existential and material. Is that the line?

No, that's my line.

Oh, that's your line. Okay. God, never mind.

But yeah, that's based on kind of. I really just went down a like deep reading, nerd level path just trying to trace this word through like a lot of different recent writings that have some connection. Yeah, that, that was like the kind of first thing that I noticed about people, whether they're historians or whether they're theorists, like reflect or whether they're just, you know, revolutionaries are living their lives, writing about their experiences in the past or now with living in kind of communal context of Some kind even looking at the. From the Rojava information Center, I believe, and their description, like what makes a commune in it actually municipally makes a commune in the autonomous regions. There is this kind of like physical proximity and sharing and relying on shared infrastructure and a kind of pact or agreement or kind of like political or cultural outlook to some degree that constitutes like you have to kind of have both elements existing, you know, it's. It's more specific than like, if I'm an anarchist and I, and I say we the anarchists or something, you know, like that's not a commune. That's like everybody who kind of declares this label and some sort of fidelity to these, that those ideas described by the label, you know, this is more specific. It's like where you are, who you're actively relating to on the basis of something.

Yeah, yeah, I think something we were talking about sort of before we were recording that I really liked and I like this with kind of like the origins of the communal punk house or whatever, is that it's like. And maybe it's because I'm older now, where I'm like, well, I certainly maybe don't have to live in a punk house anymore. But then when I think about that, I'm like, no, I could never, not, I never don't want to live in a punk house. And when starting to think about why that is, which isn't to say that people are allowed to live alone. Anyone who wants to can live alone if they would like to. But there's something about the kind of idea of relating to other people that way that feels important and something that is beyond survival, you know, where it's like, yeah, when you're like a 20 year old punk and you're broke as fuck, then it's like, yeah, you're gonna live with a bunch of other broke ass punks and you're gonna. And that is, that is a form of communalism that is related to survival. And at least where I'm at in my life now, I'm like, I want to do this because there is a piece of it that's rooted in survival or affordability, but there's a larger part of it that's rooted in the deep desire to live and struggle with people that I'm in proximity to and living with in a very intentional way. Does that make sense?

Totally. And that's part of what I think can be appealing about this, more kind of philosophical, for lack of a better term idea of the communists. And it is something that I think does Cut across many different kinds of people who have engaged or done something they might call a commune or been a part of this, whether it's in the midst of a kind of intense political struggle like the Oaxaca commune, or if it's in the context of a kind of, like, more prolonged, you know, way of life. And that's part of why I think it's important to kind of walk this line between being specific enough that we're not just being kind of vague, you know, and kind of making this really highly abstract thing that you can kind of. Anyone can describe what they're doing, you know, as that, but also not so specific that it's like, well, if you're not living in a dinghy punk house, you're not. Could possibly be part of a commune like. Like our future. Our future world that we might want to come to if we got all of the things that we wanted to get. Is. Is everyone living in tiny rooms with dingy roommates?

You know what I mean? Like, that's not. It's not.

It's not that specific.

Which.

It's cool if you want to live in a dirty punk house all your life.

That.

Do you. You know.

Yeah, but it's not about austerity.

Yeah, right. It's more about. It's. I think it's. It's more important to focus on the way in which we're relating and how we're relying on each other, and not just each other as in humans or our friends, but our. You know, it does constitute, at least on some level, our relationship to our ideas as well as our relationship to the earth and other living things. On it.

Yeah, yeah. So I guess getting into it, what are kind of the. What constitutes a commune or what kind of tenants or pieces of it make something a commune and not just. You're a punk house or not just a land project, you know, not just living in proximity to each other. Yeah.

I mean, there's a number of things in the talk I've given where I live. The first one, you already said it's existential and material. It has to be both. There's some kind of. There tends to be some kind of oath or shared commitment amongst the people who are participating in the commune. And so in terms of Taksim Square or Gezi park in the Arab Spring or the Turkish uprising, you know, to some degree, that oath was just to, like, topple the regime.

Right.

Or to. That was the kind of, like, political

goal

of doing what they were doing, but it also was about defending the park. And the occupation and so there. And, and so in Rojava also, that, that's like, that's a major piece is like in the neighborhood or the village or whatever is kind of constituting this, this, this commune that sends representatives to these municipal councils. Part of what literally constituting the commune in a kind of, for lack of a better term, like a legal sense for them is. Is a shared oath to defend their area so they, so they will like erect defensive bodies or like callable militias that are tasked with defending the neighborhood or the village. If, you know, ISIS or the Turkish military or whatever, like were to try to attack them. And right now, I should mention that right now parts of the autonomous region are under attack by the current empower Syrian regime, as well as also, you know, fighting off Turkey all the time. So, you know, you should try to like follow what's happening there as much as you can. I think there have been some recent calls for solidarity actions and acknowledgments for people out here to pay attention. The other thing is just like sharing some sort of place, land, infrastructure, you know, this, this reliance on shared land or infrastructure. Yeah, I mean, some of the research I was doing, there's this journal called the Reservoir. There's two issues so far, and they. And the second issue is on Communion and it's a lot about communal related things and on communes, both historically and presently. And one of them, when looking back at the Back to the Land movement, actually tried to find about like eight kind of large kind of aspects of common aspects across all of these different kind of communal experiments in the Back to the Land movement. And that was one thing they identified that cut across all of them, whether they were political, whether they were cultural, whether they were like New Age hippie, whether they are even kind of culty kind of projects, was this kind of some sort of shared perception of the world that made them feel separate from the, from the social order. And specifically they even identified that the, the shared perception doesn't necessarily have to all be the same. It's like on some of these New Agey communes, it's like the spiritualities that exist there are kind of vastly different in many ways and contradictory and weird. But they're all grouped up together because they feel other than them and they're trying to separate themselves from the larger world.

I really like this aspect that you talk about, I think in God is it. What do you say in the talk? I'm looking at a transcript of your talk because it was very helpful in informing this conversation and I'm not going to find it. But you talk kind of about this intuition to know that something is an intuition to know that you strive with the rest of the world or something. I forget exactly how you put it. And it's this thing that. It's funny to boil a lot of stuff down to these kind of formative punk experiences, because everything is so much beyond punk. You don't have to be a punk or be a teenager, punk teenager to have had these experiences. I think you can have them at a lot of times, but it's like the first time I went to a punk show or something as a teenager, it was this moment where for my whole life I had felt some kind of perception of the world that I felt separate from it, or in strife with some larger parts of the world or about the powers that be or whatever. And then going to a punk show for the first time and being like, oh, people share this perception with me. And there's a very basic intuition that I can get from being around this that I am in shared struggle. It's a really funny and magical feeling, which I'm boiling down to the first punk show that I ever went to. But I'm sure people have a lot of different examples of that. It's kind of like a. It's sort of like having a moment of rupture or a shift or something, but it's on this individual level. I don't know. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense. I think that to some degree, this is. This was the wager that many of us coming out of more insurrectionary anarchist circles had made to some degree. Is that like we'd had these experiences, especially after Occupy Wall street, this was a little bit different. Maybe prior to that, but at least for me, even though I was already kind of involved prior to that, I'd always felt like very much like what we were doing was. And the way that we thought about the world was highly marginal and made us total freaks compared to the people around us, right? But then Occupy Wall street, in that whole moment, you know, as. As, you know, silly as so much of it was looking back on it, or as, you know, even silly and annoying as I found it at the time, something felt like it cracked open where suddenly we weren't. We didn't just feel like we had kind of found our few friends that. That also felt something was so deeply wrong, but we were suddenly. You know, I remember at a camp having a conversation with a comrade of mine, and he was remarking, like, being in this like, situation with, like, hundreds of people that we don't even know is like, nothing I've ever experienced before, you know?

Yeah.

And to some degree, like, the commune thing is, like, is a. Is a gesture or provocation to, like, take that moment, whatever moment that is for us, really seriously. And I think that for the kind of more insurrectionary circles I've run in for a while, our. Our perspective has been these. These large social movements that have emerged, even these large ruptures or uprisings, like 2020. We should take them super seriously, not just for their fighting power, but their, like, the kind of communal relational aspects that occur in the midst of them and try to hold on to as much of that as we can in between those ruptures. Find, you know, the expression find each other or whatever would float around a lot and. And some of that was like, find each other in these moments and try to hold on to, like, the meaning that was created there and, like, deepen it and prepare for the next one. And. And some of this too, relates to a lot of, you know, her post Hurricane Katrina. That's an aspect of it as well. Like, a lot of people reflect after these disasters, even when they've lost everything materially, that they almost miss the communal feelings that they had. Like, they never felt so a part of something and so tied to other people as in those moments, even though it was also devastating in many ways. And people remark, like, missing that feeling, like, going back to. Once their life stabilizes and they have to have a job and go about everyday life after that, that. That's hard and feels very, like, lonely.

Yeah, it's like the. The disaster communism, it's like, often what it gets referred to as.

Some of this is a provocation to take that seriously and try to build. Build a movement, at least in part on its basis.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. It's like this feeling where, like, the world suddenly makes sense to people. And I think trying to figure out how to hold onto that is really hard because we all have to. The drudgery of everyday life sort of resumes and we get sucked back into all the silly things, but sort of getting back a little bit into more of what makes a commune a commune. You talk a little bit in your talk about self sufficiency, which I think is a piece that I think a lot of people think is very intrinsically tied to the idea of a commune, or at least I would think that. And I'm sort of like, I'm curious about your takes on being critical of self sufficiency. Within a commune.

I think that that's a big lesson at least of the stuff I've been reading from the back to the land movement is that there was a degree to which it was kind of implied or even explicitly stated sometimes within that countercultural movement that like, part of the idea of what they were doing is like proving that they can live differently, you know, than the mainstream society or whatever. And that meant kind of like just pulling yourself completely out of all of it, being as self sufficient as possible. Maybe that meant with a hundred other, you know, intentional community residents or maybe that meant like you and your ten friends or whatever. No, and most people found that virtually impossible because it is, it's, it's like, you know, the, the tendency or the danger in talking about communes is this idea of like, well, if we can just like live on our own terms around like sharing more, you know, having this kind of cooperative sharing principle, and we just go off and form our own communities based on that and we don't have to do, you know, deal too much with, with the outside world and we can just prove that it's a better way to live. You know, that's, that's a fantasy.

The.

And, and it's a huge lesson from the back to the land. It's where you get a lot of the silliness that kind of gets related back to land. Right. And so, you know, part of what's interesting about looking at historical Commune, there's even, you know, some parallels to the Paris Commune and the kind of, you know, people studying it on a kind of military, strategic basis. It's like one of the reasons that a lot of historians think the Paris Commune, like one of the big limitations of it and why it was eventually crushed and there was massacre is because they, they were unable. Even though other communes were attempting to be formed and kind of to some degree were formed in other cities. There was, there was a quick breakdown at a, there was a quick breakdown at a certain time when they weren't able to form strong relationships to the rural peasantry or like, and that's where the city got its food, you know, so it was just like the military could literally cut off Paris and crush the Commune eventually because it basically became a siege type situation, at least on a military level. And so, yeah, there's this, you know, in, in Rojava at least, and to some degree the kind of Zapatista community, there's a high emphasis on the inner reliance of these commons. And the, these aren't isolated places that have no relationship to the larger constellation that they're a part of. I think that that's something that's like,

yeah, I think about this a lot with. I think it's easy to draw this from the personal to the larger groups of people. But it's like when we think about, there's this idea and I think a lot of normative culture that we have to be entirely self reliant and self sufficient people. And like, I feel like normie dude culture really like pushes this narrative. You know, we're all supposed to be self made. We're all supposed to be like, have all this shit together. And it's like, I think that really weakens us as people. And I think it's like. And we see that when people like kind of shut themselves off from their friends, for example, where it's like relying on people or being interdependent on people is actually a really big strength and it's a really big opportunity to learn and grow as a community. It's like we see this in relational therapy too, where it's like, you and your partner should not be these islands. You need to to some degree be reliant or dependent on each other. And I think breaking that myth of self sufficiency, especially in preparedness circles, is really good, really important. So it's like, yeah, why wouldn't we apply that to the larger communities that we live in?

Yeah, there's a bit that I draw on a little bit in the talk that is connected to this idea of belief or the. What I kind of unapologetically call faith. But it all. And the pact and all this stuff. But it also like touches on this anti self sufficiency thing that maybe I could just quote that I also called in the talk. Yeah, it's from.

It's.

It's a quote from Mario Tronti, who's an Italian autonomist and you know, he passed away some years ago, a few years ago. But he has this quote from an interview in 2008 where he's kind of talking about spirituality and religion. He's referencing Christianity here. He says an individualized Christianity does not exist. Where I would be the measure of goodness. Where faith is placed in a self sufficient subject. The US of the ecclesia comes first and it is placed under the sole authority of God. The cult of the I which is so pervasive in this world is in fact the glaring sign of disbelief. Just as there is no such thing as communism, which doesn't consist in a constant opening of oneself, in an infinite Widening of sharing, that dilation of the heart which the first Christians called agape socialism in one apartment or the commune of the eye, are ridiculous. Even if in the course of these years we have done it and we have believed in it, we have had so much will, but evidently little or no faith. And the experiment failed, just as the socialism made in one country did. We wish to do good and instead we do evil, as the apostle Paul says. And evil, in fact, as St. Augustine says in his Confessions, is nothing but a perversion of will. And he goes on, you know, for a while, but he talks a bit about like, even the most individualist individuals. He says, even on an individual level, if you want to deepen yourself and your own interiority, you must in some way find other individuals who are walking in the same direction. And so it's just like a total rebuttal of this idea of self sufficient. Even libertarians have friends.

Yeah, it's true.

Mostly.

Yeah. Okay, this brings up a weird kind of piece of this talk, but I think it's a funny image to think about. So we sort of have the. What the pieces or some of the. We have what some of the pieces are for what a commune is. And I am curious, kind of why is it important to have these conversations with the people in our lives or I guess, so to speak, why is it important to sort of define the relationship, to use some relational words? This is what I thought about when you were giving your talk. I was like, oh, this is a very DTR moment where it's like, it's like, are we. I notice we're around each other, I notice we're doing stuff together. We're in a situationship, if you will. And then there's this moment of like, defining that, like, why does it. Why is it important to define rather than just like roil around?

And I mean, you know, it's a little silly to compare it to romantic love. And there's a lot of things that are like, it doesn't work for comparing it to those kinds of situations. But I think there's also, there is a, like a. There's a realness to, like, you know, when you acknowledge something with, with people that you've been doing, then you don't have. You can kind of like level up the conversation to something. You can deepen it. There's not this constant, like, questioning is, is this what we're doing is, you know, which isn't to say that you should never question things again or revisit certain conversations, but. Or certain. There's always in. When relating to people, there's always a renegotiation that occurs to some degree. Things have to change. But I do think it's important to talk about it, and particularly in America. I don't know, I'm just struck by comrades that have come from other countries or when I've traveled to other places and when other friends have traveled to other places. I'm always struck by just how kind of like so many other places seem just at a base level, more communal on some level. They're still in capitalism, they're still part of the, you know, they're subject to state crap, you know, all that stuff. It's not that they're living in some utopia or something. That's not the point. The point is like just culturally in many, many, many other places, there is just a base level lack of this hyper individualism or this hyper kind of isolationist mentality. I love comedy. I call this stand up comedian. These two stand up comedians who are both first generation immigrants joking that boundaries are American idea and that immigrants don't have boundaries. Like the joke they were talking about kind of relating to their, their various mixed immigration families and how the, the kids that grew up in America can clash in this particular way because of the like, very individualistic vibe. And I think there's some truth to that. You know, I don't want to like paint with too broad a brush, but I think it's particularly important in America to take the idea of like something like more communal communism, if you will, when it comes to relating to each other seriously. Sharing not just our little things and a little bit of money, but figuring out how to like take on ambitious infrastructural projects that we rely on to get our needs met, meet the needs of others, and make us not only help us survive, but make us actually even live better. Because then also we, we are able to use that and build the basis for fighting on. So it's not simply about being good to each other. It's, it's a, it's more about like what it will take to build a fighting force that will actually be able to change the world is to some degree a question of the commune and a question of communism in a certain sense.

Yeah. And I think it's sort of like a, I think it can't just be about how you live, you know, because then we sort of fall into, I guess, lifestylism. But it's like, I think changing the way that people live does change the way that they relate to the rest of the world and other aspects of their lives. You know, it's sort of like that breaking out of individualism where it's like. And again, people can live alone, but it's like if you live alone your whole life and then suddenly you live with people, that is going to shift what you think about the world. And so I don't know, to sort of bring it back a little bit to preparedness at least, is that I think these are important conversations to be having with the people in your lives because. It does give us a deeper way of relating to each other that I think people. I don't know where I live, I'm constantly. I don't know, do people even like me? Do people. I'm around people, or is it just like, I see people, I organize with people. Is it. Are we just dealing with each other? And I think a lot of people can feel like that in their scenes. And that's why I kind of like this DTR metaphor, is that it's important to say it because I think a lot of people will think the opposite just out of sheer anxiety.

We're engineered to think the opposite.

Yeah. And it's affirming. I don't know, it's like, oh, no. Okay. It's like in some degree. In some degree, it is about making commitments to the people around you. They're not disposable. They're not just there to provide a resource for you or your friends or something. It's this commitment to shared infrastructure, this commitment to building an emotional or spiritual or whatever landscape together is like, it's not casual. And I think that we need to relate to more people like that in not casual ways to really harp on this romantic relationship model in a not talking about romantic relationships at all kind of way. I don't know.

Well, it also, like, you know, there's a degree to which at least has the potential to reframe things like conflict that people in the kind of anarchist scene or, you know, broader radical scene get so worried about, you know, how do we handle conflict, etc. Etc. And it's not that I don't. I don't mean to say that, like, we shouldn't get better at handling conflict. Of course we should. But like. But I think it also, when you actually share things and really rely on other people, it reframes many of those conflicts. Many of many conflicts become really fickle and not things that you need to discuss ad nauseam and then gossip about with your other friends and then hold up, hold grudges or like these little fickle, petty, little like social scene type, you know, that so much of it's about your. Really about your concern about your social standing with people. I think often it's easy for that to happen because there's. There's very little basis for how you're relating to each other other than kind of like your cred or something or perceived cred. Instead, you know, if we're like, we just get to know people differently when we have to, like, just discuss the logistics of how food's going to get cooked or from point A to point B and like, how to do that in a semi efficient way that, you know, equitable for everyone involved. And I just think it just totally reframes problems. And then. And so then it's also like, there's a degree to which, you know, ideally I want to be thinking on the scale and striving towards the scale where we're not all friends, but we're still doing this together. Like, I personally, you know, struggle with a capacity to have more, you know, and I think most people kind of have a difficulty having more than maybe like five close friends or something. We have to be thinking on a different scale and operating on a different scale. And just because I'm not like a certain kind of emotionally close friend with somebody doesn't mean I can't actually trust them quite deeply to like, make sure the food is grown.

You know what I mean?

Or like, yeah, or like, show up at my house when I. When I have a plumbing issue, you know what I mean? Or whatever, like, totally. Because they. And because they kind of just trust or know that I will. I would do something similar for them just by virtue of like. And I'm just, I'm speaking in very practical terms. Ideally, we get to the point where we also. We know that, you know, even if we don't like each other very much, we are committed to pulling each other back from a police line and taking risks for each other even when we don't like each other.

Yeah, this is actually a big tip for me this year is trying to. Last year, I thought a lot about seeing communities, larger communities of people who are so ridiculously fractured for a multitude of reasons and really trying to understand what a path beyond that was, whether it's in a city, a friend group, or a bioregion. And I think this conversation on communes really, I think, gave me a little bit more hope. And what I'm seeing with my own eyes now is people in general just having more conversations as large Groups of people about how to exist past merely survival and take risks and stuff together. And I don't know, that's what felt so intriguing to me about this conversation, is it sort of offered a path through like, some of this, like, fractalization of. Of communities, you know, that happens for many reasons. Conflict, social things, like just different vibes. I don't want to boil everything down to vibes, but there's a lot you can boil down to vibes.

We got to push through the vibes.

We got to push through the vibes. Yeah.

And I don't know, I mean, that's what's promising about some of these, like, the ICE rapid response networks. Like what's going on in Minneapolis. You know, obviously a lot of it's very scary, but what I'm hearing from people there is like, just how much the kind of everyday fabric of so many neighborhoods is just revolting against ICE on a regular basis. I'm hearing, you know, hearing so many stories of just like people in a cafe, a crowded cafe, hearing whistles outside, and literally the entire cafe empties out. People who don't really know each other, you know. Yeah, the entire cafe empties out and, you know, goes to respond. And I think, you know, much like, to what you're saying, like, beyond survival. I, like, want to think in those terms too. Like, even in our kind of more like political movements or when we're, you know, fighting the power or whatever, like, being able to see the potential in. In all of these things. And I think commune is like a big part of that is like, being able to see the like, actual potential. And what we could actually. Like, what if we just took this so seriously that it was like actually how we lived and we took it seriously to accomplish these things and make them real and make them ever more and more real, you know, but we have to start somewhere, too. And so to some degree know, we're starting from our little group houses or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're about out of time. But I'm wondering if we could sort of end with some of you make some kind of assertions at the end of your talk. And I'd love to end with whatever of those you'd like to share. And also if you have any advice for people who want to form communes.

Yeah, I guess something that maybe I'll point out is that this idea isn't meant to kind of impose a sort of homogenous view. Like, I don't think communes, much, like, they aren't supposed to be self Sufficient. They also shouldn't be homogenous. And I think that in many kind of historical cases it's just true that they weren't that to some degree difference, you know, and there's always a kind of unevenness in that, in this. Like we're talking about real life, we're talking about real people. Nothing is like kind of perfect or perfectly distributed power or something like this. But I think the. What I want to emphasize is that like the commune part of like our broader political movements or vision should like start from what is shared and what feels powerful and potent. But that doesn't mean that we kind of like try to paper over differences, but we also shouldn't approach differences as if they are kind of immediate tensions or conflicts in waiting. And would also just say that like tensions exist in these things and it's fine, it just exists. We don't. I think sometimes the push to resolve tension is this kind of just mirror end of a sort of kind of conflict avoidance. And we can just. Tensions aren't necessarily evidence of like some sort of contradiction that has to eventually be resolved by one side winning out over the other. And I think, yeah, I think it's. I'll also just say that this isn't the be all, end all. There's a lot more. Like, I'm not saying if we all formed communes that we would win suddenly. I think there's a lot of very political questions around organization and political horizons and what it'll take to fight and to win that the commune doesn't answer. But I do think that like, we still have to, especially in America, in such a hyper individualized society, we have to take seriously the idea of like, like strong, mutually interdependent communities. And some of us especially have to like kind of build it from almost nothing. And we should take that really serious. And yeah, I mean, I don't know how much else to say other than that. I could watch like maybe in your show notes or whatever, you'll have some links to some of the books and stuff that I'm taking some inspiration from. Some of the writers love to share that and hopefully people will expand on it, tell me why I'm wrong or naive or something. But I also hope that people will take some of it seriously. And maybe there's a variety of ways any of this people looking to do something or deepen these kinds of conversations with their friends or their comrades or whatever. I do think how to start is like reading and discussing things together, not just as an intellectual exercise, but literally like to know each other better and get to kind of critically think together is really important and undervalued generally. And I think also just like. So starting infrastructural projects start from many of us. There's like that funny line from a zine I read where we could, like many years ago I read this. Like, we could communize more than our Netflix cues. Like, take, take it seriously. Like what, what is. What could you be kind of, even if it's kind of feels modest or a little silly at first? Or where could you start with a group of people that you already closely in some way relate to or want to closely relate to, to just build something out together that at least at first meets your own needs. Even, even if those things don't seem like they are. Like your survival doesn't depend on them. But, but, but something that can give you the basis. I mean, I always lean towards a space. Everybody needs space to meet, to gather, to do that in a way that you don't have to pay $8 for a latte for or whatever, you know, $12 for a cocktail, whatever the hell, you know, but. And then that's an easy place to start. Welcoming people into that doesn't feel the same as welcoming everyone into your houses. But you know, you know, moving close to your friends, I mean, all of this stuff feels like little things and they are little things when they're kind of viewed on their own. If they're not kind of like thinking more long term, how to expand them, how to deepen them, how to like take them more and more seriously, bring more people into them. And I think we shouldn't think that planting a few trees is going to change the world. But if we are going to change the world, we have to start somewhere. So I think everyone should just take it really seriously that even their little modest gestures, if they commit to them, could go in really interesting directions.

Hell yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on today. Do you have anything you want to plug?

Shout out to everyone resisting in Minneapolis. They are the people we are learning from right now in a very acute way. Shout out to the revolutionary youth in Rojava and also in the Kurdish areas of Turkey who are currently resisting incursions from both Turkish military to some degree, but also particularly jihadists and Israel backed jihadist regime in Syria. Yeah, I mean, shout out to a lot of places right now, but those are the two really on my mind tonight.

Oh yeah. Well, that's all I got. Thanks so much for coming on. We'll see you next time. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, then you can figure out what communes mean to you and figure out how do you want to relate to the other people around you that you find comradeship with comradery, comradeship, camaraderie. One of those is right. Also, if you enjoyed this podcast, then you can support it. And you can support it by listening to it, by sharing it with people, by putting it on at the commune. You can also support it by supporting our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And you can support strangers by checking out our website, tangledwilderness.org where we have a lot of cool books and zines and just other cool stuff that you could, some of which you can get for free and some of which you can put give us, give us some monies for. You can also support the show by checking out our Patreon. This is an entirely listener supported podcast, which is why you don't get any wacky ad breaks unless you use some podcast subscription service that gives you lots of weird ad breaks. Those aren't from us, just so you know. And on our Patreon, you can get access to cool things, like a cool zine mailed to you every month, or we will shout out or acknowledge a thing of your choosing. Sometimes it's you, sometimes it's a rad organization that you want us to shout out. And sometimes it's an awesome animal like a cat or a dog. I think it's mostly cats and dogs right now, which I feel like there's like other animals out there and we would love to shout out those animals as well. So send us some. Not that there's anything wrong with cats and dogs, but we're here for more animals beyond Cats and dogs. The title of my new zine, I have no clue what it's about. It's not about the further domestication of other animals. It's definitely not about that. But we would like to thank these wonderful people, organizations or animals. Thank you, Cool Zone Media, who is, you know, not an. I don't believe is an official sponsor of the show, but someone wanted us to shout them out and that's awesome. Thank you. Be kind and talk to strangers. Na Uliksei and Alder Tikva's Favorite Stick. The Waterfront Project, Nico the Ko Initiative, Groot the Dog, the Black Trowel Collective, Dolly Parton and Edgar Meowlin Poe. The Cats Accordions, the Experimental Farm Network Arguing about what to shout out. Tenebris Press Potatoes Staying Hydrated, brought to you by Hannah Simone Weil the Pocono Pistols the Kiwana Socialists Ivy the Astoria Food Pantry Athens People's assembly of Athens, Georgia Opticuna TSNB baby Acab and her three great pups Sarah Mr. Craft, your Canadian friend Mark tiny nonsense the Golden Gate 26 the Ko Initiative again the Incredible Renerai Alexander Gopal A Future for Abby Hue and Hee Max the Enchanted Rats of Turtle island well, see, there's another animal Inman Lancaster chooses Love Karen the Canadian Socialist Rifle association the Massachusetts chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association Farrell in West Virginia Blink Cat Shulva, Jason, Jenny and Phoebe the Cats Aiden and UQ the Dog Sunshine Amber Ephemeral Appalachian Liberation Library Portland's Hedron Hackerspace Boldfield the People's University of Palestine Julia Carson Lord Harkin Community Books of Stone Mountain, Georgia Princess Miranda, Janice and Odell Ally Paparuna, Milica, Theo, S.J. paige, David, Dana, Micah, Kirk, Chris, Micaiah, Nicole and Tikvah the Dog and the Immortal Beyond Beyond All Doggedness. Hoss the Dog. Thanks so much. We literally couldn't do this without you, and we hope everyone's doing as well as they can with everything that's going on. And we'll see you next time.