Passion Project Community

I remembered something I had wanted to write about. Last year during an hour & a half long drive in the car, my kids started asking each other this: if you were in charge of creating a world or community, how would you do it? What would the rules be? What would the living arrangements be? What would the consequences be if somebody didn't follow the rules? How would you rehabilitate people with problems? They covered a variety of ideas with this. As somebody would present their ideas, the other kids would ask for more information about certain aspects or reveal how the plan might not go as smoothly as you would think. Based on this, we heard plans get revised and more solutions were considered. Each of our kids had some ideas that were different and some that were the same. It got pretty interesting and I felt like it was a proud mom moment. I LOVED hearing my kids have this discussion unprovoked in the back of the car!

Eventually, my daughter asked me my thoughts on this and I had recently come across beautiful ideas in the book The Cleansing of America by W. Cleon Skousen. Some of the ideas are based on the Founding Fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson's views. Basically, the first thing is to take inventory of the people. How many families are there? Anybody married is a family. If you're an adult but not yet married, you would be considered part of your parents' family until marriage. (Of course this is where I branch off a litle. I'm okay with adults being counted as part of the parents' family but would also advocate some space and independence for them. Maybe they live on the same property but in their own structure, etc. Putting them together would be for support purposes but they should also be aptly considered viable and independent to the extent they desire.) Figure out how to get good leadership in place. The example here is that every 10 adults pick somebody to represent them. Every 50 adults pick somebody to represent them. Every 100 adults, pick somebody to represent them. Out of 600,000 adults (such as in Moses' time and according to what's understood about this system then), there would be 78,000 representatives. 1 rep per 10= 60,000, 1 rep per 50=12,000 more, 1 rep per 100=6,000 more for a total of 78,000 reps. That really helps represent everybody's true interest. Divide people into communities of 100 adults and allow them as much opportunity as possible to self-govern. Public lands get divided so that every adult has their own adequate and equal space. Each of these communities would develop their own schools, their own militia, their own justice situation, their own welfare program, their own roads, their own police, their own jury selection system, their own town hall and elections. When there is a close-knit group like this and somebody in the community starts to struggle, a lot of care and effort will be put into helping that person. It becomes a situation where everybody is really looking out for everybody else. Thomas Jefferson's version of this is called a ward republic.

Idealistically, this is a beautiful proposal. As you dive in, it gets more complicated. How do you keep this system in place, particularly as communities have children that turn into adults and grow? Do you let the community of 100 turn into whatever it ends up as when everybody there grows up or do you constantly re-figure the communities to max out at 100? There are pros and cons to both ideas. What if people don't comply with the system of representation? What if communities start to compete and/or corrupt themselves or others? This, is of course, the problem with every idea that seems good as an ideal but it seems flawed when put into practice. However, this is the basic idea for a possible way to set up a community that includes local control, good representation, and neighbors really looking out for each other.

Now shift to this week. My daughter and I were out and we got into a discussion about ideal communities again. I brought up the idea of a place where the community let everybody in society pursue what they're passionate about for a year when they turn 20 and supports them. Give everybody reasonable resources to pursue their passion and see how much it would change society. A passion project is a piece of work or an endeavor that someone gets involved in because they love it or feel it is very good and important, not in order to make money. It demonstrates your initiative, creativity, determination, and personal values and interests. It should be something that would inspire and excite you. Some examples include starting a non-profit charity, small business, or blog, building an online community around an issue, doing independent research, writing a book, or making a film. Because of the idea that something is created and it revolves around what matters to somebody, it's likely to contribute to the building up of a society in tangible and intangible ways.

My daughter talked to me about the two ideas that she'd be torn between (making a docu-series that covers social issues she's concerned about or creating a tiny house community that offers up solutions for the current housing crisis). We talked through lots of details and then another idea hit me. What if you could also do another year of pursuing a passion when you turn 50? Sometimes when you're 20, there's a lot about life you don't know about. By 50, you might have learned about things you never even knew existed when you're 20 so you should get another chance to pursue something then. This would keep people's vitality, too, at an age often associated with burnout. Plus, I think many 50 year-olds could do things that would really affect the community for good and this goodness would help the community embrace an older part of society more and realize their value. This is all just ideals, not real day-to-day life but it was fun to think about and fun to talk about.