Introduction

Since the industrial revolution we’ve made huge progress in life. Most of us can shower daily, eat a variety of foods, feel warm in winter and enjoy the summer. Life in our society is overall very comfortable, especially compared to millennia ago.

Still there’s worldwide unrest, suffering, waste of resources and a general lack of purpose. A result from something called ‘Late Capitalism’; The point at which all the resources have been claimed, the wealthy control the distribution of these resources and use them to maintain their higher position.

The past few generations have voiced their disdain of the current society we live in. We work for money, because money means survival and power. Tech giants with hidden agendas and corrupt world leaders make life more difficult than it should be. This is human egoism at its finest. Sadly we are too occupied with trying to survive to be able to do anything about it. Until now...

What is Ecommune?

Imagine a world where money didn’t matter for our survival. Where resources were only used when needed and we had more control over our surroundings. That’s what Ecommune stands for. The way of simply living life - not to our limits, but to our needs.

Of course we are still faulty humans with an ego up the wazoo, wanting more and more, but this ‘anti-capitalism’ is not a new way of thought. Not by large! Many of the younger generations have expressed their desire to move out of the city, to work less and to focus more on their mental health and enjoy life. Some even replace their smartphones with dumbphones, delete their social media pages, and take up unpaid voluntary work. Why? Because there’s no benefit in participating in a battle you have lost at the start.

Ecommune is a lifestyle system that complements what we lack in our current capitalist society. It’s a basis of ground rules and agreements that we each have a hand in, instead of ‘the lucky few’. This means that every action someone takes has a positive effect on everyone’s well being, including their own.

Not a replacement of capitalism

What?! Didn’t I just say capitalism was bad? Well, yes. But not all of capitalism is bad. We still benefit greatly from advancements in technology and science. These are essential to maintain our comfort, health and safety. The problem is the influence capitalism has on the minimum requirements of living life. We can keep the positive aspects, whilst removing the need for money for essential needs. This prevents money from being a method of extortion (“Work harder or get sick and starve!”) and turns it into a more positive light; a method of trade. Ecommune is thus not a threat to capitalism but an addition, by enabling it to function where it’s best suited for.

Main features

No cost of living

Having to pay for housing, ground and basic needs are not a thing here. Every shared service is supplied by everyone working together. This means that all community members put in effort to maintain the community. The services include:

Shelter: Every member of the community receives their own Tiny House. These houses are made of durable materials that are easy to maintain, to reduce the potential for high workload spikes (caused by floods, storms, fire, , etc.). Additionally, the houses have backup electricity and gas, in case the community grid fails.
Electricity: Solar panels, wind turbines and human-powered electricity generators generate power that is fed into the community grid. This technology is also maintained by the community but will additionally be helped by a third party with expertise. Coaching in maintaining these products is important to prevent neglect.
Water: Using rainwater catching techniques, storage basins and natural filtering methods, makes sure fresh water is available to the entire community. Either by local storage or using a shared basin.
Food: Vegetable gardens, automated mushroom growing, and larger farmland supply food to the community. More traditional hand-grown techniques will be the focus over mass-automation, as machinery is quite heavy in maintenance and running cost. Techniques like Zaï (water holes), food forests, hydroponics, aquaponics and sandponics help grow our food in a smarter nature-symbiotic way.

100% Off-The-Grid

Ecommune is able to fully sustain itself. Due to everyone putting in a little effort to keep all the services running and maintained, we share a common efficiency. From electricity and housing to social coaching and knowledge sharing. There are no true specialists that can only do one job, which translates into a stable platform to build off of. This makes sure we can stay fully off-the-grid, as the entire community is seen as ‘common knowledge’ where everyone has a transparent understanding of everything Ecommune offers. Help is always trained and readily available.

Sustainability / reducing humanity’s footprint

An important topic we’ve rediscovered again is that humanity has a very very large impact on our environment. Resources are quickly transported all over the world for a profit, while they exist locally as well. Worldwide transportation often causes air pollution, noise pollution and ruins the natural habitats of species that keep the area alive, causing a butterfly effect of environmental degradation.

Because Ecommune is fully focused on the local environment, transportation is no longer needed at the scale it is now at. Sustainability becomes all the more important because of this decision. If it’s not possible to maintain with the resources available, then - even if we got them from further away - wouldn’t that just delay the inevitable problem of having too little resources? Yes. Hence it’s important to keep track of where we source the resources, where we apply it, how much we can realistically spend these resources on, and what happens with the resources afterwards (LCA; Life-Cycle Assessment).

Lifestyle separations

Everyone has their own preferences and values, some of these clash heavily with each other. Late sleepers create noise at night, which disturbs early risers’ sleep. Some prefer to be together, while others might prefer solitude and enjoying the quiet. These lifestyles are best separated instead of setting up rules that are negative for everyone.

The community grounds are separated based on:

Waking times
Social zones and quiet zones
Desire to work

Services complement these separate areas where they are most needed. For example: The gym being in the early risers area and the bar being in the late sleepers area.

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Groups and group leaders

Small groups (6 to 8 members each) make sure we can check in on each other. Some people might be joyful and easily talk with anyone, others might be more individual and prefer to never speak to others. These groups should include a mix of lifestyles so no echo chambers are formed. It’ll also increase the toleration to differences in opinions and leaves spaces open for learning from other’s experiences.

Group leaders are there to facilitate and organise the groups. They make sure that everyone receives whatever they need, that conflict between members stays private so it doesn’t affect others, and keep track of potential problems. The group leaders also speak with each other about positive experiences and issues, making sure the entire community is well-informed and things don’t grow out of hand.

Overall the function of having groups and leaders is to keep order and make people feel heard. This community thrives on working together. Having a place of trusted people that you can tell more private matters to helps both the member externalise their thoughts, while the group gets a better understanding of their behaviour.

Connection to capitalism

As previously stated in "Not a replacement of capitalism", Ecommune is not meant to be a ‘capitalism destroyer’ like Marxism or other extremer visions. This is just a way to cut off capitalism from basic needs. Capitalism is a great system to trade with and advance our society. Hence Ecommune provides a connection to capitalism, by supplying the following services:

Offices: Any member of the community has an office available to them free of charge. A proper workspace is essential for keeping peace of mind. This also feeds into better work-life balance. In return for the use of these office spaces, an agreed upon percentage cut of profits will be donated back to the community.
Commercial services: Certain services are only meant for members (e.g. gyms, toilets, showers, etc.), while others are better when shared with non-members as well. Services like bars, B&B’s and other entertainment are a source of income to the park. The running cost of these commercial services is low, as mostly community members run these (and obviously have free access to these as well).
Contract work: For members who would prefer to receive a bit of income, Ecommune keeps contact with the local government and other locals, offering simple services. Think of things like cleaning a park or helping someone move. This both helps set the community in a positive light (more contributing rather than secluded) and prevents members from losing connection to the ‘rest of the world’.

Work and life balance

It’s important that Ecommune doesn’t feel like it’s your job. That is exactly like that familiar “I must work to survive”-feeling. This is what we need to prevent, otherwise we’re back to square one where the ‘grindset’ mindset triumphs. Designs and rules are taken into account to split off work and life. The focus is to make the work feel voluntary.

Some rules and designs to keep in mind are:

Don’t work a single job for a long time; After a while the human mind becomes stale with the task they’re doing. This feels like a loop without progression, where each day is no longer split off into different parts. This means that a member shouldn’t be a street sweeper forever. Small side jobs should be accepted once in a while to keep variety.
Clear border of the commercial services and private services; Because the commercial services have something to do with profits, it’s best to keep this separate.

Technology

While Ecommune strives to get back to a more simpler time, it’s important to not make things excessively difficult on ourselves. We can use technology to help do those tasks that take too much time and frustration for humans to do. Think of things like:

Planning: The community has a lot of jobs, each on different times and maybe even irregular times. This planning is best tracked using a website that’s available locally (no internet required). Members can assign themselves as available for these jobs so organisers can easily see the amount of workforce there is.
Plant management: Using drones, sensors and Artificial Intelligence it’s possible to track how well plants are growing. If there’s a problem it’ll be alerted. Additionally, water spouts, nutrition, UV lamps and shades can help maintain better living conditions for the plants. These systems are quite easy to maintain and are very beneficial to a better harvest with less manual labour.

Coaching and knowledge sharing

A key problem we’re facing in these modern times is that knowledge is being outsourced and forgotten. It’s important that each of us keeps up with a solid foundation of knowledge in how the world works. Without this we’re too dependent on others. What are we going to do if we don’t have them? Would we even know where to begin? There is certainly space for specialists, but we’ve gotten to the point where people make misinformed decisions and judgements, just because they have absolutely no knowledge about the topic at hand.

Ecommune’s goal is to share as much factual data as possible. Any member of the community will receive coaching about the basis of this. In essence it’ll be possible for anyone to do any job in the community. Some members might want to specialise in an area, which is highly encouraged as they’ll be the coaches about these topics. But it’s also beneficial to these specialised members to have knowledge about the other things going on as well. They can make better decisions as they’ll have better insight in how their decisions affect other areas of the community.

Solving problems of the modern world

Solving involuntary homelessness

Having no home can have plenty of reasons. Some have huge debts and expenses or too low income whereby they can’t afford housing. Others might have mental issues or a criminal past, causing them to not be eligible to receive housing. Whatever the case, it’s still a problem for some to keep a home.

Ecommune can solve this problem by supplying better living conditions and free housing. All by just participating in the community. However, this doesn’t mean just about anyone can walk in and get a house. Working comfortably together plays a big part in this; If someone doesn’t want to participate then that is their decision, sadly that means they will not enjoy Ecommune’s services. That’s a voluntary choice. In a more positive light, Ecommune gives the opportunity to receive housing to those that struggle to make ends meet in the capitalist way of living.

Reducing stress and increasing mental/physical health

We all know how stressful it can be to have to maintain money. Thoughts like “Can I eat tonight?” or “I can’t afford to do this.” are very common. Strange how in a modern society we still have the same insecurities as when we were hunter-gatherers, but we can do even less about it. Where we used to be able to plan ahead better and be creative about things, we’ve reduced ourselves into needing to ‘just be smarter’ to receive more money. This severely limits the options and creativity that we had before. Certain jobs just pay more; giving the elderly their daily medication earns you way less than sitting at a desk trading stock. It’s insane how our priorities have become profit-based.

Removing the fear of losing housing and having nothing to eat, by removing money from basic needs, gives us back control. Don’t have something? Make it. Can’t eat? Grow or gather it. No more waiting for your monthly paycheck and overworking yourself for that bonus. Yes, it’s not this simple in practice but the gist is still the same; Make survival our own responsibility, rather than an economic choice.

Lifting off the burden of “I can’t earn more” and putting it into the perspective of “I can fix this myself” enables a more potent lifestyle full of possibilities rather than limits. This reduces stress by a large amount. This in turn gives an even greater effect of having a calmer mind which aids in an overall better mental health. Which additionally makes you perform even better than with the burden of stress like before. It’s ironic; We’ve tried to improve society but have gone too far and proceeded to only limit ourselves.

Giving jobs to the ‘unemployable’

One of the worst feelings in life is feeling left out. We’re biologically social creatures. Not being able to add value to this social system feels like having no purpose in life. In this money-based society there’s a certain minimum requirement to work that not everyone can meet. Things like stress (e.g. ASD, PTSD, sensory processing sensitivity), insecurities (e.g. anxiety, schizophrenia, memory loss), or physical limitations (e.g. muscle/bone atrophy, cerebral palsy) are the most common reasons why someone cannot keep a job. A large number of employers are not willing to adjust their policies or lower their expectations to give better chances to these ‘social pariahs’. It sadly makes sense from a capitalist viewpoint. Why would they if they can get better performance for the same amount of money?

Resecuring humanity’s future

It’s a bit of a doomsday scenario, but there’s a possibility that we eradicate ourselves if we keep up capitalism the way it currently runs. Risks like having no more resources causing world wars, not taking nature in mind causing bad air quality and global warming, the focus on personal welfare causing bigger and bigger economical inequality, etc. All a lot of unpleasant futures that are best to avoid, if I say so myself.

Ecommune helps resecure humanity’s future by reducing resource usage, taking a more conscious step in keeping up the natural systems around us, and having no economical inequality as everyone has the same opportunities.

Eliminating poverty

It’s not so simple to say: “If there’s no money then there cannot be poverty”. Poverty isn’t always based on money. Poverty is a state in which someone cannot meet their minimum requirements for living life; no clean water, no food, no shelter. This often happens due to very harsh surroundings and lack of knowledge.

As spoken about in "Coaching and knowledge sharing", it’s vitally important to better our chances with more common knowledge. With this we become more resilient to harsh conditions like we were used to. If all the power shut down today, how many of us can survive on our own for over a year? Exactly. Not that many. We’re spoiled in the sense of having outsourced most of our knowledge to a select few specialists and relying on machinery and computer systems. That’s a bad situation to be in. We’re grossly ill prepared for unexpected conditions that influence all of us. Ecommune is a solution to this problem as it takes back control of these outsourced tasks.

The ultimate goal

The perfect outcome would be that at least half the world’s population lives in these communities. Super cities will collapse into smaller divisions and crime rates go down. Transport is reduced to a more eco-friendly method like electric trains, as the demand for speed is no longer that high (due to everything necessary being supplied locally). Job satisfaction goes up due to freely choosing to work instead of being economically forced. We have more respect for nature and its inhabitants. In turn we receive fresher air, less severe weather conditions and more healthier foods will be available to us (e.g. fish, unpolluted ground, less microplastics).

How Ecommune will thrive

It’s quite a large step to go from pure capitalism to a more socialist approach. This requires a lot of trust in each other. Not everyone is equally willing to put in effort in their surroundings and there might be conflict. These are luckily things we can prevent if we manage the community well enough. The following points will help Ecommune thrive:

Setting member limits (100-150 members): There’s a certain limit as to how many connections someone can realistically maintain. It’s best to keep around 100-150 members per community. This is inspired by Dunbar’s Number. It’s less desirable to create a community where people can be anonymous, as this’d impact our feeling of safety and willingness to work together; it’s easier to do something for someone you know, than for someone you’ve never met.
Working together: The entire basis of Ecommune is to get stuff done by sharing the workload. Having multiple people working on one project often speeds up progress faster than trying it individually. People are of different talents. We should use this synergy to be more productive.
Smart use of technology: As spoken about in "Technology", we can use technology to make our lives easier. This doesn’t mean we fully replace certain tasks outright. It means we can spend less time on tasks that take up too much time.
Use of project management techniques: Having a clearly written and organised goal gives everyone peace of mind. We can apply the project management techniques that have worked well for companies into the community. Things like Kanban and stand-ups work well to keep everyone informed and where we’re headed next.
Sharing education: "Coaching and knowledge sharing" already explains a lot of the reasons as to why we should make knowledge widely available. Having a shared understanding about a variety of topics makes it easier to work together, sympathise with the difficulty of some tasks and improve our own fields of interest.

Problems that may arise

Of course it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. There are some unique challenges that Ecommune might face. Luckily we have a lot of prior knowledge of bad examples and know how to deal with them. Plus, with everyone having essentially a transportable house, it might even be easier to reduce the impact these disasters might have on us.

Natural disasters: The violence of nature. It’s likely at the top of your mind when thinking about a ‘self running’ community. Images of water sweeping everything away or droughts ruining the crops flash before your eyes. These were and still are serious problems to humanity. Fortunately we live in a more modern time with better knowledge on how to deal with these problems. As every member lives in a tiny house, it’s always an option to relocate prior if truly necessary.
Cult-like behaviour and internal conflict: When thinking about a ‘commune separate from society’ you might think about Jonestown or Freetown Christiania. It’s easy to say: “No, my commune is totally different.”, without having actual proof of it. The problem with these bad communes is that they were way too big and power wasn’t fairly distributed. Jim Jones was blindly trusted. Christiania lost control where uncontrolled drug trade became its downfall.

What Ecommune does differently is it being ran like a bottom-up managed company rather than just a group of people living together:

Rules, law and regulations set the standard. Anything that goes against these are treated very seriously as they pose a threat to the solidarity of the community.
Smart project management prevents losing control of our goals.
Keeping tight lines with the ‘outside world’ makes sure there’s no alienation or social polarisation between both societies.
A smaller overall group with internal groups helps spot problems early on so they do not grow out of hand.

Where we are now

This plan is not that unrealistic. Some will call it an “Utopia” which only works in perfect scenarios, but there are already plenty of communities like this that run well. Some of the most popular ones being:

Damanhur

“Damanhur is an international community founded by spiritual researchers, pushing the boundaries of perception to bring catalysed personal-collective growth, and galactic understanding of our connection to the universe.“

Auroville

“Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity.”

While these communities are quite spiritual, which attracts a certain crowd, they’re not limited to be spiritual-only. We in the western modern capitalist society already have a non-spiritual version of these communities. Can you guess what we call them? Companies and organisations. There’s plenty of like minded individuals that can already work together. The only big difference between those and Ecommune being the place where they live, eat and entertain themselves.

So, what do we do now?

Set up a solid business plan To receive funding and get the idea accepted it’s a wise idea to follow standard procedure. A business plan makes sure the financial aspect of Ecommune is well executed. It’d be a shame to waste the valuable time spent on this due to a small oversight.
Get funding Simpler said than done, but not impossible. Funding for the idea is necessary for the piece of land, housing and services. While costs can be reduced by looking out for free help (volunteers, item donations), it cannot be fully relied on that we’re given everything without cost. Funding sources could be: Investors, crowdfunding, grants, donations, sponsorships, etc.
Find a suitable location Not every location is suitable for the community to form itself. As the goal is to have easy communication with the current society it’s important to be somewhat closeby, but far away enough that it doesn’t influence the usual day-to-day. Being built in the middle of nowhere isn’t desirable, but neither is next to an airport.
Hire contractors to set up the basis Massive changes will have to take place to start off the community. Land may have to be flattened or reinforced, old buildings and roads may have to be demolished. Contractors that have experience with this can set up a clean slate so future development is more easily done by people with less speed or experience.
Advertise and set up the town for 10 people at first It’d be nice to have a community with people in it. Why else would you create such a massive project in the first place?! Starting out with one large group is best. This eases members into living in this new way. Problems that arise during this starting period will not be as impactful as it doesn’t influence over a hundred people at once, without having prior knowledge of how to deal with them.
Periodically introduce more people and grow into 100 to 150 total members Once the starting group is comfortable and established, more members can be allowed into the community. This addition is the size of one group (6 to 8 members). Members of previously existing groups can be split off into this new group as well to help ease the newer members in, but this is optional. This procedure will follow until a comfortable size has been achieved, up to 150 members.
Create more communities There’s the hope that plenty more people will want to live in an Ecommune community. An important factor however is that this should be treated as a fully fresh community. Having two communities linked together is the same as having a 300 member community. This is too large and will not work out. Keeping true to the optimal size where everyone knows each other is vital. This doesn’t mean the communities cannot work together on external projects, it means that the usual day to day must stay within the community. This makes sure the feeling of responsibility and local power stays strong. If we keep to this rule, then each community will thrive.

While I – Caspar Abelmann – have written all these words to explain my ideology, I cannot change the entire world myself. I inquire everyone to take a deeper thought into bettering our society. The Earth will keep spinning even if it’s a polluted desert planet, don’t worry about that. What we need to worry about is humanity’s impact on the little creatures that walk on it. Including ourselves. There’s a natural symbiosis we are disrupting, which is a shame. We have so much knowledge but cannot seem to actually apply it, so let’s start at trying to work together and understand each other, before we set up rules and regulations that try to ‘fix’ things by force. I hope these words will inspire others to take action as well! If you are inspired but still wait for approval to change the world: You have my approval. Hereby you have been promoted to Manager of Change. Your first workday starts today. Good luck!