Joining forces and multiplying the effect
Hi [phm] and welcome here too, I thought it might be easier to move conversation from email onto the platform.
Reading your introduction in the Beautiful Wiki Community Dojo just makes me think how closely the idea is aligned to the unMonastery: it starts with the need to work with like minded people, build an intentional community, and anchor it in real life problem solving… To quote you:
I look at the world and it saddens me that there is so much injustice, oppression, suffering, greed, stupidity and violence. I’d like to see humans doing a better job of things/society/politics. One of the projects I want to work on with others is improving this situation. So as above, I think the most efficient way for me to work on this problem is in a real-life community.
Starting a community and getting our own space is also probably a good step towards fixing some of these problems. It gives us the control to experiment with new types of society/economy/politics. It gives us our own little world/space where we can try the things we want with minimal interference from pre-existing powers. If we can build something there that we think is an improvement, others will look at us and see that our ways are better, then they can try the same things.
I am always surprised to learn about similar initiatives who could benefit a lot from the model [Ben] and others here are prototyping. And how joining forces could help many more of us realise what we dream about. Look, I’ve just looked up the first post ever introducing the unMonastery, back when it was only a group idea born out of the needs you’ve identified yourself, the difference being that they’ve been open to the idea of working with the establishment:
everyone felt that they knew of places around Europe with serious structural problems, which were often the same - things such as underused building stock combined with homelessness; a feeling of community breakdown and lack of rootedness; high levels of youth unemployment; low levels of computer literacy, meaning low take-up of low-cost technical solutions to social problems; lack of socially-conscious arts infrastructure. at the same time, we each felt that we had a set of skills that were under-used, or which we could put to use in a socially-conscious way.
the solution: decide on city that needs help with those sorts of problems. talk to local authorities and city leaders. persuade them to give us a space to use, as a co-operative live/work space, for at least a year. we move there as a small-ish group. we work, alongside local residents, to help the community adapt in a positive way, using the specialist skills that we would bring. (read more)
Maybe you’d like to consider applying for the unMonastery? Or visit ? Another thing is that the unMonastery is open to being borrowed, replicated, re-mixed by whomever wishes to do so. So if these guys are achieving good results you can use that to back up your own proposal :)