Communes

While writing yesterday, I kept thinking about Brook Farm and The Blithedale Romance. (I did a report on Nathaniel Hawthorne in high school.)

As it is, I think I have more to say about Orderville.

Orderville was an early commune in Utah, named as it was organized to practice the United Order, a Latter-Day Saint collectivist program.

It doesn't get talked about a lot, but we were told a story once that stuck with me. 

A teenage boy whose job was helping with docking the lambs collected the tails, shaved the wool off of them, and sold that as his private stash, then used it to buy a pair of jeans. 

Part of the collectivism was that everyone had the same clothes, as well as dining together and sharing everything, right? So the other teen boys saw this new fancy pair of store-bought pants and were jealous. 

The community leaders decided to copy that pattern, and that would be the new style of pants that everyone would get when their pants needed replacing. The other boys did not want to wait so they did things to wear their pants out faster.

The community leaders gave up and everyone got new pants.

Some people take that as a sign that with these attitudes it couldn't work out. Apparently what really did things in was the coming of the railroad and multiple arrests for polygamy.

I think the big problem is the attempt to maintain equality by strict control.

I remember being irritated with this in Utopia; why does everyone have to dress alike?

In Utopia it was even worse; everyone had to play the same games and eat the same food. That's what Thomas More thought was needed for peace. He just happened to make things look a lot like his own preference of monastic life but with families. Plato thought plays were bad for morality, so in The Republic you can't have plays, though Plato is putting his ideas in Socrates' mouth.

The first thing to take from that is how easy it is to assume your preferences will work for everyone else. That is an illusion, though not one that stops you from being a philosopher. 

The more important question is whether we can we have our differences and get along.

Well, let's get back to Brook Farm.

It started out fun, but then there were people who wanted to follow Fourier's principles more, and then they weren't making enough money, so they went vegetarian but not everyone wanted to do that and they were sitting at different tables and some people were paying more. 

Financial issues affect things -- that's part of what the railroad coming to Orderville did -- but it was the different ideas that Hawthorne noted the most in The Blithedale Romance. The main characters disagree about women's rights and criminal reform. Those disagreements gradually get more hostile.

A lot of hippie communes had issues with women still being expected to do the cooking and cleaning.

Here's something else interesting, from The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, a 2009 book by Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

In addition to discovering that more equal societies tend to do better, they also discovered that the method didn't really matter. Some countries had high taxes and then those taxes covered a lot of things. Others might have wage controls or universal basic income, but the point was the equality, and it helped, and people still got to pick out their own clothes.

Dominator culture, even with good intentions, leans toward exercising more control. They don't trust people to do right, so they will make them do right.

As scary as trusting can be, you can't force people to be good, but also, so much becomes about things that don't even related to goodness, like what style of pants you put on in the morning.

There are differences we can allow. 

Dominator culture knows all political affiliations

The title was nearly that it knows no political affiliation, but all affiliations is probably more accurate.

Over years of reading, I eventually came to understand that nationalism and communism were natural enemies. 

I suppose it started with World War II and the Nazis and the Soviets being against each other. In that context it would seem that the Soviets were the good guys, but that's not how it played out after the war.

Of course, just expecting there to be "good guys" is overly simplistic.

I might not have thought much about it, except that when I was reading a lot of South African history (after seeing Invictus), that kept coming up. The enemies of the South Africans, especially after Apartheid, were always the Communists. Then -- after seeing A United Kingdom and reading more about Botswana -- it came up again.

Also, looking at photos from the Civil Rights era, yes, you did see Confederate flags, but you saw Nazi flags too, waved by our homegrown racists. With that happening not long after WWII, it was disconcerting.

One point of that is the rise of the Nazis here isn't anything shocking; they have been building all along and the people who intend to be good people were not committed enough to anti-racism to stop it. We'll get back to that.

For now -- and this does relate to where "good guys" is overly simplistic -- how do you end up with such similar behavior on sides that are opposed, but clearly not opposite?

When we talk about political theory, even though there are things about it that are very real, the "theory" part is that things are not generally carried out perfectly. There are goals and ideals that don't get fully met. Sometimes that is part of the problem, and sometimes the theory part is so problematic that you have to be grateful for any failures.

I remember back in high school when people were talking about communism saying that it never has been carried out perfectly; that's why a lot of people preferred to use socialism instead. I am not sure those discussions were very valuable. It did allow some people to dismiss communism as an impossible ideal, where they were more pragmatic in their disdain.

Regardless, to the extent that communism is focused on the people controlling the means of production, and where nationalism is more about putting one's nation over other nations, those appear to be very different goals. Communism seems to be looking inward at welfare of the group and nationalism seems to be looking outward at their superiority over other groups.

It did not always work out like that. The German policy of "autarky" for self-sufficiency would seem like a reasonable policy for a communist state, even if invading other countries to get the resources seemed less appropriate.

Then, a lot of people under Soviet rule starved as grain was raised for shipment and sale to other places, rather than feeding the people who raised it. (That doesn't even get into what went on with the Cuban sugar harvest under Castro's early rule.)

A lot of the Communist failures were based on a desire to compete with other nations and show that they were superior. That almost sounds nationalistic.

One potential stumbling block is that both systems had enemies built in.

For nationalists, it was other countries, but for communists, it was the owner class. The philosophy included rising up against the oppressors. That was how you bring on the good times, but the good times never came.

Does it have to be this way? What if it started with something smaller?

More on that next time.

Dominator culture's invisible hand

I'm not sure this is a good title.

I know I want to talk about dominator culture. I keep seeing cases where that analysis is missing and desperately needed. 

(I also feel very pulled to write about various things in relation to Charlie Kirk's death, but a lot of those relate to dominator culture, so it should work out.)

Before getting into ways in which dominator culture works, I want to write first about how much it is accepted, where we don't even notice it.

That's where the Adam Smith reference comes up. His point was that with capitalism an invisible hand will often guide things for the common good. 

Without delving too deeply into capitalism right now, that premise looks a little shaky.

That being said, there are people who are going to be very comfortable with how and where dominator culture leads us. That can make the required examination uncomfortable.

First of all, what is dominator culture?

From the Center for Partnership Systems, "Dominator culture refers to a model of society where fear and force maintain rigid understandings of power and superiority within a hierarchical structure."

I want to emphasize the potential variety in those models. You can talk about patriarchy and racism and caste and white supremacy and ableism... it's not wrong to mention any of it. It is also not complete.

Because there are multiple systems leading to different positions in the hierarchy, you can -- for example -- have brown people prejudiced against Black people even though it would be in their best interest to avoid racism. You can label anti-Blackness a separate thing and even relate it to colorism, but the key is really about being able to be superior to someone, even if it means you have to be below others. 

Because it is scary to be below others, that might make you cling to the superiority you have, without even considering that there might be a world without that hierarchy and the fear and abuse that goes with it.

Therefore, some people find the phrase "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" very offensive.

They may not be the people on top, but they are more likely to instinctively fear being moved to the bottom rather than there no longer being a bottom.

Here are my examples of its subtlety.

Personally, I first came across the phrase "dominator culture" while reading bell hooks. I was like "That's it!" Here was a word that perfectly expressed this thing I had kept noticing. When I looked it up and saw that the opposite was "partnership culture", which valued men and women equally, I was disappointed, thinking that then the model is that couples lead, still leaving me out. 

When I actually read Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade, expecting to be dissatisfied with that part... no, the opposite of dominator culture is that we are all working together. 

Having lived under and been influenced by dominator culture for years, it affected my expectations. Even though I had been bumping up against the system and reading material that made me want to challenge it, I was still limited by it.

The broader example was a recent post saying that when science fiction tries to create an alternate society as a matriarchy, it's just a role reversal with the women dominating, which has not been historically how they have worked. We just assume the opposite is only a change in who's in power, not how power works.

While I have to acknowledge that there is science fiction that does not fall into that, yes, that type of interpretation exists, and there is a reason for it.

Dominator culture limits our imagination and holds us back. Sometimes it doesn't need to use force because the fear is powerful enough.

Also powerful is the apathy and the ignorance and all of those other things where the issue isn't even in contention. 

But I know something better is possible.

Garden update, now with vocab!

This is not about books, music, or films, but it is partially about words.

I have realized that when I am telling people about my plants, I sometimes use words that they don't know, and that it is completely reasonable that they don't know. 

(Does this happen with my political writing?) 

It has come up more with "volunteers", but what really drove the point home for me was the look of disgust on my sisters' faces and their immediate objection to my maybe putting down "green manure". 

In January I had posted about some of the issues I'd had last year, and trying to figure out how to make it better this year. 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/01/three-things-gardens.html 

I decided what was really needed was to till and add soil. It was possible, but it did not go as expected. There were a lot of delays and I got a really late start on planting. 

I put in a round of pumpkins and sunflower seeds. The seeds were older, but I have had luck with that before; this time nothing was sprouting. I was thinking of augmenting with plants anyway, but again, due to the late start, no one had pumpkin plants.

I really love growing pumpkins, but I was giving up on it happening this year. Then I thought of this pumpkin farm we visit sometimes. I reached out to the farm store.

They don't normally sell plants, but she advised I check with the owner. He said he could probably find some volunteers, though there would be no way of knowing what they were.

First vocabulary term: "Volunteers" are the things that are growing that you didn't plant. Yes, that does mean your dandelions and crabgrass, which could be spread by wind or animal movement, but you can also get bigger things. 

We had to uproot a seedling for an oak tree that I assume was buried by a squirrel. It might have been an okay spot for temporary food storage, but it was a terrible place for an oak tree. One of my Master Food Preservation teachers had tried planting tomatillos, and they failed, but some of the seeds ended up in compost and spread around the yard, and they grew like, well, weeds.  

Since he had not planted them, he did not know what types of pumpkins they would be. Of course they could die or get too late a start, but this was my last chance for the year.

He found me three. 

One was in one of those big flower pots that you plant different flowers in for an arrangement; there was something there they had not planted. It was pretty small.

One was off to the side of one of the main pumpkin fields. The root system was really shallow, but the vine was strong.

One was in the middle of some grass near the house. That's the one that lived.

The small one withered right away. The shallow roots lasted longer, but did not make it. It was during a heat wave when I planted them, which was not ideal. 

But one hung on. It kept spreading forth bigger, greener leaves, but not vines. Yet it was still producing little pumpkin babies. 

It turns out there is this thing called "semi-shrub" that grows like a bush. I like the vines spreading all over the place and flowering everywhere, but I can see how for some plots this size would be more convenient. They do tend to produce smaller fruit and blossoms.

One friend tried a plant ID app that was torn on whether it was pumpkin or squash. Since it came from a pumpkin farm, I am assuming pumpkin, but there's no certainty.

Actually, this stirred up some memories. Pumpkins really are just a squash, which mainly divide into summer and winter squash, but they can interbreed. One year I planted pumpkins and yellow crookneck squash and harvested orange crookneck squash. 

This also reminds me of a cousin telling me about this section of a huge squash that he got at a flea market. He was trying to find out what kind it was, because it was really good, but they couldn't tell him. Now I assume that it wasn't any established variety; somebody planted the right other kind of squash next to a Hubbard to make it more delicious.

(For more fun on what makes pumpkins themselves, try reading Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon by Cindy Ott.)

Three surviving vines would have done a good job covering the front yard, at least until the first frost. That's not what I got, plus there is the back.

"Punt" is a football term, when you kick the ball further away from your end zone. It's not because you think you can score -- you would try a field goal for that -- but because the other team is getting too close to scoring and you want to buy time.

My punt is that right now I am planting a lot of peas and green beans. They have a short growing season and should make vines. If nothing else I need to keep the new dirt from flying away or becoming a giant litter box for the neighbor cats.

Then, before the first frost, I have to figure out what I do next, and what to do between now and a good starting time for next.

One of those options is "green manure".

Green manure is a cover crop planted for the purpose of enriching the soil. Before the next year's planting, instead of harvesting you till it back into the soil. You can think of it as instant compost, except the "instant" is doing a lot of work there.

https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-green-manure-1761842 

It's not a coincidence that the other things I am planting are legumes. If I added in some corn, with the beans and pumpkins it would give me the Three Sisters, but it's way too late to plant corn.

https://www.almanac.com/content/three-sisters-corn-bean-and-squash  

There is a lot I have not figured out yet. That feels pretty normal for me as far as gardening is concerned.

For now, I am at least hoping to see some baby pumpkins getting bigger and turning orange. 

Your relationships and environment

Not all titles can be clever.

Some of you know that I used to do a preparedness newsletter; that's where the Sunday blog came from.

It often focused on pretty tangible preparedness for emergencies, but your emotional resources are a part of survival too. 

It totally makes sense to look at your environment in terms of whether there are nearby farms or you are in a food desert and are there plants contaminating the air and water or a pipeline that could explode without warning. Today, though, we are just asking...

Do you feel safe expressing yourself politically?

Would the neighbors shun you? Might you get a brick through a window?

Look, even here in the liberal suburbs of Portland, I know people who have had their Pride flags stolen and I see Trump and Thin Blue Line flags all the time... there aren't really monoliths. 

In general, though, are you able to express your views safely?

If not, you may be feeling some isolation. That may be more true on a day when a lot of rhetoric is flying around about how liberals are evil.

If your area seems bad in that regard, there is a good chance that it would not be economically feasible to move. You can still try and find community.

Look for the helpers. Maybe there are some like-minded people working on getting more supervision on the polluting factory or organizing to improve the food desert. 

If you don't find anyone, maybe you could start something and bring people in, but first check out who is around you. It might be surprising..

I should also note (and I promise you that dominator culture plays a role in this), it is not unusual for volunteer organizations to have terrible political struggles, with some people wanting to take leadership so slandering some members and playing favorites with others. I have seen some terrible burnout in dog rescue.

As we get into the relationships, we have to remember that people are not perfect. Also, you are people.

Who empties and who fills your bucket. Who listens when you are hurting? Whom can you ask for help?

The very important related questions are who confides in you? Who asks you for help?

Not having good answers is not where you throw up your hands in despair; it's just a starting point.

Maybe you need to reach out first. Is there someone whom you think might need help, and you would be willing to help them, but they haven't asked? How hard would it be for them to ask you?

You can tell someone that you are there for them, though it may require some reinforcement before they believe it.

You could also find that you would like to help others but you feel like your bucket is too empty. Is there someone you could talk to about that? 

If it's less pressure to do something that is not a big need, like a nice note or cookies, just because, that can be a perfectly fine starting place.

These are only starting questions, but I am going to throw two more out there knowing there are common patterns that come up:

Is your primary social engagement coming from work? 

Today's world makes that pretty easy, but changes in work can disrupt those relationships very abruptly, even when you socialize outside of work.

If job troubles happen, is that going to leave you isolated?

Also, if you live with people, do you all recognize each other as full human beings with the rights to their own thoughts and ways, who need to respect and be considerate of each other?

Sure, I ask that thinking more about husbands and boyfriends being sexist and not granting women their full humanity, but you know, it can happen with parents and children too.

That doesn't mean that you have to break up the relationship, but often people will struggle to realize they are not respected -- maybe they are not even liked -- and it's hard to move forward from that.

Respect is something that you both feel and do. My younger sisters and I are in a good place, but there was some anger and fighting along the way. Don't despair if things aren't good yet.

At the same time, if things are mostly in a state of detente achieved by ignoring issues, there may be room for improvement. That improvement is worth the discomfort that it will require.

I know there is nothing very concrete there, but it can't be concrete because it is so individual.  

It is also worth it.

Now in this worst timeline, there are previews of the accelerating stressors, so use them as a guide to what kind of improvements might help you and what improvements are possible.

We still need to be able to imagine something better, and implement it if we can. 

After the case studies, moving forward

Looking over the case studies has given me many thoughts about how we got here and what we do next.

I have been vacillating between giving personal tips and things to think about versus the importance of having some dominator culture analysis.

I think the analysis will take longer, so here are some tips.

Actually, today is more about the devastating reasons that we need the tips.

Looking at the three case studies, they were in different states of comfort and happiness, which seemed to be greatly affected by personal relationships and environments.

Obviously, in the same way that relationships form part of your environment, there can be some fuzziness on cause and effect in the relationships. I believe B's unexamined sexism damaged his relationship with his wife, and then that damage led to him becoming more misogynistic.

Life and people and situations can have all sorts of complications and nuances and they are very personal.

Because we know that, we are not going to necessarily judge people for what they do or don't do; that is not the purpose.

What we can do is consider our situations and options and then try and do better as we have the means.

Remember, A was the most conservative but also the most comfortable; most of us are at least suffering mentally now.

I do not expect that comfort to last, but the things that will cause that will not make life easier for anyone.

I predict future (already starting, really) difficulty along various lines.

We are going to see declining health with more difficulty accessing health care. That's not just vaccine-related but also deregulation and less enforcement of existing regulations. There will be deaths, but there will also be a lot of disability. Notice the increased talk of eugenics (even when they are not calling it that) and increased talk of institutionalization, especially  when we are talking about mental illness.

Growing stress and declining civility leading to more violence leading to increased fear, with increased fear also coming from incarceration of homeless people and immigrants. Yes, there have been deportations, but the camp in Florida seemed to be more about incarceration.

There will be more environmental disasters with worse government response. This is going to destroy jobs and housing situations. Also, we are seeing less job security and protection for workers. 

Add to that the rising cost of living on multiple levels, with some items becoming very hard to get, that is going to mean declining quality of life and private companies buying up real estate and this is also going to drive people into homelessness, which may drive them into incarceration.

Artificial intelligence in wrapped up in all of this, contributing to less respect for workers and more job loss, more environmental damage and energy instability, more psychosis, and less ability to get good information, which the government will not help.

I want to point out something with the increasing threats: you are not meant to feel safe unless you are "with them", but being with them is a moving target. The hate always needs to expand. Currently the people who care about the "good" immigrants that they like are starting to get it, maybe, but that will expand.

It's easy to feel very angry and bitter, but that won't help. Acknowledge the anger, because it is fair; then think about surviving and helping others.

And how do we survive and help others? 

That's where we start looking at our own relationships and environment. 

Case studies: Possibly the most relevant one

It's easy to think that most of my conflicts would be with conservatives; at least on the surface we seem most diametrically opposed.

However, I got on Facebook shortly before the country elected our first Black president. I think that might have caused some sifting, where I don't even remember the conflicts. I remember there were some, but it's been a long time. Certainly the oddball bigot pops up here and there, but my bitterest disputes seem to be with leftists.

That's why I say that C might be the most relevant, but of course the interesting thing about disputes with leftists is that they are so similar to disputes with conservatives. They are...

• Confident that they possess the moral high ground.
• Discounting of the most reasonable things you say.
• Quick to become abusive.

It should be better. Trump is a way more vile person than Bernie Sanders, so you would think that someone devoted to Sanders would not be as noxious as someone devoted to Trump. As reasonable as that premise sounds, it just hasn't been my experience.

In this case, C could not stand my support of Hillary Clinton. He kept attacking my posts in her support, which I kept defending in turn. 

The point of the breach was that in checking out his own page I noticed I was not the only friend who disagreed with him, but he didn't seem to be attacking the men in the same way. I asked about that.

"How dare you accuse me of sexism!?!" 

From my perspective, I was only asking a question to make him think. I did have my suspicions that he was sexist, but I didn't think he was doing it consciously. Maybe that was condescending of me. Anyway, he unfriended me and the conversation ended.

That wouldn't even be that interesting, except that it surprised me that he is avoiding politics so much right now. 

There's a lot going on; most people are posting a lot, with lots of outrage and concern over the current government's corruption and depravity. 

Leftists contributed to these, so their posting is often kind of defensive about how Harris would be just as bad on Palestine or how Democrats should have given us a better candidate, but they are still posting. 

Why isn't C?

Last I knew, he was living in Texas, like A. That may not be working as well for him.

The most noxious leftists are living in New York or California, where they are a lot less likely to be beaten up for their beliefs. That could make a difference.

There you have it; those are all three now.

Can we learn anything from this?

I am willing to post more about that.