what will take so long

In my area of the country the ecovillage project that I think is farthest along in terms of prefiguratively demonstrating eco-communitarian social-change direction is the EcoVillage at Ithaca (EVI). In their thirty years of existence they’ve advanced a relatively amazing four steps along a journey that I conceive of as involving perhaps a thousand steps.

They’re on track toward creating a real village, one with a critical mass of households able to start to be somewhat economically and socially self-reliant. My guess is that such would require several hundred households, at the least, maybe a thousand. EVI currently has a hundred. And there is currently not enough in the way of sustained relationship to that particular place-on-earth as to motivate the kids to stick around. In keeping with the derangement of our norms, the kids go off to college and never come back. (They end up in New York or San Francisco or London or Singapore. They fly around a lot and visit sometimes.)

* * * *

0.4% of advancement doesn’t seem like much.

My idea is that history will date the initiation of The Great Turning to the twentieth century. EVI is an early expression of it. But why will the journey be so long? why will it take so long? 30 generations? 40 generations?

Because: The vision of its manifestation is so radically alternative to where we’ve arrived at in the era of industrial modernity. Of course, its manifestation is mostly nothing but a return to the Old Ways, but we’ve come so terribly far from that. The human species bloom (8 billion and counting) has become so extreme, the ecological overshoot so egregious, the social insanity so deep-seated. The revival of real community (characterized by being place-based, with locally-oriented interdependence, sharing of resources, participatory self-management, and stable face-to-face ongoing familiarity) will entail reinhabitation of the land. Under those conditions people relate intimately to a particular place-on-earth; to the fauna and flora of a place within a particular bioregion. Generation after generation stays, loves, and relates to it as the Home Place.

The Home Culture within the Home Place.

So: We’re really, really far from the re-creation of sane human habitat. It’s going to take a while. But the journey has begun.