Are Intentional Communities Missing Something Important? The case for Deep Interdependence and Community Supported Community

While many hypotheses exist to explain why ICs and families (as opposed to individuals) are not doing well (according to metrics of social cohesion, lifespan, member retention, and as a proportion of global population, which is a proxy for global social change), they mostly ignore the fact that they did much better (in the form of villages) before the industrial revolution. Consistent with this fact, we observe (along with others such as Michael Polanyi and Thomas Friedman) that global capitalism is an external force that erodes, destabilizes, and outcompetes lower levels of human organizations, such as psychologically integrated individuals, families, ICs, and small companies. It is already known that strong shared beliefs and commitment mechanisms can help create community glue to counter the dissolving effects of global capitalism. Based on emergence and multi-level-selection theory, we propose several novel ways to inoculate ICs against this external force, including agreements to prioritize both resource production and distribution internally (as opposed to externally), to strengthen lower levels of resource organization (i.e. integrated psychological individuals and families), form higher levels (such as economic networks of ICs), and include a sufficient number of phenotypically conservative individuals within the IC. We also propose that these measures, which we call proper nesting, can also (in conjunction with known conflict resolution and governance solutions) partially inoculate ICs against internal dissolution forces, such as inter-member conflict, by reducing the number of potential conflicts.