David Rauschenbach

Women require other women. When this environmental requirement is satisfied, their bodies produce oxytocin, "the mechanism by which love and affection positively affect health" (Marnia). Western civilization's residential and city planners, for lack of this fact, have left us with a legacy of isolated structures, apparently optimized for the needs of the male occupant, or the legal or economic convenience of the developer, while almost perfectly optimizing the social isolation and disconnectedness of its occupants.

If a woman's production of oxytocin evokes feelings of contentment, reduced anxiety, calmness, and security (Wikipedia), and if these qualifiers describe the normal baseline of a healthy (tribal?) woman, then the logical corollary is that the suppression of oxytocin due to the social isolation of disconnected living must also increase a woman's feelings of discontent, anxiety, fear, and insecurity.

In other words, the legacy of male-oriented residential and town planning has been producing varying degrees of crazy in our women. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

Residential needs defined by men

A baseline for modern home conveniences for men might include access to his refrigerator, man-cave, big-screen TV, or getaway vehicle.

The modern woman's convenience baseline is miles apart from her male counterpart. She must leave the home for play dates and luncheons (because she is isolated at home), grocery shopping (because the dysfunctional home does not produce food), getting money (because her community does not produce money, and is lent to her instead by far-away banks for a fee called inflation), and so on.

Now as most people know, when a woman's needs are not being met, everyone (and I mean everyone) suffers. Therefore, we should work on the solution with all of the resources at our disposal.

Female coping mechanisms

11% of American women now take anti-depressant drugs (compared with 5% of men). Countless others turn to TV and social media to satisfy basic social needs. Some unknown percentage phase in and out of some degree of crazy, both fueling the cliche, and explaining why Google finds over 400,000 pages containing that exact phrase. If you have never listened to women speaking openly on the subject, or if you disagree with the premise, then this blog is not for you. Otherwise, the existence of the problem is a foregone conclusion.

Actionable Alternatives

Since the first wave of the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970's, various communities have plunged headlong into researching more communal living alternatives. These efforts have been called by various names, such as intentional communities, hippie/Brethren/Hutterite/Mormon/sect compounds, and co-housing. Many operate on meager finances, and on the fringes of society, which on the one hand provides the freedom to perform the important research, but on the other hand requires the observer to glean the lessons learned without getting distracted by the conditions of poverty and outright economic failure.

All of that is about to change. According to John Robb, there are tens of trillions of dollars in investment capital currently sitting on the sidelines. That money will not be deployed in financial markets, because they have become casinos. It will not be spent on treasuries, because the government is approaching default, and because treasures are "a triple threat to your capital", as Doug Casey likes to say. And the money will not be spent on real estate, which is in freefall, and designed for a bygone era of farming or "happy motoring", as James Kunstler would say.

John Robb's central message lately is that an investment in a Resilient Community is the only investment worth having. If his message gains traction, and if those tens of trillions of dollars are deployed in new Resilient Community development, then that would be enough money to fund 1 million separate communities, with each one capitalized with $10 million dollars!

And that is only what would get the ball rolling, because some folks think that the real action will be in the 2nd generation of new communities (2025+), that will use new open-source monies to accomplish whatever needs doing, which will probably make the current International Communities Directory look like child's play.

Investment Implications

As capital begins moving into community development, I see developments starting to polarize into two distinct types:

1. Bottom-up concensus-driven open-source communities that are fueled and perpetuated by creativity and total member participation. They are redesigning living spaces, integrating work areas, planning to produce and consume local moneys, and dealing with the member isolation problem by re-introducing more ancient and tribal communal organization. They have broad appeal to 13^th generation Americans, and are adaptable platforms for their children and grandchildren, in peace or war. And because they are in alignment with the future, they have unlimited upside potential.
2. Top-down investor-driven tract developments that are initially marketed through fear, then perpetuated by flipping or unloading, because of not representing value worth holding for future generations. As such, they embody the peak dysfunction of the end of an age. Their structure maximizes the return on investment for an investor minority, placing it at odds with a community majority. For the community majority to profit like the investor minority, the community must come to accept and favor bubbles, so that they might also profit by flipping, which rewards behavior that weakens the community. In other words, the structure is created with internal forces that will eventually pull it apart. While there will be some money to be made "the old way", this model falls short of the elusive win-win ideal, and further begs the question whether the economic model can be profitable for all members, absent bubbles to facilitate the flipping. I would not be surprised if this model has only 20 years of life left, during which it might target 12^th generation Boomers only.

If bubbles and fractional reserve currencies are a part of the problem, then so are the projects that depend on them and perpetuate their existence. Therefore, it is time to move on.

Conclusion

As the early stages of the present spiritual and cultural shift unfolds, the subject of resilient and self-reliant communities is finally receiving much needed attention. A common theme is the degree to which existing communities can be retrofitted for sustainability, resilience, and meeting the needs of its inhabitants, instead of merely its investors.

If current conventions such as tract-selling and isolated structures are "an embodiment of the psycho-social disintegration of society" (Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein), then the subject takes on an entirely new dimension, and crystallizes which development models have the best long-term upside potential, and the most meaningful applicability to current generations of humanity.

Michele— irreplaceable soul-mate, mother to my 4 daughters, and crazy as a bat when placed in solitary confinement,
including suburbia, a flat in Europe, and a lonely midwest farm. Thank God when friends and sisters come
to visit. The bottle of wine is a Mad Housewife Cab. I wonder, is that glass half-empty, or half-full?

Further Reading:

• “Intentional Communities: Lifestyles Based on Ideals” (a primer, by Geoff Kozeny)
• The Dalai Lama's Amazing Proclamation to Women! (by Ariane de Bonvoisin, 17-Oct-2009, Huffington Post)
• “Isolated buildings are symptoms of a disconnected sick society” (quotes from “A Pattern Language: Towns • Buildings • Construction”, 1977)
• The Medicated Americans (Scientific American, Feb 2008)
• The Only Investment Worth Having (John Robb 5-Jun-2010)