Ideas of One Small Family - Mettanokit


Mettanokit


Ideas of One Small Family MN-A2

Mettanokit Community
at Another Place
Route 123
Greenville, NH 03048
(603) 878-3117

Brochure:Ideas of one Small Family
Another Place

The philosophy and workings on an intentional egalitarian community

The Mettanokit Community

We are an intentional community. This means we choose to live together. We also strive to be egalitarian, which means that we try to give all community member’s equal access to resources according to need. The structure we have chosen for our community is that of a large family. We draw inspiration from many sources, noting that the recent historical trend towards “nuclear” families does not suit us. We look back to societal configurations such as extended families and tribes.

An average of 12-15 of us have been living together since 1981. We are babes and yet, we are old. Communities that began before the recording of the human story are vanishing and many of the newer communities that began in the past decades have ended. We continue….

A small portion of what we have learned is these years together is written with several goals in mind. One is to orient those who are considering community so that whey you visit here you might understand better some of the things you see and feel. The second is to inspire those of you who hold the idea that people can live together well. We feel we are doing this. We have come to understand that getting close to each other is both a joy and a struggle and we welcome both, understanding that is our choice to use every occurrence to our advantage and for our greater comprehension of what it means to be fully human.

Since we believe that all things are benign, including human beings, you will perhaps perceive that our philosophies, systems, and structures are built on that simple assumption.

With hope for peace and true prosperity for all beings.

The members of Mettanokit Community

What makes us different?

We have looked at some of the ways the society is organized to support people, and some of the ways that society is organized to oppress people.

Pooled Resources Realizing that only a very small percentage of the world’s population controls most of the world’s land(including its resource and technology) we choose to put our assets together so that we can explore a more equitable method of distribution of assets. The land we care take is owned by a non-profit corporation, Another Place, Inc. , a center for holistic education and living since 1976.

Child-Raising Realizing that in our culture the task of raising children falls to a very few people who are not paid, or who are paid very poorly for this immense and great work, we have chosen to require all adult members of our community to be actively involved with the growing of the next generation.

Work; Realizing that certain kinds of work, which are necessary for the continuance of healthy communities are not compensated or are poorly compensated (e.g. childcare, cooking, cleaning, house maintenance, car maintenance, personal healing, studying) we have chosen to compensate ourselves equally for all work, regardless of the societal norms.

Art Realizing that art is vital to life, we have chosen to encourage each other to pursue our creativity by supporting these activities in very way we can.

Creative Process We recognize that our goals and aspirations are a process, that they are constantly changing and that we are always reaching for better lives together. We also recognize that we are “swimming upstream” in many ways since the larger society we live in does not always understand or support our efforts. We are cultivating a spirit of tolerance, understanding, persistence, honesty, and humor.

We agree to respect all beings and spirits in the universe
as our teachers and to care for our sacred earth. We trust ourselves
We trust the process of attunement to solve all problems and conflicts
among us. We accord each other freedom, support ,appreciation, respect
and full power without regard to age, sex, race, personality, intelligence
or history. We seek by living simply and by sharing to heal the earth
re-create society and hasten the spiritual transformation of humankind.

How does it all work?

Let’s take it from the top. You decide you might want to live here. What happens? Success in becoming a consensus member of this community takes you through several steps: Visitor, Provisional 3-Month Member, Provisional one-year member, Consensus Member.

Visitors:
The status of visitor is broad. Some visitors are doing term papers for college or high school studies and are interested in community. Some folks are curious, some folks come because they had a good connection with one of our members and want to experience more, some visitors are interested in joining a community.

We welcome visitors. All visitors must be planned in advance with our visitor coordinator. Please plan your visit to happen during the first week of the month. This is generally our “ visitor time” If that time is impossible for you, please discuss this in a letter or by phone with the visitor coordinator.

We ask visitors to: