307 – Interview With Diana Leafe Christian Part 2

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Paul starts off by mentioning how the last half of the last podcast they made got ruined so now they are now re-recording that. Diana wants to make it clear that she has a basic disagreement from Paul. She believes he has made an extrapolation of a too small sample by saying that most conflict happens in the kitchen of communities but this isn’t how all communities work, not all of them share a kitchen so she is basically just saying we need to be more precise about different types of communities because generalizations are always bad.

She talks a bit more about what she thinks of the phrase intentional communities. Paul notes that he thought she was trying to move away from intentional community to ecovillage but she debunks this and says she doesn’t like when people use the word ecovillage when they don’t actually have an ecovillage. She goes on to speak about the definition of an ecovillage and relays the general definition and the classical definition. She continues by breaking down this definition into more detail.

They talk about the criteria of getting to call something an intentional community, they talk about the standards and whether there are any. She does note that she doesn’t like that people can just say their their project is an intentional community on Intentional Community Directory when it isn’t. Diana goes on to talk about how to use the Intentional Community Directory and how to go about choosing and joining a community.

Paul switches it up a bit and talks about ego and arrogance for a while and Diana talks about how she wants to throw out the word ego because it doesn’t mean anything. Next they talk about her article which is going to be a chapter of her book, which describes a bell shaped curve in which all people fall somewhere on. She explains each type of person on this curve starting with the majority of people who obviously fall in the middle.

Diana mentions that when people are pointing at people and calling them bad things they usually are lacking the communication skills to express what they are really feeling. Next they talk about non-violent communication and non defensive communication a little it and Diana shares a personal story of her own relating to this. Next they talk about the word jerk and it’s implications for a while and Diana tries to steer them back to the theme of the podcast by mentioning that she suggests all communities do three things:restorative circles, sociocracy, and non-violent communication.

Relevant Threads

Open Communication
Define Ecovillage
Being An Introvert In a Community
Independent/Consensus/Dictator Hybrid

Credit: Cassie Langstraat

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