In the Company of Others
Edited by Claude Whitmyer (with Gail Terry Grimes)
"When the stranger says: 'What is the meaning of this city? Do you huddle together because you love one another?' What will you answer? 'We all dwell together to make money from each other,' or, 'This is a community'?"
There is something about being human that makes us yearn for the company of others, to be members of a family of spirit, a team, or a clan in which we are fully seen and understood. Stuck inside our own skins, we often feel alone and cut off; we want to be with others who share our problems, challenges, and hopes. Today people everywhere are finding ways of ending their sense of isolation by joining together in loosely and tightly structured communities of peers.
In the Company of Others explores how people are solving the dilemma of separation and building deep community through:
- business support teams
- neighborhood service clubs
- addiction recovery programs
- food co-ops
- men’s and women’s ritual groups
- intellectual salons
- intentional spiritual communities
- artists’ groups
- electronic networks
- AIDS and cancer survivor groups
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Eric Utne: I am because we are
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Claude Whitmyer – Waking Up to the Company of Others
Part 1: Seeking Community: The Need
Chapter 1. Mark Holloway – The Wins of Our Fathers: Utopian Communities in Nineteenth Century America
Chapter 2. M. Scott Peck – The Fallacy of Rugged Individualism
Chapter 3. Arthur E. Morgan – Home sapiens: The Community Animal
Chapter 4. Malcolm Margolin – An Historical Native American Village
Chapter 5. Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson – A Modern Village of Spiritual Seekers
Part 2: Making Community: The Task
Chapter 6. M. Scott Peck – Stages of Community Building
Chapter 7. Duane Fickeisan – Skills for Living Together
Chapter 8. Robert K. Greenleaf – The Leader as Servant
Chapter 9. Michael Linton – Money and Community Economics
Chapter 10. Amia Lieblich – The Economics of Kibbutz Makom
Part 3: Finding Community: The Satisfaction
Chapter 11. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Kinship and Friendship: The Flesh of Community
Chapter 12. Ram Dass and Paul Gorman – Service: The Soul of Community
Chapter 13. Starhawk – Celebration: The Spirit of Community
Chapter 14. Thich Nhat Hanh – Awareness: The Consciousness of Community
Chapter 15. Stephanie Kaza – A Community of Awareness
Part 4. Living Community: A Wide Range of Choices
Chapter 16. Geoph Kozeny – Intentional Communities
Chapter 17. Wayne Liebman – Ritual Men’s Groups
Chapter 18. Juanita Brown – The Corporation as Community
Chapter 19. Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durett – Collaborative Housing
Chapter 20. Stephanie Mills – Salons
Chapter 21. Kristin Anundsen & Carolyn Shaffer – Electronic Communities
Chapter 22. Frances Fitzgerald – The Castro: Building Community in the Face of AIDS
Part 5. The Dark Side of Community: Facing and Overcoming the Pitfalls
Chapter 23. Charlene Spretnak – The Other: Community’s Shadow
Chapter 24. Margo Adair and Sharon Howell – Domination and Submission: The Subjective Side of Power
Chapter 25. Arthur Deikman – The Cult: A Mirror of the Times
Chapter 26. Rick Fields, Peggy Taylor, Rex Weyler, and Rich Ingrasci – On Cults and Organizations
Chapter 27. Tim Cahill – Jonestown: In the Valley of the Shadow of Death
Part 6. Tomorrow’s Communities
Chapter 28. Arthur E. Morgan – Achieving a Community Way of Life
Chapter 29. Bill Devall – Ecocentric Sangha
Chapter 30. Gary Snyder – Rediscovering the Commons
Chapter 31. Leif Smith and Pat Wagner – A Future Community Today: The Open Network
Chapter 32. Ernest Callenbach – A Future Community Tomorrow: Ecotopia
Epilogue: Claude Whitmyer – Community Lost, Saved, and Liberated
Contributors
Resources
Bibliography
Notes
Permissions and Copyrights
About the Editor