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Oct 20, 2008 About skillsharing, networking, community live and “free love”…
After we had visited the Gasser school (next post)
we accidently came across a presentation of the Z.E.G.G.-community in the Schloss Glarisegg:
2 people that are living in the “Zentrum für Experimentelle GesellschaftsGestaltung” (centre of experimental society creation) in Belzig near Potsdam (that exists since 1991 and is one of the biggest communities in Germany)
were telling the Glariseggers (and us!) about their experiences with community live in the last 17 years…
skillsharing as it should be - and we were surfing it 
What was quite interesting to me is that the roots of Z.E.G.G. community
(and it’s sister community Tamera in Portugal that we are propably goin to visit later on our tour)
are here in Steckborn, where the “spirit fathers” and founders of those two projects lived in another community before (that went through the media as a strange “sect” and was quite known for this).
Moreover - as the Glarisegger told - the community of Glarisegg maybe would never have come into being without the community experiences of the people in Z.E.G.G. and Tamera.
So we felt it was quite an important and inspiring meeting taking place there
and hopefully the beginning of a friendship in between two communities that are so connected in their histories anyhow.
The main idea that is connecting the ’bout 80 people living in the Z.E.G.G.
is mostly the wish to experiment with different forms of loving and with nonviolent forms of comunication - and creating peace in this way by working on themselves and raising consciousness…
A grand part of the conversation with the people of Glarisegg was circling around the topic of “free love” and around how people in the Z.E.G.G. are living it - propably as it is a theme that is interesting for everybody and that you don’t get to talk about a lot in “outside world”…
To prevent misunderstandings: “free love” doesn’t mean that having sexual relations with more than one person is a dogma in the Z.E.G.G. - even though it was more like that in the beginning of Z.E.G.G, but people there learned from their experiences
and found out that there is thousand ways of loving
and that everyone has to find for him/herself the way that feels good for him/her.
“Free love” just means that everybody is free to chose his/her form of loving freely,
from not having any sexual relations at all, monogamic relationships to having several relationships at the same time
and that people try to support each other in their relationships and loving without judging over the form of loving…
They said that this form of loving and living feels much more “normal” than most of the people who don’t know it might think: open communication about sexuality and problems coming up in relationships help a lot - that’s the same thing in monogamic and polygamic relationships.
“If there is no peace in love, there cannot be peace on earth… ”
They also said that the ways of how people live their love and relationsships in this society mirror the big problems of human history:
people believe in possesing people they love in they same way as they believe in possesing land and other ressources… wanting to keep control about everything and for that reason coming up with “moral”, laws, borders, wars …
To confront yourself with letting go of your fears to loose somebody (something)
and to realise that you do not in general loose someone (something) just because you share with others
can help to raise consciousness about what is happening on this planet
and how we could live something else…
Most important in this (long and difficult) process of changing one’s mind is to speak with others about the problems coming up,
so that information can float freely through all the relationship-networks and there is transparency about the feelings of all people that are involved…
Interesting topic -but well, let us come back to the meeting and Z.E.G.G. in general:
The Glariseggers and Z.E.G.G.ers were also talking a lot about organisational questions, like what forms of organisation people in Z.E.G.G. chose, how about finances, etc … :
Most of the people in Z.E.G.G. are working outside of the community and similar to Glarisegg they also have a seminary and guest business going. We did not talk about self-sustainibility.
There are some “leaders” in the working groups, which is the people that engage most or have most skills about something. The people normally decide together who wants to and whom they want to be in charge of something.
Organisation structures are changing from time to time, but at the moment it is like this:
There are
*working-group meetings (like the cooking-groups meetings, etc),
*”forums” (where you have a platform to talk about things you want to promote, like new ideas etc or emotional things) and
*”plenums” ( to decide in concensus about important topics that cannot be decided about in smaller circles)
When you are living with 80 people, you cannot always be in contact with everybody
and know how everybody is going, so normally the people you are sharing your flat with or the groups are the people you know best and you got to do most with.
There are various forms of communication in the Z.E.G.G. , from group meetings to emails… to keep transparency about all the processes going on
To get a community member in the Z.E.G.G. doesn’t need as much money as in expensive Switzerlands Glarisegg community, but about the same time and process:
You do an introduction course of 5 weeks, then you can stay there for up to a year as a guest to see how it feels for you and the community. After this time you can become a full community member.
There would be space for up to 20 or 25 more people in the Z.E.G.G. buildings.
There are about 10 children in the Z.E.G.G., for whom the parents don’t have to pay rents and food, but those costs are carried by all the community.
One of the last topics we talked about was the relation in between Z.E.G.G. and Tamera, which is still strong even though there is some “family fights” every once in a while…
People from Tamera are always welcome in the Z.E.G.G. and the other way round.
As we already had contact with people from Tamera also,
I am right now really curious about how this community looks like.
—Anja
Last 5 posts by admin
- And then there was 8 ... ... About changes in our group: - November 7th, 2008
- Hof Allne Wind - October 31st, 2008
- Ludmilla in a rut! - October 31st, 2008
- working on the wagons - October 30th, 2008
- say goodbye to bodensee - October 26th, 2008
communities, switzerland
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