Succession, Community, Culture

Succession brings about the regeneration of cells and rehabilitation of habitats; it rules the microscopic and macroscopic orders of nature. Observe the forest, the reef, the galaxy, and witness myriad applications of the same law. Succession is the norm; one form follows another. That which is exhausted gets replaced; that which regenerates multiplies and expands.

Communities are organic entities that emerge from nature, referring to the laws of their specific context as they operate through shifting, ever-changing forms throughout space and time.  Groups of people and the forms they take are expressions of human ecology, the living convergence of influences both visible and unseen.

In my first essay in this series, I explored the concept of ecovillage as a strategy for sustainability, and what it takes for an individual to make the shift towards a regenerative way of life. In this piece, my focus turns to the process of creating culture through place, which is linked to the emergence of communities and their growth in succession.

A community is an organism, a living ecology, that emerges in a specific context due to favourable conditions. In this essay, I will be drawing upon examples from human, ecological, and microbial communities in order to demonstrate the law of succession that dictates the creation of culture through place.

Community happens naturally when a group of living organisms converge upon a shared arena. The concept of community-building, therefore, is less about defining the laws that determine how the community should function, and more about creating optimal conditions for community to emerge. I will be outlining the conditions and qualities of that emergence based on my own experience.

HOW TO GROW A COMMUNITY

Take this morning’s breakfast and leave it in a patch of sunlight. By the end of the day, expect a thriving community of microbes to be creating a unique culture specific to place. The context for this community is the substrate you have given them and the prevailing conditions that bring about their growth.

Culture, for the microbes, is formed by the cycling succession of dominant forms, which we describe in this context as a ferment. Over time, we observe the stratification of organic residue as the culture works upon the original substrate to transform it; each dominant strain of microbe is building upon the work done by the one which precedes it.

Precisely the same thing happens when humans come together to create culture through place. After all, human and microbial communities are closely linked and essentially symbiotic — relationships we have cultivated with certain microbial strains throughout the history of civilization have created many good things for us to eat and drink. And both human and microbial communities are defined by the interplay of living elements in a flow of succession.

But in human communities and civilisations (which simply emerge out of cultures that prove resilient) the product of fermentation is neither tangible nor edible. The culture of a community gives rise to ideas and values that succeed, with increasing richness and diversity, over time. A really good human community generates a quality of culture that yields a more lasting satisfaction than even the finest miso or mead.

This is the satisfaction of humanity expressing the highest ideals of life: espousing the way to peace and liberation for others to follow. Consider the doctrine of the Buddha, the teachings of Christ, the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas and the Upanishads. These are products of culture that has ripened to the summit of human achievement, and have accordingly prevailed in their relevance throughout millennia.

And the creation of culture, perforce, begins with the act of community-building.

COMMUNITY-BUILDING IS THE ULTIMATE FORM OF CREATIVITY.

A culture evolves through people living together to define their connection to place. On the island where I live, there are remote montane hamlets built in territories unmapped by former colonial powers, and yet whose boundaries are known intimately to indigenous land custodians. Language and story chart the relationship of people to place more accurately than a map does: culture determines how the land is understood by the communities who live upon it.

Creating culture, like any ferment, does not require the work of generations. Rainbow Gatherings, for example, last only for the duration of a lunar cycle, though the unique culture that seeded this movement dates back to 1972. What community needs to create culture is a place, first and foremost, and a shared vision of how to live within it. Within this context, relationships are formed that execute the process of turning one set of circumstances into what is needed for the next phase of collective growth.

The culture of a community is determined by dynamics of relating that take place within it; some communities form around a dominant player — say, a chief — whilst others are organised by a team of decision-makers or vision council. In either case, interdependence is the order of relations: in ecological terms, a dominant species depends on support from auxiliaries to create a balanced and functional community.

In Melanesia, chiefly authority is relational: there is no such thing as a sole executive chief, because a paramount authority is answerable to the line of auxiliaries that range from regional, tribal and familial chiefs. Interdependent relationships are built into the culture of traditional societies throughout this region: dominant players depend on the cooperation of many to maintain their dominance, and when one ceases to be relevant, the next emerges in the field.

SUCCESSION, IN COMMUNITIES, IS A FACT OF LIFE; IT’S WHAT CREATES CULTURE.

In the evolution of being, ideas and aspirations that work replace those which have become unwieldy through over-expression. It is not the prerogative of the old to resist the new: understanding how each phase of community life flows into the next creates a context for continuous creativity and novel forms of expression.

In the lifespan of a community, successional dynamics are observable through points of transition that we refer to as thresholds. Thresholds mark the emergence of a new level of complexity in a living system and its components; given the right conditions and constituents, the culture grown by a community will increase in its complexity over time, outgrowing the constraints of its earlier forms with new innovations.

In the production of shoyu — a condiment made traditionally from soybeans and wheat inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae (koji) and submerged in brine — the unique culture of the ferment is formed first through the action of the koji on the substrate and subsequently through a process of enzymatic hydrolysis that takes place in the brine. Then yeasts and lactic acid bacteria come along to join the microbial party, and hydrolysed amino acids form in consequence to bring rich, savoury flavours out from the blandness of the original substrate.

This is a complex example but it illustrates brilliantly how culture is created by dominant players working in succession across dynamic thresholds — a scaled-down version of our human communities. Observing one’s shoyu preparation over its period of maturation, there are several players that dominate in different stages, each performing their unique metabolic tricks to create the culture of the shoyu: the koji, the yeasts, and the lactic acid bacteria drive the process for a given season to transform the moromi and the briny brew in which it swims into a complex field of dynamic relationships.

When humans start building culture through place, the dynamics of relating are strikingly analogous. The whole process is seeded by the germ of a starter culture (like the koji) that works upon a substrate or place of action: a block of land in nature, a squat in the big city, any place designated by the community’s originators or seed crew to set their vision into motion. The coming together of these conditions creates the first threshold in the growth of community dynamics: the raw materials are gathered in place and the culture seeded through the vision or desires of its pioneers.

A period of dynamic growth succeeds from the first threshold, creating the conditions for the next phase to emerge in the process of community-building. Diverse collaborators (like the yeasts and lactic acid bacteria) are drawn into the mix, usually by the strength of the vision and quality of culture in place.

Throughout the second threshold, complex relationships are forged that bring about qualitative and substantial transformations both to the vision and prevailing culture: the emergent community begins to experiment with what works and what doesn’t in the scope of its operations and breadth of relationships. Importantly, all developments in this phase are specifically driven by the place and its needs: the culture therefore depends upon and is determined by its terrain; it is a culture of place.

COMPLEXITY BEGINS TO EMERGE.

This phase of community growth is characterised by network formation, expansion of facilities and outreach, and a quality of dynamic optimism that supports individual and collective creativity; it is an exhilarating phase of a community’s lifetime, as the emergent possibilities to co-create appear limitless in such a field. Provided a few key preconditions (which I will expand upon) are soundly in place, the rampant diversity of this phase evolves the community towards the third threshold, in which a coherent structure emerges to frame and enhance a unique culture of place.

Here we begin to witness a culture in its maturity: the dynamic reactivity that characterised the early phases of community growth settles into its structure; a deeper level of complexity begins to emerge, as with a batch of shoyu left to age in the cellar. The originary vision is succeeded by a clear, collective purpose that binds the community in a state of communion. In such a culture as this, people begin to relate at depth with one another; peace, ease, and coherence in community life become the standard, as the interpersonal volatility that creates conflicts diminishes.

This is, I should say, a rare occurrence. In the nine years I have been living in communities, I have not yet witnessed the full integration of this process. I have seen its possibility on the horizon and worked actively towards it, but in every case the development of a clear collective purpose as an expression of the unique culture of place has been forestalled by players invested in other agendas. As with the shoyu, the only way to prevent contamination by unwelcome microbes is to stir things up from time to time.

However, there are certain preconditions that can be put into place in the early phases of community-building in order to prevent this from happening. In making shoyu, you employ a nice salty brine (~15% by weight) to prevent corruptive strains of bacteria from taking hold in the ferment. In building community, you start with a clear vision and intention from the outset, and have processes in place to ensure that everybody who comes along to co-create the culture is coherently aligned with them. Easier said than done; the microbes tend to behave more predictably than people.

Since people act in accordance with their beliefs, even the ones they are not aware of, outer transformation comes hand in hand with inner transformation, and the other way around. Living in community can be an excellent support in individuals’ journeys towards self-realisation and living life more in accordance with their consciously chosen beliefs and visions for the world. Of course, it can also be the opposite — and the outcome largely depends on the intention, structure and practice of the community, as well as our ways of approaching ourselves, the I, and each other, the community.

— CLIPS Guide to Group Projects. GEN-Europe, 2017.

MORE ATTEMPTS TO CREATE COMMUNITY HAVE FAILED THAN THRIVED.

Everything that I have learned about community-building comes out of years of frustration and disappointment with the whole endeavour, which — perhaps due to my unique brand of relentless martyrdom — I can never seem to relinquish. But it not the purpose of this essay to dwell upon failed experiments; after all, I would never serve you a spoiled shoyu. Every painful lesson has been necessary for personal and collective growth, which is really what I mean by passing thresholds.

In speaking of succession, I am pointing towards the unique set of conditions in community that contribute to the growth of culture over time, through the collective efforts of diverse players. And for a really rich culture to emerge from a place, a structure is needed to frame these collective efforts and to enhance their quality.

A structured community has solid agreements about how things work on a practical level, as with businesses and organisations. However, this alone does not make for a mature community; it is rare (in my experience) that written agreements are actually lived out in day-to-day life, for constitutions, manifestos and mission statements tend to reflect the ideals and and aspirations of a place and not its reality.

In a community whose culture has ripened to maturity, such documentation ceases to be relevant. There is no need to espouse ideals of interdependence or mutual respect once these values have become entrenched in the unique culture of place. The hallmark of a mature community is not its outward manifestations such as programs, outreach, or developments; rather, there is an ineffable quality about the people living there that marks their sense of belonging to the place.

In the appraisal of culture, as with fine shoyu, our measures of distinction are qualitative and subjective; the artisanal shoyu made by traditional methods — roasting the wheat on hot sand, fermenting the moromi on straw mats and bamboo — tastes qualitatively different from mass-produced soy sauce, and accordingly belongs to a different gustatory context. And yet both products are perfectly good condiments that perform well in the dish best suited to them, bringing out deep savoury flavours and rich aromas; who is to say which is better?

COMMUNITY IS THE GLASS JAR OF HUMAN FERMENT.

A mature culture that has grown out of a place will always be connected to that place; and to be part of such a culture means that one’s association with place remains part of oneself. The life of a place so suffuses the consciousness of its inhabitants that one feels and senses the rhythms of the community in one’s own body. Here the parallel between the community and the condiment ends; for one final transformation, uniquely human, is needed for the complete expression of culture.

If a mature culture is rare these days, than a bestowal of its wisdom is rarer still; that is, a teaching is brought forth that outlives the community, serving as a testament or instructive manual for how to live. Consider the Pali Canon, the Zohar, the Tao Te Ching — texts whose truths are timeless and placeless, which nonetheless emerged from the unique cultures of their time and place. Such cultures breathe life into the work of human expression, resulting in the bestowal of teachings beyond the context of their emergence.

In Vanuatu, the practice of sandroing — an scriptural artform of patterns drawn in sand — transmits information about local culture (history, ritual, myth, kinship and choreography) whilst presenting a cosmological framework for temporal experience. The precise geometry of points and lines that flow through the single, flowing gesture of a sandroing also convey, as Peter Prevos writes, “the esoteric aspects of local culture which can only be understood by the initiated, by those people that fully understand the context in which their culture exists.”

The modes of expression in the gesture of bestowal are as varied and rich as the cultures from which they spring: cave drawings, oral narratives, folklore, dance, and artisanal crafts practiced through ritual forms have contributed to the collective learning of our species for thousands of years. These forms — commonly non-linear and esoteric in quality — are transmitted and received in a specific context, and yet like the smooth gesture of a sandroing they symbolise the continuous link between the wisdom of the past and our actions in the present.

Like spores cast into the wind, the ideas and values that germinate culture await optimal conditions to renew and proliferate; the context, the place and the players will be different, and yet the germ of an established culture restores meaning and purpose in the world through its emergence. It is through this process that we continue to create, continuously renewing ourselves and our communities in the growth of culture.

ONE FORM FOLLOWS ANOTHER.

Nature ensures that a single pattern of relationships is succeeded by something else when it is no longer serving balance in the living ecology. In the forest, a mighty tree is felled in the storm, shattering many others in its wake; the microbial activity generated through the ensuing compost of biomass, combined with increased sunlight reaching the forest floor, creates a glade of frenzied fertility and potential for diverse growth.

In community, we all play our part in the drama of emergence. What I have learned through the ongoing experiment of creating culture through place is that community is a living entity. It has a life of its own, beyond what I can control with my ideals and opinions about things; beyond my indignation, my conviction that he is wrong, beyond my high-minded aspirations and sense of moral entitlement, there is a living field that is so much more powerful than the sum of my thoughts. And it is what I’m part of; it is growing within me.

Succession is the truth of ongoing surrender to the harmonious growth of human culture: it says, let's keep going, let's create this together, and taste what emerges from our collective effort. In this, there is only reverence for the process we share as community, in its infinitely varied forms. Emerging from nature, our communities are operable to only this sole and sovereign law — one form follows another.

If it is so channeled, life in community may touch upon something perhaps even deeper than joy. There are a few who repeatedly seek out brief experiences of community as if such episodes were some sort of "fix." This is not to be decried. We all need "fixes" of joy in our lives. But what repeatedly draws me into community is something more. When I am with a group of human beings committed to hanging in there through both the agony and the joy of community, I have a dim sense that I am participating in a phenomenon for which there is only one word. I almost hesitate to use it. The word is "glory."

— M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum.

This essay was first published in Surrender Now, February 2022. (link)