this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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the real self sufficient homestead is founding a village with like at least 50 like-minded people.
...and refrain from drinking Kool-Aid and punch, just in case
AA got it right as far as that goes. Leadership revolves.
AA would be one of the biggest organized cults on the planet if the founders hadn’t thought of that.
Now, not everyone can be a leader, and those who can’t won’t generally volunteer. So, what you end up with in a small community is a handful of leaders who don’t agree on everything and therefore represent the needs of the people in the group a lot better.
Whether we like it or not, positions of leadership tend to happen naturally. As long as we hold sacred the fact that there is no truly central leadership, it shouldn’t devolve into a cult.
It might just be a part of our nature though. When you enter recovery they give you a list of places to avoid (they gave me one anyway) because the revolving leadership has fallen apart and a single personality has taken over.
AA relies on religion and finding god to treat a medical problem like addiction. I don't think it's the best example my dude.
Well that’s not the part I’m talking about. I’m talking specifically about the leadership.
I’m an atheist who attended AA for years and I never worked the steps. The old heads definitely start to put the pressure on you after awhile though. “Yer higher power could be the universe.” Well, yeah, but it specifically says god.
That's only one factor in a high control organization.
There's a theory that the longevity of a commune comes down to making costly sacrifices. This signals to the group that you're not going to be a freeloader. Things like praying at a set time every day, or going to services tends to make religious communes last longer. The tasks don't have to do anything in themselves; they just have to exist and take up some of your time and effort. Religion has an easier time mandating these things, because you can put the whole reason for it on an ephemeral deity rather than something more concrete. In fact, this signaling to the group may have been the reason religion developed in the first place.
The data on this is mixed, however.
http://cognitionandculture.net/wp-content/uploads/Sosis_2003_CommuneLongevity.pdf