Page 293 [293]
OCR
PROPHETS AND LOCAL ECO-COMMUNITIES 29] What can ecological local communities do? These communities try to realize their goals at three levels. On the level of the community, there are several kinds of ecological communities living alternative ways of life, e.g. some who share commodities (car, tools, books), or farm collectively. Then there is the level of the individual or household: members of the community help each other to make their households more environmentally friendly. They exchange information, and experiences to promote ecologically positive solutions or try to make others behave in an environmentally friendly way. Consolidating these norms is easier in a community where people mutually help each other than alone. At the level of the settlement, there is a possibility to act, too. The community may pursue political activity (in the classical sense of the term, not the partypolitical sense of the world): they may take an active part in the discourse, debates and decision-making about public matters of the settlement (or neighborhood or area). In the course of this effort, they may try to usher the local government(s) or locally active companies toward exercising greater care for the environment (they may also establish an undertaking*), and they can also shape the mentality and behavior of the local population.‘ The first and third levels are particularly important, because the ecological community can play a key role in the emergence of new institutions and in carving new building blocks for the construction of a new social-economic establishment. In this way, the community can exert a disproportionately large influence: the new institutions will most probably also be used by people who are not consciously environmentalist but their behavior will eventually become environmentally friendly in this way. (For example, not everyone who shops at a local farmers’ market is motivated by their deep awareness of the need to protect the environment.) It is worth noting that the newly formed communities are not only useful in terms of ecological sustainability. Many aspects of individual and social problems from depression to homelessness can be traced to the atomization of society. Forming new communities would not only lessen the pressure on the environment (and the adaptation to the environmental changes) but would entail a lot of other gains. Communal institutions formed to alleviate environmental problems may facilitate the solution of other social problems which require cooperation as well, and which are also meant to restrain egoism and promote the common good. Evidently, the radius of influence of a local eco community is small. But put before your mind’s eye the map of Hungary and imagine that a few hundred settlements already include such communities. That would already mean an enormous strength. And if such local communities rallied into a nationwide network, they would exert a powerful influence at the national level. 3 http://kozossegivallakozas. hu On how local eco-communities can make democracy more local and participatory, see TakacsSanta 2017: chapter 6. 4
