Introduction
Welcome back to Community Resilience, a podcast created in collaboration with the Ecovillage Resilience 2.5 Degree Project, facilitated by the Global Ecovillage Network. I’m your host, Eva Goldfarb, inviting you to gather around the fire as we explore resilience, adaptation, and transformation in our time of deepening polycrisis. Today, we gather with Michael Werfel of Sieben Linden Ecovillage, situated in the community Bietzendorf in the Altmark district, Salzbüttel, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, near Frankfurt.
Michael Werfel is an author, videographer, community weaver, and karaoke superstar. He has lived in Sieben Linden Ecovillage for 15 years, in and around projects involving public relations, management, facilitating seminars for potential new members. In addition to creating and publishing Eurotopia, a wonderful compilation of ecovillages around Europe, Michael is a documentary filmmaker with a theme of community.
Interview
Eva: Welcome, Michael. I like to start these podcast stories by kind of getting your story, more or less, on how you came to community and why you came to community.
Michael: Well, I am in Sieben Linden Ecovillage, which is 26 years old now, at this location. And I have met up with the people who were planning the place in 1996 as kind of a journeyman, lost journeyman, actually. I was trying to conquer the world on my own feet, but I kind of failed. And I found refuge within that group that was starting to do the ecovillage. And at that point, I happened to be helping out with the first Eurotopia directory ever that was compiled at that time. And at the same time, they were scouting for a place to found the ecovillage. So I was there in a very interesting moment of time. And I was part of the first expeditions to check out this new place that was for sale. So when they finally bought this place in Popau, near nowhere in the north of Germany, really, I made a film in 2001, while not being a resident, about the creation of this ecovillage after it was four years running, very in the beginning. And I moved there in 2007. So several years later, I stayed a friend of the ecovillage. And finally, I decided to move there after I tried all other kinds of stuff. And I really find that I grew roots here. I have a family now. I had my mother here that was sick for six years. She had to lie in bed and I tended to her and I found people in the community helped me tend to her. I found my partner. We have kids now with three kids. And I’ve done almost everything in the community. I mean, I’m a builder by education, but I’m also a filmmaker by education. So here I do all this and more. And what I really like about this is I like that we have a, you know, a future that we create. So the future here is nothing to be afraid of. It’s like we do it ourselves. So whatever comes up, it’s done by us. So it’s good. It’s going to be good. It’s always going to be better everything, of course. And I see my children roam around here and really like the ecovillage. And all these questions children ask, you know, why do people do this? Why do people do that? I can honestly answer them because here we really kind of try to do the right thing. So whenever I’m in the city with them, they ask me, why are these people angry? Why do they have big cars that scare other people? And to tell them, I don’t know. I don’t like it either. That’s why we don’t do it like that. So in a nutshell, I’m kind of satisfied living in a place where we kind of have reign over our culture. I can go on and go on, but it’s better if you ask specific questions.
Eva: That’s beautiful. The future is nothing to be afraid of here. I think I will pull that as a quote. That’s really lovely said. I’m wondering if there was anything in you that really shifted when you started interacting with Sieben Linden. What was the internal motivation to make the switch and live there?
Michael: Well, when I finally decided to come here, I was in a partnership with a woman that lived in Hanover and who decided that she wants to stay in the city with her son. It was not my son. And it was hard to break that, but I knew that I couldn’t live in the city anymore. So I told her carefully, let’s stay together, but I really need to get out of the city. I really want to go to Sieben Linden now. And for her, unfortunately, it meant separation. And so it was over with us. And that was hard. And the motivation I wanted to be there though is, well, I was sick of the city. What I don’t like about cities is the traffic and actually the advertising. That is something that is really stressing me out. Being told to think or buy stuff, you know, like who gives them the right, you know? So I was at Sieben Linden and I felt like an awe for these people. They seemed like really, I don’t know, straight in a way, you know, like they knew what they were doing. They knew what they wanted from the others. They could say yes and no.
It was kind of a clearness that I found impressing and I wanted to be part of that. And I remember that I saw a calendar with all the birthdays on it in a central room. And somehow I wanted to be on that calendar with my birthday on it. I really remember that this felt for me like I could be part of this whole system by doing that. So yeah, I decided and I decided to come. And in the first years I had a lot of ideas what to do. Like everybody, like every newcomer coming to Sieben Linden, they have a lot of fantasy what they can, what their influence can be on the village. And the truth is you can have a huge influence on the village and on everything because everything is still under development and we always need enhancements to our communication or to our structures. They are never finished. But I did very little of that. Like one idea was to build a tower in the forest because the country is so flat here and I just wanted to make an impact, you know, and I was so full of energy and fantasy. And I didn’t do that, but I engaged in other places in the community, like in the PR group and in the management. And the compost toilet was my thing. So yeah, I eased into that whole thing. And now I’m really, I feel like I’m playing a role here. So people would notice if I’m gone. Not everybody loves me, but, you know, I make a difference if I don’t do, if I’m not here. Some people would say, where’s Mike? Who’s going to do this now? So it’s a good feeling, you know, to be needed somehow.
Eva: Perfect. As a storyteller, I’m going to try to challenge you a bit to tell the story of Sieben Linden and in the frame of resilience, but maybe starting with what brings you all together. What is the binding glue and any periods of transition that you feel called to share?
Michael: Okay. So the story, the story, the glue and periods of transition. Wow. Okay. We start right at the top. I would say the story of Sieben Linden, the basic story is that, you know, people came together because they wanted to live in a place where sustainability is really the focus. You don’t have to explain your neighbors why you do this, why you don’t fly, why are you going to the organic store? Because this is like self-evident. We all have shared this common denominator. And there was an interesting question at one point where people said, okay, we want to be self-sufficient, right? We want to do as much as possible on our own land. We want to grow most of our food ourselves. Don’t we? Because there was these others that said, oh, but we want to make seminars. We want to go out into the world. We want to show the people what we do. So there needed to be some kind of a compromise between those two aspects. And there was a decision, a community decision to do, to actually, yes, we focus on telling about us. And we take into account that that will reduce our self-sufficiency because we will not send everybody in the garden. We will only do a certain percentage of self-sufficiency. So we can allow other people to use computers, to make websites, to do seminars, to make podcasts, stuff like that. And I think we really stick to that still. And it works well because we do have a relatively small ecological footprint. A study from 2014 says we have a third of the German average, and we could reduce that. But we don’t because we want to use what we have and show people, look, this is already an achievement, and we are happy doing this. So we have a lot of time. Some people would say we have not enough time, but we have much more time than if we would really do everything ourselves, if we would be on the field morning to sunset. We’re not that. So we have a good balance, I think. We have a lot of fun. You said I’m a karaoke superstar. Yes, that’s true. And we have these parties, and we have a disco, and we have a cinema. We have multifunctional rooms where we do that stuff. We have a sauna, that’s important, and lots of places where you can do lots of things, like a pond for swimming. So this is not the very ascetic back-to-the-land life. I feel we dwell in luxury, but in a sustainable way. So I think this is the message people need. Yeah, so the community glue, I think, is sustainability. And of course, not everybody is the same. That is also important. We are a quite individualistic community, having said all that. I mean, we have some common purses. We buy our food together. We have some solidary system of charging for the food. For example, we make a round of who can pay how much for the food and stuff. The children are included. The children don’t have to pay it for themselves. But even though we have that, we are quite individualistic. I mean, you can decide how you earn your money. You can decide if you have your own car. We have a good carpool, but some people think they need their own car. We do not share all money that we earn or that we inherit, for example. And that can be a downside, but at the same time, it enables this diversity. Because if we would not have this freedom, this individualism, many people just would not come. This step would be too high for them, too long, too hard.
Eva: Amazing. You have just touched on a lot of different frameworks that really make up the ecovillage map of resilience. A bit on social through education and giving these seminars and the ecological dream of also wanting to be self-sufficient and not putting all of your bandwidth there and touched a bit also on the economic sharing. So really, thank you for bringing that in so early to this conversation. And I think that’s part of the ecovillage vision is to be holistic, to not focus everything on one dimension. And I’m wondering what the Sieben Linden culture is to bring in this last aspect. What the Sieben Linden culture is?
Michael: Yes, the culture. Well, Sieben Linden has its own culture, which is great. But you can see it on first sight. I mean, what you see on first sight when you enter the village is that you are asked to turn off your mobile phone or put it in flight mode. So you won’t see people, you know, checking their messages on the premises, at least not people who live there. Some guests do it and they get looks. That makes them stop it in a friendly way, of course. But of course, apart from using only compost toilets and apart from having generally less materialistic life and, you know, walking around barefoot and stuff like that, I think the more subtle aspects of our culture is that we enjoy knowing each other. We enjoy talking to each other and also maybe even criticizing each other. It’s maybe too much to say that we enjoy it. You know, we have this exercise that is called what stands between you. And we sometimes do it when we do a big gathering and it says, OK, everybody stand up, find somebody. What stands between you? And most people go, you don’t really want to say this. But we do have a culture where we try to tell what’s between us, even the negative things, you know, like it’s really annoying for me that you have so many guests that you send into our common house without being present yourselves. For example, could be something that I’m annoyed by and I’m encouraged to tell that and we’re encouraged and we do it to sort things out like this. So that is really different from the villages around us where people close their doors and you never know what happens inside. So I think that also in this way, we are more of an urban culture, even though we are really in the middle of nowhere. So I feel much closer to people who live in a like a progressive neighborhood of Berlin, say, than in the village that is one point five kilometers away from from us. But they cope with us. You know, we are in the news all the time. We have a local newspaper that is craving for stories. So we are in there all the time and they’re good. They do a good job of, you know, telling about us. And I think people can see that there’s quite a lot of stuff going on. Just yesterday, I read a really good article in the local newspaper about how we have a pilot plant for biogas. Is that the word in English that we use that we made out of feces? So that is something that is quite experimental. But even though it’s a local newspaper and a lot most people around us here, they never heard of compost toilets. The article transmits that pretty clearly. That’s it’s a good thing. So we have the support by the mainstream culture. And generally, even though we have our own culture, because our subject right now is culture, we do try to be permeable, open to the culture around us. And we invite people to us to see what we’ve done, to see what we build. I’m in the local fire department, which is hard sometimes. But, you know, we try to reach out and we managed to have a good coexistence. And it’s interesting, though, because the mainstream culture around us is really in place. It’s hard to overcome. So even though we really radiate, you know, and we have so many people coming to us and we really we make a big impact here. But this local culture of not really talking to each other, of talking bad about each other, of trying to, you know, transmit your opinion as the only true one, that is really a hard thing to overcome. And I am not sure how and if we will ever do this. But within the village, you really notice the difference.
Eva: Amazing. Yes, this often comes back to the root of what is human culture. Can we escape these patterns?
Michael: Yeah, like, for example, relationships. Yeah, like, yeah, like relationships, you know, we deal with them in a mature way, you know, because everybody knows people separate, they fall in love, they separate. So in Sieben Linden, that is quite usual that people, you know, that we know how hard it is if a couple separates. We try to support them. We hope that they can be friends. To have open relationship is not all that uncommon in Sieben Linden. So we know about this, you know, nobody will say, oh, did you see she’s hugging him? It’s okay. You know, we have we have couples that have children and parents with everybody knowing have other lovers and that’s okay, you know.
Eva: All about acceptance. Wonderful. Thank you very much. And also thank you for the tool. What is it between us? I hope listeners pulled this into their lives as well.
Michael: It can be good things too, you know, it doesn’t have to be negative things.
Eva: So we are connected here over the Ecovillage Resilience Project, which has really been exploring the future that we’re looking at. And before we kind of get into these harder topics of resilience, I wanted to look a bit into the past, into what economic or social impacts your area has had on your work. Just to give us a framework before we move into envisioning a future.
Michael: Well, obviously, we are in the northeast part of Germany. And the reason we’re here is because after the wall came down, there was easy land to be bought here. We couldn’t have this acreage here in West Germany or in the South Germany. The downside is that the landscape is kind of a challenge. We have huge fields that are monoculture. And the place where we are now, it was part monoculture forest, part monoculture fields. So it has really profited a lot by our settling here. Now we have biotopes and hedges and everything everywhere. So that was the main thing. We came into a place that was all conventional agriculture. The people who were not in agriculture, they were commuting to Wolfsburg, where they have the biggest auto factory of Europe, Volkswagen. So that was basically the reality here with very little in between, I think.
Eva: And then have there been any big moments where resilience was needed? This could be a natural disaster. It could be a big death in the community or a big ripping. If we kind of look into specific periods that have really called for resilience. And then I’m going to ask how the response has been. You can maybe take one example.
Michael: Our own big natural threat is, I think, drought and lack of water and heat. And maybe in the future storms. We didn’t suffer much for that yet, unfortunately. We have irrigation in place to conquer the drought. We have very good building techniques like clay and very well insulated buildings that withstand the heat. And we’re enhancing that. I’m enhancing that to make sun shields in front of the windows of my house. So this is nothing we can’t handle yet. From the social standpoint, if we’re talking about the lifespan of the community, there was one big conflict that almost tore apart the community that was after a couple of years into the founding. Suddenly was the question of animal husbandry on the premises. Because one part of the people said, oh, but we are an ecovillage. Obviously, we will have cows and animals. And the other said, we are an ecovillage. Obviously, we will never kill an animal on our premises. So these were two big sides. It took a few years to get it clear that this is a huge conflict. Because you cannot really keep animals without slaughtering and eating them at some point. Otherwise, you will have lots of male chicken or you won’t have milk. Because if you get milk from a big cow, from a cow mom. So the resilience came into place because we were already, well, I wasn’t at place at that time, but the group was already schooled in communication techniques. And they met many rounds and many conflict mediation efforts to resolve that conflict. And they found a compromise. So even being able to set up for a compromise is really an important feature of somebody. That is something that makes up people that live in community, that they already know that you have to make compromises. Because in our culture, where you’re supposed to be the coolest person on earth for yourself, because you have an iPhone or whatever, you’re not told and not taught to make compromises. But I think you can’t do without. So what we do now in society right now, which I find very unresilient, is we vote for the person that we really believe and let them do all the fighting wherever, in Washington or in Berlin. And then they don’t get things done. And while climate change is getting worse all the time. So I think what we have to do is make compromises on the local level. So politics can stay able to do things.There’s a better word for that, but you know what I mean. So resilience, I think we are quite lucky in Sieben Linden. We do this international resilience project now. And I hear from people who are actually exposed to a flood line or something like that. We don’t have this. And if I go through the resilience attributes that we are collecting right now, I feel that with our self-sufficiency, with our wide social horizon, we are doing quite good in terms of resilience. For us, it’s right now interesting, how can we stay qualified to handle an increasing number of challenges at the same time? Because when I tell about Sieben Linden like this, I get very enthusiastic and I think it’s working quite well. But when I’m looking at Sieben Linden and when I’m discussing within Sieben Linden, I have a lot of critique where I think we could be better. For example, of course, we have to make up our management from people who live in Sieben Linden. And none of these people are trained managers. So we spend a lot of time and we waste also a lot of time in finding the right way to do the things. And I sometimes wish we could be more effective, but at the same time, being not effective and taking time and listening to every voice is also a strength of diversity, which is also a resilience attribute. So, you know, don’t listen to me. I’m not even the right person to say if we’re doing it right or not. I think Sieben Linden as a whole is doing it better than if I was the manager and decide to do it, because I might be too efficient and I might, you know, mute some voices that are unnerving me, although they might be important to the development of the whole. So it’s good even for me to acknowledge that, you know, Sieben Linden is more than just a bunch of Michaels, like myself.
Eva: Yeah, so I find this kind of an underlying theme of community also, of including all the voices. And it’s one of the ecovillage principles also. But it does get into these moments of frustration when the efficiency isn’t very apparent and you don’t know what that voice is bringing. This is a conversation that’s actually been very alive in my world this week.
Michael: Which voice is bringing? You don’t know which?
Eva: The voice of dissonance, what is of worth or what quality is this voice bringing, because that is kind of the underlying idea behind sociocracy and other group decision processes.
Michael: Yeah, I sometimes have hard times with all these voices. And there’s one saying that says, it has all been said, but not by everyone. So, you know, people repeat the same thing again, because…
Eva: Yes, beautiful. You were talking a bit about politics and how compromise is a very important aspect of politics. I’m wondering how important you think it is for the ecovillage movement to engage on this political level?
Michael: Well, that’s a really difficult question, you know, because if we get into the role of storming the capitals to tell people, look at how we do it, we are not gonna have sympathies, you know. So what we are best at in the Middle East is doing our thing successfully, basically just living here and being happy and making this accessible to as many people as possible. And we are succeeding with this, you know, we have TV and newspapers coming all the time, people coming, visiting and going away changed. But in these times I see many people getting frustrated with this. Like my daughter, you know, she is 11 years old, she reads all Greta Thunberg books and she realizes that living in an ecovillage is the best she can do, but that cannot be all, you know. Doesn’t she have to go out and protest and yell and scream and stuff like this? So there is an urge to do this. And as you said, yeah, what can be our impact in politics? Whenever I notice that I am becoming actively promoting this lifestyle, I’m getting resistance. So I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m skeptical about this. I mean, I do believe that people should engage in politics on a personal level, but it’s a tricky thing, you know, because what we do here, as successful as it is, it seems to threaten people because it questions their lifestyle very easily. Very easily. Just the day before yesterday, I made a tour with some Lions Club members that came to look at Sieben Linden. So I showed them everything. They were really interested. And at one point I said that if you take climate protection seriously, at one point you will hit the system question and you will feel that maybe you cannot really change anything if you go on with this capitalistic growth thought. And bam, I had the resistance and there was all gone, you know, all the chemistry I built up with the group. Because there was one person that said, no, no, no, no, no way. Without the market, nothing would work. And he gave me all kinds of examples that were really wide out. I mean, he quoted that we can now make energy by removing CO2 from the air. So yeah, like a process that is barely possible. And if it’s possible, it takes a lot of energy. He says now it’s possible to make energy with this. Why don’t we do this? And so there was nothing, you know, to respond to this. And the others were unnerved because suddenly we’re not talking about Sieben Linden anymore, but about politics. So it’s so difficult to make politics as an ecovillage movement. And I know that Jen is trying to do this. And I’m not involved with this because I don’t see how we can do this in a good way. We are so valuable when we give people the chance to come to us and look at us. But we have to be really modest with this, I think.
Eva: I think that opens a nice transition to the question of what ecovillages can gift to the world.
Michael: Yeah, I have one thing to say because I’m involved in a project called Climate Change Counseling. It’s an art project dealing with how we tell people about this transformation of society that’s ahead of us. And one thing I was working on in this project is that we have hardly any scenarios. We don’t know. There are some really great scientific studies of how we can still make it, you know, 1.5 Celsius, 1.5 degrees, how we can still, how we could still make it if, you know, we would pull all measures now, which we don’t. But even those scenarios, they don’t tell us if we do this, if we do all this stuff, how will it look like in 10 years? I mean, what will be different? Because obviously some things will be different around us and it will not be flying cars. It will be something else. It will be smaller flats. Maybe it will be less meat. It will be a different agriculture, but I’m really lacking, uh, you know, visuals. And if you see visuals, you can, you can, you can go, um, what it goes, like you can, you can Google that and you could find ideas of landscapes, how they will look after the transformation and it’s all green, but it’s still huge skyscrapers, but they’re all green. So I don’t think it will look like this either in 10 years, you know, it will be something much less spectacular, but anyway, what it, whatever it is, nobody knows. And I think we need to see something like this. So people get an idea what they’re going for and they can start looking forward to it because we really need to see this as a challenge, this societal transformation that’s ahead of us. That can be, uh, not a challenge, uh, an opportunity. Yeah. It can be an opportunity for everyone. If we rebuild our societies to be climate neutral, because why don’t we do this? They can also be, uh, socially, uh, you know, they can be, they could be fairer. They can be rich, poor, so as we can get more together. Sorry, my English is miserable. Know what I’m talking about? We should see this as a, as an opportunity. And now to finally get to the point, um, eco village is just that we are a future scenario. And this is like, it’s awesome because everything else that is written about the future, you cannot touch it, but you can come here very easily. You can take a train and a bus, and you’re here with us and you can see a life that is only one third of the ecological footprint. And it’s so easy. You know, we all, we are healthy. We talk your language. We know how to use cell phones. We are not completely out here. We’re not cavemen or anything. We can relate to everyone, you know, and I can also go back to the city and talk to people there. And they won’t even notice that I’m from the village at the beginning. Maybe later, maybe when they look at my clothes closely, then they will notice that it’s from the free shop in our free corner. Yeah. But you know, we can still relate to the world and it’s so easy. And this is, I think what we can give to the world. We are a future scenario and everybody should rush to see this and get inspired.
Eva: And I don’t know if your clothes would be a giveaway. I have young cousins and now the trend is secondhand shopping. So it is coming in even small town Indiana where I grew up.
Michael: Well, you have the thrift stores in the U.S. I know I used to buy there when I was there.
Eva: All right. And then you talk about this future scenario as a tool. I’m wondering how people can engage with Sieben Linden. Do you have open door days? What is the process for engaging and getting this example?
Michael: We have open door once a month. We have like some offers with a low threshold where you can really come and basically work for food and lodging. We do, you know, we cook marmalade or you help clean up the premises or build little things or work in the forest or in the garden. And then we have all kinds of seminars. So you can really do a lot of seminars as Sieben Linden. Either, you know, spiritual or self-experiencing seminars or also some therapeutical things. But also ways to get to know Sieben Linden. But you do have to make the first step yourself somehow. Many people stumble on our website, which is quite comprehensive. And I made a documentary about Sieben Linden. We have a little trailer now on our website about Sieben Linden. It’s also available with subtitles. So some people read about us somewhere. And it’s interesting because we get requests also, of course, by all kinds of media. And in Germany, you have some public media that is, well, we have, of course, newspapers that are paid partly by advertising, partly by subscriptions. And we say yes to them usually. And when TV comes, private TV that is funded only by advertising, you know, then we usually say no, even though these are sometimes the cooler programs and they have lots of lots of audience. We say no because we don’t want to be the content that they use to sell their advertisement that propagates a completely different life. So what is it good if we tell how good we are and people like this and people are attentive? If after that, you know, they get brainwashed by you have to buy this cell phone and this tariff to be a cool person. That’s that doesn’t make sense. So we say no to medium, medium that is only funded by this. And we had a big boulevard tabloid newspaper that wanted to make a story about Sieben Linden. And, you know, we were thinking, well, we can reach a lot of people if we do this. But at the same time, we support this really, really sexist, racist newspaper. And in the end, we said no, because somebody said, you know, people have to make the very first step themselves. And the very first step would be to read something else than this newspaper. I think that was a wise, wise word.
Eva: Yeah, it was beautiful. Talking about the people that have found their way, have made the first step. Have you noticed really transitions in resilience from visitors on even the small scale as they are experiencing these alternative social structures, how they’ve been impacted?
Michael: Changes in resilience, you know, resilience for me is still a pretty new term and I can’t really easily get my hands on it.
Eva: So we have defined it as the ability to cope. So maybe as people have been introduced to conflict resolution techniques, they have found voices that they didn’t know that they had or strength to do this exercise. What is there between us? Or to be able to overcome social conflict, overcome their relationship with capitalism, etc. I’m interested if you have kind of an interpretation of the definition that has arisen during the project as well. How is he happy for you to share?
Michael: You know, I don’t really know so much about the visitors because they’re only visitors and they’re gone afterwards. So I cannot really monitor their change. I know for me that it made a big difference to know that a place like this exists when I was living somewhere else. It really helped me through a lot because I could always think if everything does not work out here, you know, job, career, family, relationship, I can go to Sieben Linden. At the very least, they will probably take me for food and lodging if I work for them. So this helped me, you know, navigate my life in mainstream society. And I think that is the case for many people that visit us, usually because, you know, they’re directed to a place in community. I mean, there was one person that came to me to help with Eurotopia as a volunteer. And that is he decided to stay in Sieben Linden and he tried himself out in different places. Like he was a custodian for a while, he was working in the office for a while, and now he’s the cook. And it seems like cooking is really great for him. And community makes this possible. So I think it enhances resilience in people to live in community and have this low-key chance to try yourself out because you don’t usually have this, you know, you have to make a decision for a job and then you’re always afraid to lose that job because who knows if you’ll find another one. So this fear is less here, which is good for their development. And about the visitors, well, there goes a science project. I can’t do it right now.
Eva: Okay, I’m gonna, I think, use this as a transition point maybe into more heavy future scenario thinking. You talk about the fact that Sieben Linden is there as a really big hope and kind of it was a rock for you even before you were living there. I’m sure this exists for other people in the world, especially in Germany, that maybe an ecovillage they’ve come into contact is this future hope. And I’m wondering how prepared Sieben Linden is for coming changes, specifically in this example, it would be migrating humans as some of our more southern regions become less hospitable. How prepared you are to kind of take on some of the challenges that we explore in the resilience project?
Michael: Well, we made, as part of this project, we made a system model of our system as an eco village. And we also identified, you know, thresholds that would change a lot and also outside influences. And we always try to think outside influences like an increase in migration and political instability. And we try to think of what this would mean for us. And it goes in all directions. If we would really have more people wanting to live with us, I think we could find structures to cope with this. But at the same time, the challenge would be for these people to even want to, you know, adapt our culture or our rules, basically, you know, and if they wouldn’t do this, then it would just be an attack, you know, and we’re not talking about this, we’re still trying to to think about how can could we integrate that. And I think it would be a valuable lesson for us to integrate more people. So far, fugitives that came to Germany were not interested, at least as far as we could tell, when we invited them to live in Sieben Linden, because some things that are really important to us are like not on the top priority for people who just lost their home, you know, like, not using cell phones, not eating a lot of meat. And I think that we could, I think that is a valid scenario that we take more, that we actually take fugitives with us, or that we just take people, if shit hits the fan in the cities, you know, people might also want to come to the village and see if they can easily make an easy living there. So some of these scenarios are threatening, you know, that people would just come and take away from us without our consent, you know, but to a certain degree, I think we could we could take on that challenge. But we don’t, we don’t have that emergency plan in action. And we identified that an important ability for our resilience would be that our own community governance is in place, you know, doesn’t have so many open construction sites like it has now, because right now, we have some people doing the management, they all say, oh, there’s too much to do, there’s too much to do, we never go anywhere. And still, there’s so many open points that we want to do, and they are not done, because there’s seems to not be the capability to do that. So there’s a weak spot for us, I think, even though we’re doing good. And everything I said so far, you know, is really enthusiastic about Sieben Linden. We could use, I don’t know, some kind of a better management that that I could trust more, for example, where I could rely on even if they have only if they have only much less time for managing that they have now, because they would have other things to take care of, that they would do a good job. And right now, I don’t have that trust. Right now, I feel they’re all like an over their heads and almost threatened by burnout. And this is something that that worries me. I’ve been in the management, like two times shortly, I’ve never done it for many years. And I think if you know, it would break down, I could jump in and do some of the basics. But we don’t have that in place yet. We don’t have a backup management council, for example, if the one that we have now is, is burning out, for example. So I see us, you know, theoretically, we could cope with things like this, but we are not prepared for it. That would be too much to say. But we identified this as something to work on in order to, you know, increase our resilience.
Eva: Have you looked as a community or as an individual at maybe what the root of this burnout or overwhelm is? Is it climate anxiety? Is it? I don’t know.
Michael: Yes. So have we identified what this is? What, what the cause for possible burning out is? Well, we identified stress, the stress level in the community as one of these aspects that is in danger, that is, that is crucial. And because of obviously, it, it interacts with the functioning governance. Because if the stress level is high, you know, we get, we get anxious and yell at each other, and there’s conflict and things don’t work well anymore. Immigration to community could increase stress level. But also if we get a scarcity of water or due to climate change, that could increase stress level. If we have economic instability around us, you know, people have less income that could increase stress level, weather extremes, these. So all these things, they come down to the stress level in the community. As if everything works fine, you know, we are fine. But if things become difficult, we have to fall back on, on the methods that we fortunately know about being solidaric with each other, and be exchanging emotions and stuff. But of course, we try to take care of our emotional hygiene, you know, like talk about conflict, talk when we are stressed out. But this has to happen parallel to functioning governance. If we, in the case of emergency, only hold hands all the time and cry together, that is fine. But at the same time, we still need to make decisions. I am quite hopeful that we will manage if that would happen. Because in the past, whenever something happened, you know, if somebody, like there was a guest flipping out at the night and, you know, yelling and throwing things, and very quickly, we had people at that place to be there with this person to calm him or her. Or if we have a personal emergency, some person suddenly had a stroke or had to be supported, we very quickly find support groups for that person. So I am quite hopeful that we have this ability to come together when it’s necessary to leave our jobs and our not so important things in order to ensure that the basics work in the community. So I am hopeful that we have this ability. The past has shown that we do. But what we really have to monitor is the stress level in community. And as I said, it has all kinds of causes why it might go up. And we don’t have that one recipe how to make it go down. Maybe you can enhance this question so I can finish this subject. Because I think that now you asked me if I have any idea why the stress level goes down. And I just told you, yes, I have. But that’s not very satisfying in terms of resilience, you know.
Eva: But that’s okay. I mean, that’s part of the challenge.
Michael: There’s obviously open questions, you know, just because we’re dealing with resilience now doesn’t mean that we have the solution. And also, it’s two people from our community who do this project. And we have workshops with some people from the community. And we get, you know, we get big hoorays for doing this. But it’s a long way of being implemented in all our institutions, what we come up with.
Eva: Do you have any personal practices that help you cope or move through periods of difficulty?
Michael: I really have and love art to do this. You know, if it gets too bad, I can always write a novel about it, I think, you know, or write a song about it. And yeah, just doing that, it helps me to see everything in perspective and to see everything as an adventure too. You know, if I’m really pessimistic, and I see apocalypse, nuclear apocalypse in front of me, I might even see some exciting things about that, you know, in my fantasy as an artist. So yes, that is that always helps. And of course, I have children that live very much in the moment. So sometimes I have to be there for them to, you know, tell them, yeah, the Lego set you ordered is still not there, although we paid this guy by eBay, but it will come, you know, they need some consolation. But sometimes they console me by just in every single moment, playing, yelling, laughing, just enjoying life.
Eva: That’s really the trick. If we could all stay in the moment, I think, for the most part, happiness would be.
Michael: Yeah, it needs to, it needs to have some projecting into the future. I think, I mean, if everybody stays too much in the moment, because it’s so much fun to drive the SUVs, maybe not. Yeah.
Eva: And then I’m wondering, on a community level, if Sieben Linden has any celebration or tools or rituals that they use to move through periods of difficulty?
Michael: Well, we have, we have our rituals, and some are more successful. And, you know, people are looking forward to it and coming to it. And some are wanted by some, and they don’t have that big audience. But if we use it, especially in times of difficulty, not so much. If you have an issue that’s pressing, you can invite to an evening, a thematic evening, and people will come and discuss that with you. But a ritual that brings us through, what could that be? Like what? Do you have an example?
Eva: Dancing.
Michael: Dancing, because it’s been raining for four weeks consecutively, or something like that? Or not raining? No, we don’t dance, even though it might not rain for three months. I mean, we dance anyway. Well, no, we don’t really draw that connection, I think. No, no. Yeah, I think maybe it’s good that I have to say no so often, because it also reminds us that this resilience thought is kind of new to us, and it’s not what we’ve been told about our economic system. And also, resilience is something you cannot turn on, you know, it has to grow. And I’m doing this project with Gen International, and it’s exciting. And I think I take a lot of stuff with me for our ecovillage. But only now, right now, we are doing aspects of resilience. That is an exercise we’re doing right now. Just this morning, I did that. And I just found out that without being associated with this resilience project, Sieben Linden is already quite resilient in many of these aspects. Just because, for example, our governance is not centralized, but we have councils, a lot of people are involved. We have many different skills. We are quite inclusive in people who have all kinds of skills and all kinds of interests. So automatically, we have a good standing in resilience, but it’s not something you can just decide, okay, we will get resilient in half a year or so. So this is an exciting thing, and also an exciting podcast, I think. And I wonder what other communities say about this, but I will not fake that we have thought about resilience a lot. But before this term came up, we used self-sustainability a lot, and we were wondering how self-sustainable we are. But resilience is better because the term includes and incorporates also the social aspect and the aspect of what the future can bring outside of the ecovillage. So, for example, economic instability or climate refugees. So I think this term has a career in front of it.
Eva: Yeah, let’s see where it goes. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. I think we got really a lot of stories and tools to take home and just set inside the framework of ecovillages as living examples, future scenarios that are still working to be resilient. There’s some honesty and humbleness in that as well. Is there anything else you would like to share before we end?
Michael: Well, I hope it was interesting and it was very nice to talk to you. Thanks for these interesting questions. And if people want to know more about Sieben Linden or about me, I would love if they check out my film. I can send you a link and you can look at the trailer at least. It gives you some pictures of Sieben Linden. So that’s the film I made in 2020, which is interesting because it was also the Corona year. So it wasn’t intended, but I made a portrait of our community in 90 minutes and it includes the way we dealt with Corona, which was interesting.
Eva: The point of resilience also, how people dealt with Corona, one of our first global outbreaks
Michael: Communities had a good head start in resilience and that many communities did well during the pandemic. Yes.
Eva: All right. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Michael.
Michael: Okay. Bye-bye.
Outroduction
How are you growing resilience in your community? I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation with Michael and that you will join us again next week as we continue the conversation over what it means to be resilient in our time of polycrisis. While you wait for the next episode of Community Resilience, we invite you to explore more about Ecovillage Resilience 2.5 Degree Project by visiting us online at ecovillage.org/resilience. Talk soon.
GEN Staff
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