intentional community

Hello, everyone! My name is Emma, and I am proudly the new edition to the Dacha Project as the Sustainability and Media Intern. My objective is to document and articulate the lived reality of a do-it-yourself egalitarian community works and functions. I have a background in political science and philosophy with a degree in Politics Philosophy and Law from Binghamton University. I have come to work with the Dacha Project with the intent to explore how intellectual theory becomes a lived reality, specifically how living collectively with a sustainable orientation can be a successful alternative living lifestyle. I will be posting interviews, photographs, DIY explanations and philosophical musings about the Dacha Project and the people involved. IN the spirit of an interview post, I decided to interview myself about my interest in the project what I intend to do.

Question: Why are you interested in the Dacha Project?

Emma: I’m interested in the concept of taking an ideal and turning it into a lived reality. Right now our society is talking a lot about climate change and how, if at all, that should cause change to our public policy. There is a lot of controversy, a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of resistance to changing the mainstream way of life. People are upset because they do not know what this means for themselves and their families, but they are also confused because they do not know what they personally could to  contribute to the remedying of this problem.

I see the Dacha Project as a conglomerate of ideals, but one aspect of it is challenging what it is to “live” and exploring the idea of “living”, as going beyond what is commonly done. Most people wake up, go to work, living in a house, don’t talk to their neighbors, go to a grocery store. It can be like sleeping through life to an extent and not thinking about why it is significant how a person lives. I don’t believe our society has thought of “living” as a concept yet, but it will come up due to climate change. As our society is now, we’re very isolated, we don’t share, we don’t make group efforts as communities to go beyond our personal desires, and this has culminated in a lot of materialism and consumerism that has negatively impacted the environment. Instead of letting desire and materialism run rampant within a person, the people in the Dacha Project have consciously made the effort to sacrifice some luxuries and work to make an ideal of benefiting the environment real. The Dacha Project has already been exploring this concept for several years, and that makes it interesting to me.

Question: What concepts within the Dacha Project are you looking to understand?

Emma: There are two components I am looking to understand; the philosophy and the practicality. The philosophical aspect being the ideals, goals, and desired outcomes of the Dacha Project, and the practicality aspect being how those ideals, goals, and desired outcomes are formed into actions and implemented into reality. I’d like to explore the progression and evolution of the philosophy, as well as how and why those ideals may have changed.

Question: Why do you think the Dacha Project is important?

Emma: I think its important because there need to be alternative ways of living to our industrialized system. We’ve made everything into a commodity and caused dire environmental ruckus as a result, we’ve made a lot of problems and don’t have very many solutions. The Dacha Project is looking to go beyond the assertions the mainstream society has put out about how individuals should live by exploring the idea of what makes a community and way of life. I believe the Dacha Project is important because it has been successful due to a group of dedicated people, and the ideas/ideals behind it are especially relevant to the greater issues of the modern day.