Welcome to Conscious Communities©

About This Blog

This new blog explores the complex and essential nature of community in our lives. We live and we die in communities; from the tiniest crossroad towns to the largest megapolitan areas. Conscious Communities looks at community from various vantage points, and it offers a new way to conceive of communities, as we move forward into the future.

This new view encourages us to see communities as having the potential to rise and grow as places or centers of heightened awareness and expression. By heightened awareness and expression, there is an intention to point to the effect of community, in its many dimensions, on our consciousness, or our deepest sense of ourselves. It is in this vein that this blog is given its name: Conscious Communities. Communities should inspire and exhort their citizens' consciousness, and citizens should in return use that inspiration and exhortation to lift up and sustain their communities.

On one level, each of us is conscious, that is perceptually aware, of the communities we know and have experience with. There is more. Have we considered the possibility that communities are powerful agents co-creating our most basic consciousness? Have we considered the possibility that our most intimate and personal interiority is in part supported and shaped by what we take to be community?

Have we considered the possibility that we owe, in part, our capacity for heightened awareness and expression to those communities in which we live, work and play? So too, our communities, when beset by social, economic, political and ecological problems, diminish our capacity for heightened awareness and expression. For our communities to support and sustain us, we must support and sustain them.

Finally, have we evolved a view of our communities as conscious creations, flowing from our individual and collective thoughts, feelings and actions? In this sense, do our communities reflect our deepest, most honest, and good intentions? Absent these intentions, we have what we see all too often: Communities divided against themselves, a growing loss of commitment to community, a decline in community pride, violence, illiteracy, poverty, hate, fear, and near devastating ecological damage.

Communities play a central role in shaping all aspects of human life. This blog has been created in recognition and celebration of communities as conscious connecting, gathering, creating, sustaining, learning, producing and integrating centers for human beings.

At times, we are prone to romanticize and idealize community because we long to feel connected to the whole of life. Because we simply want to belong...to something. Sadly, many of us have lost our sense of belonging to community, family, our work, and even ourselves. On the other end of our romanticization is demonization, where we project our sense of alienation and loss onto our most basic community institutions, such as the schools, city hall, or churches. And yes, at times these institutions do fail us, and crush rather than lift our civic commitment.

The 19th century French sociologist Emile Durkheim used the term anomie in referring to the sense of malaise in individuals, characterized by an absence or diminution of standards or values, which Durkheim attributed to the failure of religious institutions in sustaining faith and our overall sense of being connected spiritually. Durkheim also pointed to the division of labor dominating economic life since the Industrial Revolution leading individuals to pursue egoistic (individualistic) ends rather than seeking the good of the larger community.

Many of the sociologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries pointed to the alienating effects of modernization. Alienation refers to the individual's estrangement from traditional community and others in general. The 19th century German economic philosopher Karl Marx's theory of alienation refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to the antagonism between things that are properly in harmony. In the concept's most important use, it refers to the alienation of people from aspects of their "human nature." In today's age of George W. Bush Bourgeoisie ideology, these ideas appear incomprehensible. After all, who would dare criticize the engines of Capitalism as causal agents in our loss of sense of community and overall human connectedness?

Politics, hidden behind the mask of government and public service, has also robbed us of our sense of community. Only the most naive, or incurably gullible, would miss the abuse of power taking place in the name of community goverance today. And yes, people of all walks of life consciously choose to embed their self or group interests in the political process. All, you might say, in the name of community.

Have things really changed over time when it comes to our treatment of community? There has always been an unmistakable and irresolvable tension between self and community interest. What is our way out? Could a new vantage point looking at the intersection of consciousness and community help ease this tension? That is the experiment this new blog aims to carry out.

We manifest our communities out of our consciousness. We give birth to them by the way we think and feel about them. Our cynicism kills of hope and faith in communities. Our unidimensional view of communities robs them of their richness and dynamic nature. Our unconsciousness of the connectedness of the whole of life cheats us out of our sense of belonging and connection with our communities.

In many ways, communities are sadly under-estimated, and possibly under-valued, in today's fast-paced, ever-changing world. It seems it is always something else that is more important; be that our individual wants and desires, our families and personal relationships, local or state government, our major corporations, or the global economy. Yet, when we think about it, we see that our communities, and the personal relationships we have with them, provide one of the most essential building blocks for society. Communities have a civilizing influence on us through our daily interaction with other citizens. They are the local lenses through which we see and come to understand many other aspects of the world and our lives.

Communities are truly complex human organizations that exist in geographic places. As such, communities are located in time and space, and find locality in the natural environment. Yes, our communities exist within nature, which reminds us to build our communities in a sustainable fashion.

The complexity of communities is explained by their multi-dimensional natures, which include ten intersecting and co-existing realities: 1) social; 2) cultural; 3) economic; 4) political; 5) technological; 6) spiritual or religious; 7) creative; 8) educational; 9) personal and interpersonal psychological; and 10) ecological. While many may argue that communities are determined to a greater degree by one or more of these realities, Conscious Communities sees each as playing a vitally important role that only it can play. The articles and stories shared here reflect each of these realities. Each is important in giving rise to heightened awareness and expression in our communities.

While not often thought of in this way, communities are powerful incubators of the human spirit. They house us, nurture us and challenge us to grow. Communities are centers of collective energy, talent, meaning and awareness. In this sense, communities are very powerful, especially when they draw together their various energies in service to the human spirit. Yes, communities, like all else, should be in service of the spirit; for that is our most essential nature.

By spirit, no particular religious view is intended. This blog should be a confortable place for people of all faiths, or no faith at all, to come, share and celebrate community as an essential foundation of spirit. Moreover, all should feel welcome to draw upon various modalities for knowledge and understanding as they seek to make community real for themselves in a spiritual consciousness sense. As such, the community resident, spiritual teacher, student, scientist, community planner, worker, economic and community developer, local elected official, business owner and executive, educator, philanthropist, medical doctor, human service and counseling professional, retired person, poet, writer and artist should all feel equally welcome here at Conscious Communities.

Conscious Communities' Author

Don Iannone is a spiritually-based organizational and community change agent and strategic planning consultant based in Cleveland, Ohio. For the past thirty years, his work has been to strengthen the economic life of communities. To most, he has been known as an economic development strategy consultant.

Don's work since the mid-1970s has carried him to 41 states and 13 countries. While the vast majority of his work has been in the United States, Don firmly believes that the future of communities will be influenced to an even greater degree in the future by global economics and transformational technology shifts. Things and events outside local communities will be even greater forces for change. Don also believes that the future of communities rests in the hands of people, and the degree to which they hold the right intentions, make the right choices and take the right action to develop and cultivate their communities. He believes that communities can muster and exhibit great wisdom, creativity, and heightened awareness and expression when such things are intended, upheld and allowed to sprout socially, culturally, economically, politically, and creatively.

In addition to Don's work with communities and organizations, he is a published poet and author, and public speaker. His poetry blog, can be found at: http://conscious-living.blogspot.com Finally, Don has a daily meditation and yoga practice. His undergraduate education is in Anthropology and Psychology and his graduate training is in Organizational Behavior. He is currently completing a new Masters Degree in Consciousness Studies, which is an emerging field, drawing upon world religions, psychology, philosophy, mind-body medicine and science in advancing our understanding of human consciousness.