Page 16 - Core Beliefs For Intentional Community

hunters associated with forty women, old people and children probably
constituted a camp of reasonable size…In most cases, however, the hunting

band and the camp were part of a larger breeding unit of several hundred
person living within a distance that permitted ready communication…social

anthropologists use the magic numbers fifty to five hundred to define the range
of group size most common to the hunter-gatherer way of life.

The practice of agriculture naturally resulted in much larger human settlements.
But even though cities have existed for thousands of years, most human beings

during prehistory and the greater part of history have lived in groups of
relatively small size – whether as nomadic tribes or village dwellers. In The
World We Have Lost, the English writer, Peter Laslett, has shown that the

villages of some five hundred inhabitants constituted the fundamental
demographic unit of England until the Industrial Revolution…

…Because he evolved as a social animal, man has a biological need to be part of a
group and even perhaps to be identified with a place. He is likely to suffer from

loneliness not only when he does not belong but also when the society of the
place in which he functions is too large for his comprehension…

PRECONDITIONS FOR TRUE COMMUNITY

Excerpt from: Martin Buber, TRUE COMMUNITY
(Gemeinschaft, 1919)*

Martin Buber, German-Jewish philosopher,
utopian socialist author of “I and Thou” an
examination of the human inter-relationships.
He believed that flashes of true human
interpersonal relationships necessitate
community groups with shared ideals.
He likened true community to a bicycle wheel.
The members constitute the rim but what holds
them together are the spokes extending to the

hub which represents their shared infinite
ideals.
Martin Buber (1878-1965)

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