can go together with the glarisegg article, not too many photos, maybe one or two, not use too much space
Z.E.G.G¶
About skillsharing, networking, community life and “free love"
Quite by accident we found ourselves watching a presentation of the “Zentrum für Experimentelle GesellschaftsGestaltung” (centre of experimental society creation) based in Belzig near Potsdam (that exists since 1991 and is one of the biggest communities in Germany) during our stay in the Schloss Glarisegg: 2 people sharing their expereinces of community life, over the last 17 years…
The roots of Z.E.G.G. community
(and it’s sister community Tamera in Portugal that we are propably goin to visit later on our tour)
are here in Steckborn, where the “spirit fathers” and founders of those two projects lived in another community before (that went through the media as a strange “sect” and was quite known for this).
Moreover – as the Glarisegger told – the community of Glarisegg maybe would never have come into being without the community experiences of the people in Z.E.G.G. and Tamera.
The main idea that is connecting the roughly 80 people living in the Z.E.G.G.
is the wish to experiment with different forms of loving and with nonviolent forms of comunication – and creating peace in this way by working on themselves and raising consciousness…
A grand part of the conversation with the people of Glarisegg was circling around the topic of “free love” and around how people in the Z.E.G.G. are living it – propably as it is a theme that is interesting for everybody and that you don’t get to talk about a lot in “outside world”…
To prevent misunderstandings: “free love” doesn’t mean that having sexual relations with more than one person is a dogma in the Z.E.G.G. – though it was more like that in the beginning of Z.E.G.G, but people learned from their experiences
and found out that there is thousand ways of loving
and that everyone has to find for him/herself the way that feels good for him/her.
“Free love” just means that everybody is free to chose his/her form of loving freely,
from not having any sexual relations at all, monogamic relationships to having several relationships at the same time
and that people try to support each other in their relationships and loving without judging the form of loving…
They said that this form of loving and living feels much more “normal” than most of the people who don’t know it might think: open communication about sexuality and problems coming up in relationships help a lot – that’s the same thing in monogamic and polygamic relationships.
“If there is no peace in love, there cannot be peace on earth… ”
They also said that the ways of how people live their love and relationships in this society mirror the big problems of human history:
people believe in possesing people they love in they same way as they believe in possesing land and other ressources… wanting to keep control about everything and for that reason coming up with “moral”, laws, borders, wars …
To confront yourself with letting go of your fears to loose somebody (something)
and to realise that you do not in general loose someone (something) just because you share with others
can help to raise consciousness about what is happening on this planet
and how we could live something else…
Most important in this (long and difficult) process of changing one’s mind is to speak with others about the problems coming up,
so that information can float freely through all the relationship-networks and there is transparency about the feelings of all people that are involved…
Interesting topic -but well, let us come back to the meeting and Z.E.G.G. in general:
The Glariseggers and Z.E.G.G.ers were also talking a lot about organisational questions, like what forms of organisation people in Z.E.G.G. chose, how about finances, etc … :
Most of the people in Z.E.G.G. are working outside of the community and similar to Glarisegg they also have a seminary and guest business going. We did not talk about self-sustainibility.
There are some “leaders” in the working groups, which is the people that engage most or have most skills about something. The people normally decide together who wants to and whom they want to be in charge of something.
Organisation structures are changing from time to time, but at the moment it is like this:
There are:
- working-group meetings (like the cooking-groups meetings, etc),
- ”forums” (where you have a platform to talk about things you want to promote, like new ideas etc or emotional things) and
- ”plenums” ( to decide in concensus about important topics that cannot be decided about in smaller circles)
When you are living with 80 people, you cannot always be in contact with everybody
and know how everybody is going, so normally the people you are sharing your flat with or the groups are the people you know best and you have the most to do with.
There are various forms of communication in the Z.E.G.G., from group meetings to emails… to allow transparency in all the processes going on.
To get a community member in the Z.E.G.G. doesn’t need as much money as in expensive Switzerlands Glarisegg community, but about the same time and processes:
You do an introduction course of 5 weeks, then you can stay there for up to a year as a guest to see how it feels for you and the community. After this time you can become a full community member.
There would be space for up to 20 or 25 more people in the Z.E.G.G. buildings.
There are about 10 children in the Z.E.G.G., for whom the parents don’t have to pay rents and food, but those costs are carried by all the community.
One of the last topics we talked about was the relation in between Z.E.G.G. and Tamera, which is still strong even though there is some “family fights” every once in a while…
People from Tamera are always welcome in the Z.E.G.G. and the other way round.
As we already had contact with people from Tamera also,
I am right now really curious about how this community looks like.
comments on that article
Falk
I feel very strange with you writing so noncritically about the Z.E.G.G. and the way you make advertising for them. Z.E.G.G. spiritual leaders Duhm and Lichtenfels are wellknown for their sexistic, misogynous ideology. For example wrote Lichtenfels about rapes that the main problem is that the women wouldn’t enjoy it – instead to say “no, i don’t want it” they would have to say “yes, i like it”. – which inhuman way of thinking. Duhm has been convicted because of sexual abuse. There is much more to read about the Z.E.G.G. if you go around with open eyes. To call them a sect plays down the meaning of their ideology.
The Z.E.G.G. community never distanced itself from its former leaders and their ideology.
Furthermore the Z.E.G.G. ideology describes a shortened cricism of society – summarized it says that all problems in the world can be reduced to inhibited sexual intercourse and that abolishing the sexual compunction of people, especially of women, will save the world. It fades out the influence of patriarchy and other kinds of dominance and power. It makes the complex mechanisms of the world easier than they are. That a direct result of this ideology was that women in the Z.E.G.G. society had to be opener to the sexual wishes of the dominant men is faded out, too.
If you like to get an impression of the Z.E.G.G. from critical view you can visit (only German language – sorry) pages like:
www.projektwerkstatt.de/gender/texte/ze...
www.projektwerkstatt.de/zitate/z_kommun...
bine
Hi,
it is nice to collect experiences and to get different perspectives of life – thats your idea with that tour. Thats why I feel responsible to make you aware of negative things around this communities tamera and zegg. You only mentioned it as a sect, but it is not really clear what you mean with this (you could see mainstream society also as a giant sect..). A generellproblem with this communities is, that they are ideologicly dominated by thinkers called Dieter Duhm and sabine Lichtenfels. those people advertised sexist anti-feminist theories about realtionsship between man and women and try to cover it as an emanzipatoric way to save the world (very esotherik style). It is very disgusting what I read from them, but you can make your own picture…
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/senate/52...
best wishes and a critical view and open heart!
anja
hey guys
I wrote this article just from the point of view I have,
I never visited Z.E.G.G and don’t know a lot about it… the impression I had there from the 2 people I met in that place was positive and reflected.
I didn’t ask them about their position towards these “gurus” or whatever…
What I do is I am trying to find out what moves people, and look at what I see in a as neutral as possible way…
We will see how Tamery feels like
even though there it will be propably the same like in Glarisegg, we will not have that much time to really get to understand everything happening there
I think it is very important that this discussion is here, what else can we do? people got to find out themselves in the end
what we tried to do in Glarisegg is critisize (in this case mostly the commercial behaviour), but not be destructive, feel why the people are behaving like this and try to find solutions…
I think just that we were there brought lots of input and inspiration to this place…
just to say “this and that place and this and that people are bad and we shouldn’t do promotion for them” cannot be a solution
I try to see positive aspects -that are there and that are true – and if there is things to critisize I will! but it is never a solution to only talk about the negative sides of something… it is about seeing both!
andi
i would pretty much appreciate to read blog articles from different tour members, not only from one, thats what i thought while reading this article…
and i think you’re right anja, it makes no sence to walk big circles around everything with a bad reputation… i only think if you write articles like this you should make pretty much sure not to advertise through the way you write, because to me the article felt pretty much like “hey cool, you should all visit…” – not so extrem but it did… so, you said you wrote the article from your personal perspective, perhaps thats the fault with such a vaxed topic…
see you,
andi
