We all know that navigating unfamiliar sites is hard enough, but navigating our own was a really interesting task. Cody and I met up on Sunday night to look over our extremely bare-bones project website and get to work. We pulled from other students’ course websites to get some inspiration for “Pages” we could make to allow site visitors to easily access our project’s conclusions.

Cody and I settled on pages titled “About Us”, “Our Contract,” “Media,” “Differing Perspectives,” and “Our Conclusion,” while agreeing we may add more depending on the sort of data we collect along the way. I think it’s important for site visitors to know a little bit about our personal interests in the course, and it helps build a relationship even if it may be a virtual one. We think of this section as more colloquial and friendly. Our contract still needs editing but we can’t work on that until we’ve talked to the monks one-on-one. “Media” will include photographs and videos obtained from the visits to the abbey, as well as archived photos and videos. “Differing Perspectives” will allow us to further explore our conclusion but in a more personal sense where both Cody and I can write about our experience with the project and our differing interpretations of the collected data. Our conclusion will be a comprehensive collection of both Cody and my work and will be less separated than the aforementioned page.

Today we applied to be exempt from review by the Institutional Review Board and hopefully will hear back soon. I don’t think Cody and I knew what we were getting into; the process is tricky and it seems like they’re looking for very precise responses from us. In general, I hope that we are accepted as exempt because it’s a shorter wait process. As soon as we have the OK, we will begin interviewing the monks.

In this video, published by the Genesee Abbey on YouTube, the B-roll narrator speaks softly while soothing music scans over images of old barns or deer in a field of long grass. The narrator describes the serenity of nature and the fraternal love shared by the monks at the Abbey of the Genesee.

The video then begins to take a slight turn as the images start to show monks in the bread-making facility, operating heavy machinery in a warehouse-type environment. The words “reverent labor” used by the video’s narrator seem antithetical to our own perceptions about typical warehouse labor.

The video is extremely well-done, showing that there is an appreciation by the strict observers for technology and mechanization. I think my own misconceptions about monasteries will be proven wrong along the course of the semester; although the monks spend a lot of time in contemplative prayer and silence, it doesn’t mean they are totally disconnected from modern technology or living in the stone ages. I think it would be interesting to speak to them in the coming weeks about their relationship to the outside world, as we discussed in class last week. Do they see themselves as totally separate from the larger community? How does their bread making business differentiate them from other monasteries which seek seclusion from the larger community? Can’t wait to find out the answers to these questions, although I do expect them to vary from monk to monk.

While reading Kanter’s essay, “The Comforts of Commitment: Issues in Group Life,” I constantly found myself returning to the points she made about a strong and centralized “charismatic leader” as a crucial element in many successful communities (127). Although I understand that Kanter covers nineteenth-century communes, it’s valid to read her essay intertextually with the 1960s’ reemergence of communal living; the image of this enthusiastic leader seems relevant to the rise of cult groups. (Maybe in class we should briefly discuss what distinguishes an organized commune from an organized cult.) Of course there are no clear-cut boundaries between the two, but I can’t help but think of the “Manson Family” when I hear about charismatic figureheads. What isn’t addressed in the paper (and I realize this isn’t part of the essay’s topic) is the abuse of power and the implications of this on the group’s members. What most times begins as a peaceful and seemingly loving group can become monopolized by a single person very gradually and then very suddenly. As Kanter points out, however, the devotion to the centralized leader causes a member’s commitment to the group to grow. I propose that this fierce commitment based on the group’s leader can cause people to become manipulated.

This is why I find the abandonment of individuality so problematic; we are at our most vulnerable when we disown all that we’ve ever known (family, friends, morals) in order to become a part of something completely new. Hence why cult members often partake in activities that they would otherwise never be involved in, but do, for the sake of the greater community.

As for Sosis & Bressler’s piece (though much of the mathematic aspects go right over my head), to me, the results are not too shocking. People are incentivized to work hard their entire lives and do good and give to charity, not always because of sheer selflessness but because of the promise of reward in an afterlife. That might be kind of cynical, but I think that’s where the researchers’ data was guiding them. Secular communes aren’t motivated by the fear of disappointing a higher power because there isn’t one to worship, hence why secular communities lose membership or struggle with balancing a centralized leadership with democratic ideals. And I generally think this is OK — you don’t want to have to invent some higher power in order to maintain your group’s membership — there’s an artificiality about that. If people are not willing to be active members in the community, it’s simply not for them and they should be encouraged to either get more involved or go their own way.

Cody and I have finally decided on the community we will be researching throughout the course of the semester! I think I speak for the both of us when I say that this is a very exciting decision to have made, and that we can’t wait to get started on our tasks.

The meeting with Father Isaac went very well and there seems to be a wealth of information available to us about the monastery that needs to be collected, digitized, and made accessible to the community at large.

Although I felt bad about breaking the news to the co-op, I still would love to incorporate them into our final presentation to show patterns of intentional communities in the Geneseo area. They were very understanding of our desires for a more established community. They are just beginning, and I hope that when I return to Geneseo as an alumni, I will see a flourishing co-op still present.

Our contract still needs some work (ie. finishing up our “Milestones” section) but other than that, I feel really positive about the path we’ve decided to take.