Dear Folks,
My mom complained that I used two unfamilar words in my last letter, so I just looked back to see what they were. I guess “entropy” and “Enneagram” are the most likely candidates. Sorry about that. Let me explain.
Entropy is a word physicists use to refer to the tendency of the universe to fall into disorder. If you pour ink into water, the ink disperses into the water; the molecules never spontaneously sort themselves back into ink. When I vacuum up dust fuzzies under the bed, I realize that they’re bits of fiber that have fallen off clothing and sheets, and I think “entropy.” The house slowly proceeds to disorder and never, ever cleans itself up without an input of a burst of energy from an organizing force, such as me. Entropy. Decay. Things scatter and degrade and fall apart. So when my car and computer and stove and dog’s leg all went on the blitz at once, I felt I was suffering from an attack of entropy.
Of course the universe has also evolved forces that create order, chief among them life and intelligence. So my car is now fixed, the new stove fits nearly properly back into the counter, and dear Emmett has gone through a day of surgery in Rutland and has come out as bouncy and trusting as he went in — though the leg is not noticeably better. The vet says it will take awhile to mend. Living cells do knit themselves back together. There’s no handy six-dollar word for the opposite of entropy. I think the opposite word should be “money,” since reversing the disorder in the car, the stove, and Emmett each cost over $600.
OK, what’s the Enneagram? It’s one of many personality-typing schemes, like the horoscope (I’m a Pisces) or the Chinese five-element system (I’m an Earth) or the fashionable-in-the-business-world Meyers-Briggs scheme (I never typed myself on that one). Any attempt to put people in boxes is always an oversimplification, often misleading, but also useful and sometimes revealing — and we humans keep doing it, because we have to account somehow for the obvious and fascinating differences among us.
The Enneagram is said to derive from the Sufi tradition, centuries old. “Ennea” is the Greek word for “nine.” It recognizes nine basic personality types (with lots of sub-complications). I learned it from the folks at New Road Map, who use it as a tool for community discussion and understanding, which is what attracted me to it. Then Stephen and Kerry moved in and Stephen announced in our very first conversation together: “I’m a Four and Kerry’s a Six.” And Beth Sawin and Phil Rice in our Cobb Hill community told me that they are a One and a Five. And so it goes. As Jim, who just moved in here, says, “This group is obsessed with the Enneagram.” (He says he’s a Three with a Two wing, but some of us suspect he might be an Eight with a Seven wing.)
This talk can drive some people (especially Nines) absolutely crazy, because they don’t like to be typed and they don’t like to lay types on others. The lore of the Enneagram discourages typing others — you’re supposed to use it for self-understanding, not for pigeonholing your friends and relations. But we “believers” can’t let it go, because it really is helpful in learning to see oneself more objectively, in explaining oneself to others, in realizing that others could be operating from legitimate principles that are quite different from yours, and in seeing the directions in which one has the opportunity to grow.
I can’t possibly explain the whole Enneagram here. (My favorite book about it is Understanding the Enneagram by Richard Rohr, who is a Jesuit priest and uses the Enneagram for pastoral counseling.) I can summarize what seems to be the driving force behind each number — the “currencies” with which we reckon life’s transactions, the filter through which we see and rank each other:
One — morality, order
Two — love, generosity
Three — success, accomplishment, admiration
Four — beauty, emotion, spirituality
Five — knowledge, understanding, wisdom
Six — security, loyalty
Seven — pleasure, fun, joy
Eight — strength, power
Nine — peace, harmony
Every person has elements of every Enneagram type, of course; the type just indicates which elements are dominant. One can slide into other types — as a One I lean toward my Nine wing, and I go toward Seven when I’m happy and Four when I’m stressed. No type is inherently better or worse than any other, there are just better and worse ways, more and less enlightened, of being each number. All types are needed in any community. Each has unique strengths and weaknesses and particular ways of pleasing and grating on each other type.
So I’m a One. I go through the house wiping crumbs off counters, picking up clutter, turning off lights, putting things away. I do that not because I love cleaning, but because my mind has a hard time being at peace when there’s a mess around, or something broken, or something out of place (including a human relationship). It came as a great shock to me to understand that some people actually do NOT go through their days seeing EVERYTHING as right, wrong, fixed, needs fixing, clean, dirty, OK, not OK, moral, immoral, 6 on a scale of 10. Really. I thought everyone did that, though I have 27 straight years of evidence that some people can live totally happily when there are unwashed dishes in the sink.
To an Enneagram One, entropy is a personal and permanent enemy. There, Mom, I used both words in a single sentence!
You can see why I spend Saturdays cleaning the house. And love to weed the garden. And teach ethics. And write an opinion column. And consider my mission in life to rid the world of pollution and starvation and dangling participles and split infinitives.
Ones can be tedious, judgemental, over-serious, angry reformers. They can also be energetic, uplifting visionary leaders, sincerely trying to work toward the Good. Ones are easily dissatisfied, but there is also no joy like the joy a One feels when something is clean and orderly, or when something goes well. Our whole motive force comes from our constant awareness of the gap between the Terrible Way Things Are and the Wonderful Way Things Could Be. Our deepest secret is our anger at that gap. Since we don’t approve of anger (among many other things we don’t approve of!), we’re not good at letting it out; it simmers within us; most of the time we are mad at the world and mad at ourselves. It seems we can either harness that steam into constructive work, or we can inflict it on ourselves and others in unconscious and uncontrolled and destructive ways. Our direction of growth is to learn to express and unleash anger appropriately, not to deny it or suppress it. (I think my worst columns are the ones where my anger gets the upper hand. On the other hand, other Ones — and Eights, who are not afraid of anger — LOVE those columns!)
Most people seem to hate being their own Enneagram Number. And to take awhile to admit that it’s really them. I thought I was a Seven, a Five, and a Six, before I admitted I was a One. (Though that’s abundantly clear to everyone who knows me, and now also abundantly clear to me!)
Well I could go on — and on and on and on — but that’s enough. If you want to know more, get the book. The Enneagram freaks of Cobb Hill hope to teach the scheme to the whole community, to provide a language by which we can understand each other. (Dana keeps harping on the unpainted barns because she’s a One. Phil doesn’t say much at meetings because he’s a Five, always processing information. Stephen talks about making his garden a beautiful piece of art because he’s a Flaming Irish Four.)
Meanwhile, let’s see, lots is happening around here.
My ethics class is going gangbusters. I think I may never have had such interesting and interested students, such deep, passionate class discussions. (I think I say that every year.) We are just starting the case study on genetically engineered crops, and the kids are reeling at the enormous changes in the world that have just happened in the last few years, that they didn’t know about, that they don’t even know how to think about. Last week I asked a molecular geneticist to explain how gene-splicing works, which he did in the most animated and excited way — this is truly amazing science and everyone I know who does it is just THRILLED by what is becoming known and possible. Then the kids asked him how he FEELS about it, who will use these technologies for what purposes, whether it’s RIGHT. (They’ve just read Ishmael, so they’re pretty sensitive about the power of human beings to mess about with other species of life.) He had no answer. He really hadn’t thought about it. That dumfounded and infuriated the students. (They must all be Ones. It would be impossible for a One not to worry about what’s Right.)
As for me, this case is reminding me of the scientists who invented the atom bomb. Focused on the gorgeous science, oblivious to morality. It’s amazing that the scientific community as a whole seems to have learned nothing from that experience.
Spoken like a true One!
There’s probably going to be an angry column or two or six coming on genetic engineering.
On the farm it feels good to be coming up from the depth of the cold, though we know we’ve got a good month of winter still in front of us. We’ve already seeded pansies and onions and petunias for indoor growlights and south windows. Kerry the dutiful, careful, systematic Six has worked out her whole complex summer cropping scheme. (When you produce weekly for 25 or more families, plus the Coop, plus the farmers’ market, you have to keep the lettuce and beets and carrots coming.) We do the morning chores 45 minutes earlier and the evening chores 45 minutes later now. In the western sky there’s a spectacular lineup of bright planets, Venus and Jupiter and Saturn, which we admire on every clear evening. In February there are many clear evenings, sunny days, calm sweet mornings — the calm before the March storms.
The Cobb Hill community is slogging through momentous decisions in preparation for our Act 250 permit application and big bank loans and construction — everything is coming to a head and getting serious! I think the group is doing a great job of handling it all. Here’s just a partial list of what’s happened this month. (Only the part I know about — we’re getting too complex for any one person to know everything.)
One new family has asked for its final clearness meeting, another has just entered the clearness process, another is moving up to the valley to be able to interact more regularly with our process. That means we now have nine paid-in member families, two more in the pipeline, and I would estimate three more in serious process. We also have a steady stream of new inquirers, some of whom immediately depart because we won’t allow 2500 sq ft houses, or we won’t enforce total vegan diets on everyone, or whatever. Others stick with us.
We’ve decided to try for a third well at a more favorable site for the farm and the neighbors and to hydrofract well#2 only if well#3 is a complete bust. Sigh. More money spent! We’ve also given up the idea of pumping water to a holding tank at the top of the hill with gravity pressure back down, in favor of a more accessible and inexpensive set of pumps at the commonhouse.
We’ve made some tough and potentially risky decisions about the location of graywater leachfields. (Risky in terms of future implications if our primary location fails — a good incentive to be VERY aware of what we put down drains.)
We’ve had a discussion with another bank (Vermont National) about mortgages and a $4 million construction loan, and this bank didn’t choke on ideas such as conservation easements and common ownership and composting toilets. They didn’t give us a loan yet, either, but we feel hopeful.
We’re close to settling the legal form of our homeowners association and to begin working on our “constitution.” It looks like Vermont law makes it favorable for us to be a coop, to own shares in the common land and commonhouse, to own individually our own houses and a long-term lease on the land under them. I think the only way we won’t go with that form is if we find a bank can’t tolerate it — and there are many other things about us that seem to raise bank eyebrows more than the coop legal form. I see this whole phase as a great opportunity to educate banks. Either that or to learn to run our own loan fund. Or both.
For Act 250 we’re preparing our own traffic impact study, rather than pay thousands of bucks to a consultant to do it. This involves a black traffic-counting hose currently laid over Mace Hill Road, winding up and around a tree (to stabilize its position) and into the living room window of the Hunt House, where Peter Kawecki can jot down hourly or daily counts. Then we have to search the Vt Transportation Agency’s website for road ratings, accidents rates, etc. We’re learning a lot from this process and having fun.
I’ve started talking with the Upper Valley Land Trust and Twin Pines Housing Trust about a possible grant to buy our conservation easements and/or to support some affordable housing units.
We are grappling with the historic preservation people about the status of the old farms. For Act 250 I have been fending off any declaration of historicity, because it could interfere with either our design or my hopes to retrofit the Hunt house as the Sustainability Institute office. None of the existing buildings are at all remarkable in any architectural or historic way; they’re totally typical, function, unfancy, beat-up Vermont farm structures. On the other hand, we really aren’t going to disturb any of the old buildings at all, except to upgrade them from their current state of neglect. And on the third hand, I just found out about a state grant program to help restore historic barns. So maybe I want us to be historic after all.
We had a meeting with a Quaker elder to hear from a pro about the processes of clearness and consensus. That led to some new process ideas to try in our meetings. (The Fours and Fives love the idea of stopping for moments of silence. It drives the Threes and the talkative Sevens out of their wigs.) I love the deep interest and commitment to experiment this group has, when it comes to process. We know we have to get better at listening to each other, at expressing and resolving conflict, at really speaking our minds, at searching for common and greater wisdom. I think we’ve improved a lot — and still have a way to go — and are determined to get there.
On the Sustainability Institute front, I’m completing our first annual report for a board meeting next week. We are fully funded for this year and I’ve just hired a half-time administrative assistant, to help me know where I left my head these increasingly busy days. One of our corn-commodity researchers is just back from an uplifting meeting of the American Corngrowers Association. Looks like we can form a good strategic alliance there. One of our shrimp researchers was at the Global Aquaculture Association convention, where he heard lots of not exactly loving comments about environmentalists. Looks like we have to go on treading most carefully there. Our forest-products researchers spent last week touring New England paper mills. We’re making good connections there. The crew gets all excited when they get out into the real systems, meet the real people, hear the real problems. So do I.
Night before last we all went to a community production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” with Ariane playing the fiddle. Kerry and Stephen are painting the whole inside of the house, in preparation for putting it on the market. (And this is a BIG, strung-out old farmhouse.) Kerry is spending this weekend at a cheese-making workshop — last night she brought home a delicious Mozzarella she had just made, and we had it on my freshly baked sourdough rye bread. Jim is scheduling loggers into a safety training program called The Game of Logging, and Stephen’s going to go to it too. Stephen is completely redrafting his Great American Novel.
The cows and horses are basking in the measurably warming sun. They’re starting to sugar tomorrow over at Cobb Hill. I’d better quit writing to you and get to work on that annual report.
Way too much going on. But it’s all such fun!
Love,
Dana