We believe and assert that every person within their own familial or other bonds, and through freewill participation by all persons involved, owns a right to cluster together with other people on a private basis to nurture and promote their way of life. Everyone who disputes this right has an authoritarian psychosis and cannot properly and humanely interact with society outside of their innermost lust to dominate their neighbors.
It is, as with every right, impractical to say this right has no limits but, like all rights, those limits must exist only where the practice of this right overwhelmingly harms the rights of others, uses coercion, or involves a tort against another person.
A right to cluster may be somewhat limited by the practical necessity of ensuring a right to fair housing. As an example, if the only housing for many miles is controlled by these clusters of people and you don’t fit in with any of them, then, practically speaking, your right to fair and equal access to housing is, at the very least, undermined. That being said, the likelihood of this every occurring may be slim as natural market forces will compel even clustered living groups to lease residential space to the public under fair housing laws as a way of offsetting costs.
Clustering is not isolating. If you cluster with other people you don’t cut yourself with others outside you cluster group. The world is too interconnected to allow for isolation in clustering but it is also too top-down to neglect the use of clustering as a way of increasing your resources and support in the face of top-down efforts to control you.
What we are asserting is that a cluster of people, and we generally think 120 adults of the same mutual affinity group (the IRS calls it a fraternal bond) is the upper practical limit, has every right to dwell together and make membership in their mutual affinity group a basis of freewill participation. A cluster is not a large-scale group (like an entire mutual benefit, refugee support, and missions society), that is a freewill participatory association, which we also own a right to form. A cluster is a body of people with a mutual affinity bond that is capable of acting as a larger extended multi-family household community that can be self-governing and achieve mutual self-reliance and self-sustainability.
Clusters of people may be a collection of people who live near each other and who create shared spaces and common facilities both for mutual benefit and shared purposes. They will tend to be a combination of residential and non-residential participants who revolve around 120 or so adults of the same affinity group all of whom feel and act as a familial community.
A cluster may in fact include people who are not part of the core affinity group, such as staff, people being housed as refugees, people leasing space, friends and family who reside with members, and children of members who live on site. To cluster is to live more freely and to have the pooled resources and mutual support needed to live in a more luxurious manner than your present means might allow.
People can cluster, people should cluster, people have a right to cluster, and as our shipwrecked civilization flounders into crisis after crisis, people will be compelled by necessity to cluster. It is for this reason we assert this right now, the right to cluster together with others in a familial bond based on a mutual affinity or identity.
How might clustering be abused? Namely, we may see people try to cluster in larger and larger groups in order to essentially discriminate against others. They may only want white people, they may hate people who aren’t monogomous and heterosexual, they may hate Muslims, they may hate Christians or Atheists, and on and on.
Scrutiny of clusters is morally justified to prevent these torts against others, who have an equal right to exist and live, or cluster, and who, within the broader community, must be accorded all the same rights and respect as everyone else. But a cluster of up to 120 adult members and everyone attached to them in a neighborhood setting is not a violation of anyone’s rights.
Within the Upadaria project, we emphasize pluralism to such a degree we encourage Upo Clusters, what we call Shireholds as a group and Estates or Castles for larger single clustered living hubs, to actually set aside space for leasing to the public based on fair housing laws. We don’t, however, beleive it is justified to mandate this, although we strongly feel it is a good thing to do.
It is our conviction that a clustered living arrangement should have the following features (these are ethical standards, not coercive laws):
1. It is based solely on freewill participation within a clearly defined set of shared ideals, principles, practices, mandates, and standards agreeable to all who freely join the community.
2. It is not too large that all the adults members could not get together in person and form a concensus about governance, resource allocation, and the such. Thus around 120 adults begins to be an upper limit to a cluster.
3. It is positively for something, like its way of life or sociocultural identity, it is not based on hatred or violence toward others and it doesn’t promote hatred or violence toward others.
4. It is based on ideas and beliefs more than things like race or ancestry, even if its mutual affinity is based on some sort of nationhood or ethnic identity. As an example, a Scottish Christian mutual affinity may tend to attract people of Scottish ancestry but it would welcome anyone of any race or color who simply had an affinity for and a desire to live a Scottish-Christian way of life.
5. As much as it can, it sets aside around 10% of its housing options for refugees/people in crisis and 20% to be leased to the public under fair housing laws to serve others and prevent itself from becoming insular while contributing to the existence of fair housing access for all.
6. People who join own shares, not the physical building, and if they leave or must be removed, they are either duly compensated or they remain on site but their status changes. Unless they commit a real tort or crime, they are never shunned or shamed for ceasing their active participation.
7. Mutual self-reliance and sustainability are the chief material aims, the object being to assure the physical, emotional, and spiritual sustenance of all persons who are members or who are connected thereto, even people who lease space, and always on the basis of offering and providing, never imposing, such help and support.
Note: if done right, the public will crave leasing space from a Upo Cluster, a cluster based on the Upadarian nationality, because it will assure them of sustenance even during hardships and of safety during times of crisis or disaster.
That all being said, clustered living is an inherent right. A cluster of all black people or all white people isn’t our ideal and we feel these can become insular, prejudicial, and self-destructive, but the right to do things others think is wrong, provided it does no harm to others, cannot be denied.
The right to cluster is a new formulation, but it has always been an inherent right, we believe, even if unrecognized as such on a formal basis.
