Area of Human Behavior: Interpersonal Relationships
One of the most important organizational areas of Los Horcones is the area of human behavior or interpersonal relationships. This area deals with human affairs, this is, matters related to the behavior of community members (children and adults).
Note. Remember that for behavior analysis, "behavior" is not just motor actions, but also thinking, feeling, imagining. Thus, the behavior area of Los Horcones is concerned with all the actions of human beings.
The area of human behavior is divided in two: the "adult behavior area" which deals with the behavior of adult members and the "child behavior area" which deals with the behavior of children, or better said, with the behavior of adult members in relation to the children (adults are the ones who mainly shape and maintain the children's behavior).
Los Horcones is an educational community
All the members of Los Horcones are convinced that building a communitarian society necessarily implies learning communitarian behaviors. These behaviors need to be taught, they do not occur by themselves, because something happens in our mind or brain. So, to design educational practices is one of the main functions of the area of human behavior at Los Horcones.
Newcomers need to clearly understand this point. People can not live in Los Horcones behaving in non-communitarian ways, they need to change their behavior. We help them and ourselves to change behavior throughout the application of behavioral principles (behaviorological principles). Of course, behavior change is gradual. We do not expect sudden changes in behavior. We reinforce successive approximations towards communitarian behaviors (shaping).
We know that if the community did not request newcomers a behavioral change we would have many more members, as most communities do. But we would also have the problems these communities have, for example: a large number of members who are not identified with the communitarian objectives and that in the long rung interferes with the development of the community more than what they help it.
Los Horcones wants to be a genuine community, not just a group of individuals living in the same place, each seeking their own self-interest objectives. To become a community in the real sense, an area that deals with human behavior is necessary.
A community is not a group of individuals living together seeking individualistic goals disregarding common good.
People frequently ask us why people leave the community. One answer is the following: They leave because it is not reinforcing for them learning to become communitarian. For people in general, is not reinforcing to seek the common good. Teaching these reinforcers is precisely one of the main functions of the area of human behavior. Obviously, we have not always been successful in this teaching process. We have not always been able to help people learn communitarian behaviors and reinforcers.
Please do not understand the above as if we were saying that all the members of Los Horcones are already ideal communitarians or that in order to live in Los Horcones a person needs to be totally communitarian. What we are saying is that all members of Los Horcones must be convinced that it is essential to learn communitarian behaviors and reinforcers. Newcomers are not required to behave in a communitarian way since they arrive. They are expected to learn it gradually. This is an application of shaping procedure in the communitarian setting. See Glossary.
Like other areas of the community, the area of human behavior is organized by one or more coordinators. Their main functions are:
- To organize periodical meetings to talk about the behavior of all the members (including the behavior of the coordinators who organize the meetings). In this meeting we talk about what we like or dislike about the community as a whole, about ourselves or other members. We select target behaviors. Behaviors we want to change and the procedures we are going to apply.
- To teach members about issues related to interpersonal relationships skills and personal skills such as self-knowledge, behavioral self-management, etc.
- To serve as counselors or mediators when members have personal relationship problems.
- To inform community members about advances about the science of behavior.
Los Horcones as a therapeutic community
Los Horcones community often functions as a therapeutic environment, however this is not our main objective. We need people who identifies with our communitarian ideals. People who come not merely to solve their personal problems but to contribute their effort to achieve these ideals.
Los Horcones is not an escapist society. We are not living in this way to escape from a reality full of social (personal) problems. On the contrary, we live in this way, because we think we could find more effective solutions to current social problems.
We believe one solution to our current social problems is to establish* communitarian (cooperative) villages or communities. In this communities people can live helping each other for a common good and not competing for an individualistic-egotistic goals. People can decide about the matters that affect them.
We believe that we can solve many of our current social problems by founding small towns which can be as self-sufficient as possible (Walden Two towns).
* Observe that we are saying "establish communities" not just talk or write about them.
We invite people to be part of this communitarian lifestyle.
Last up-date: January 2002
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