ATG

Overview of Our Town Proposal

Want to raise a family where family life, friendship, responsibility, and local life are valued?

We hold that naturally flourishing communities arise through the voluntary initiatives of ordinary people. They are sustained not primarily by bureaucratic institutions, but by the everyday customs through which families, neighbors, and local economies have always formed.

Our proposal is not to build a town from scratch or establish a pre-engineered community. Rather, as a guild of Millennial and Generation Z laymen, we seek to actualize the potential inherent in our common nature by settling in an existing semi-rural town and helping its local life flourish.

Governance Structure

The Keeper of the Guild
To sustain the guild's primary function, the Keeper alone has authority to accept, reject, or revoke membership. He also leads Socratic symposia, textual seminars, and similar activities, facilitating philosophical contemplation of timeless ethical and metaphysical principles rather than directing the personal lives of members.

The Freedom & Responsibility of Members
ATG exercises no executive oversight over the Shire-oriented initiatives of its members. Members are free to pursue—or not pursue—practical undertakings beyond philosophical contemplation. At the same time, all members share responsibility for sustaining the guild’s secondary function by entertaining ways to embody timeless ethical and metaphysical principles within the local economy and culture.

The Guild's Limited Role
The guild does not place the prudential decisions of its members under the direction of a governing board. Nor does it require members to employ their hard-earned resources according to a socialist, distributist, capitalist, or any other prescribed economic program. 

Following Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, ATG recognizes the household as the most fundamental natural sphere of authority and prudential responsibility. Accordingly, the guild does not interfere in the economic decisions of husbands and fathers. Rather, it offers philosophical fellowship and moral support to members who wish to cultivate local friendships, business alliances, and other Shire-oriented initiatives.