>On Apr 16, 2005, at 9:19 AM, tully wrote:
>
>> On Friday 15 April 2005 06:08 pm, John Adams wrote:
>
>>>It was the theory of the late seventies and early eighties that we'd
>>>be able to build the new society within the shell of the old, blah
>>>blah blah, by building co-ops. Turned out people liked their
>>>organically certified food more than they liked their democracy and
>>>their worker-controlled businesses.
>>
>>It was the theory of us hippies in the 60s and 70s that a self
>>sufficient lifestyle on the land would help contribute to peace and
>>social equality in the world. These theories are right. Our
>>approach to it was lacking. We homesteaders found out that it was
>>too hard for small families to make it on the land. But there were
>>larger communities that did succeed and are succeeding like Twin Oaks
>>in Virginia and other communities around the country and the world.
>
>Yes--there are tiny communities in scattered locations representing
>a fraction of a percent of the people who tried this. They are
>little blemishes on an otherwise unbroken record of heartbreak,
>misery, and human waste from the mass delusions of the
>back-to-the-land movement. Typical hippie narcissistic stupidity of
>the anti-humane sort.
That's a little too harsh - they were trying, and who knew what would work 35 years ago?
But now we know it just isn't enough. You're never going to get more than a handful of people who want to live Twin Oaks-style - and Twin Oaks itself survives by selling hammocks, cashew butter, and web design to the outside world. It's a way of carving out your own niche while leaving the balance unchanged. It free-rides on industrial society, while leaving most other social relations unchanged. Beats living purely inside your own head, but it's not unrelated to that.
>I have some thoughts on this, beginning with: What do you do with
>people for whom four walls are four too many?
Three too many, please! Comrade Stalin deserves nothing less than total accuracy.
Doug