Anyone ever consider living on or starting a commune? Something to get back to roots of sharing, growing our own food, the "it takes a village" thing, all that jazz.
Do you live on one now?
I want to someday own a piece of land big enough to have everybody I love live on it in their own homes, plus space for visitors, plus space to grow everything we all eat.
I can’t, I’m too used to infrastructure and having readily available food with virtually no effort done on my part or obtain it. I would not enjoy replacing self actualization with farming one single bit (ironically enough my last name means farmer in German).
Thought about it and decided that there were better ways for me to act on those impulses. I think it's great that people do it, though.
I think a commune of freethinkers would be a great experiment. Can athiest/agnostics achieve what religon can't--live in peace.
I agree with patchoulijulie. There would have to be a very strong ethos of democracy for me to feel positive about it. Full democracy is the key.
I've thought about it. There is the concern, as others pointed out, of the rise of a cultish dictator. I've said before that almost every organization that starts out with good intentions ends up bad because someone will always start a power struggle. There would have to be an asshole filter to make it work.
I would love to participate in something like that. I would be wary of power hungry participants though.....that is always a threat.
Greedy, power hungry humans will always be with us in every aspect of life.
@jlynn37 Exactly....part of the complexities of human nature.
No. They never work. Some asshole always decides that they think they know better than everybody else and becomes the local dictator.
@Morganfreeman
Not a true utopian society. It started out that way, but for quite some time the kibbutz communities have accounted for a pretty significant portion of the Israeli GDP through industry and tech. They are no longer just agricultural communities and they are no longer self-sustaining.
No, but when I lived on our family farm near Morehead, KY, we grew our own organic food, made our own clothes, I raised exotic birds for sale, and gave piano and speed-reading classes on the side, but didn't raise food animals since I was mostly vegetarian..I made yogurt and kefir though.
I couldn't do, my collectivism ends there, I was sick over the weekend & when I nodded out on the couch I dreamed that I live in some sort of weird communal situation with 4 other people (strangers) in Detroit, In short it was pretty dystopian & I was so glad to wake up in my single person house even with the nasty sore throat.
I do grow some of my own food & share it freely for what its worth, but I could never be a Marxist I like the idea of personal property & space.
A collective, yes. Commune, no. By that i mean a group of people coming together to buy a large piece of land to be divided up between them. Some communal agreements perhaps regarding energy supply but otherwise, this is my patch, that's yours, so fuvk off to yours ?
Oh Hell No! It's hard enough living with one person and making decisions.
Hahahahaha
I've wanted to, but I think it's more of a pipe dream than anything else.