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  • From: yarrow@sfo.com
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] hippie communes
  • Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:03:04 -0700

From what I've read, the problem with hippie communes was

(1) poor communication skills -- open communication and mediation and conflict resolution are not things that most of us learn, or recognize the need to learn. In a small space with many people and usually few resources, much needed.

(2) lack of boundaries -- not enough private space, and no acknowledgment that each person needs some private space, private time, private stuff.

(3) ego-crazed leaders -- generally a leader emerges, and if (usually) he starts to think of himself as the one "in control" and thus the one whose ideas get acted on, and starts to order people around, and they decide this isn't the ideal they had in mind, it all starts to fall apart. Recent examples in pop culture: the big community garden in Los Angeles, which reportedly was falling apart long before it was sold because of ego-crazed leaders; and the leader of the free world himself.

(4) no role models for how to live this way -- the closest model for living in community, sharing skills and resources, and pulling together is the family, and I know very few people whose family of origin set a good example. Certainly no political unit I know of is a good example, either. So intentional communities were all very experimental, trying to invent something new. Few discovered any kind of "glue" (such as well-developed shared beliefs or ideals) that would keep them together when inevitable difficulties arose.



From what I've read, the problem with hippie communes is the hippies.....





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