Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[yarrow@sfo.com]

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.....