7 ms·

Good read. It certainly resonated with some of my own existential angst about modern society, and I was vaguely aware of this period in history, but I really li

Good read. It certainly resonated with some of my own existential angst about modern society, and I was vaguely aware of this period in history, but I really like Jenning's take that there's so much to learn from these, like social experiments done in miniature. Another part of me believes that these experiments are probably worth doing again, this time using technology (particularly computers) to help organize things. Indeed, my own naive personal utopia would involve living in a nice place with individual apartments and a communal kitchen, day-care, and daily meditation/yoga. It would be cool if we all worked together too, perhaps as a software company. Note that this is an excerpt from a recently published book, "Paradise Now: The store of American Utopianism! http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=Paradise+Now%3A+The+Story+of+American+Utopianism+&mtype=B&hs.x=0&hs.y=0&hs=Submit http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=Paradise+Now%3A+Th...

loginwashere 11y ago
Why would you need communal kitchen?
- RobertoG 11y ago
  I suppose he miss explaining histories around a fire after a day of hunting in the wildness. There are something alienating in the way we live in big cities. We miss the palaeolithic.
  - mhurron 11y ago
    > We miss the palaeolithic. Speak for yourself. All I see is forced interaction with people that are around you for reasons that have nothing to do with your choice to spend time with them.
    - adrusi 11y ago
      Except in the paleolithic these people would be your extended family, the friends you grew up with, etc. And because of the cultural homogeneity of such societies, you would get along better with them than people get along with their families today. In the modern context, these would be people you selected.
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    Oddly enough, when I lived in more rural/suburban settings, I never really encountered anything I'd consider communal or primal/"paleolithic" but when I moved to a bigger city, I found many more ways to address those desires. Even if it's just having a corner bar where neighbors stop in for a meal or a beer in the evenings or getting together with nearby friends on various nights for board games or cookouts, I see a lot more community and shared activities. Much of it is only enabled by the proximity of urban life where the need to drive over to meet up is minimal or nonexistent. When I lived in the "boonies", any gathering had to be a lot more scheduled since you had to account for driving.
- jhbadger 11y ago
  Because the labor of cooking for 100 people isn't 100x the labor needed to cook for one. In grad school I lived in cooperative housing where one day every other week I had to help cook the evening meal for everyone else and just got to eat the other days. It was far more efficient than cooking every day for myself and far cheaper than restaurants.
  - dreamdu5t 11y ago
    And what if you like to eat healthy but the other people like to eat lots of meat and processed food? Communes are great if nobody has mutually exclusive preferences
    - nickpinkston 11y ago
      In practice, you tend to have people of like-mind coming together and actually syncing preferences closer over time. It's been very efficient in any communal setting I've been in.
    - Retra 11y ago
      Sounds like you're hung up on a trivially solved problem for some reason.
      - dreamdu5t 11y ago
        What's the trivial solution?
        Retra 11y ago
        Talk with your roommates or make your own food if you're a picky eater.
    - jhbadger 11y ago
      We had a vegetarian and a meat entree choice at each meal and the meals were fairly balanced. If there was anything to complain about it was that the food tended to be not highly spiced in order to reach the common denominator. But we had hot sauces and the like so that people could spice things up if they wanted.
jqm 11y ago
That does sound cool and things like that have been tried in the past. The traditional type of problems seem to be (human nature being what it is) that the guru in charge of the yoga studio proclaims he is the second coming of Jesus Christ and everyone needs to give him all their money and the persons in charge of day care start kiddie diddling. And it's a damn shame these type of things don't seem to work out so well.
xiphias 11y ago
Google used to be like this when you were allowed to sleep there. Now only the apartment part is missing.
blinkingled 11y ago
> my own naive personal utopia Seriously what prevents likeminded people from doing exactly the same today?
- soylentcola 11y ago
  I think there are plenty of people living in communal housing on some level or another. In my city I've met several who have shared larger townhouses with several bedrooms and shared living space (the simplest would just be looked at as having several roommates I guess) or large warehouse/loft spaces with similar arrangements. I don't know of any full apartment buildings like this though. I guess the main issue is the one that comes up often enough with the smaller groups I've run across: stability. The more people you have, the quicker the odds of "turnover" go up with people moving in and out. Adding to this is the sense of ownership or control that tends to keep people living in any given place. If you feel like it's really your home, then you want to stick around but the more people split "ownership" of common resources, the less each individual feels it's their home. I think on some level everyone wants to make their home the way they prefer and I guess the apartment building idea would be good for this. You have enough individual space to fulfill the desire to have your own setup but you share the parts that make sense to share. I guess my question is where the line is between just good neighbors on a block who share some activities/resources and housemates in a big building when defining a potential community or collective. I think there are so many degrees of community that there's not really a set point at which it becomes a collective endeavor. If you go by just living in the same structural building, then there are certainly plenty of examples right now. All you really need is a building where residents all have some level of agreement on things to be shared and contributed to. The flip side is that the only real way to ensure it happens is to buy the actual building and only rent apartments/sell condos to people who agree to the arrangement. If you don't have a replacement for someone who is moving, can you afford the vacancy while you look for one? If residents own their own condo/unit, can you compel them to only sell to someone who would follow the "house rules"? I can see why these things tend to be more along the lines of lucky accidents (neighbors who all choose to contribute to some degree) than more formalized arrangements.
  - 11y ago

loginwashere 11y ago

Why would you need communal kitchen?

RobertoG 11y ago
I suppose he miss explaining histories around a fire after a day of hunting in the wildness. There are something alienating in the way we live in big cities. We miss the palaeolithic.
- mhurron 11y ago
  > We miss the palaeolithic. Speak for yourself. All I see is forced interaction with people that are around you for reasons that have nothing to do with your choice to spend time with them.
  - adrusi 11y ago
    Except in the paleolithic these people would be your extended family, the friends you grew up with, etc. And because of the cultural homogeneity of such societies, you would get along better with them than people get along with their families today. In the modern context, these would be people you selected.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Oddly enough, when I lived in more rural/suburban settings, I never really encountered anything I'd consider communal or primal/"paleolithic" but when I moved to a bigger city, I found many more ways to address those desires. Even if it's just having a corner bar where neighbors stop in for a meal or a beer in the evenings or getting together with nearby friends on various nights for board games or cookouts, I see a lot more community and shared activities. Much of it is only enabled by the proximity of urban life where the need to drive over to meet up is minimal or nonexistent. When I lived in the "boonies", any gathering had to be a lot more scheduled since you had to account for driving.
jhbadger 11y ago
Because the labor of cooking for 100 people isn't 100x the labor needed to cook for one. In grad school I lived in cooperative housing where one day every other week I had to help cook the evening meal for everyone else and just got to eat the other days. It was far more efficient than cooking every day for myself and far cheaper than restaurants.
- dreamdu5t 11y ago
  And what if you like to eat healthy but the other people like to eat lots of meat and processed food? Communes are great if nobody has mutually exclusive preferences
  - nickpinkston 11y ago
    In practice, you tend to have people of like-mind coming together and actually syncing preferences closer over time. It's been very efficient in any communal setting I've been in.
  - Retra 11y ago
    Sounds like you're hung up on a trivially solved problem for some reason.
    - dreamdu5t 11y ago
      What's the trivial solution?
      - Retra 11y ago
        Talk with your roommates or make your own food if you're a picky eater.
  - jhbadger 11y ago
    We had a vegetarian and a meat entree choice at each meal and the meals were fairly balanced. If there was anything to complain about it was that the food tended to be not highly spiced in order to reach the common denominator. But we had hot sauces and the like so that people could spice things up if they wanted.

jqm 11y ago

That does sound cool and things like that have been tried in the past. The traditional type of problems seem to be (human nature being what it is) that the guru in charge of the yoga studio proclaims he is the second coming of Jesus Christ and everyone needs to give him all their money and the persons in charge of day care start kiddie diddling. And it's a damn shame these type of things don't seem to work out so well.

xiphias 11y ago

Google used to be like this when you were allowed to sleep there. Now only the apartment part is missing.

blinkingled 11y ago

> my own naive personal utopia Seriously what prevents likeminded people from doing exactly the same today?

soylentcola 11y ago
I think there are plenty of people living in communal housing on some level or another. In my city I've met several who have shared larger townhouses with several bedrooms and shared living space (the simplest would just be looked at as having several roommates I guess) or large warehouse/loft spaces with similar arrangements. I don't know of any full apartment buildings like this though. I guess the main issue is the one that comes up often enough with the smaller groups I've run across: stability. The more people you have, the quicker the odds of "turnover" go up with people moving in and out. Adding to this is the sense of ownership or control that tends to keep people living in any given place. If you feel like it's really your home, then you want to stick around but the more people split "ownership" of common resources, the less each individual feels it's their home. I think on some level everyone wants to make their home the way they prefer and I guess the apartment building idea would be good for this. You have enough individual space to fulfill the desire to have your own setup but you share the parts that make sense to share. I guess my question is where the line is between just good neighbors on a block who share some activities/resources and housemates in a big building when defining a potential community or collective. I think there are so many degrees of community that there's not really a set point at which it becomes a collective endeavor. If you go by just living in the same structural building, then there are certainly plenty of examples right now. All you really need is a building where residents all have some level of agreement on things to be shared and contributed to. The flip side is that the only real way to ensure it happens is to buy the actual building and only rent apartments/sell condos to people who agree to the arrangement. If you don't have a replacement for someone who is moving, can you afford the vacancy while you look for one? If residents own their own condo/unit, can you compel them to only sell to someone who would follow the "house rules"? I can see why these things tend to be more along the lines of lucky accidents (neighbors who all choose to contribute to some degree) than more formalized arrangements.
- 11y ago