Great read. Makes me nostalgic for the optimistic incoherence of the 60s counterculture, a time I never knew firsthand but heard stories about from my dad. My grandmother was part of it, growing weed on a farm outside Montpelier Vermont. The misadventures of the hippies do make you wonder if maybe another way of living is possible...
> The misadventures of the hippies do make you wonder if maybe another way of living is possible...
Only on the backs of the people who actually keep the world running. It's an inherently parasitic sort of LARP only possible in a very wealthy society. If everybody starts living the commune life, you're soon looking at a whole lot of violence and abuse, just like the primitive, self-sufficient societies the hippies romanticize and were / are trying to imitate.
While not perfect, I'm sympathetic to the hippies not only because of my two Summer of Love aunts, but because in a tough world, they dared to question the imperfect status quo and attempt to try to make something better than just accept the bad.
But the mindset wasn't a total wash. After all, they were right about the Vietnam War, weed, civil rights, magic mushrooms, and they're part of the reasons we have Silicon Valley, iPhones, and open source. It's no coincidence YC / HN is based in the exact locale the hippies were.
I think the fact that healthcare, education, and housing (necessities) were all far cheaper then, relative to wages, also made it far easier to "drop out". The things that were more expensive then but much cheaper now are things that are essentially luxuries, like everything you can buy from China at Walmart and Amazon.
This was a time when you could graduate from college with little or no debt -- and more importantly, have a large cohort of friends, now also equally educated, who were in the same situation. You could find cheap rent, avoid buying a TV, and make do on very little.
Today rent and student loan payments alone ensure that most people who might combine the working class grit with the educated creativity and out of the box thinking to want to do weird stuff like this, can't afford to do anything but get a mainstream job. And even if they make it work, people don't do stuff like this alone, and all their friends have mainstream jobs.
Hell, even as recently as 2011 you could get a studio in Manhattan for under $1000.
As far as I'm aware there isn't a lot of anthropological evidence to support your view that primitive societies were any more violent than we are today. You seem to have a pretty dim view of human nature that may not be reflective of any kind of scientific reality. The article itself doesn't mention any episodes of "violence and abuse" in the communes so I'm not sure why you're pointing to that as a reason for their failure.
As for the hippies, I think it's admirable that they actually made the effort to practice a different way of living, even if it was short lived. Very few people or movements are brave enough to even attempt such a radical experiment. The unfortunately common idea that the way we live now is the only way or the best way demonstrates a poverty of imagination.
Maybe the first limiting factor to be encountered would be a lack of suitable land, if everyone wants inefficient self-sufficiency and enough room to run around in circles and scream and shout and giggle.
This is true of most people; we all survive only because of the society around us. We'd all be hosed if everyone became commune hippies, but we'd also be hosed if everyone became a programmer or construction worker or truck driver.
That said, the communes are now gone usually through their own dysfunction, abuse, unsustainable economies, and so on. People tried the life and didn't stick with it because it wasn't so great. There are a few though... mostly religious in some way. I'm not sure if the religion makes the deprivations more palatable, or the religion builds the community trust that either avoids or apologizes for whatever problems occur.
For people who claimed to be building intentional communities, it's no wonder they failed: these hippies seem to have had absolutely no clue about what any 21st century child could tell you are the very fundamentals of community building!
>“What had been manageable and a complete delight began to disintegrate,” Selvin continued. “It’s the mentality the utopian ideal attracts: instead of responsible members you’re looking at people wanting something for free. Utopias are undermined by human nature.”
Having twice-attempted communal living arrangements (once in SFbayarea): this quote is spot-on. Both my experiences, it was the awesome member's worthless partner [who sunk each dream].
My update to the above quote would be this: "Humanity is undermined by human nature."
