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- Twin Oaks Intentional Community (since 1967)
- Black Bear Ranch (since 1968)
Extending this through the "true 60s":
- Freetown Christiania (since 1971)
- The Farm (since 1971)
- Dear Friends,
- I have spent over twenty years in what is now called the "Hippie Movement", living in short-lived communes based on an anarchistic freedom and long-lived communes based on religion, taking part in political activities such as CORE work in the early 50's and the political action era of the Sexual Freedom League, and writing for, drawing for and editing little literary reviews and underground newspapers. This experience has brought me, gradually and reluctantly, to certain conclusions that I'm pretty sure some of your readers will dispute, yet to me they seem inescapable.
- First, those communities based on freedom inevitably fail, usually within a year.
- Second, those communities based on authority, particularly religious authority, often endure and survive even against vigorous opposition from the outside world. (The best example of the strength of religious authoritarian communism is the monasteries and nunneries of the Catholic Church.) ...
- How, then, can an intentional community possibly be superior to conventional society? If the intentional community hopes to survive, it must be authoritarian, and if it is authoritarian, it offers no more freedom then conventional society. I am not pleased with this conclusion, but it now seems to me that the only way to be free is to be alone.
- ORO, El Cerito, Calif.
- Whole Earth Catalog, Fall 1969, p. 81.