Intentional communities, by and large, fail to recognize the many darwinian iterations of evolution modern societies have gone through over the years, where successful social organizations have overwhelmed their less-adapted brethren.
Simply put: the current way of organizing society is a pretty good plan for organizing a very, very complicated social mechanism full of smart, self-interested actors towards the common good. Is it fucked up still in many respects? Absolutely. Do you have a better idea? Highly unlikely. We've been working on this whole "getting along" thing for millennia, and we've tried pretty much every idea possible at one point or another.
There's a modern conceit that we're somehow smarter or better than previous generations, and that's very misguided. We're much better informed, certainly. The conventional wisdom, the collective mental schema regarding what's a good idea and what's not, that's improved dramatically. Not because you thought about it, but because a bunch of faulty social assumptions have gotten weeded out over the years. But people are pretty much the same as they've ever been.
Simply put: the current way of organizing society is a pretty good plan for organizing a very, very complicated social mechanism full of smart, self-interested actors towards the common good. Is it fucked up still in many respects? Absolutely. Do you have a better idea? Highly unlikely. We've been working on this whole "getting along" thing for millennia, and we've tried pretty much every idea possible at one point or another.
There's a modern conceit that we're somehow smarter or better than previous generations, and that's very misguided. We're much better informed, certainly. The conventional wisdom, the collective mental schema regarding what's a good idea and what's not, that's improved dramatically. Not because you thought about it, but because a bunch of faulty social assumptions have gotten weeded out over the years. But people are pretty much the same as they've ever been.