Yes, all the Utopian commune experiments in the American Northeast stand as testament to their fragility. Even ones founded by wealthy families tended to last only a decade.

The most successful Utopian community was Oneida, a pseduo-millennial free love cult. It lasted for 30 years and grew to about 300 people. It succeeded precisely by not being terribly Utopian (by our standards today): their leadership was centralized in a single family and, quite frankly, in a single man, John Noyes; they were picky about who they let in; and they were capitalists, making lots of money by manufacturing silverware. In fact, when the Community disbanded, it didn’t so much disband as simply become Oneida Silverware, Ltd.

I had a point to draw this back to the original post, but I lost it . . . Something to do with millennial cults, alternative communities, and the inevitability of their failure or their re-integration with the society they sought to exit (see Utah).

Further, is this not community-building? Would the techno-futurist not agree that community is no longer tied to the tyranny of location?

Short answer: Both are hoakey religions, but the former stood and stands against while the latter is completely parasitic of the Cathedral.

Agreed, but personally I have no choice. I have no living family (although I am in the process of building one from scratch). However, I have always been successful in building niches in my environment with groups of people who work together well and get goals accomplished. Once is a fluke, twice is a trend, but five times is evidence that I have a skill at this.

There’s also an engaging definitional issue (are they like churches, tribes, enterprises, or something else?). Which rough model of collectivity are you feeling drawn to?

Currently, my mode of collectivity is Existential Threat. Reaction coalesces against the Cathedral in the same way that humanity would coalesce against a hostile alien threat. I can worry about whether I’d prefer to live in a pagan ethnostate, a Catholic theocracy, or a techno-futurist paradise once we have the Patchwork. (All three have their appeal to me.) For the time being, my focus is the Patchwork, and working with like-minded individuals. One thing I know is that solitude is a failure mode for me.

Oh, I think most people would prefer that, but it entails a 180° shift from standard Cathedral life. Unless you’re a Mormon living in SLC (where you might enjoy a six-figure salary and, if everything goes to pot, you’re already in your TEOTWAWKI community), it’s one or the other. You’re either in the big city or the ‘burbs which (as George Zimmerman discovered) has no real community, or you’re in the sticks and (hopefully) effectively Amish.

The infection of radical individualism runs deep. I’d prefer to pool my work with a community, so we can together build only a few lifeboats, enough for everyone in the group, plus a couple spares for redundancy. Then, since we aren’t all focused on our own boats, we can see about making inroads from the shore.

I forgot to mention the bank advert next to the Chinese restaurant: ‘We’re all ears’. Also, my head hurts.