Are Intentional Communities the Answer?
Could intentional communities further the goal of simple living in ways that living in standard housing cannot? This would be a totally innovative use for communal groups. Historically, communal living experiments in America such as the Shakers, the Hutterites, the Harmonists, and the Oneida community have been vehicles for people who have separated themselves from the rest of society based on a new vision of how life should be. However, the way I have phrased the question implies a different role: intentional communities as a way not of escaping from the world, but of being a spark to change the world, moving it toward a simpler, less materialistic way of existing. Indeed, if communities are “simpler” in some tangible way, we might foresee a world in which some sort of communal housing is the norm rather than a minuscule deviation from the housing norm. To answer this, we have to ask two additional questions. The first and most important question is, does living in intentional communi
