Mostly, eco-villages is a fraud.
Baptist church is also a fraud.
Crime on crime!

Keep you close to home and ring to police by mobile telephone.
Do you know such an eco-villages like Russia and USA?

How about keeping your religious and political views to yourself?

Al

Just the baptist sect, Valerie?

Mary, there is a "co-housing" complex near me that I have visited. The houses are fairly small and clustered away from the remote parking, and they have a pretty nice community garden going. Probably doesn't really qualify as an eco-village, though......

Thank you, Al and pnbrown, for unindifferent reply.

Just for international experience.
It was in Russia a net of eco-villages (Anastasia) with kindly hopes. People lost their homes in towns eventually.

I'll stop talking about eco-villages for drug users (under the control of Protestant church) for now...

Since the Eco followers have so different methods to become Eco my personal belief is that any village is doomed to fail unless the members are following a book by rote. Any suggestions on where to visit an eco-village?

I decided to add after doing a search and looking at the requirements for some: If you must give or loan your money to the village treat it as a loan to the family. Do not expect to receive the money back if you decide to move on.

Sounds like a hippie commune under a different name.

One of the more productive eco-villages, now defunct although the silverware company they started is going strong, can be studied by searching "oneida silverware company + history". A former CEO of Oneida was a friend and he often spoke of why this type of community fails. Over the years the founders age, the women lose their sexual attractiveness, the men develop wanderlust, the young people born into the community tire of supporting the oldsters and the community falls apart.

Village Homes in Davis, CA is well-known and I've been there numerous times. Most of the residents there love it and defend it fiercely and I can't blame them. Can't say the residents are hempen and eschew carbon-based energy and meat and capitalistic material goods and strictly locavores, but the design and land-use concepts are very sound and a good model to scale up.

Dan

I suspect that valerie_ru is suffering from a translation error, which to an extent explains why her post makes no sense.

Your query about eco-villages took on a religious tone.

Many, many, many, many, many, many moons ago, in the late seventies or early eighties I attended an agricultural seminar at the Emissary Center in Loveland, Colorado at the Sunrise Ranch.

There were many presenters from around the country, I suspect, of different faiths. I didn't feel that I was going to be bludgeoned into anything while there. They have centers around the country and world. http://emissaries.org/contacts.php

This page on their site relates to methods and practices with regard to farming/gardening at the Sunrise Ranch. http://sunriseranch.org/farm/methods-and-practices/

This article from The New York Times could be considered to be about an eco-village. I came across it a few weeks ago, even though, it was written in October and thought it interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/world/americas/16gaviotas.html

Terran

p.s.

Just to save Valerie the trouble, he is a guy. ;~)

Here is a link that might be useful: Las Gaviotas

I wasn't talking about the "hippie communes" of the past. There is a growing movement of eco-villages these days based on organic farming. I visited one. They build their own houses with help form each other or contractors, so they don't owe the bank. They share farm machinery and otherwise live cooperatively. They use solar and propane to go off the grid. It is a healthy economical way to live. If you think about it. Nothing as weird as some seem to think.

Ah my old childhood stompin grounds, great way to get from the Big Thompson to the Cache La Poudre River.

There is a growing movement of eco-villages these days based on organic farming. I visited one. They build their own houses with help form each other or contractors, so they don't owe the bank. They share farm machinery and otherwise live cooperatively.

It's very similar to kolhoz (collective farm).
The idea of the commun(ism) probably will never die.
It's a joke, not a political view.

Are you sure that your individuality will not be supressed in the commune eventually (it may be called eco-village, kolhoz, kibbuts, falanga and so on) ?

Well the difference between a commune and a communist society is one of scale, both in numbers and in innumerable powers.

In a commune you can have a relationship with each person, humans can have working relationships with a little less than 200 individuals. This means that there is a level of psychological accountability that, say the communist party of the PRC doesn't feel.

Secondly you have one of power. While a communist dictator has almost complete power a commune in say the US has very little. They cannot detain someone, they cannot force someone into an agreement, the worst they can do is kick you out really.

There are no guarantees against abuse of rights, there is nothing to stop an individual from being oppressed by a significant other or a parent, or a boss or any other of a nearly infinite array of people you can interact with. Eco villages draw a community of like minded individuals together, and it is unlikely that a totalitarian dictatorship is likely to spring forth.

it is unlikely that a totalitarian dictatorship is likely to spring forth

Ohhh, I don't know, I don't know....
200 individuals can control personality much more effectively then 200 millions.

Where commune of 200 like minded imdividuals can evolve?
1. They continue be like minded (rarely occur but possible if they united under the influence of bright personality such as Leo Tolstoy, his moral principles, his doctrine. Organic gardening doesn't seems to be such a comprehensive teaching.)
2. They stop be like minded and break up. (most probably )
3. They evolve to hierarchy. A rapid way to totalitarism and authoritarism, most dangerous criminal groups really like trotskist's groups in Columbia and Bolivia.

they cannot force someone into an agreement

This way they will be forced not to be sustainable economically, I think. Disagreement in economic developement will be always. They must to do something with this disagreement. It may split a community.

you forget that 200 million people is also 1 million groups of 200 people.

Yes the communities that don't work will split, that is what they have done in the US and Israel for years.

you forget that 200 million people is also 1 million groups of 200 people.

I know example when 2000 people (not 200 but no more than 2000) controlled (very effectively) 200 million people. It was in the USSR during 1930-1950th years. That group was NKVD (KGB). I though befor that there were MANY of them. Now, after archives were disclosed partially, it turned out that it was a relatively small organization. They controlled directly tens million people and indirectly 200 million.

I will grant that if you get 200 KGB types out of 201 people that they will have a very tight grip on that one other person ... what exactly are the odds of that? If 1 in 100,000 were KGB types then what are the odds of having 3 or more in a group of 200?

The problem with isolated group of people is that they can evolve either to totalitarism or to authoritarism.
25% of people who quit communes in USA said that main reason of their leaving is excess of power (sociology data).
The probability 25% is high, isn't it?
Really it reflects the international data about the percents of authoritarian persons (such as Hitler ideally) in different countries.
Such is the mathematics.

I call Godwin's Law! Everyone kindly set your keep boards down and exit to the left. Please show the clerk you "check in tag" and the left side of your brains will be promptly returned. Thanks for playing and don't forget to stop in at the gift shop.

key boards, that is

All I know is that dictator is sitting in everyone of us.
Under some circumtances this dictator can develope in monster.
Isn't it was the reason to change dictators from time to time when the idea of democracy appeared?
All good intentions fade if this dictator awake.
Do you think that Pol Pot in Campuchia was monster from the beginning? Nonsens. He just wanted to build ideal equitable society based on villages (really eco-villages!). You know what happened then...
It all not so simple as it seems to be.

Who want to think, he has to think about - Why people want to leave large towns? Mother said (from village): "go, son, to big towns, there you'll be happy!" It was 100 years ago. Now we see other picture: "go, son, to a small village, there you'll be happy!"

What the reason?

75 years ago there was more opportunity to make money in the cities. Now with many urban areas there is crime, filth, and little opportunity...so the country and suburbia beckon....of course with employment on the fringe of the cities.

The 25% figure doesn't mean much with out more data. It does however highlight the fact that people can leave! Also communes are not isolated any more, communications technology has shrunken the world.

"25% of people who quit communes in USA said that main reason of their leaving is excess of power."

Not that anything you say makes any sense to me, Valerie. But just out of curiosity, what % of people who quit the traditional family structure feel the same?

I don't know about all families, just about my own.
My family is 3 people: I, my wife and our doughter 15 years old. When someone becomes a dictator (it occurs from time to time) then other 2 immediately stands to the opposition. So, the power of dictator don't continue long time. This is the mechanism which allow us to exist together (yet).

How long the families of 200 people exists?
There always be someone who want more then he(she, especcially she!) deserved.

Jim Jones was a good example of what can go wrong with any communal living eco-villages or other wise. He established a communal living center and through threats and probably actual physical harm he took over the group of people he gathered and convenced them to drink poison kool-aid after giving it to their own children. This does not happen very often but it is a good example of what can go wrong in a communial living situation. Other groups over the years have also followed other leaders who basically brain washed members into believing and doing everything the leader tells them to do.

It is my understanding that many of Jim Jones followers were well educated and not just simpletons gulled by a leader.

Jonestown had two attributes of note in this conversation.

1) It was similar to a commune
2) It was a cult

Now if we isolate and control for those variables we can get an idea of what they do.

If we have a commune that is not a cult do we have the same problems? An emphatic NO.

If we have a cult that is not a commune do we have the same problems? A resounding YES.

Communes do not protect against all possible problems, neither do cities, or families or fountain pens. That does not mean that you can condemn them for it. Pol Pot had his regime grow rice, that does not mean that rice leads to genocide.

Most of Jim Jones followers were simpletons.

Brendan: I'm not certain if Jone's followers were simpletons but consider what occurred back in the 1970's.

A college psyc. professor of mine was invited to a large revival/gathering in Glenwood Springs, CO by a few of his close friends. He was hesitant but went anyway, coming and going over a 2 day period. What he observed and recognized was a form of brainwashing by a man and his assistants. The man was attempting to get people, on the spot to get the audience to give him money, titles to their homes, jewelry, anything of value and doing it successfully.

My prof. was astonished seeing numerous people he knew and some of his friends just handing over their valuable possessions. When he asked them what they were doing they could give him no good reason and seemed, "out of it as though they were on drugs". He tried to talk them out of what they were doing to no avail. Finally, when he realized the entire meeting area was going to be locked down, he escaped. The next day the leader and his minions were nowhere to be found.

None of my prof's friends were stupid or weak-minded people, quite the opposite. It was a powerful lesson to my prof. of the ability of people to be persuaded in a group situation.

Ever since hearing my prof. tell me that story, I cringe when I see snippets of the large gatherings Avon and Walmart have for their own employees. Rah, rah, rah!

Ever hear of a company in CO called Woodward Governor? That place was like The Stepford Wives back in the 1970's at least.

Most, but not all by any means. 51%=most.

I don't know which worries me most, the easily swayed simpletons or non-simpeltons.