num_pages: 271
description: After twenty successful years as a poet and educator, Judson Jerome retired with his family to a rural commune. The very activities which meant progress in my life, he writes, progressively cut me off from the satisfactions I most yearned for. I decided to retire. In this book he tells not only how he came to make that decision but also why, for many people, young and middle-aged, communal living can offer new hope. On a grant from a research fund, the author visited dozens and studied thousands of the new communes founded since 1965. His findings are a unique blending of research and first-hand experience, reporting on the economics, communications, political structures and dynamics of growth in the movement, sexual and other interpersonal relations, education, and an emerging new philosophy of anarchism based on new consciousness. He gives evidence to show that people of all ages are increasingly choosing to opt out from the social system, not in blind selfishness, not looking for synthetic Utopias, but in a dedicated and deliberate effort to recover lost harmony with nature. Communes are not a haven for they could be the new frontier.
language: English
title: Families of Eden: Communes and the new anarchism
titlecomplete: Families of Eden: Communes and the new anarchism
ratings_count: 3
publisher: Thames and Hudson