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Shakers have nearly died out.

a_unique_person

Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
a_unique_person
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A couple of hours from here is Shakertown of Pleasant Hill. It was a 19th century Shaker community which, by the middle part of the 20th century, was abandoned buildings and non-Shaker farmland. The meeting house was turned into an auto repair garage (you can still see the automotive oil stains on the wooden floors.) But the place has been restored and turned into privately run historical site and tourist draw.

I think I visited there in grade school, but I have no memory of that. However, my wife and I visited a couple of years ago, and we were very impressed (enough to purchase an annual membership).

It's a beautiful place, and fascinating. The volunteers and employees who acted as tour guides, dressed in period costume and demonstrating aspects of Shaker life, were fantastic. I'm very proud to have this kind of historical site in my state, and I encourage visitors to go.

The Shakers were--and, I guess, are, for now--pretty darn cool. I can be pretty down on religion, but it's obvious that religion can form the bedrock of beautiful, admirable things. The Shakers are a bright example.
 
The Shakers live communally, owning nothing as individuals. Favouring utilitarian clothing — denim pants and simple shirts for men; long, modest dresses for women — they shun adornment. They pray together several times a day and believe life is a constant quest to emulate Christ. "One of our founders said, 'Even my every breath is a prayer to God,' " Brother Arnold Hadd said.
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Hey, these guys made communism work.

The trick is: 1) Make it voluntary. 2) Make religion a part of it.
 
geni said:
You missed 3. Keep it small.
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I don't know, is there some fundamental reason it couldn't work on a larger scale?

Suppose these communities became popular, then some of the larger and more wealthy ones opened new franchises. Couldn't it grow?
 
Suppose these communities became popular, then some of the larger and more wealthy ones opened new franchises. Couldn't it grow?
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Why would you want them to?
 
Mycroft said:
I don't know, is there some fundamental reason it couldn't work on a larger scale?

Suppose these communities became popular, then some of the larger and more wealthy ones opened new franchises. Couldn't it grow?
Click to expand...

You run into issues of not knowing people. Communism works on a small scale (pretty much every political and econimic system you can think of works on a small scale) because everyone knows a high enough percentage of the people involved. This means that cheater get caught. More importantly any members of the collective know that cheaters get caught. Beyond a certian size you lose that.
 
Mycroft said:
I don't know, is there some fundamental reason it couldn't work on a larger scale?

Suppose these communities became popular, then some of the larger and more wealthy ones opened new franchises. Couldn't it grow?
Click to expand...

Yes it could, as long as each community is small and they are independent. One of the problems with Communism is that those who govern "in the name of the people" usually govern for themselves and their friend. If a communist government is to actually work for the people, the place must be small enough for the people to know personally the government and vise-versa, social pressure keeping him from abusing his power too much.

The basis of all problems with government is simple, really. We have evolved to live in clans of, at most, 200 or so people--the largest number of people one can expect to know personally with some degree of affinity. We treat those people as "friends"--those whose desires should be respected even when they contradict our own--and we tend to treat everybody else as "strangers"--that is, those whose desires have no effect on us trying to satisfy our desires.

We lived like that for over a million years. Then the agricultural revolution happened, and suddenly, there were nations and tribes as well as clans. But we aren't programmed by evolution to such advanced thinking--it's been FAR too soon for that. We simply do not consider the rights of others except for those 200 or so to be of equal status as our own.

The result? Whoever is in power will always tend to think of his family and friends first, at least to some degree, leading to a new aristocracy with titles such as "secretary general" or "general comissar of the workers" or "president" instead of "king" and "duke". Poof, there goes "treating everybody equally" and "liberating the workers from opression".

Communism fails because it asks the impossible from human beings--to treat strangers the same way one treats the family. This will simply not be done, no matter how wonderful the utopia it's supposed to create. Capitalism and Liberalism (in the traiditional sense) work, relatively at least, because they cleverly managed to ask from human beings to do what they want to do anyway--act selfishly and for their family's and clan's--as long as some "ground rules" that benefit everybody are observed.

It is not wonder that the "burgenois (sp?) family" is seen as the root of the problem to all the utopist ideologues (especially of the Marxist stripe). For it is indeed one's concern for one's family and friends that is the ultimate cause of the impossiblity of all their plans for a communal utopia where everybody is equal, no more war, racism, opression, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. This, I suspect, is also the real reason for the attack on the "opressive" traditional family" by all the ex-communists turned "social activists".
 
Mycroft said:
I don't know, is there some fundamental reason it couldn't work on a larger scale?

Suppose these communities became popular, then some of the larger and more wealthy ones opened new franchises. Couldn't it grow?
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Franchise celebacy. Yeah, that's the ticket.:)
 
Ryokan said:
How about the Movers? Are they still about?
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Yep.

pm_about.jpg
 
Dammit AUP I thought you were saying that the Ford GTHO Phase 3 was extinct til I realised they werent around before the civil war.
 
Skeptic said:
We lived like that for over a million years. Then the agricultural revolution happened, and suddenly, there were nations and tribes as well as clans. But we aren't programmed by evolution to such advanced thinking--it's been FAR too soon for that. We simply do not consider the rights of others except for those 200 or so to be of equal status as our own.
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This makes sense, but it also suggests to me an important role that religion plays in creating a reason to go against our genetic programming and to adopt a standard of behavior that benefits everyone, not just the small circle of people we know personally.
 
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