What a remarkable pedigree you have, certainly not one to be laughed out of court, Patricia. Maybe you will come to be seen as the Wise Woman archetype by the new community. It would be a pity to waste your skepticism, and you might be able to offer a few public health tips as well… those public toilets 
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Live and let live.
I support their way of life rather than all those posers and their posh gin palaces in the South of France.
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That seems very odd, dry compost toilets are all the rage, even for non hippies these days. Sounds like they need some lessons 
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Haha no thanks. I’m no different from anyone who grew up in San Francisco in the 60s and 70s. Time moves on, why regress? 
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Well, looks like it’s a done deal so will just have to wait and see what happens. I don’t support any particular way of life but I suppose I support everyone’s right to live the way they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt other people. That’s the part in question at the moment.
Maybe planning that for the mud and straw houses?
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I shouldn’t think they’ll be a problem…too many meetings to decide whether, this week, it’s charcoal jam or quinoa on toast, to go bothering the locals.
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Yeah, bad choice of words. But good question, what IS traditional society in 2020? These days in the US especially, the word “traditional” seems to be linked with right wing religious conservative extremism and I hope my prejudices toward the commune didn’t read as coming from that camp.
I honestly didn’t realize the 60s were en vogue again to the extent I’ve seen in France. It’s kind of funny, the beads, the dreadlocks, headbands, fringe, tie-dye, free-range children…what’s so progressive and unique about a tribe of wandering homeless people pooling their resources to set up a shelter for more of the same in the heart of your village?
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I am not sure our homegrown alternative lifestyle mob are quite like your American ones, we tend not to have the religious or cultish dimension for a start. Why do you think they are so dodgy? Have you become so bourgeoise in your older age 
?
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Cool Man 
as we used to say in our flares and tie-dyed shirts.
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Not forgetting the Afghan coat - happy days:sunglasses:
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I have to say I admire your cool and dispassionate aporoach to adversarial discussion. I misjudged you.
I think you’re rightly skeptical about the increasingly polarised debate around conservative or ‘traditional’ ideas of how world affairs ought to be ordered, and less absolutist ways of envisioning our collective future.
I think many younger people see how fragile is the world we had come to see as enduringly robust and certain of itself, its institutions, and the ideologies from which they have grown.
There is, I think, a growing awareness worldwide that the old order is on the cusp of passing away, and the status quo ante, the way things were, is very unlikely ever to return. Younger people of my personal acquaintance including my own early middle-aged offspring live their lives lightly and unfettered by comfortable certainties about society.
They are the anti-fragilists of tomorrow. Not resilient and unbreakable “bouncers-back”, but capable of surviving chaos, which is (as science shows), the ‘natural disorder’ of what we vainly call “things”.
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The 60s counter-culture has been a constant in my life - one of the reasons I draw great pleasure and inspiration from the alternative lifestylers here in Brittany now.
My childhood too spanned the 60s; then as a student I worked for the magazine Peace News, produced by a ‘collective’ that didn’t live together, but did rotate cooking lunch every day which was eaten together round the scrubbed table that was really the heart of the magazine; then I was involved in the wholefoods and radical books movement - again I didn’t live in a ‘commune’ myself, but many of my friends and colleagues did - very successfully. We published and sold books like Small is Beautiful that set the seeds of the modern environmental movement; indeed, there is actually a very direct inheritance from French existentialism after the war through to the 60s counter-culture, and hence to many still vibrant counter-cultural projects. I’m lucky to have worked with many over the last 40 years - the young people driving them a particular source of inspiration - my current favourite perhaps Djebli Club in Mokrisset, Morocco.’
So from my perspective, it’s not a question of what’s en vogue at all - but rather a continuum of ideas and lifestyles, with many roots in France, and now blossoming here - and everywhere - in the face of climate/ecological breakdown.
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Haha! Maybe so!!! I keep hearing different versions of their mission which makes me suspicious overall, but you have a very valid point! Without the religious underpinnings, and lack of a charismatic leader (hopefully), the outlook is a bit brighter. 
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Many of them are quite possibly the children and grandchildren of the 60’s…we are quite proud that (most of) the younger family members have developed their own independent ways of being. We dreaded them wanting a bowler hat and subscription to the FT for a birthday present.
Is a group of young’ish people setting up to live together not preferable to what can be seen elsewhere of the third generation of unemployed and feckless growing up to live on benefits and sit in front of a wide screen TV?
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Good point. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! These aren’t kids though, they are late 30s early 40s pursuing the dream life of unemployment, living off the land and the kindness of strangers. It’s a hard concept to get used to from where I’m sitting, because it feels like they’ve done nothing to change society, just left it entirely behind.
My older son, same age, makes more money than God in the tech industry and is out there every day protesting in Portland, fighting for anarchy, against systemic racism and a government that no longer functions, getting tear gassed, watching people get beaten, shot in the head with rubber bullets and shot at with real ammunition by federal and Portland police, not to mention the idiot Trump militias, aka Proud Boys and their ilk. I think these are the people who are making the necessary sacrifices and creating the change that will give others equal opportunity to realize their utopic dreams.
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And then there are those who are out there actually fighting a war for change in world order, putting their lives on the line to stand up to rampant police corruption and brutality, a failing government regime, racism and oppression of indigenous populations and other people of color, etc. Somehow, dropping out and living the dream when that isn’t an opportunity available to everyone, people of color in particular, feels to me a bit like “putting the cart before the horse”, but perhaps you have to “be the change you want to see in the world.” Sorry I’m so full of cliché this morning…I wake up every day to news of the horrors in my own country and wonder how it will ever end.
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Your story inspires me because it presents the notion of hope in the form of this continuum of ideals. We protested the war but somehow were placated when it ended, went on to rejoin society and then became “the establishment” we fought so hard against! What a bunch of sell-outs!!!
I suppose there are many confronting the array of world issues in their own way but at the moment we are again fighting a huge war for basic human survival in the US. Honestly, these discussions on this forum have been so helpful to me in identifying my own biases. I’m so grateful for this intelligent, enlightening discussion!
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There is village not far from me that has a lot of hippie family’s the directly saved the village and the school they are some weed smoking going on nothing more then the locals do anyway
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Our Family in Munich have a hut in the Austrian Alps.
They have just got electricity and the facilities are as you mention and outside!
They take loads of lavender from our garden and after use it is sawdust and lavender!
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