ing in human society affordment, skills
and technical experience necessary to make significant changes, why
wait? Why not proceed forthwith to live a better life?

This dilemma has confronted individuals and sub-groups in various
civilizations. It has been particularly in evidence during periods of
decline and social disintegration. It has led people of both sexes and
all ages to uproot themselves from the old social order and reestablish
themselves in a social order "nearer to the heart's desire."

Such efforts have been described as "intentional communities" to
distinguish them from a traditional, currently existing social order
which emerged from the past encumbered with vestigial remains and
obsolete institutions and practices having little or no relation to the
needs and wants of a changing world.

Pilgrim Fathers in New England, William Penn in Pennsylvania, Lord
Baltimore in Maryland aimed to organize local intentional communities.
Similar efforts were made by the Mennonites, the Dukhobors, the
Hutterites, the Mormons in North America. The Christians during the
decline of Roman civilization led a movement to convert a large
geographical area to a new and better way of life. Followers of
Mohammed, several centuries later, made a similar effort to convert the
Eurasian-African world to their ways of thinking and acting.

Young people by the thousands, in the United States and other western
countries, are turning their backs on western civilization and are
organizing enlarged families and communes that provide their members
with a modified social order which aims at improvements here and now.

Necessarily such social experiments are looked upon with suspicion by
the Establishment. They are "new", "different", "subversive", "godless",
"wicked." Hence, they are criticized, denounced, raided and often broken
up as threats to existing law and order.

Intentional communities may grow out of consumers' cooperation. They may
begin as farm collectives. Generally, however, they consist of the
followers of outstanding leaders of religious or ethical sects. Many
intentional communes spring up, mushroom-fashion, and disappear with
equal rapidity. Others endure for generations and centuries.

In a very real sense they are pilot plants designed to correct
individual or social maladjustments and substitute new ways for old
ones. As pilot plants they experiment with deviations from existing
social norms, acting as a social la