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 laboratory in which new ideas and
practices are tested, modified, accepted, rejected.
Change is one of the essential aspects of every society. There are
changes in personnel.
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