Environment Discussion

I was unable to talk to anyone over break about the environment who had really different views than mine. I did however talk to my mom and sister about the sustainable living communities. When I was abroad in Costa Rica I got to stay at one called Durika for a few nights one weekend and I had a great time there. I really respected the way in which they lived and the fact that they were a hard-working a tight-knit group of individuals who seemed very interested in the environment and in touch with nature. I discussed this type of living with my mother and sister and mentioned how I might like to live in one of these communities at some point in my life. My sister gave me a website to visit that was about one she knew about in Montana where she lives. Through my mother's facial expressions and comments I was able to see that she was quite skeptical of these types of places. She had joked with me when I was in Costa Rica and about to go and visit Durika that I better not join their "cult." She was just joking but the truth is is that she does have some skepticism about communities like those who claim to live off of the land and refrain from wasting water aka taking showers. She told me how my father used to live on one of those hippie communes up in New Hampshire. He eventually got sick of it because that sort of lifestyle ended up being an excuse for people to be lazy and he was the only one with a job and was therefore financially supporting everyone else. She was not saying that every community like this is full of lazy individuals but it is something that you have to be careful about it. After bout ten-twenty minutes of quiet thinking I ended up telling my mother and my sister that I was not going to live in one of those communities. My mother asked why and I said that I didn't want my nieces and nephews at family reunions to be asking why Aunt Neile's kids were so weird and why their names were plankton and mulch. When it comes down to it, if I were to become seriously interested in living in a self-sustaining community, I would have to do much more than look into how they were living in a sustainable way, I would also have to do some serious research on the group dynamics because the social life would end up being just as important especially since there would be very little privacy amongst the individuals of the community.