Communal Living

Lately I've been interested in the concept of communal living. Communes, to be exact. I'm thinking that if we ever run out of oil, we will have to live in smaller communities and walk or ride bikes everywhere we need to go. The hippies of the '60's had it right, I think, but unfortunately not very many communes made it. There are so many questions to be had, like should a commune have a leader? Who cooks? Who cleans? Who handles the money? What about health care?

Today we drive our cars long distances to go shopping. [In my case I do, I live in a small town]. If oil ever runs out, and some analysts contend that it will, what will we do? No more trips to Tulsa, no more commuting to school or work. We will be a pedestrian society. Communes will pop up everywhere as people try to make sense of what life has brought them. But communes will have a different purpose than they did in the '60's. It will be a purely survival tactic. In the '60's it was protest and the "back to the land" movement. It will be different next time.

I had a professor tell his class once that every 100 years a society disintigrates and rebuilds a different one. Will this happen to us? What will archeaologists of the future find out about us?