One of my favorite ecovillages is in St. Gallen, Switzerland, where a group of people have taken early retirement or abandoned high-paying jobs to live together and rebuild a 19th century Benedictine monastery in the middle of nature.
And why do you like it?
They are bringing it back using local resources, almost extinct traditional crafts and inventing really interesting ways to use modern technology, like solar computers.
A utopian community?
We are all children of people who dreamed of a different way of living. The history of the world is the consequence of utopian dreamers.
Marked by adventure.
At some point in the past a few decided to leave East Africa and do something completely different from what their parents and grandparents had done.
2,500 years ago Pythagoras founded a commune in southern Italy.
Yes, it's a very early example of a group of people who were dissatisfied with the way life was organized in ancient Greece, and Pythagoras and his followers had this crazy idea.
Where were they installed?
In Cretonne, with the idea of living in harmony and studying the mysteries of mathematics and the universe, sharing properties and establishing equality between men and women, things that at that time were very far from Greek society.
How was the experiment?
It was so influential in Greece that Plato was inspired by Pythagoras' lifestyle to write The Republic, one of the founding texts of Western philosophy.
What do 2,500 years of these attempts to create utopian societies teach us?
The Greeks created the concept of family, the classic dad, mom and children who live in their apartment with their private objects; The Romans adopted it and then the Church spread it.
Model that continues to dominate.
The vast majority of humanity has a status quo bias, they do not want to change anything, but the history of human progress responds to that minority of utopian dreamers who fought, for example, against slavery, and for free education or divorce.
What social utopias triumph today?
There is a movement in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands of communities of women of a certain age who decide to live together.
And how are they doing?
Scientific studies show how people who live in cohousing have higher levels of happiness, lower rates of unwanted loneliness, and a more satisfactory use of their time.
Coexistence is not easy.
Cohousing is a nice balance between private space and shared spaces with a set of rules and regulations within each community. The pandemic showed us how lonely it is to be locked in our apartments; We want to be connected with others and cohousing is a model of success.
When the children have flown.
Yes, it is very fascinating because we are seeing these social alternatives among people under 35 and over 60, all of us in the middle continue to cling to the model of the nuclear family in a single-family home, and it is very ironic.
Because?
Because parenting is when we would benefit the most from living in more collective and collaborative ways, but it is when we isolate ourselves. Younger and older people choose this path that allows them to reduce their expenses and be able to enjoy, for example, community gardens and orchards.
Who opts for cohousing?
At the moment, well-positioned people who want to live collectively in a desirable place, and it seems very positive to me.
What else do the studies say about this alternative life?
People are happier and claim to have a higher level of well-being by consuming less, with a smaller ecological footprint. Many people think that more is the key to living better, but studies like the Harvard one – a study that has been underway for 70 years – emphasize that satisfaction lies in relationships with other people.
…
It has been studied how children grow up in ecovillages, and the fact of having more interaction with different people suits them very well; Children are prepared to form emotional bonds with multiple adults and not just one or two. As they say in Africa, it takes a tribe to raise a child.
What do failed utopias teach us?
Utopia is always on the horizon, always developing. They have to be flexible and participatory. The moment they become rigid and dogmatic they fail.
