I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led me back to the 19th century. I was shocked to find what I would describe as far more… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
There are Harvard grads, free thinkers, feminists, abolitionists, well-to-do people who want to go write poetry and live on a farm and cook and laugh and have a good time. As they themselves described it, it was an "inward facing"… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
Utopian fiction is really boring. I had to read a lot of it, and it's not that much fun. But they're fascinating to me… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
The fatal flaw of most utopian visions is that they're fundamentally static, and that's not a comfortable place for humans to live. Fourier was… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
There are two instances I studied in which a community moved, amazingly, into an preexisting village built by other, earlier communalists. The Rappites were… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
The religious and irreligious are agreeing with each other almost all the time. Their rhetoric is the same, and their plans are the same.… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
These weren't college kids on acid. They were preachers, and bankers, and farmers, and the salt of American society subscribing to ideas that now… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
The thought was, 'We're going to go to California, where the soil is black and ten feet deep, and there are no rocks, and… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
But if you'd only ever lived in small wooden house in the middle of wilderness, it sounded much better. Especially because it provided intense… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
Atheist isn't really the right word because they tended to believe in some sort of Enlightenment, capital 'N' Nature kind of god. But these… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led me back… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
Because the utopian's worldview was framed around moving toward this perfected future, it helped stimulate the private exertions that add up to social progress.… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
The thing that had fueled these utopian communities was a literal belief, and not just a general sense of optimism, that the earth was… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
They [Oneida people] didn't want to fix problems one at a time. If someone invited them to a feminist convention, their answer would have… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
Utopians don't say, 'The world's corrupt, women make less money, people of color are oppressed at every turn.' You don't list the problems of… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
don't think I should be in the business of making big pronouncements about where we are now, but I would say that dissatisfaction is… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
The secular utopians basically said the exact same thing, they just took the Bible out of the equation. The religious and the secular groups… — Christine Jennings Copy Share
