A cura di @Luigia.

Sul New Yorker, il racconto autobiografico di una donna che visse per tutta l’infanzia in una comune negli anni Settanta—di fatto più che una comune una delle tipiche sette presenti negli Stati Uniti—comune da cui a un certo punto fu costretta ad andarsene, per poi costruirsi una vita come gli altri e ripensare alla sua esperienza.

In a nation fixated on individualism, cults and communes are easy objects of disdain—and perhaps envy. Their members are breaking the rules, discarding the sacred nuclear family. It’s libertarianism plus sex and drugs, and it’s wrong, but do tell me more.

The truth is far more complex, though no less insidious. As individuals, how well are we positioned to say which systems of belief are right or wrong? When I was a teen-ager, I would ask my mother, “Did you really believe we were going to live on Venus? I mean, just for starters, we know that Venus is uninhabitable by humans.”

“It’s complicated,” she would say.

Immagine da Flickr – Tony Webster.