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America was founded on dissent and has continued to attract social, religious, and political dissidents seeking fertile ground to sow new ideas about how to live in community. But even as America served as a beacon for the world’s tired, poor, and homeless imaginaries, once transplanted to the shores of this haven, the drudgery of daily life coupled with the inequities of new class relations re-created some of the conditions that propelled many to flee from their original homelands. Yet others—driven by a vision to abandon the shackles of greed, ignorance, avarice, and ennui—formed intentional communities and implanted themselves in places physically apart from mainstream society in an effort to realize their beliefs about proper social relations. Typically, they aimed to embrace new ways of being that would liberate them from the oppression and dehumanization that accompanied capitalism, patriarchy, and individualism as they aimed to transform the dominant culture.
Various groups at different historical moments worked to found a more perfect union while holding divergent values. Many were committed to hard work and spiritual purity, and grounded their beliefs in active choices regarding settlement location, building design, and consumer goods needed to sustain their own versions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A common practice of the dominant society is to point a discerning finger toward these social experiments, savor their supposed failure, and cast aspersions on those who would dare to attempt to live according to alternate values as a smoke shield to obscure the flaws of mainstream society.
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