“What is it with hippies?” we once heard an Indian girl say when encountering the alternative scene for the first time, “They all dream of starting their own community! And what is this obsession with giving massages? It’s a way of hitting on each other, right?”
Upset with the modern world and often quite unable to function in it, many hippies do indeed dream of starting their own utopia where they can leave behind all the evils of Babylon. They’ll grow their own weed, make music in the sun and everything will take care of itself.
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Only what tends to happen is that before long the power struggles and politics begin, hierarchy divides the newcomers from the old hands, bitter quarrels erupt over who’s not doing/giving their fair share – and even if the community does manage to function, the kids that they have will despair of their parents running around in the nude and escape to the big city as soon as they can.
The Beauty of Keeping Things Fluid
The Oasis is not a community in the sense of the usual hippie dream. Only a few people will live there all the year round and mostly people will come to stay, recharge and share their talents before moving on. We’re not trying to make a community where people make their home because that’s a small society and, as we can see all around us, societies tend to be pretty complicated things.
The biggest threat to a project’s imagination and sense of humour is stagnancy. So there will always be flow in the Oasis, new blood coming in, new ventures and projects with no visitors hanging around for more than a few months to keep things fresh.
