"Hundreds of people came to see us and our farm in Vermont. The thousands of young people who now come to our farm in Maine are the same type of seekers. They have heard or read about our Forest Farm and are curious to learn what it has to show or teach. They are ready for anything that makes an idealistic appeal and that is fairly far from standard community practice. They are unattached except in the very limited sense of selective mating. They are apolitical, impatient of restraints - especially when governmentally imposed.
"Increasingly they are turning their backs on a world community that has tolerated war and is preparing for the contingency of one in the future. They are ardently in favor of peace in a braod sense, but are not ready to accept a commitment to any organizaion that works collectively for the cause. Almost universally they favor "freedom": that is, the pursuit of their personal goals and fancies. They are not joiners and genreally not members of any group more specific than is implied by the adoption of a specific diet or the pratice of some yoga exercises.
"They are wanderers and seekers, feeling their way toward an escape from orthodoxy and superficiality, with the nervous dissatisfaction that characterizes people who do not have a home base in any real sense. Perhaps they can best be described as unsettled. Never before in our lives have we met so many unattached, uncommitted, insecure, uncertain human beings."
Helen and Scott Nearing, Continuing the Good Life (1979), Chapter 15.
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