Eleven Ecovillages, Vegan Liverwurst, and Proof That Greed Is Optional
" a month-long overland cruise through Germany " I just got back from touring 11 German ecovillages, which is a bit like touring 11 different flavors of the same miracle — the miracle being that a critical mass of otherwise employable adults woke up one morning, looked at the conventional life plan laid out for them, and said, politely but firmly, “no thank you.” That’s really the whole essay, if you want to leave now. But stick around, because the details are where the Germans, bless them, always overachieve. Here’s what I keep noticing, tour after tour, decade after decade. Nobody stumbles into an ecovillage. You have to actively climb out of the trajectory your parents spent eighteen years constructing for you — the one with the tidy handrails and the guaranteed pension — and step off into the weeds on purpose. There be snakes there, and usually your parents watch fearfully, or tearfully, arms raised to their heads, muttering the German equivalent of “we di...
