The Idealists Anonymous Meeting

The hoodies covering everyone's faces as they filed through the door to the community center's basement gave most who came across it a wary feeling about what went on in there every Wednesday night. Occasionally, a brave soul or two ventured in with the crowd and sat down in the circle of chairs situated in the room.

On this night, however, there were only the people in black hoodies.

People came into the room and situated themselves in seats, then slowly they all started removing their hoodies and revealing faces, clothes, identities.

The organizer, noted by the clipboard and pen in his hands, called everyone to order as the last few trickled into the room.

"Who would like to share today?" he looked around the room slowly.

"I will," a small voice from the left of the circle called.

Our organizer nodded and sat. The young woman slowly stood and clasped her hands together. In a much stronger and clearer voice, she began,

"Hi. I'm Bryn and I'm an Idealist."

Somber mutters of "hello Bryn" echoed around the circle.

"It started as a kid, when I first became immersed in new worlds through books and television. I went through the things your standard potential writer goes through. I built worlds in my head and tried to come up with new languages for different characters to speak. I wanted everyone to be happy.

"In high school you really start to form your identity but you're nowhere near done solidifying your core ideals. Now, I'm in college. I've learned a lot in the last two years, all of which has fed my brain and my beliefs in ways I never could have anticipated. As a writer and an anthropology student, I'm fascinated by how cultures develop. I'm also fascinated by their problems and how they fall apart. As the young'n I am, I want to change the world for the better. I strive for what everyone strives for, a Utopian society where everyone is equal and lives at least mostly happily with everyone else.

"The human condition is such that this is difficult to achieve because we don't all feel the same way about things. We're not always happy. It's easier to appreciate things when they're taken away. You can't always get what you want. These are all things I grew up hearing. These are all lessons I've learned in life's experience, what little I have after only two decades on this Earth.

"Lately, I've encountered an urge to solve the unsolvable problem of building Utopia. In order to channel this, I've started putting my planned solutions in stories and playing with them to find their flaws as I put different characters in them. Theoretically, their only downfall is selfishness. They're all based on the same systems and influenced by the same philosophies. Disagreements are handled however they're handled but in general people live together the way I'd like them to. Need-based sharing is a big deal in a lot of these solutions. Capitalists would hate my work but at least they all have some kind of anthropological backing. Some of them could absolutely develop naturally as a result of cultural evolution. Others are what you get when you take a group of people sick of the status quo with common values and set them on a pre-planned course of development by someone like me. I guess that's really what the point of an intentional community is, isn't it?

"My most recent plan came about as a reaction to my frustrations with a particular survival game on my tablet. I've achieved all there is to achieve in this game within an in-game week and and a real world 36 hours of inconsistent playing. The house was designed, the living arrangements decided, the various tasks that needed to be done were planned out, the stages of development were planned down to the placement of every last stone.

"The only thing now would be for people to actually get together, execute it, give it personality, each decorate their own rooms, and live together under the plan.

"But now, I just feel disappointed and tired. These plans will never really be executed. They will never be experimented with in the real world. I've wasted calories obsessively dreaming up a single Utopia.

Thank you for listening."

The woman sat down to a round of soft clapping and nodding heads.