Celibacy and Collapse

Celibacy is a recurring theme in some of the collapsed utopian communities we've viewed, while it is arguable that these societies didn't collapse as a result of celibacy, it is undeniable that celibacy was a catalyst to their collapses amid other factors. Rather than creating a sustainable society, celibacy merely helped to gather members together for a temporary society and created the conditions necessary for a short lived utopia.

The first point to examine is how celibacy creates a utopian society in the first place. In the case of the Shakers, the community was formed over a shared belief in certain values including celibacy. While the Shakers clearly had many other values that allowed them to form a unified community, celibacy was on of those many values. In the grander picture, celibacy can be one of many values that might allow for the formation of a utopian society. Like in every utopian society we've seen, a shared belief in a certain set of values has always been the catalyst for such development: the Amish and their religious views, the Zoars and their economic woes, the Shakers and their religion, the list goes on. Even in non religious utopias, values in regards to how a community should be managed were the crucial link such as Fourier and his phalanxes. Celibacy is just one of many possibilities for unifying values but undeniably generates unity.

However, a society built around celibacy is unstable for various reasons, the most obvious being natural sustainability within an isolated system. Without new recruits, these communities will inevitably die off as a mathematical fact. Thus, these communities then become reliant solely on a constant influx of new blood to revitalize the community's dwindling numbers. Reliance on external forces is clearly an unstable model for sustainability but beyond that, celibacy comes with other consequences.

As a general value, celibacy is a deterrent for many wanting to join a community. Post civil war, many Americans began harboring sentiments that societies like the Shakers were anti-development, an obvious indictment of their lifestyle. Beyond just the idea of development, celibacy is a value only appealing to a select group of the population. Thus, celibacy served not only to create an unstable community but also worked against the only countermeasure keeping the society afloat; celibacy damaged their chances at recruitment.

While it is debatable whether or not the Shakers really cared about their modern day collapse, it is undeniable that celibacy often works against the community. Celibacy may temporarily bring people together, the time they have is often cut short by their shared belief in celibacy. With an unappealing value causing them to be unstable and to some, repulsive, communities that prize celibacy are always heading towards an inevitable collapse. Celibacy and a sustainable utopian society are incompatible, while celibacy may be the fuel that drives a utopian society forward, the fuel of celibacy is a fast burning one as seen in the Shakers and the Zoar.