Paul Gauguin attempted suicide shortly after the painting was completed. And little wonder. He went expecting to find paradise, and instead he found.nothing.

Or maybe you have cause and effect reversed. Gaugin was inclined toward depression, and therefore unhappy in his society. He went seeking a better place, but since the problem was in himself, it didn't help. Like all depressives, he had a mental filter which screened out the good and highlighted the bad.

I said some people think the Mosuo are the root of the Shangri-La legend. I didn't say I thought it was paradise. The Mosuo have their problems. Not least among them that men are as oppressed there as women are in the rest of China.

I don't know if it takes a village to raise a child or not. Didn't read the book, and I'm not going to. But anthropologically and historically speaking, there's no denying that humans evolved to live in extended family groups. The nuclear family is a recent, transient development. Holding it up as "natural" is ridiculous. Closer to natural are those Italian family compounds you still see around here. Several houses on one large farm, each with several families, all related. Often, it will be a different generation on each floor. The advantages are easy to see. There's always someone to watch the kids. If someone loses their job, there are other adults who can contribute economically to the group. If someone gets sick, there's always someone to take care of him. If a kid is having a hard time with his parents, there are other adults he can confide in.

As for Rome...yes, I do think there's a lesson there for us. But it has nothing to do with family structure. It's the economy that determines family structure, not the other way around. Rome fell due to economic reasons, and we are certainly not immune.

Joseph Tainter covers Rome, and many other collapsed societies, in a book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. It's fascinating reading. A synopsis/review is here:

http://members.aol.com/leanan7/tainter.htm