LITR 5737: Literary & Historical Utopias
Historical Presentation 2005

Matt Mayo

Twin Oaks: an ecotopia.

Course Objectives to Keep in Mind:

3c. What literary, cultural, and historical prototypes exist for utopia?

3b. What is utopia’s relation to time? Does utopia stop time, as with the millennial rapture? Or may utopia evolve?

Daniel Pinchbeck “Paradise Not Quite Lost”

• Twin Oaks is an intentional community located on a 500-acre former tobacco plantation near Charlottesville, Virginia.

• The community was founded by eight “idealistic members” in 1967.

• Influenced by Raymond Mungo, who started a commune in Vermont in 1967 and was called the “literary voice of the commune movement.”

• Initial goal: escape from middle class values, create a better and more peaceful society, one more rooted to the earth than contemporary society.

• Slow community expansion: Twin Oaks now supports over 100 members, and operates a dairy and vegetable farm.

• Twin Oaks limits the number of children to 20% of the total population, and discourage women from having more than one child.

• The children are “home-schooled.”

• Average age: 40. Average stay: Over seven years. The average age has increased significantly since the community’s inception; the founding members were mostly in their early twenties.

• Name is taken from B.F. Skinner’s book “Walden Two.”

• Twin Oaks has always been a “leaderless” society (key to success?)

• Ultimate dream is to be completely self-sufficient

• However, the Twin Oaks Hammock shop produces 35,000 hammocks a year for Pier One Imports. Twin Oaks hopes to break free from doing commerce with large corporations eventually.

• “Most” relations (marriage) at Twin Oaks are monogamous.

• Everyone at Twin Oaks, even couples, resides in private quarters.

• Residents are required to attend weekly meetings, called “check-ins.”

• Twin Oaks has experimented with a number of family planning/population control measures

“This year, Twin Oaks celebrates its 30^th birthday, which in commune years is almost ancient, and has not survived so long by encouraging members to do their won thing. The roster of forbidden activities ranges from drug taking to owning a car to keeping wages for a job outside the commune” (26).

“The stringent directives carefully preserved in the community’s rules and bylaws keep it a self-enclosed world . . . a laboratory where questions raised in the 1960’s-about the individuals place in society, about the meaning of community-continue to be asked” (29).

“[Members] strive to take control of their own lives, the food they eat and of the environment, inspired by a larger movement towards ‘voluntary simplicity’” (26).

Ed Gottileb, a member, states “We are a model for a different kind of society - one that is gentler on the earth - that features cooperation [over competition]” (26).

“Twin Oaks adopted its labor system from Skinner’s ideas: instead of a single job they perform every day, the members create weekly work schedules, varying their activities every few hours . . . members receive a $60 monthly stipend to spend as they please” (28).

“In the early years, children would all sleep together in one house – theoretically they belonged to the community rather than individual parents. The community has kept some control over other aspects of family planning, limiting the number of children to 20 percent of the total population and usually discouraging women from having more than one child” (28).

“Many members say one problem with Twin Oaks is that it often attracts misfits.” I ascertain that these misfits are identified and exiled from the community.

Ward: “‘I think most of us come here with some problem we are trying to solve, and it is only once we are in a safe environment, that we can really work at it . . . for me the problem was shyness . . . I wanted to make deeper connection with people. Here I found a primary relationship, with Elissa’” (29).

Links

Homepage for Twin Oaks.

Here is where you may purchase a Twin Oaks hammock.

Photos of Twin Oaks infrastructure, natural areas and residents.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/top_articles/1970_January_February/Twin_Oaks

This is a very informative article, written in 1970, shortly after the inception of Twin Oaks, that details the community’s philosophy and origins.

http://www.twinoaks.org/members-exmembers/members/paxus/dream.html

Link to the article Dr. White provided to me.

http://www.culturechange.org/issue20/twinoakscommunity.htm

An article written by a Twin Oaks member, promoting the community and culture.

http://ahimsazine.com/arch/twinoaks.html

Testimonial from Twin Oaks member Valerie, who interestingly calls the community a “feminist utopia.”

http://www.une.edu/ur/releases/commune.html

Promotion for a lecture at New England University for a lecture about Twin Oaks.

http://www.the-declaration.com/1998/10_01/features/utopia.shtml

“The Literary Meets the Living in the Communal Experience,” by an undergraduate, Andrew Monohan. Twin Oaks originally was influenced by a literary work, Skinner’s Walden Two, and this article explores its connections to the literary and the historical. This is a very well written and interesting article.

Search Google News: ‘Twin Oaks Commune,’ and similar.

Try this. Many discussions are posted about Twin Oaks, and other planned communities, and reveal many strong emotions on the parts of residents, for and against the ‘ecotopia.’ Here are two samples I found interesting:

hello friends.  twin oaks, a rural commune-style intentional
community and working farm in rural virginia, is seeking folks
interested in exploring membership.  we live and work together on
about 500 acres here in virginia.  twin oaks has been in
existence for thirty years.  we share common values of
cooperation, non-violence, and egalitarianism.  twin oaks is
income-sharing and there are no joining fees for membership.  we
have many cottage industries, we are an f.e.c. community, and we
have about 70 members at the present.  if you are interested in
learning more about our community please check out our webpage:
                               http://www.twinoaks.org
if interested in coming for a visit please check out the section
on our three week visitor program.  if anyone is interested in
talking to me personally about my experiences living and working
here, i hope you'll feel free to get in touch with me for a chat.
my email address is l...@twinoaks.org
much love & many blessings to you all
                                 love & light
                                          lila (alt.communities.intentional, Febuarary 2, 2000, accessed June 23, 2005 via www.google.com)

Just two things are missing from conservative intentional communities:
>replacement of conventional pair-bond marriage with an extended intimacy
>shared along the bonds of the community; and pooling material resources so
>that no one in the community need be employed in the economic system
>external to the community. (These need not be both done, but most "alter-
>native" communities invoke one or the other, afaik.)

That is/has been the goals of both Twin Oaks in Virginia, and East Wind in Southern Mo.  Both have the majority of their members living AND working inside their community (much like a feudal manor), except without the Baron, with consensus leadership, no guru's.

>Well, there were a number of folks trying this ca 1970. Did they dissolve?
>Or just decide their chances were better if they quit writing books about themselves?

Most current studies and writings about what happened in this era attribute the failure of those groups to at least three things:

(1)  Over use of drugs/stimulants, and no economic base to sustain the group.

(2)  No common value system that took the place of "anti-establishment."  
After being "anti-" to what does everyone become "pro?"  

(3)  Traditional nuclear family values were hard to break/leave.  The pull to have a "family" that was wife + husband = children + car + mortgage was too strong.  So the long hair was cut, old friends were deserted and corporate jobs and values were  pursued, to "keep up with the Jones."  

Today the search for utopia is being done in "single" families, rather than among  "expanded families" bonded by "community."  As such, isolated suburban life added to alienation, another goal became a handicap. (soc.religion.Unitarian.univ, September 13, 1998, accessed June 23, 2005 via www.google.com)

Reminder of highlighted course objectives:

3c. What literary, cultural, and historical prototypes exist for utopia?

3b. What is utopia’s relation to time? Does utopia stop time, as with the millennial rapture? Or may utopia evolve?

Being a community whose primary goal is environmentally friendly self-sufficiency; Twin Oaks is a living example of an ecotopia. On the whole, Twin Oaks seems to validate the course objective position that the utopia stops time. Twin Oaks does not seek to evolve, instead, it seeks to maintain a status quo, through cooperative works and population control: ideals similar to those outlined in Callenbach’s Ectopia. The fact that the commune is influenced by a literary work proves that the “Literature of Ideas” indeed has influenced actual humans to take action, and live by the idealistic principles of utopian literature.

Questions for Discussion:

Does Twin Oaks, by seeking stability through non-growth (remember, the population is limited to around 100 persons, adhere to the notion that utopias “stop time?”

The average age in Twin Oaks has doubled since its inception, with most citizens being in there forties. Therefore, the commune is making efforts to attract younger members. As a class, do we feel American youth are attracted to, or repelled by, the thought of living in an ecotopia? Will Twin Oaks survive?

Why would communities such as Twin Oaks attract “misfits?” Is this a fly in the ointment for ecotopias/utopias (planned communities) everywhere?