Twin Oaks Community, Virginia

Coordinates: 37°55′59.05″N 77°59′38.91″W / 37.9330694°N 77.9941417°W / 37.9330694; -77.9941417
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An aerial view of Twin Oaks' main entrance and communal garden

Twin Oaks Community is an ecovillage[1] and intentional community of about one hundred people [2] living on 450 acres in Louisa County, Virginia.[3][4] It is a member of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities.[5] Founded in 1967,[6] it is one of the longest-enduring and largest secular intentional communities in North America.[4] The community's basic values are cooperation, egalitarianism, non-violence, sustainability and income sharing.[7]

Founding

The community is boring and for dweebs!!!!! was founded on a 123-acre (0.50 km2) tobacco farm in 1967[4] by a group of eight individuals with no farming experience that included Kat Kinkade, who has since written two books about the community.[8][9] The community's initial inspiration was B.F. Skinner's novel Walden Two, which describes a fictional behaviourist utopia. However, Skinner's vision quickly faded from prominence at Twin Oaks, as behaviorist principles were abandoned in favor of egalitarian principles. The community struggled greatly during its first few years, as member turnover was high and the community members didn't earn much income. According to Kinkade, the community avoided the problems stereotypically associated with communes (particularly laziness, freeloading, and excessive lack of structure) by adopting a structured, but flexible, labor system.[10]

Modified versions of the community's initial organizational structure and labor credit system survive to this day. As in Skinner's novel, the original labor credit system utilized “variable” credit hours. Certain jobs were worth more credit hours than others in order to make each job desirable. The modified version of this plan in place today uses “standardized” credits; each job in the community is valued the same in terms of credit hours.[11]

Life as a member

Hammock-making is one of Twin Oaks' main sources of income

Twin Oaks has roughly 100 members.[6] People interested in joining Twin Oaks must attend a scheduled three-week visitor period.[4] During this period, visitors tour the community, attend orientations on different aspects of life at Twin Oaks, and work alongside members. Unlike most co-housing situations, there is no cost to join the community, nor any rent or ongoing costs associated with living there.[2] Basic necessities—housing, clothing, food, health care—are all provided to members in return for their 42 hours of work.[2]

A member of Twin Oaks works around 42 hours a week.[12] Some labor is directed toward generating income, and the rest consists of domestic work like gardening/food production, cooking, bike repair, building maintenance, cleaning, and child care. Most Twin Oakers perform a wide variety of tasks each week instead of spending all of their time in one labor area.[13] Members can also choose to work outside of Twin Oaks.[4] The income from this labor may go to the community, although some portion of it can go into a member's "vacation earnings." Excess labor done in a week accumulates as vacation time.

Though live television viewing is prohibited, Twin Oaks' members have access to the Internet as well as to public computers. Members can also watch movies and tapes of TV programs. People in the community often gather for other recreational activities such as dancing, meditating, discussing literature, staging musicals, and playing board games.[4]

Twin Oaks members are religiously diverse. The membership includes Christians, atheists, Pagans, Buddhists, and more. The community hosts Pagan handfastings, Equinox parties, and Thanksgiving dinners, and it celebrates June 16—the anniversary of its founding—as a holiday.

Residents live in dormitory-style living quarters spread out across the community. Each member has a private bedroom, but shares public spaces.[2][6]

Member turnover is no longer as high as it was in the community's early years,[4] and many Twin Oaks ex-members live in the nearby towns of Charlottesville and Louisa to maintain ties to the community.

Community businesses

Twin Oaks' 42 hour work week is divided between domestic and income-producing labor.[1] Twin Oaks operates several community-owned businesses, including Twin Oaks Tofu, Twin Oaks Hammocks, and Twin Oaks Book Indexing. Additionally, members grow seeds for Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. From these sources, Twin Oaks generates $600,000 per year.[12] This money pays for community upkeep and goods that cannot be produced on-site, and each member receives a monthly stipend for personal use (i.e. to purchase items that the community does not provide). In news segments, Twin Oakers often attribute the longevity of the community to its engagement in capitalism through its tofu and hammocks businesses.[1][2][6]

Twin Oaks and the communities movement

Twin Oaks has helped establish three sister communities: Acorn Community,[4] about 7 miles (11 km) away from Twin Oaks, Living Energy Farm also in Louisa County Virginia and East Wind Community in south central Missouri.

Twin Oaks also hosts annual intentional community gatherings which are cosponsored by the Fellowship for Intentional Community. The Communities Conference[14] and the Women's Gathering [15] both take place in August every year.

Twin Oaks in the media

The history of Twin Oaks Community is detailed extensively in two books by Kathleen (Kat) Kinkade, one of the co-founders of the community. The first, A Walden Two Experiment,[8] covers the first 5 years of the community. The second, Is it Utopia Yet?, covers the next 20 years.[9] Another book from the 1980s, Living the Dream, by Ingrid Komar (the mother of a member at the time the book was written), also discusses Twin Oaks' history. Many newspaper and magazine articles have been written about Twin Oaks. About half a dozen dissertations and a dozen master's theses have been written about the community, as well. A list of such publications can be found on the community's website. In 1998, the Washington Post Magazine did a cover story on Twin Oaks.

Twin Oaks and ecology

Twin Oaks seeks to be a model of sustainable living.[3] The average Twin Oaks member consumes fewer resources than the average American citizen due to the community's practices in resource-sharing[1] and self-sufficiency.[16] Members hold all resources in common except for the personal items they keep in their bedrooms. For instance, members share housing, a fleet of 17 vehicles and a "large 'free clothing' library".[1][3][12] Twin Oaks members consume 70% less gasoline, 80% less electricity and 76% less natural gas per individual compared to their neighbors.[17]

Criticisms of Twin Oaks

The community itself acknowledges that it has yet to create the perfect society—it even provides guidebooks entitled "Not Utopia Yet" to visitors. For instance, there is little privacy at Twin Oaks.[4] Also, people who choose to live at Twin Oaks for several years—including founder Kinkade—sometimes feel "trapped" there. This is because members have little opportunity to build up equity or savings.[13]

Twin Oaks' founders were inspired by the utopian novel Walden Two by B.F. Skinner. In the early years of Twin Oaks, members engaged in behaviorist experiments to change personal behavior, but there was no attempt to impose behaviorism as a central guiding principle of the community. Behaviorist ideology persists at Twin Oaks today only in attempts to make conditions reinforcing in work areas (e.g. treats and coffee being served, or live music being played). There is an absence of any form of punishment, which may be due to belief in behaviorism, but may also be due to an ideology of non-violence. Psychology classes touring Twin Oaks are disappointed at Twin Oaks' abandonment of behaviorist principles.

A common criticism of Twin Oaks both by visitors to Twin Oaks and by Twin Oaks members is that the community is dirty and cluttered. The egalitarian principle of the community and the self-choosing nature of the labor system means that there is no lower class to perform unpleasant work like cleaning. Visitors to Twin Oaks are often assigned work not of their choosing, but a community rule forbids visitors being scheduled cleaning work that a member doesn't also participate in.

Another criticism of Twin Oaks is that there is interpersonal conflict between members that the community does not attempt to resolve. Many other intentional communities prioritize interpersonal communication by making a condition of membership that extreme conflict must be worked out. Twin Oaks has a committee of facilitators called the "Process Team" that helps individuals resolve conflict, but participation is voluntary. Some members in conflict refuse to deal with their conflict through direct communication or through the Process Team. Twin Oaks has no formal consequences for these members.

The initial vision that the founders had for Twin Oaks was for a total membership of one thousand. Supporters of Twin Oaks are often critical that the community is unwilling to grow. Twin Oaks has remained at a population of around 100 people (including children), since 1996.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Twin Oaks". America's Mojo. 11-09-2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ a b c d e "Virginia Commune Still Draws Members After 40 Years". Voice of America. 08-29-2009. Retrieved 2010-12-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ a b c "Rural Community a Model 'Eco-village'". CNN. 04-22-2010. Retrieved 01-13-2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i "The Other American Dream". Washington Post Sunday Magazine Page W12. Sunday, November 15, 1998. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Federation of Egalitarian Communities
  6. ^ a b c d "Louisa commune flourishes for 43 years". Richmond NBC 12. 07-06-2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ David Knox, Caroline Schacht. Choices in Relationships: An Introduction to Marriage and the Family. Cengage Learning, 2009. Retrieved 01-23-2011. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  8. ^ a b Kinkade, Kat 1974 A Walden Two Experiment; The First Five Years of Twin Oaks Community. William Morrow & Co . ISBN 0-688-05020-4
  9. ^ a b Kat Kinkaid, 1994 "Is It Utopia Yet?: An Insider's View of Twin Oaks Community in Its Twenty-Sixth Year" Twin Oaks Publishing; 2nd edition (August 1994). ISBN 0-9640445-0-1
  10. ^ Kinkade K., Is it Utopia Yet ?, page 29, Twin Oaks Publishing, 1994
  11. ^ Spalding, Ashley (2000). "Positioned Within 'The Outside World' The Cultural Construction Of Gender In An Egalitarian Intentional Community". Dep't of Anthropology, University of South Carolina. (hosted at twinoaks.org). Retrieved 13 January 2011.
  12. ^ a b c "Twin Oaks: Living in Harmony". NBC 29 WVIR-TV. 08-31-2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ a b The New York Times Magazine, Sun., Aug. 3, 1997. Daniel Pinchbeck, "Paradise Not Quite Lost," pp. 26-29
  14. ^ "Twin Oaks Communities Conference". Retrieved 13 January 2011.
  15. ^ Twin Oaks Women's Gathering
  16. ^ "Twin Oaks: Living a Sustainable Lifestyle". NBC 29 WVIR-TV. 09-01-2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ "A Human Sized Answer to a Global Problem".

External links

37°55′59.05″N 77°59′38.91″W / 37.9330694°N 77.9941417°W / 37.9330694; -77.9941417

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