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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced withwith permissionpermission ofof the the copyrightcopyright owner. owner. Further Further reproduction reproduction prohibited prohibited without without permission. permission. COMMITMENT AND COMPROMISE:

Or a Tale of Two Communities

by

Mami J. Finkelstein

submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of The American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree

of

Master of Arts

in

Anthropology

Signatures of Committee:

Chair:

Dean Af the College

Date 1995

The American University

Washington, D.C. 20016

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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UMI Microform 1381576 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DEDICATION

To my loving parents, Robert and Beverly Finkelstein,

my brother and sister, Michael and Lori,

and to those who have followed the road not taken

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. COMMITMENT AND COMPROMISE: Or a Tale of Two Communities

BY

MARNI J. FINKELSTEIN

ABSTRACT

This thesis explores the forces behind the long term survival of two intentional

communities. Formal organization, rules, and commitment to common values are

necessary for community longevity. However, adaptability to societal forces is also

essential. Therefore, is it possible for intentional communities to adopt survival

techniques without compromising some o f their original values?

I undertook fieldwork consisting of interviews and observations at two long-lived

intentional communities: Shannon Farm and The Farm. I asked questions related to

the themes of alienation, community, and the necessary survival techniques the

communities have adopted over the years.

Threats to these communities included external pressure in the case of the Farm

and internal pressure in the case of Shannon. The Farm had to compromise their

entire economic system in order to overcome financial woes, while Shannon members

discovered a way to manage internal strife and increase their commitment to the

community.

u

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the many people who have helped me with this research project:

Thank you, Dr. Brett Williams, for all your time spent advising and guiding me towards my goal of a Master’s Degree in Anthropology. Your expertise in contemporary American issues was greatly valued throughout this project.

Thank you to the second member of my committee, Dr. Jeff Fishel. Your first-hand experience of communal societies and contacts at Shannon Farm helped me immensely.

Finally, I would like to thank the members of Shannon Farm and the Farm. Without their hospitality and cooperation, this paper would not have been possible.

111

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. IN THE SCHEME OF THINGS...:A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN COMMUNAL SOCIETIES...... 5 The Early Utopias ...... 5 Postindustrial America ...... 6 Contemporary Communal Societies...... 10 Commitment and Compromise as a means of Survival ...... 15

3. HEADING SOUTH ...... 19 Shannon - The Community in the Mountains ...... 20 The Farm - The Spirit of the Hippies ...... 24

4. THE FARM ...... 29

5. SHANNON FARM ...... 46

6. COMPROMISE AND COMMITMENT...... 63

APPENDIX A ...... 70 APPENDIX B ...... 71 APPENDIX C ...... 72 APPENDIX D ...... 73

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 74

iv

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INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

— Robert Frost

Purpose

Intentional communities are not just a relic of a bygone era. With increasing

divorce rates, delaying marriage, and the choice to remain childless, more and more

people are turning to group houses, co-ops, and intentional communities as an

alternative to the nuclear family. Intentional communities offer people a way to share

resources, make friends, and be part of an extended "family."

The communities explored in this thesis could be used as models of communities

that have survived the odds and beyond. They have faced threats to their survival and

adopted ways to combat them. And the fact that intentional communities are still

being formed after hundreds of years provides some evidence that they are a viable

alternative to a traditional, middle-class lifestyle.

Through field research and an exploration of relevant literature, this thesis will

investigate the motivations leading to the formation of two intentional communities (or

1

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communes) in the late 1960s and early 1970s and the forces that led to their long term

survival while the majority collapsed after a few years.

A review of intentional communities demonstrates that formal organization and

commitment to common values is necessary for the survival of a community.

However, in a constantly evolving society such as the United States, adaptability to

outside societal forces is equally as important. Therefore the significant questions that

this thesis will explore are: what are the techniques that two long-lived communities

have used to combat threats to their survival and did they manage to adopt these

survival techniques without compromising some o f the values that led to their creation

in the first place?

To investigate this question, I visited two intentional communities in August of

1994 -- The Farm and Shannon Farm. The two were founded on very different

ideologies and were politically, spiritually, and economically organized in different

ways, yet both had managed to survive for over 20 years. Field research consisted of

interviews and observations.

The threats to the communities came in the form of external pressure in the case

of the Farm and internal pressure in the case of Shannon. While the Farm had to

compromise their economic equality and spiritual beliefs in order to overcome

financial woes, Shannon members had to discover a way to manage internal strife and

increase their commitment to the community and each other.

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The Farm

The Farm, located in Summertown, Tennessee, began in 1971 as a communal

group of 320 self-described hippies from San Francisco. By 1980 their membership

had swelled to 1400 and then began to decline to its present size of less than 300.

During the 1980s The Farm experienced economic failures and experienced a mass

out-migration -- what they refer to as "the change." This was a reorganization from a

true "commune" to a cooperative where people were permitted the individual

accumulation of property. Members saw this change as a necessary compromise and

adaptation for survival.

Stephen Gaskin founded the Farm as an alternative to the materialist lifestyle that

he and his followers found predominating in the mainstream culture. The group has

also found that fundamental interpersonal skills are key to the survival of the

community. Detailed information on the Farm will be discussed in chapter 4.

Shannon Farm

Shannon Farm, founded in 1971, is located in Afton, Virgina. It is a residential

intentional community where people share land, encourage member-managed

agriculture and business, and support harmonious living situations there and in the

larger society. Unlike the Farm, Shannon was never a commune in the strictest

definition of the word, but, instead, has always maintained a certain rapport with the

outside culture in order to remain financially stable and allow members more freedom

of choice.

In recent years, Shannon has been plagued by internal conflict, especially in the

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areas of growth and interpersonal communication. The community had been divided

into those that want to see Shannon expanding and growing and those that were

resistant to change. This and other hotly debated issues threatened the stability of the

community.

As a result, members made a conscious effort to renew their commitment to a

peaceful existence in the form of reworking their decision-making process. Since they

have adopted a formal consensus method, decisions have been made with less of a

struggle and tensions have been eased. Shannon Farm will be discussed in more detail

in Chapter 5.

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IN THE SCHEME OF THINGS... A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN COMMUNAL SOCIETIES

Rosabeth Kanter identifies three critiques of American society that have provided

the spark for communalism. These are religious, politico-economical, and

psychosocial. Religious themes were prominent until 1845; politico-economic issues

were prominent from 1820-1930; and, the psychosocial period emerged after World

War II and became strong in the 1960s. These three communal waves encompassing

religious, socialist, and psycho-social themes have much in common. They all reject

the mainstream culture as unhealthy and strive to achieve perfection through a

restructuring of established social institutions.

THE EARLY UTOPIAS

The first major wave of American communal societies began in the 19th Century.

Several hundred communities formed what is referred to as the utopian movement.

Members of this movement strived for the creation of a new and perfect society.

Most of the early utopias centered on a religious theme. Later ones were founded

by European Separatists and Pietists. The best known societies from this era are

Harmony Society (1804-1904), Oneida (1848-1881), Amana (1843-1933), and Brook

Farm (1841-1847).

A second wave occurred between 1825 and 1930 when hundreds of new

5

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These communities began as a reaction to the industrial revolution which they saw as

impersonal. Socialist communes attempted to provide a refuge from the dehumanizing

affects of the factory system and were largely based on the philosophies of Robert

Owen and Charles Fourier. Well-known socialist communes include New Harmony

(1825-1827), Modem Times (1851-1866), and Utopia (1847-1851).

Less prominent than either the religious or socialist communities were the

spiritually-oriented societies. These communities sought to introduce Eastern

spiritually to Western culture. The early efforts of these groups helped to influence

many of today’s "new age" communities.

Almost all the utopian societies of the 1800s and early 1900s were rurally based

and sought isolation from what they believed were the evils of mainstream America.

Resources were pooled, through economic necessity as much as ideology, and the community was often organized around a single charismatic figure. This was especially true of the religious communities. Most communities encouraged sexual restraint or even celibacy and were based on the nuclear family. The communities were often mini-societies, providing for all of their members’ needs but requiring much hard work and personal sacrifice, along with renunciation of the ways of society (McLaughlin & Davidson, 1986:87).

POSTINDUSTRIAL AMERICA

The third wave of intentional communities (and the one which I am most

concerned with) occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s in postindustrial America.

Daniel Bell set the beginning of the postindustrial society at 1956 when white collar

workers outnumbered blue collar workers for the first time. Postindustrial efforts were

directed to the cultivation, exploitation, and application of scientific knowledge to

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create new objects for consumption.

Between 1945 and 1960, the gross national product grew by almost 250 percent

and per capita income grew by 35 percent (Coontz, 1992:24) This dramatic economic

change was one of the most powerful influences on postwar America. Buoyed by

consumer spending and huge military budgets, the economy expanded in an explosive

fashion.

With the nation at close to full employment, millions were freed from the anxieties about subsistence that had engrossed them in the 1930s. . . Postwar America became absorbed in the acquisition of goods and evolved a variety of institutions — from suburban supermarkets to gourmet food stores — that ministered to the shopper (Leuchtenburg, 1973:6).

In this period the United States moved into a "high mass-consumption" stage and

spending in the private sector played an important part in the upswinging economy.

Additionally, Americans multiplied their population in greater numbers than ever

before (33 percent between 1940 and 1960), leading to a baby boom.

The distribution of income vastly expanded the middle class and enabled millions

of Americans to take part in the growing consumer culture. Many working class

families became members of the middle class and by the mid-1950s, nearly 60 percent

of the population was at a middle class income level (Coontz, 1992:24).

The real takeoff of consumer culture. . . began during the 1950s. Advertising increased by 400 percent between 1945 and 1960, a growth rate faster than that of the GNP. As motivational researcher Ernest Dichter explains advertising’s aim: "We are now confronted with the problem of permitting the average American to feel moral . . . even when he is taking two vacations a year and buying a second or third car (Coontz, 1992:171).

To some, however, the consumer culture furthered a docile, standardized nation of

conformists.

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Each morning Mr. Jones put on a standard uniform of button-down shirt, sincere tie, and charcoal-gray flannel suit, and adjusted his perpetual smile. At night he read to his children from the "Little Golden Book" of Tootle the Engine, a cautionary tale with the admonition: "Always stay on the track no matter what’ (Leuchtenburg, 1973:70).

After World War II the United States experienced an intensive internal migration

out of the inner cities and into the suburbs. Critics of postindustrial America focused

much of their ire on this migration and the quality of life in the suburbs.

Instigated by federal loans, low interest rates, and veteran rate mortgages,

developers constructed expansive suburban developments. Between 1946 and 1958, 85

percent of all new housing was built outside the cities (Gitlin, 1987:14). By I960, 62

percent of American families owned their own homes (Coontz, 1992:24).

Putting their mouths where their money was, Americans consistently told pollsters that home and family were the wellsprings of their happiness and self esteem. Cultural historian David Marc argues that prewar fantasies of sophisticated urban elegance, epitomized by the high-rise penthouse apartment, gave way in the 1950s to a more modest vision of utopia: a single-family house and a car (Coontz, 1992:25).

While the suburbs gained 60 million people, the country’s top 25 cities lost 18

percent of their populations. By 1970, there were more people living in suburbs than

in cities (Halberstam, 1993:142).

To some people, the American Dream turned into a nightmare.

Shoddy housing developments, ’conceived in error, nurtured by greed, corroding everything they touch,’ wrote John Keats inThe Crack in the Picture Window, had been vomited up by the conscienceless speculators who defaced the countryside with rows of identical boxes spreading like gangrene. These excrescences bred swarms of neuter drones . . . [who] cannot be said to have lives of their own (Leuchtenburg, 1973:76).

The economy in the postindustrial years reinforced cultural norms. As long as

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people were being paid well for working hard and sacrificing for their families, these

norms became legitimized and enjoyed wide acceptance and authority."... rules are

clear-cut, people observe them automatically, and are rewarded for doing so. A

cohesive society may not be happy, creative, or stimulating, but it imparts a stability,

for which the majority always yearn" (Yankelovitch, 1981:180).

Despite all the material comforts middle-class suburbanites were beset with

insecurities.

Yet no matter how much consumer debt they piled up to feed their hunger for consumption, no matter how eagerly they accumulated space and goods to convince themselves that their self-sacrificial struggles had been worthwhile, they were not always convinced that their well-upholstered consumer paradise was here to stay. Nor was it always self evident that the price was worth paying (Gitiin, 1987:17).

Many children of the middle-class picked up on these insecurities and rebelled

against the middle-class ethos. By the mid-1960s acounterculture was bom. The

counterculture was organized by intellectuals, streetcomer preachers, campus dropouts

with advanced degrees, visionaries, and drug users (Gitiin, 1987:214).

Nontraditional institutions such as underground newspapers, pamphleteering, rock

bands, drug designers, food cooperatives, and free medical clinics blossomed. The

ideologies of the counterculture could be found in drugs, rock music, and mass media.

"Millions, cushioned by affluence, desirous of fun or relief, out of joint, were in an

experimental mood" (Gitiin, 1987:215).

Symbols of teenage rebellion soon turned into symbols of cultural dissidence.

. . . the wild and various antiuniforms that took on especial meaning as the nation sent its armed forces off to war. Boys with long and unkempt hair, pony tails, beards, old-timey mustaches and sidebum; girls unpermed, without

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rollers, without curlers, stringy-haired, underarms and legs unshaven, free of makeup and bras. To orthodox eyes, this meant slovenliness and sexual ambiguity; to the freaks themselves, a turn from the straight to the curved, from uptight to loose, from cramped to free -- above ail, from contrived to natural (Gitiin, 1987:215).

Authorities defined these ways of the youth as illicit and unscrupulous. Drug trips

became more common. Sex lost its taboo. Violence and street crimes escalated with

the burgeoning number of coming-of-age baby boomers. "For the children o f the

suburbs, this was an unexpected shock. Drug-crazed murderers and LSD-inspired

suicides did sell papers, but that didn’t mean they weren’t happening" (Gitiin,

1987:219).

And at the center of this ensuing chaos was the Vietnam War.

With draft calls up, and student deferments pared down in 1966, the war moved a lot closer to the hitherto exempt, and the student antiwar movement boomed as a direct result. But even beyond the students and the militantly opposed, the war was a steady, hovering curse. Many of the freaks knew soldiers, has been soldiers themselves, or feared becoming soldiers. . . . the Vietnam War was actual, nothing potential or abstract about it; napalm was scorching actual flesh, bombs were tearing apart actual bodies, and there, right there, were the traces, smeared across the tube and daily paper — every day you had to go out of your way to duck them. The New Age was streaked with nightmares (Gitiin, 1987:220).

CONTEMPORARY COMMUNAL SOCIETIES

As a rejection of the prevailing individualism and alienation of postindustrial

suburban America and energized by the uprisings of the 1960s, some members of the

counterculture desired a return to a freer, simpler lifestyle.

Kanter’s third wave of communal societies is based on a psychosocial critique

revolving around alienation and loneliness in postindustrial America. Modem society

has put people out of touch with others and their own fundamental nature. "I have no

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feeling of relationship to an over-all American society defined in terms of success and

security. These are not ideals that give me any pleasure" (Keniston, 1965:59)

Erich Fromm (1955) defines alienation as a mode of experience in which people

see themselves as an alien. Furthermore,

. . . alienation is a response of individuals especially sensitized to reject American culture by their early development, a development which in part reflects their families’ efforts to solve dilemmas built into American life; and it is in part a response to social stresses, historical losses, and collective estrangements in our shared existence (Keniston, 1965:391).

People experience alienation when they do not perceive themselves as the center of

their world and creator of their own acts. Instead the acts become the master, whom

they obey. For example, a people who have a passion for money are possessed by

striving for it. They are driven by forces separate from themselves in order to satisfy

their greed.

The alienation between man and man results in the loss of those general and social bonds which characterize medieval as well as most other precapitalist societies. Modem society consists of atoms . . . little particles estranged from each other but held together by selfish interests and by the necessity to make use of each other (Fromm, 1955:140).

However, people are social beings with a need to share and to feel as a member of

a group. Critics believe that industrial societies weaken the bonds of community,

belongingness and emotional security that characterize traditional lifestyles. "In

modem industrial society we often purchase our material well-being at a high human

cost, the chief symptom of which is the destruction ofcommunity" (Yankelovitch,

1981:226).

The absence of community is experienced as a loss, a void, a sense of

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homelessness which can bring about feelings of isolation, loneliness, instability, and a

depleted spirit. In middle-class America, the elements of community have been

fragmented. The migration into the suburbs "would change the very nature of

American society; families often became less connected to their relatives and seldom

shared living space with them as they had in the past" (Halberstam, 1993:142). This

fragmentation of community requires a change in the way that people define

themselves.

. . . Americans are forced to live without community, and must seek in inner integration a substitute for traditional social definition of themselves. Though we are a nation of joiners, we are not a nation of men and women who feel they belong. . . the loneliness that both Americans and foreigners see below the surface of American gregariousness suggest our vague sense of truly belonging nowhere (Keniston, 1965:252).

The Search for Community and the Rise of the Communal Movement

This whole generation, all the people who are receiving these new energies and turning on, we don’t want to be in the materialist bag anymore, and we don’t want to get caught up in the nine-to-five career bag, the two-week vacation, barbecues-in-suburbia-bag. . . . If I was put on this earth for anything, it was to love my brothers and sisters, and these other things just aren’t important (Melville, 1972:12).

In his study of why people joined communes in the late 1960s and early 1970s,

Benjamin Zablocki found that the most common reason was consensual community --

to establish or live in a community of like-minded others, to put shared beliefs into

practice (Aidala & Zablocki, 1991:108). Intentional communities put an ideological

emphasis on family and often use kinship terms to refer to each other.

. . . family is community; the closeness of living quarters makes it objectively difficult to dissemble . . . in circumstances where emotional compatibility is a major aspect of what holds a group together, it constrains members to pay

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attention to their subtlest feelings; it enhances and deepens their mutual dependence, instead of evoking guilt and anxiety (as it may in contexts where there are strong bureaucratic counterpressures . . . (Berger, 1979:67).

Communal societies have a history of springing up in response to the maladies of

society. For example, the utopian movement of the early 1900s was a response to the

industrial revolution. In the late 1960s, young Americans began to contrast their lives

with those of their parents, whose existence they saw as impoverished due to their

enslavement to the material world. They believed that their parents had given up

freedom of choice in the name of money. While much of this "counterculture" dealt

with this issue in different ways, such as political activism, public service, and

assimilation back into the mainstream, others chose the path to self-fulfillment by

seeking a less complicated lifestyle; to own fewer possessions, to escape the rat race,

to become closer to nature, to live in communities of like-minded people.

By 1970 there were over 2000 communes of significant size in 34 states

(McLaughlin & Davidson, 1986:92).

For many hippies, the real urgency to move toward community came from a sense of total alienation, intense anger and despair about society. They felt a moral imperative to withdraw participation from the spiritual degeneracy of society which manifested itself as greed, violence, and war. They wanted to join with other like-minded souls for mutual support, for reinforcement of a shared identity, and for the celebration of liberation from social fetters (McLaughlin & Davidson, 1986:93).

For purposes of analysis, McLaughlin & Davidson (1986) divide the intentional

communities of the 1960s and 1970s into three distinct types. These arethe urban

crash pad, the political commune, and the rural commune.

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The Urban Crash Pad

The urban crash pad began in the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco in 1967

(the Summer of Love). Thousand of teenagers and young adults swarmed into the

area. Crash pads (communes where people could spend the night for a few days)

began cropping up throughout the Bay area.

The crash pad was exciting because at any given time, all types of people would

show up to share sleeping quarters. Many imbibed in psychedelic drugs, which they

believed would help people overcome ego trips and merge them into a sense of

oneness.

Urban hippie communalists worked on creating a feeling of community by setting

up service projects such as food co-ops and free health clinics. They established

neighborhood child-care and set up tool exchanges. Neighbors often shared

cooperative gardens.

Today, while there are few urban crash pads still in existence, there are thousands

of group homes and food cooperatives still around.

The Political Commune

Political communities revolved around a strong ideology and political activism.

Activities included Vietnam protests and civil rights. Members strove to create a new

way of life that was non-monogamous, cooperative, and socialist. Their goal was to

distance themselves from the alienating, possessive, materialistic norms of the middle

class.

However, the biggest problem with the political communards was that since they

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were based around such a strong political ideology they were inflexible and intolerant

of members who’s political views were not an exact match. This created tensions

between members and many of the political communes broke up as a result of lack of

interpersonal communication and commitment.

The Rural Commune

The rural commune is the predominant type that survived the 1960s and is still

vital today. Rural commune members concentrated on building a self-sufficient

community — growing their own food, sewing their own clothes, and producing much

of their own energy resources. Political and religious issues were not as important as

acquiring an extended family spirit.

As with the other types of communes of the 1960s, many rural ones did not

survive very long due to lack of commitment, communication, and mles for

organization and decisionmaking. Those that did survive placed greater emphasis on

adhering to an organized system of rules rather than just relying on people to do

"whatever". Several, such as The Hog Farm in California, the Farm in Tennessee, and

Shannon Farm in Virginia are all still around today.

COMMITMENT AND COMPROMISE AS A MEANS OF SURVIVAL

No matter the type of community, the main issue that all intentional communities

face is how to maintain the solidarity and commitment that is necessary for its long­

term survival. The utopian vision of communal life must necessarily be infused with

reality in order to confront the problems of social organization and solidarity. For

example, who does the dishes in utopia?

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Kanter (1972) identifies several organizational problems that must be addressed to

help enable a community to survive the long haul. They are as follows:

* how to get work done * how to ensure that decisions are made to the whole group’s satisfaction * how to build interpersonal relationships * how to select and socialize new members * how to include a degree of autonomy * how to ensure shared perception of the community’s vision

Kanter summarizes these issues as commitment. They reflect how members

commit to the community, to its values, and to each other.

The issue of commitment arises at the intersection of the organizational

requirements of the group and the personal orientations of its members. It, therefore,

links self-interest to social requirements. People are usually willing to commit to the

degree that they feel little or no conflict between the requirements of the community

and their own needs. This relationship is tenuous at best. For example, if someone

has a personal desire to eat meat, they would be less willing to commit to a

community that was strictly vegetarian.

Members need to feel that it is worth giving up separate attachments in order to

achieve a collective unity. "Connectedness, belonging, participation in a whole,

mingling of the self in the group, equal opportunity to contribute and to benefit are all

part of attaining collective unity" (Kanter, 1972:126). In a strong community, feelings

of camaraderie are essential to sustain the group through bouts of internal dissention.

One way this is achieved is through regular group contact.

Regularizing arrangements and activities that involve the entire community

enhances cohesiveness and strengthens commitment. Additionally, it reinforces

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information sharing and participation in group decisions. Successful communities tend

to hold frequent group meetings because they reinforce the existence of the

community. Participation in meetings makes members feel more involved with the

group and gives them opportunity to participate in the day-to-day decisions. When

people invest time and energy into making something work, they are more likely to

fight harder for its continuance. Group meetings will be discussed in the chapter about

Shannon Farm.

The main threats to community survival stems from internal sources or external

sources. Internal threats include disagreements on how the community should be

managed, a shift in values, miscommunication among members, and a general dislike

between certain people. External threats come in the form of economic debt, natural

disasters, and dissensions with the neighboring townspeople. While external threats

are harder to avoid, successful groups will try to avoid internal dissention or attempt to

immediately rectify any internal strife.

When external issues threaten the community, the group must somehow find a way

to manage them, usually by changing its structure to incorporate the threat. For

example, certain 19th century utopias, such as Harmony, Amana, and Zoar,

experienced external pressures in the form of increasing technological advances,

improved transportation, and expanding communications. The communities had no

way to cope with these intrusions except by ignoring them or incorporating them into

the community. Those that stuck with the "no consumption" ideology experienced

dissent and dissatisfaction and tended to disband sooner than those that had changed

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their ideology to allow for the new technology.

However, when a group bows to such pressures, how far must they compromise

their original vision? As America politically, technically, and socially evolves,

communities must necessarily change in order to survive. Furthermore, this

relationship to the outside world is constantly subject to revisions in the face of

continued external changes. Many structured communes of the 19th century fell prey

to their rigidity.

Therefore, a method of compromise must be developed. Many of today’s

successful communities develop such techniques either at the onset or in the face of

jeopardy.

Synanon, whose loose structure has lasted throughout its history, continually adds elements suitable to the latest developments on the outside, incorporate new technology and changes labels and secondary concepts, which injects dynamism into a stable structure. While the framework remains, various parts are always changing. Thus Synanon has established channels through which change can be introduced without undermining the basis for the community’s existence (Kanter, 1972:144).

The following chapters will explore this theme of change and adaptation as

survival techniques. The Farm, discussed in chapter 4, looks at a community that has

successfully responded to external pressures, while Shannon Farm, discussed in chapter

5, is an example of a community that had to fight internal conflicts.

with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 3

HEADING SOUTH

FIELDWORK METHODOLOGY

The methodology for this thesis was field research consisting of interviews and

observations at two long-lived intentional communities: Shannon Farm and The Farm.

I spent four days at each community interviewing members and observing community

meetings, social events, workplaces, and individual family units. I interviewed both

male and female members of diverse ages who spent various lengths of time living on

the communities (see appendices A & B).

The interview questions were predominantly related to the theme of alienation, the

reclamation of community, and the necessary survival techniques the communities have

adopted over the years. Secondary interview information was of a more personal

nature to the interviewees themselves (such as their upbringings, their personal reasons

for joining a community, etc.).

Additionally, books on intentional communities, periodical articles on the Farm,

and documents, such as Shannon’s bylaws and lease, were examined. Information

from these sources was used as an enhancement to the personal interviews and helped

me to piece together historical background information on the two communities.

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Shannon - The Community in the Mountains

The Setting

Shannon Farm, consisting of 84 members living on 489 acres in the Blue Ridge

Mountains of Virginia, was the first stop on my agenda. One member of my thesis

committee, Dr. Jeff Fishel, secured a host (Barbereh) for me to stay with. As I got

closer to the community, the surroundings became more and more rural. In fact, the

turn-off leading into Shannon was so obscured that I passed it five or six times before

I finally found the entrance. Once inside the community, the environment became

more densely wooded. It reminded me of the places that I used to go to camp as a

child.

Barbereh’s home was a beautiful house made of wood and glass. Since Shannon

members own and build their own homes, each house I saw was different in size and

design.

Houses are arranged in clusters throughout the community (see appendix C).

These clusters are like mini-subdivisions, each one having its own electrical and water

systems. I could not determine if the members of each cluster were purposely grouped

together or if the grouping was based on where members just happened to build their

homes. However, if someone wants to move to a certain cluster, all members of that

cluster must agree to allow it.

Although most people seemed to own cars, the roads in the community were

poorly paved. Several times, I worried about hitting a tree or running over jagged

rocks.

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There are no outside street lamps of any kind and the community is pitch black at

night. While walking to an interview at a neighboring home, I had to use a flashlight

to find my way. To a city person, such as myself, this was a little disconcerting, not

to mention scary. Additionally, the absence of street noises reminded me of how

isolated Shannon is. The night was completely silent except for the sounds of crickets

and other animals.

Since Shannon is located in the mountains, there are many scenic mountain-view

areas throughout the community. Additionally, recreational activities at Shannon

include a large man-made lake, a sweat box, and a community vegetable garden.

The People

The people at Shannon were very hospitable and cooperative. Barbereh made me

feel immediately at home, eradicating some of my nervousness at this new experience.

She wasn’t home when I arrived, but she left me a note to let myself in. This gave

me a while to adjust to my surroundings.

When she arrived, she cooked me dinner and told me that she had to go out of

town the next day and that I should make myself comfortable. It was extremely

trusting of her to allow me, a total stranger, to stay in her house unattended.

Furthermore, she left me with no house key because she never uses one herself. As a

result, it was a strange feeling for me to leave a house unlocked and I had to

continually shake off the nagging feeling that I forgot to do something. Apparently,

most people at Shannon leave their houses and their cars unlocked and that feeling of

trust and safety is a big attraction to the members of the community.

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Prior to my coining, Barbereh posted a notice at the community center announcing

my arrival and the purpose of my visit. By the time I had arrived, she had secured

several interviews for me, reducing much legwork and explanation on my part.

The people I interviewed were more than willing to cooperate. In fact, several

who were not on my list approached me, asked me about my research, and wanted to

be included. Unfortunately, I did not have time to interview all that were interested.

The people that I did interview were agreeable to being taped and they answered

my questions without hesitation. Most of my informants were just as interested in my

background and at times it seemed like I was the one being interviewed.

Most members of Shannon live in single family homes, consisting of monogamous

couples, nuclear families, and singles. I did, however, visit one group home — a large

structure which housed several single people and single parents with children. This

house (Haiku) was the largest on the community.

One thing I did notice about the people at Shannon was the age gap between the

young people and the adults. I was hard pressed to find many people in their 20s.

Members’ ages jumped from young children to people in their mid-30s. This could be

a result of the isolation of the community. I was very surprised to find Shannon

completely shut down by 10:00 on a Saturday night. Adhering to the stereotype of

communes, I was expecting to find the community a little "wilder" then it was.

Instead of parties and midnight dips in the lake, most people were in their homes with

their families and housemates. Even the singles at Haiku were at home. Apparently

in the early days, Shannon was more experimental in sexual and drug type activities,

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but there was no evidence of that during my visit. As a person in my 20s, I would

find it very hard to meet people at Shannon and to participate in the type of "night­

life" that many people of my age group enjoy. However, when people do want to find

more excitement, Charlottesville (home of the University of Virginia) is nearby.

Businesses

Since almost all members work outside the community, I did not see evidence of

any community-owned businesses. Most members work off the community in jobs

such as computer programmers, consultants, and freelance writers. Shannon does have

a community garden that is for the personal use of the members, but is not used as a

business. Members are expected to contribute labor to the community as needed

(although I did not have a chance to explore how).

My impression of Shannon was that it physically resembled a middle-class suburb

which happened to be located in the woods. However, unlike a typical suburb,

Shannon members extended themselves beyond the walls of their own homes to

embrace their neighbors in an extended family-like spirit. Even the internal quarrels

that they experience reinforce this. It is far easier to honestly air disagreements with

members of your family than it is confined to the forced politeness between mere

acquaintances.

The people at Shannon feel that they have escaped the middle-class trap that was

waiting for them after college. They believe they have found the right balance

between communalism and individualism and are very satisfied with their life choices.

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We recognize that the ultimate success of our endeavor rests not with any formal document or legal structure, but with a more subtle spiritual bond. We pledge ourselves to that bond (Bylaws of Shannon Farm Association, Inc.).

The Farm - The Spirit of the Hippies

The Setting

After leaving Shannon, I drove south to Summertown, Tennessee to visit the Farm

-- a community of 300 self-described hippies living on 1750 acres. Unlike the

mountainous woods of Shannon, the Farm was flat, open, and expansive.

Prior to my visit, I secured accommodations with a host family (Barbara, Neil, and

their 3 children). Since the Farm often has visitors, families accommodate them for a

small fee, including meals.

Upon my arrival, I was required to check in with the visitor center at the front

gate. No strange cars can pass thorough this gate without signing in. Upon sign-in I

was given a map of the community and told where I could find my host’s house.

Since the acreage was so vast, I found this map to be vital to my wanderings (see

appendix D).

Most of the buildings were homes and Farm-owned businesses. The architecture

was a mish-mash of different sizes, shapes, and building materials. This is due to the

Farm having to rely on low-cost, free, and scavenged materials to build their

structures.

Initially, the group lived in a fleet of school buses which was supplemented by

housing constructed from salvaged materials. They then developed a style of tent

houses made with army tents that had scrap wood floors, frame sides, styrofoam

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insulation, and rusty tin roofs. These materials were mostly salvaged from scrap

yards. As many as 30 people would live in one tent. I did not personally see any of

these tents and believe that they are no longer in existence.

The homes I saw were mostly large -- leftover from the days when the Farm had 5

times as many people. The home where I stayed initially housed 5 families and now

only houses one. As a result, there were many rooms that were unoccupied and were

reserved for visitors. It almost had the feeling of a boarding house.

Initially, the Farm used gasoline motors, kerosene lamps, wood heat, and propane

for cooking. Now, however, they rely on public power. Solar heat is used in many of

their buildings and they have experimented with electric cars.

Although meals were included in my visit, I chose to eat lunch at the Farm Store.

The store was reminiscent of a convenience store, selling earned foods, premade

sandwiches, and household necessities. Additionally, one could also buy handmade

tye-dye T-shirts and small jewelry items. No meat was sold and lunch consisted of

tofu hotdogs (although I did accompany this with potato chips and diet Coke).

The People

Perhaps because of the large size of the community, I found the people at the

Farm less personable than at Shannon. They seemed leerier of strangers and it was

harder to arrange interviews. Additionally, several people canceled after already

agreeing to participate. However, the people that I did interview were cooperative and

readily allowed themselves to be tape recorded.

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The family that I stayed with was at once typical and atypical. Gender roles were

very traditional and Barbara did all the cooking (most of it from scratch), while Neil

worked a construction job. However, the frank discussions that I observed between

them and their kids was a reminder that they had come out of the counterculture of the

1960s. Both of their teenagers had recently returned from an extended tour following

the Grateful Dead. The conversations that occurred concerning the drug trips that they

and their friends experienced was one I had never expected to see between parents and

teenagers. It was refreshing to see the two generations communicate so candidly.

I consider my interview with Stephen Gaskin (the founder) to be a major coup of

my visit. Originally, I thought that it would be impossible to meet him, much less

interview him. Instead, I had planned on interviewing his wife, Ina Mae. I called her

and she told me that she was not available, but perhaps Stephen would talk to me. I

arranged to meet with him the next day.

When I arrived at his house, I was greeted by a slight, older man, with long gray

braids, a bright tie-dye T-shirt, and a huge smile. Stephen was an expert interviewee,

having done this many times over the years. He was an ardent talker and I ended up

staying and talking with him for at least an hour after I turned off the tape recorder.

After leaving his house, it was easy to see why people were drawn to him. Although I

did not believe in many of his theories (such as telepathy), his enthusiasm was

contagious.

As with members of Shannon, I did not see many people in their 20s, although I

did see more teenagers. They seemed to have a tight knit group and held parties fairly

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often. Music is a uniting factor between the generations and several rock and roll

bands of all ages exist there.

Decisions are based on majority-rule. Primary decisions are made during annual

budget planning sessions that are held weekly for three months out of the year.

Subgroups, such as the Second Foundation, are responsible for making decisions for

particular areas, including some of the business ventures.

Community Businesses

Unlike Shannon, The Farm owns and operates several community businesses.

Originally, they grew and processed sorghum and sold molasses as a source of income.

They also grew organic vegetables for the group and as a source of additional income.

Most of the members are employed by community businesses. Others, who work

off the community, are employed in occupations such as construction or satellite dish

installation. Some work from home, typically in health care or accounting.

In the past, the Farm was an innovator in soy bean technology and a tofu press

was the community’s first patent. The tempeh inoculant that they first marketed is

used worldwide.

Today, the Farm operates around 30 businesses. These include publishing,

electronic manufacturing (radiation detectors, satellite dishes), woodworking,

agricultural products (soy dairy, tofu, shitake mushrooms, and honey), and tye-dye T-

shirts. The Farm also owns and operates a construction business, an auto repair shop,

and a bakery. Most of these businesses provide services to the surrounding

communities.

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In addition to their for-profit businesses, the Farm also operates several charitable

organizations. They share their resources with the poor through PLENTY USA,

Rocinante was set up to help the elderly and disabled, and their midwifery services are

renowned throughout the area.

I found my visits to both Shannon and the Farm to be educational and

enlightening. I had come in with stereotypical expectations about what "communes"

were supposed to be like. While some of my expectations were met, others

completely surprised me. I did, however, expect these communities to be viable

alternatives to a traditional middle-class lifestyle. And that they were.

The following two chapters provide more details about the results of my

interviews and experiences at Shannon and at the Farm.

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THE FARM

The Farm, located in rural Summertown, Tennessee, is one of the most well-known

and long-lived communities to emerge out of the communal movement in the late

1960s. Founded in 1971 by Stephen Gaskin, the Farm had peaked at over 1500

members in the late 1970s. In the mid-1980s the community experienced what they

call the change. This change was necessitated in order to further the survival of the

community. As a result, the Farm is currently down to a membership of around 300,

yet still provides an excellent example of how alternative communities must

compromise and adapt in order to survive.

The following information on the Farm is based on both a review of existing

literature and the results of a personal visit that I made in August of 1994. Much of

the information on the Farm prior to the change was found in articles and books on

intentional communities, as well as through interview data collected on my visit; while

most of the post-change information was garnered solely through my personal

observation and interviews with members, including founder, Stephen Gaskin.

The Beginning

Stephen Gaskin

The Farm was founded in 1971 on the spiritual beliefs and teachings of Stephen

Gaskin. At the beginning all Farm members recognized Stephen as their spiritual

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leader and practiced his system for obtaining enlightenment. His ideology is a blend

of several traditions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, Christianity, and psychology.

He linked all these traditions together into a single faith to express the essence of all

religions. Stephen and his followers feel strongly that established religions are

insincere and lack true spirituality. "We moved around a lot. My father also broke

from the church and so I was raised by free-thinkers. And that is something to be

proud of. I do feel like a religious kind of person but I can’t deal with organized

religion" (August 1994).

While Stephen’s status has diminished from that of a spiritual leader to one of a

respected elder, a complete examination of the Farm is not possible without first

discussing his ideology; for without Gaskin, there would be no Farm. Stephen was

working at San Francisco State University during the height of the Haight-Ashbury

era. It was during his time as a teaching assistant that he developed his leadership

style and had his first encounters with the hippie movement and the psychedelic drugs

that would change his life and the lives of his future followers. He told me,

. . . although I had brushed briefly with the Beatniks, I did not know where hippies were at and so I went to see where the hippies were at and I just fell in with them. And they were the most fun and the most revolutionary and had the most heart. They were happening. And so I just started doing it with them and then I wanted to know more about all the stuff that was going on. . . . So I just thought that maybe the way you learn something like this was to build something. So I started Monday Night Class. And we met in the Gallery Lounge at San Francisco State College and more and more people came. . . . And in two or three years we got over 1000, 1500 people coming and we discussed the whole hippie world spirit -- God, sex, death, war -- all of that. And the something that kept coming up was that if we were really going to try and do it right we should all live together so that we could control our own bullshit (August 1994).

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Stephen’s encounters with the hippies ultimately led to his first experiences with

psychedelic drugs, especially LSD. He found that drug experiences broke down the

walls separating people and brought them together in a communal "telepathic"

understanding.

None of us were planning it... we just got stoned together. We were so high we got telepathic and inside each other’s heads. A cut glass platter that Maggie (Stephen’s wife) had used to bring refreshments caught the light, splintering it into four directions, a beam piercing each heart. We started glowing. Michael and Maggie turned white and me and Ina May did some psychedelic change things and we looked at each other with looks like, "Wha-a-at?" We didn’t say anything, but we all thought this thing and were afraid to say it! . . But it fell on us . . . bang . . . just chonk! . . . it was such a beautiful, perfect, clean telepathic thing, that, among other things, we’re like a living monument to that communication (Pfaffenberger, 1982:184).

Stephen’s revelations about telepathy led him to believe that his thoughts could

impact upon other people and that what people thought and felt about one another was

extremely important. He believed that the cause of human misery was that people did

not send out loving, healing "vibes" to each other telepathically. Therefore, he

concluded that if a group of people who agreed on the existence of telepathy came

together, it would be possible to create a community that would give energy, health,

and happiness to one another.

To test this idea, Stephen set up an experimental college class at San Francisco

State called, "Group Experiments in Unified Field Theory." The class met on Monday

nights and hence, the Monday Night Class, which was to continue for four years, was

bom.

Monday Night Class

The reason behind the Monday Night Class was to explore a world in which what

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people feel and think about each other would have an impact on them. Phil, one of

the original members, remembers.

I was interested in learning about mind, if I were to put it in sort of a broad picture. And trying to understand. O f course, I was into psychedelics out in San Francisco along with everyone else and so that heightened all of our interest and what it meant. What were these experiences and how could we apply them to what we were doing? And I guess it wasn’t exactly a quest that I was on. It was more out of curiosity and interest that I ended up at Monday Night Class as something that seems not quite so alien. There’s a lot o f other theological explanation that was happening in Eastern religion and so forth. This [Monday Night Class] was something I could relate to. People that seemed to have experiences like my own (August 1994).

The Monday Night Class began with a religious theme. The group chanted a

Hindu mantra for several minutes. Stephen would then answer questions from the

audience about the mystical and religious books that the Class members were reading

at the time. Stephen used his own interpretations of religion to draw ideas to support

his theory on telepathy and become the spiritual leader that the kids of the time were

seeking. It was the success of his charisma that the Farm was founded upon.

Bryan Pfaffenberger (1982) believes that Stephen’s success should be understood

as an interaction of three separate forces. The first is that his audience was composed

mainly of college students and dropouts who were trying to understand the texts and

who found his professorial manner familiar and convincing. Secondly, his rhetorical

style combined lucidity with a rough-and-ready confidence and, moreover, an ability to

transform any counterargument to his advantage. Finally, his teachings came down to

a very simple, straightforward proposition: "If you want to change the world, you have

to change your soul — you have to change things on a spiritual level." Donald, a

member since the beginning, relates the first time he saw Stephen speak:

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Stephen was running a meeting with maybe three or four hundred people. . . . And he was connecting with everybody. And he was saying what I knew to be true. I was agreeing with him. I was sitting there, ’yeah! yeah! yeah!’ That’s right, you know. How does he do this? How does he get everybody to agree to the same things that I knew that I couldn’t get anybody [to agree to]. . . . And you could just feel the energy in this meeting. People’s attention was so intense. It’s a vibration. It’s a home. It’s a buzz. And you could feel it, yeah. He said, ’that’s the holy spirit.’ And I’d been an arguing atheist up to that point. And I knew he was telling me the truth. And I had to drop the whole thing that I had logically built up in college and say "alright we’re talking about the spirit" (August 1994).

The early period of Stephen’s teachings climaxed in the huge meetings at the

Family Dog Ballroom in San Francisco. Up to 2000 people would come to hear his

philosophy. He announced that he had become a spiritual teacher and if they were

willing to do what he suggested, they could stay on a permanent spiritual high. While

many thought he had gone off the deep end, most had faith in his ideology -- "that by

believing the world is crummy, we make it crummy." If people are to stop suffering

they must stop complaining and create a beautiful and peaceful universe for

themselves. Additionally, as individuals, we can choose to change the world for the

better, but as a community the effect multiplies.

According to Stephen, when people come together to form a community they

bring about a pure creation. A group of people who are in agreement about what they

ought to pay attention to will experience communion. This emphasis on community

readily lent itself to the creation of a consolidation of tight knit families that came out

of the nameless sea of individuals that attended the Monday Night Classes. His most

ardent followers patterned their lives after his -- down to living semi-nomadic in

refurbished school buses. Stephen told me the following story on the responsibility of

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being a charismatic leader:

Well the role model thing was that I realized that anything I did, people would copy whether it was straight or not. Now at a point I quit wearing my glasses. For a couple of years I’ve had a fifty percent improvement in my vision. Then there were people who quit wearing their glasses who were clearly completely blind and they were out driving and they were dangerous. It was dangerous because people thought, ’well Stephen did that. I can do that’ (August 1994).

However, this pattern of adoration had major significance in the formation of the

Farm just a few years later. It culminated in the "Caravan."

The Caravan

In 1970, Stephen was invited to speak at a number of lectures throughout the

country. As he prepared to embark on his tour, 200 people declared, uninvited, that

they were going to follow him. On October 12, 1970, a caravan of as many as 63

buses left San Francisco. Its departure was significant in the formation of the Farm

since only his most devoted followers came with him on the Caravan, finally ending

up in Summertown, Tennessee. Stephen recalls,

I started with a caravan because these preachers came from all over the United States to my lectures and they told me what hippies were because it was happening in all the small towns and so they would come to the city to see what it was all about. It was a spiritual crisis . . . and they set me up with a caravan. I spoke in 42 states, traveled with as many as 400 people. Hundreds of buses sometimes (August 1994).

On the other hand, Joel, a long-time Farm member, was not quite as successful.

. . . when the caravan was forming I joined the group of about 70 people that didn’t have buses or vans and stuff but wanted to go on the caravan. And we pooled all our money together and bought 9 buses to go on the caravan and split on the buses. And the bus that I split on, it turned out we had to rebuild the engine so we didn’t go on the caravan. And we got started about six weeks after the caravan and kinda followed them around the country, never catching up and we got back to San Francisco. That’s where the caravan was ending and the people were going to resume their lives in San Francisco and then we

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found out they were heading back to Tennessee (August 1994).

The reason for their exodus out of San Francisco was that upon his return to the

Bay area after the caravan, Stephen felt that the spiritual impulse had left San

Francisco. Later the caravan members held a meeting and decided that they wanted to

stick together and form a commune. "’We’ve shared so much karma and so much

heavy stuff has gone down and we’ve done so much heavier stuff than we ever

thought we could do. . . . Let’s go to Tennessee and get a farm’" (Pfaffenberger,

1984:199).

Why Tennessee? Stephen answers:

We got back to San Francisco. The caravan was over and we didn’t want to go back to doing what we were doing before, which was living on Haight Street or going to school or living on our parents or being on welfare. It was just all kinds of small time nothing stuff and what we were doing was bigger and funner. So we went back to Tennessee. There were some nice people here and we checked out the land and we got the cash and we’ve been buying land ever since (August 1994).

The Birth of the Farm

After its inception in 1971, the Farm grew and flourished throughout the 1970s.

By 1973, there were 500 members, an increase of nearly 100 percent in two years.

Within another year the population doubled again to 1000 members, peaking in the

late 1970s at 1,500 members. Many of the people I interviewed joined the community

during this period of intense growth. The reasons they give for coming to the Farm

center around the theme of looking for something that could not be satisfied by the

American Dream. Many people, such as Susan, a 15 year member, mention

spirituality,

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I guess it was just some kind of rejection to a suburban lifestyle or, you know, maybe its a lack of some spirituality. I don’t know how many people are satisfied out of our age groups and demographics that became seekers at that part of their lives. And, for here, a lot of people that came here . . . the spiritual aspect of it is part of what we thought filled a certain void (August 1994).

Phil adds,

The American Dream to us was a hollow one. I don’t think it could satisfy deeper needs that we had as a generation. The lack of real spiritual commitment. Just the church-going community of our parents was a social one. And it didn’t satisfy our needs for answering the questions that we had. They just weren’t answered for us and that became a more important quest for us (August 1994).

Donald believes that,

Religion is why we came together. It wasn’t to make a groovy, fun place to live. Or to be organic farmers or anything like that. I mean all those things fit in. It makes sense with the lifestyle. But we came here to practice our religion. To see how high we could get together if we loved each other (August 1994).

Others, like Joel, felt alienated in the outside world.

What I really felt was either I was crazy or the world was crazy. And, if I was crazy it was too bad, but if the world was crazy I had a chance. And I determined that the world was crazy. . . . This was something I had to do. Your life was kind of planned and you’re going along not quite understanding why you were going along and why it had to be this way and then this window of opportunity opened for a group of people that were well educated, well fed, and well cared for saying, ’This system . . . there is something missing. And I’m going to try something else and see what I can do’ (August 1994).

Some of the women joined the Farm at that time because it was widely well

known as a sanctuary for pregnant women with no place else to go. A standing offer

had been made -- "Don’t have an abortion. You can come to the Farm and we’ll

deliver your baby and take care of it, and if you ever decide you want it back, you can

have it" (Kern, 1993:205). Some women I spoke with took the Farm up on this offer.

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Vickie recalls:

In early ’77 I got pregnant. So I found myself pregnant and I did not want to be having society take care of me, going on welfare and all that. So my friend had gotten hold of This Season’s People, the newer book that the community had wrote, and I just really liked what I heard. And one of their books did mention that if you want to come here and have your baby, instead of having an abortion, to come to the Farm. . . . So I came down here right before Independence Day . . . and I just felt right at home (August 1994).

Kim had a similar experience:

It was somewhat hedonistic where I came from. You needed more support in order to raise a family and a community like the Farm . . . sounded right. And I had hoped to come out and I was working on a lot of personal problems pertaining to pregnancy and wanted to keep my baby and sanctuary was at the time here - where you could come and have your baby and people would help you. Which is what I did (August 1994).

Unfortunately, the high membership that the Farm experienced in the 1970s taxed

its resources. People were living 20-30 to a house and the land was not being paid

off. While people were working extremely hard, most were performing what the Farm

calls service jobs -- running the laundromat, teaching the kids at the Farm School,

canning and freezing foods, farming, running the radio station, etc. These were not

paid positions. And while, these positions were important to the members of the

community, as far as fending for themselves for many basic needs, only 30% of the

members were bringing in actual money to support the entire community. Joel told

There was real strict poverty. Economically the Farm wasn’t successful and people weren’t eating well. They weren’t living well. They weren’t improving their lifestyles. We weren’t improving because we continued to take people on beyond the point that we could care for them. Most of the people that came here were not financially contributing to the maintenance of the community (August 1994).

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The Farm was in serious financial trouble. The bank was threatening to repossess

the land. Vanderbilt Hospital was also threatening to take land in exchange for some

unpaid medical bills. One informant told me that community members were on a

starvation diet. If the Farm was to survive, a change needed to occur.

We used to pay too much attention to the spiritual dimension, ignoring the physical. We’d say, ’We’ll just have good karma and it will all work out,’ but it didn’t work because it was too unbalanced. We were living the communal myth, saying, ’Give us your huddled masses, and we’ll feed them, clothe them, pay their bills (McLaughlin & Davidson, 1986:202).

The Change - 1983

Fortunately, the Farm was willing to concede that in order to survive they had to

be willing to make the necessary adaptations to outside forces. As mentioned in

Chapter 2, compromise and adaptation is one of the most important criteria for

survival. Complete economic self-sufficiency for closed subsocieties is virtually

impossible. In order to survive, communities must remain linked to the occupational

and economic system of the larger society. Stephen recalls one of the catalysts for the

change:

We tried to borrow money from the banks. The banks did not want to loan it to us. So this one guy said he could figure it out. He said what we gotta do is we gotta make a holding company to put some of the businesses in and then we can borrow money from the businesses in the holding company. So at the time we were so naive that we didn’t notice that the guy who was the Chairman of the Farm, Chairman of the Ice Cream Company, also made himself Chairman of the Holding company. He put the Ice Cream Company into the Holding Company and did a leverage buyout. We lost the Ice Cream Company because of this (August 1994).

As a result of bad business decisions and all around poverty, the Farm underwent

a serious restructuring, and by 1983 it had changed from a communal collective to a

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cooperative. This meant that Stephen relinquished his position of authority and the

community became more populist Additionally, money replaced barter as the medium

of exchange. The Farm was incorporated and issued stock as a way of generating

capital. Most significantly, the front gate, through which thousands of people had

been welcomed, closed and a limit was imposed on the length of time that "visitors"

could stay. This effort was to discourage new members and only about a dozen new

people have been accepted since.

The change from a collective to a cooperative has had direct effects on its

members. Now, members can keep private property and own material goods. They

must earn their own incomes, and then contribute monthly dues for rent and taxes.

Some Farm businesses are now separate corporations that charge for their services and

pay workers from the profits. Additionally, visitors (myself included) are asked to pay

for their stay instead of trading it for labor. Finally, unwed mothers can no longer

have their babies delivered and cared for free of charge.

Stephen Gaskin also relinquished his spiritual leadership and the community now

practices other spiritual teachings as well. Leadership in the community is more

decentralized, utilizing a participatory democracy and an elected governing board. The

Farm now actually resembles a small town.

Most members were not happy with the change and a mass exodus out of the

community ensued. Susan remembers,

It was a big trip because everybody was just going through wild ranges of transition themselves. . . . some people were extremely disillusioned, you know, and left bitter and so you see . . . for us all, our friends were going through so many changes. We, throughout it, never thought of somewhere else where we

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really might want to or felt like we should jump ship or something. But a lot of people were feeling all different ways so it was a real difficult time for I’d say two or three years. But me personally, that was probably the hardest part was watching other people [leave] because we were going along OK (August 1994).

After the Change

Since all the people I met at the Farm decided to stay after the change, I did not

have the opportunity to hear how it affected those who were opposed to it. However,

I did find out how it affected many who stayed. For some, such as Vickie and Kim,

who relied heavily on the communal aspect of the Farm, the change made things more

difficult for them financially. Yet they both feel that it has made them more

independent as individuals. Kim (who lives in a tar-roof shack with an outhouse)

reveals,

In the beginning it was a little difficult. But it actually has made me more resourceful and inventive. Everybody landed in different positions when the structure changed. So I would say that it actually taught me how to get along and figure out how to economically make it (August 1994).

Vickie’s family had a similar experience:

I was definitely scared because for a good five years I was depending on the community, which in ways wasn’t good. And I had to go through changes and my husband had to figure out how we were going to be feeding ourselves, etc. . . . We had to make some decisions. And it was really good for us. It’s been good. We definitely all had to go through a lot of changes to survive (August 1994).

On the other hand, families such as Susan’s and Barbara’s came out financially

ahead after the change. While Kim is now living in a tar-roof shack, Susan’s house is

large, comfortable and well stocked with all the amenities such as a computer, TV,

stereo, VCR, and nice furniture. Barbara’s family also gained financially from the

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change.

Every family has to earn money. Not just the 60 carpenters that go out and do it for the 1500 of us that live here. And because Neil [Barbara’s husband] was a carpenter he was out doing it anyway. So it actually was easier on us. Because instead of his money that he was earning going into the communal pot, we got it directly and we bought a television, we bought a washing machine. Whereas, for a lot of families who worked as hard but didn’t have a job that could necessarily generate income, it put them through a lot of changes (August 1994).

As Kim puts it, "The heaviest part [of the change] was that it wasn’t all divvied up

equally." Members of the Farm now have differing qualities of lives. Throughout my

visit I saw some people with nicer homes, cars, and more material possessions then

others. Those that had the skills and ability to earn more income owned more material

comforts.

I could not help but wonder as I observed this inequality, what made the Farm

different from any other "unintentional community." If the original vision was that

people would live simply, and equally, sharing possessions as well as ideologies,

where do VCR’s, stereos, computer games, and an unequal distribution of wealth fit

in? In other words, in order to save their community, had the original spirit of the

Farm been compromised?

Most members I interviewed did believe that the changes were necessary and

justified. They felt that while the physical configurations had changed, the spirit had

not. Additionally, most of those who stayed felt that the change was for the better and

the community was stronger as a result. Phil, who had been an original member for

12 years, left (and missed the change), and then recently came back said,

Well I think there are some elements of it [the vision] that are lost. Or, at least

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they are misplaced. The sense of purpose isn’t as grand. There is really a loss of commitment to grand ideals because of the necessity to manage your own very small world. Maintaining a job, earning money, your family, and so forth. . . . The true idealistic notion that we had coming here was to share everything and it was untenable. I don’t think the idea was wrong, but because people are inherently unable to really give up so much. . . human nature, at least within the American psyche (August 1994).

Joel agrees,

I look at it as an experiment and that we gave it a better try than probably anyone else and was able to sustain it for 12 years, almost 13 years, and weren’t able to anymore. It was taking up more energy than it was worth and we were giving up our youth and creativity to something that wasn’t making it. And we had to get on with our lives (August 1994).

Some also cited the welfare of their families as a rationale for the change. For

example, Barbara recalls,

. . . it made people think more of their families first rather than the community first. . . . and also family’s kids were growing up and getting older and needing braces or eye glasses or things that when they were little babies . . . you could stuff six or seven in a room and it didn’t matter. But then after a while you realized that the kids need some space. They need to have their own toys that they don’t necessarily need to share with everybody else (August 1994).

Joel adds,

One of the things that spurred the change was that we were seeing how much we were depriving our kids. And I think that was a big decision in a lot folk’s minds that it wasn’t fair because of our dreams to deprive our kids of stuff. . . . Some folks are more successful in making money within the system than others, but I think everyone here in our tribe, we still consider ourselves hippies, not materialists (August 1994).

Another interesting aspect of the change is that the reality of human nature snuck

into the youthful idealism. Most members have now reached or are fast approaching

middle-age. What was an acceptable living situation for someone in their 20s is not

necessarily acceptable for someone in their 40s. Consider the following comments

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from Phil and Donald:

When my kid was bom there was 24 people living in our house and it was a tent. A big tent. A huge tent with a wooden floor. A nice kitchen and there was 24 of us living in there. And I didn’t mind it. But I don’t want to do that now. Not with three teenagers. That was one thing when we were young hippies with young babies, but the more our families grew the more we realized, ’hey, we got to have our scenes together’ (August 1994)

I don’t think that I would have, given my perspective on things now, I don’t think I would have gone through what I went through to come here in the first place. I lived in a school bus for years. I lived in crowded housing and bad conditions. That was a strain on all of us. But we were young and idealistic and that prevailed. Now, I guess as you get older, you get a little more settled (August 1994).

The fact that the Farm did recognize the need for change. No matter how the

physical configurations had changed, the community was committed to picking

themselves up and making it work.

We came here to love each other, to tell the truth and not be angry. And also on top of that, the ability to change when it became necessary. When it was obvious that if we stay a commune collective we would have lost our land. And we would have been living in school buses on the road again (August 1994).

The willingness to change would not have been possible without the commitment

and bond that members have to the community and each other. Those who had left

the community at one time or another for various reasons found themselves being

drawn back to the Farm. Although it wasn’t the same place they had left, the feeling

of belonging and connectedness had remained. Phil had one such experience.

My experiences living in Maryland were that I never developed the friends and the closeness of friendship that I had on the Farm. So therein lies the secret towards continued longevity. Because people have a bond with each other. And there’s a real love of this place and the commitment to much of the idealism that does remain has to do with preserving the land and enjoying our friendships with each other and hopefully to do something useful on a larger

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scale. And that still, I think, can happen (August 1994).

The Future of the Farm

The future of the Farm and the communal movement itself, is rocky at best.

Many Farm members expressed deep concern that their kids are leaving. Some feel

that they have alienated their kids and are experiencing a generation gap. It is ironic

that the same things that drove them to start the Farm are driving the next generation

away. Phil expressed concern at this.

Our kids have taken off. We still have good relationships with them. I have kids in their 20s who are in California and we get along great but I’m not sure they’ll come back here. . . . We need to develop systems that will incorporate our kids into our community again. If we don’t, we’ll just die. We’ll just get old and die (August 1994).

What eventually might save the Farm and other communities from becoming

extinct is the same community-minded values that led to their creations in the first

place. While most Farm kids are leaving when they reach college-age, there has been

an indication that as they get older and have their own families, they will return. They

are having a resurgence of young people come back who were children there and who

now have children of their own. They want to rejoin the community as a safe, secure,

place to raise their own families as they were raised. Donald has noticed that, "The

people that are most interested in it are the kids that have left and are now having their

own kids and saying, ’hey, it was kind of boring back there. So quiet.’ But then

when they start becoming parents . . ." (August 1994).

Within the next ten years most of the original Farm members will be well into

their 50s and their kids will be having families of their own. Whether they will

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choose to continue the Farm, or perhaps start their own communities, through further

generations, remains to be seen.

The Farm is just one community of the thousands that started in the late 1960s and

early 1970s. The difference is that they are still around while the majority has failed.

My visit and personal conversations introduced me to a community of people who not

only have a real commitment to the community and each other, but were willing to

change and compromise when it became apparent that it was the only way they could

stay together. While the economic structure of the community had to change, the

people have not. Stephen Gaskin sums up the Farm in this way,

. . . the guy with the long fulcrum who was at our community said, ’If I had a place to stand and a place to put the fulcrum I could move the world.’ And that is what this place is -- it’s a place to stand and a place to put the fulcrum (August 1994).

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SHANNON FARM

Shannon Farm, located in rural, Afton, Virginia was started in 1974 by a group of

thirty people. The main purpose of Shannon is to be a residential community where

people share land, yet also respect individual freedom and creativity.

Shannon has never had a charismatic leader. Instead, they are a community based

on creating a politically egalitarian society. All decisions affecting the community are

made by consensus and equality. Nonviolence, and individual responsibility are the

primary shared values.

What sets Shannon apart from most intentional communities is that they believe

that it is important for individuality to take precedence over group domination. Will, a

member for 10 years, told me,

Shannon is full of individuals. . . . These people don’t want to be led. . . I think about places that have gurus of one sort or another and its like everyone follows completely until something goes wrong and then everyone is completely disenfranchised. I think that the way the Farm was such a tight and big and really impressive community and then pretty much disbanded and it has regrouped. I have a lot of respect for what they’ve done to regroup, but I feel like their initial vulnerability is because they were too centered around one person. And I don’t think it’s healthy for a group of people to give that much power to one person (August 1994).

Additionally, although Shannon’s values are similar to many other intentional

communities, they have no community income sharing, and houses are individually

built and owned. Members build or lease their homes after the entire community

46

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approves the building plan. The land is commonly owned by members and

community agreements are made about the care of the land. If a member decides to

leave, the lease on the house can be sold or the house rented out to a member, but

never to a nonmember.

Houses are built in clusters (similar to a neighborhood) with names such as Cat-

Briar, Another World, and Beech. Each cluster has its own electrical and water

system and cluster members must agree on anyone who wants to join the cluster.

Clusters are comprised mainly of individual and nuclear family homes with a few

group houses thrown in.

The membership process is decentralized, requiring much individual effort on the

part of the applicant. To gain support for membership, applicants must commit to

getting to know the other members of the community through community meetings,

work projects, recreational activities, etc.

Provisional membership is given to those who gain the support of at least one-

third of the members. After six months a provisional member can request full

membership which requires the support of at least two-thirds of the members. Once

full member status is reached, a contribution of 7 percent of after-tax income (or a

minimum of $42.50) a month is paid as dues. Members who have been there longer

than 12 years pay 5 percent of after-tax income (or a minimum of $30.00) a month for

dues. Additionally, members are expected to contribute at least a day and a half of

labor a month to community projects.

The following information on Shannon is based on both a review of existing

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literature and the results of a personal visit that I made in August 1994. Unlike The

Farm, which has been written about extensively, much of the information on Shannon

was garnered solely through my personal observation and interviews with members.

The Beginnings - An alienated youth

Shannon was formed in 1974 by a group of young people who were disillusioned

growing up in mainstream suburbia. John, one of the founders, remembers,

I was one of the people who set the place up. I grew up in suburbia and was not happy with my life choices at the time in terms of coming out of school. I liked the [school] environment a lot and I realized that coming out of school and sort of going into a work environment with very different values from me and the work culture was very different from the culture I wanted. I didn’t like suburbia growing up. I wanted better and at some point I got the brainstorm to build here — this was the early 70s. The idea was to build our own society, build our own culture, do it our way and not have to accept the dominant things that were going on. . . . When I was in college - I was an undergraduate at Dartmouth — and I was very much aware of community. There were people who were in the same boat I was in. We were all and the same boat and we sort of were doing this thing together and this trip together. And it was neat but it ended and I went to graduate school and that was a change and I was like, ’whoa, I don’t want to go into the American suburbia or work. I didn’t want to do that. And I figured at some point that it was a sense o f community that was missing and I sort of stumbled on this doing it ourselves and it turned into an intentional community (August 1994).

As with many communities in the early 1970s, Shannon was set up to be much

more communally-oriented. However, early on, a fire devastated the community and

they didn’t have the money to build things back up again right away. Financing was

shaky and only two people could remain on the land. John told me,

There were pockets of groups and individuals living off the land and there were still people who hadn’t moved on the land and they were concerned about the level of activity and the speed with which things were happening on the land. And so the decentralists sort of went out and after the fire, partially because the community wouldn’t put resources into keeping people on the land or . . . we lost something too. Some of us wanted to say, ’hey these people lost

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everything in the fire. Let’s just get them some money because they didn’t have renter’s insurance and stuff like that.’ And the larger community said ’no we can’t afford that.’ That was kinda creepy. Some of us felt like the communal thing kind of faded after that (August 1994).

Since Shannon was built out of a dissatisfaction and alienation of the mainstream

middle-class lifestyle, many of the current members of Shannon also cited this as their

reasons for joining. Will recalls,

. . . when I went to college, it got to where every three months . . . they have a quarter system at Virginia Tech . . . I had a new set of classes and a new set of friends that was involved with whatever I was studying at that time. And when I moved away from there and did other kinds of work, again it was a matter of having a job that might be working three months to a year, and my involvement with people I was living with and things that I had were in a constant flux. . . . It kind of set me off from otherwise accepting all the norms — that you’re supposed to get married, then you’re supposed to have kids and you’re supposed to have the white picket fence and the split level house. In becoming unplugged from that I started to look for traditional values through untraditional means. And so I was looking for these things that you’re supposed to get from a family from other sources. That’s where community came in for me (August 1994).

Mike, one of the younger members, reveals,

I’ve been a problem, a bright kid, but a problem for my whole life in not knowing where I fit in and what to do. This is as happy as I’ve ever been. . . . Getting to know lots of people. Having a lot of people around all the time. . . . And I guess if I had to say what the unifying factor was, everyone here has turned their back on straight life to greater and lesser extents. So we all have that binding us together (August 1994).

Gary, who has lived at Shannon for 10 years, also had a similar experience:

I had been raised in classic suburbia. Public schools. Did four years in the military. After that I kind of groaned a little bit and basically lived conventionally. Had a job. Had an apartment. Well, there was a definite dissatisfaction with how I was raised, public school, the whole conventional ways of living in the world. I’ve always asked questions of myself and motivations of myself and other people. And I wanted to change things. I think that’s just part of my human nature (August 1994).

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This estrangement from the mainstream society has permeated into the next

generation of the Shannon youth. Jason, who is 20 years old, has lived at Shannon

since he was 12. Recently he took a trip across the country to experience life outside

the community and found alienation still a relevant concern.

Basically, I did a circle across the country just to see as many crosscuts of America I could find. And I found out that I really didn’t care for the rest of the world. I saw just a lot of very scared people who weren’t able to open up and embrace the people around them. And I thought that being isolated in a city of a million people is a pretty scary thing and a very sad thing. And that’s not something I want (August 1994).

Anarchy Creek and Establishment Creek

The fading of the communal spirit at Shannon in the early days inadvertently

contributed to the long-term success of the community today. Shannon is unique

among the intentional communities in that, in spite of not wanting to be a part of

mainstream society, members have always recognized the importance of maintaining

strong ties to the outside world. In fact most members work outside the community

and earn their own individual incomes to build and upkeep their own homes. As a

symbol of the bridging of the worlds of their community and mainstream, Shannon has

named two creeks that run through the land "Anarchy Creek" and "Establishment

Creek." This bridge is very attractive to most members of the community. Many feel

that it gives them more individual lifestyle choices while still maintaining a sense of

community. In fact the issue of freedom of choice was a common theme in my

interviews. Some like Mike chose to come to Shannon, specifically because of that

set-up,

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I particularly did not choose to go to a community where I would be working for the community all the time. . . . I wanted to have more freedom of choice about what I did. More local freedom of choice. I happen to be a person who has a skill that’s really marketable and get paid for doing it. And I can easily see myself going to a community that didn’t have any sort of work for a computer job. And I’d be doing ditch-digging or whatever. And I don’t like that kind of life. I like working with my head. I like working with computers. So for me, it was a big factor in coming here to know that I would still be outside in the straight world whenever I wanted to be. . . . I wouldn’t mind the income sharing or the possession sharing at all. But I want to be able to decide for myself what I do (August 1994).

John agrees,

I think it’s real helpful to have people going in and outside. If people are just here in the community, it becomes their whole life. And in my perception . . . some of the problems we have are with the people who are here most of the time. This little world becomes their whole world so they . . . little things suddenly get to be big, important things. If you go in the outside and work in the outside then you see some of the crap that goes on out there, then this place looks real good by comparison. We have our own bureaucratic rules and garbage and stuff like that. But that’s our garbage. We can change that. We can work with that. We understand it. We accept it. And our problems seem smaller compared to some of the serious stuff that’s going on in the outside. And if you’re going on the outside, working on the outside, than you are much more aware of that then if you’re here all the time (August 1994).

Will also feels that this is an effective method,

I’ve done some research in to a number of different communities and a lot of them like to consider themselves to be self-sustaining or whatever. But some of them are like Twin Oaks where for the most part the community is financially sustained by individuals who work an extraordinary amount for the rest of the community. I mean they got the hammock building business and they’ve got a couple of other things where people do a lot of labor and the money goes to the community. And while other people are essentially doing other kinds of services for the community, they are not bringing in the money for the community and so the burden as far as being able to support is that much more for the people who are actually doing things to bring money in. Shannon recognizes that money has to come from somewhere in order for Shannon to be able to have the facilities that we’ve got here (August 1994).

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A Community In Crisis

Although Shannon seems to offer the best of both worlds, they have had their

share of problems. I believe that by trying to emphasize individuality, they have

compromised group commitment and cohesiveness. Gary seems to agree,

Most of the changes [over the years] have been in our dynamics in a personal group effort. . . . When I first arrived there this great sense of community of working together and sharing lives and as the years have gone by, I’ve noticed that has lessened and that most people have retreated more from the community as such and live their lives with a little more attention to themselves (Gary, August 1994)

We have no rules, we have lots of agreements that we can go back to and work on. But it’s sort of like if there is a problem than we’ve got old agreements. But the trick is to get the people with the problem down in the same room with some other people and just talk about it and come to some acceptable situation. We’re not doing as good a job now as we did in the early days (John, August 1994).

Shannon has been lucky over the years in that they have been relatively free of

external threats to the survival of the community. They have enjoyed financial

stability and steady growth. The main threat to Shannon’s longevity, however, was a

problem of internal commitment. Many, such as Amelia, a fairly recent member,

became disillusioned because of internal strife,

. . . it’s sometimes disappointing that we have the same problems here that people have in non-community settings. That is, people miscommunicate with one another. They misunderstand one another. They develop rivalries or have battles which they then continue to resurrect over years. Those kinds of politics are sometimes disappointing.

Gary expressed similar feelings,

My least favorite part [of living at Shannon] is the inability, the inexperience of people to work together and to express themselves in an honest, vulnerable way. That’s probably the worst part of it all. . . Every now and then I think of just walking away (August 1994).

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Disagreements about community-wide issues and values had become rampant. The

biggest disagreements centered around the growth of the community. John recalls,

We brought up a proposal about five years ago to buy another 300 acres of land and double the size of the community. . . And that was like they . . . the shit hit the fan for some people. They didn’t like it because their feeling was that it was too big. The big issue here is on growth and how big we’re supposed to be. We have agreements that don’t quite fit with each other. (August 1994).

Amelia, who is relatively new to Shannon told me,

In the small time I’ve been here there have been major conflicts. I think the conflicts, however, are due to precisely those differences in values that people have. There are people here who . . . are very eager to see our membership here grow and have there be more members, more houses, more building on the land. . . . There are other people here who like the size that the community is now. So that’s a big conflict - the growth issue (August 1994).

Some of these conflict caused internal dissention that lasted for years and divided

the community into separate camps. Gary told me of one such confrontation:

One of largest conflicts had to do with electric lines on the land. At one point we had one place where electricity came on to the land. And as people were here for a few years, they wanted more power. And the two ways of getting that were over-land lines and underground lines. The community was split over how to do that. One pack wanted to keep the property clear in an aesthetic sense. Keeping it natural, as pristine as we could. The other one just wanted power. A small group actually threatened to leave. And so that took months and months of conflict resolution. That was one of the biggest upsets in the community (August 1994).

Additionally, Will related one of the biggest challenges that the community faced,

finally resulting in the realization that they were in serious trouble:

We had a very painful series of meetings surrounding the purchase of new land. We bought a parcel of 30 acres that was added to the original land here. And we were probably at our worst in buying that land. I wish we hadn’t bought the land because of the pain that has come out of it. We had three groups of people. One group who said that we definitely need to buy this land so that no one will do anything else with it because we are worried about our

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view. And another group of people said that we definitely need to buy this land so that we can put a cluster on it and we can have more people living here. Another group was saying we definitely have to buy this land so that we can put a community center on it. And those three were completely incompatible things. But all three of them were getting together and saying we’ll get it first and then we’ll work it out. And basically what we were doing was we were deciding on what we were going to fight over the next three years. And that’s exactly what happened. We fought over it for three years. . . . I think it cost us a lot. But on the positive side of that, it was the thing that got us to decide that we needed to do something to improve the way we make decisions here. And in search to that answer, we ran across a method that has been put together by a fellow named C.T. Butler and it’s called formal consensus (August 1994).

C.T. Butler’s Formal Consensus

At Shannon’s request, C.T. Butler came to the community and held a workshop on

his method for formal consensus decisionmaking. This was a crucial step in

Shannon’s need to strengthen their internal commitment to each other and the future of

the community. The following information on formal Consensus was taken from the

book, On Conflict and Consensus (1987), by C.T. Butler and Amy Rothstein.

Consensus is a form of decisionmaking in which all contributions are valued and

active participation is encouraged. Butler feels that often the consensus process is

informal, vague, and inconsistent. This was the situation at Shannon. In order to

solidify their decisionmaking process, Shannon needed to adopt a more formal method

of consensus. Will told me what their meetings were like before Butler’s workshop:

We were very loose with a lot of the process, particularly when it came to things like preparing for a meeting. The agenda might have a lot of items on it that weren’t worded very well and sometimes there would be an agenda item and we wouldn’t be able to tell who actually put it in. And we’d get to the meetings and people would get hurt because they were all invested in getting this done really quick and getting this decision done, while others were saying that this isn’t put together well (August 1994).

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Butler taught them to divide the decisionmaking process into various levels or

cycles. The group goes through each level of discussion for every decision being

made. The purpose of the levels is to allow for additional structure to help resolve

concerns and reach decisions.

Each level has a different purpose. The first is broad, focusing on the entire

proposal which leads to discussion and consideration of the implications of the

decision. The second level serves to identify various concerns that members have

regarding the proposal. Here, the community weighs all drawbacks to the ultimate

decision. The third level is narrower in scope. The discussion is limited to a single

unresolved concern which the group focuses on until a resolution is reached. At all

levels, strong group facilitation and discussion techniques are employed.

Butler also taught Shannon to employ a set of stages in the consensus process.

The first stage is the introduction of the proposal. The facilitator of the meeting

introduces the person presenting the proposal and then gives a brief description of the

proposal, explaining why the it has been brought to the meeting and describes the

consensus process that the community will follow. The facilitator must ensure that the

whole group understands the decisionmaking techniques being employed.

Proposals are prepared in writing and distributed to the group well before the

meeting. This stimulates prior discussion of and attention to the proposal. At the

meeting, the presenter reads the proposal aloud, provides relevant information, and

communicates the benefits and reason for adoption, while also addressing existing

concerns.

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After the introduction, a broad discussion among the group occurs. The facilitator

elicits comments about the whole proposal, including advantages and disadvantages. If

there seems to be a universal agreement to the proposal the facilitator calls for

consensus.

The facilitator asks, ’Are there any unresolved concerns?" or "Are there any concerns remaining?" After a period of silence, if no additional concerns are raised, the facilitator declares that consensus is reached and the proposal is read for the record. The length of silence ought to be directly related to the degree of difficulty in reaching consensus; an easy decision requires a short silence, a difficult decision requires a longer silence. This encourages everyone to be at peace in accepting the consensus before moving on to other business (Butler, 1987:13).

However, if after broad discussion, concerns are raised, the process moves to the

next level. Concerns are identified and written down in front of the group. At this

point the facilitator should not allow any comments in defense of the proposal. The

focus is solely on concerns.

Next the group attempts to resolve the concerns. At this level, the discussion

revolves around resolving all concerns. Once most of the concerns have been

resolved, another call for consensus is announced. If not all concerns have been

resolved then the group must move to the next level.

At this level the facilitator goes back to the unresolved concerns and asks the

group to address them one by one. Creative discussion techniques are used to

facilitate a solution to each concern one at a time. Once each concern is resolved,

another call for consensus is made.

However, if consensus is still not reached, there are three options to closing the

proposal. The first is to withdraw the concern. "The technique for accomplishing this

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is to ask if there is any person with this concern who is unwilling to stand aside; that

is, acknowledge that the concern exists, but allow the proposal to be adopted" (Butler,

1987:16).

If the decision does not require immediate action, the second option is to send the

proposal to a committee to clarify the concerns and bring new resolutions for the

group to consider at a future meeting. Finally, if after reaching all three levels and

consensus has still not been reached, the facilitator may announce that the proposal has

been blocked and move on to the next agenda item.

The reason that I have included such an extensive discussion on consensus is that

Shannon members believe that this method has had a positive influence on their

commitments to bringing peace back to the community. They have given it significant

credit and attention, therefore, I have as well.

He [Butler] has a method which I think has a lot of positive things and it has had a good effect on us. And so having something that much more clearly sets out the procedures for how people can make a decision together using consensus brings us to try and fuse a lot of the certain variation on the violence. . . . The way that we deal with each other can be very violent without there actually being physical violence. And to say this is the place where we’U deal with this kind of issue. And then when we’re done dealing with these issue then what we have is consensus. We’ve benefitted greatly from it (Will, August 1994).

The Monthly Meeting

Fortunately, my visit to Shannon coincided with the community meeting that is

held the first Saturday of every month and I had the opportunity to see Butler’s

consensus process in practice.

Prior to each meeting, a committee of five people is assigned to formulate an

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agenda for the next meeting. This agenda is distributed to the community at least

three M l days before the meeting takes place. Their standard agenda contains items,

such as minutes of the last meeting, reports of ongoing activities, new proposals, and

community announcements. Each agenda item is assigned a presenter (usually the

facilitator), and is allotted a certain amount of time (the community must all agree to

extend the time if needed) for discussion. The meeting I attended at Shannon adhered

rigorously to these agenda criteria.

The meeting is chaired (or facilitated) on a rotating basis by two people each time

to ensure all members of the community a leadership role. Other roles that Shannon

members take on at meetings include:

The Peacekeeper - When controversial topics are being discussed, it is the peacekeeper’s job to keep tempers in check. The peacekeeper pays close attention to the mood of the meeting and if tempers start to flare the peacekeeper intervenes to remind the group of its commitment to cooperation by calling a few moments of silence. The peacekeeper is the only person at the meeting who can interrupt without first being recognized by the chair.

The Timekeeper - The timekeeper is selected to assist the facilitator in making sure that the meeting sticks to the time limits imposed for each agenda item. Ample warning is given towards the end of the time allotted so the group can close the discussion or vote to extend the time.

The Public Scribe - The public scribe writes on a large pad of paper the information going on in the meeting for everyone to see. This role is important during brainstorm sessions and airing concerns.

The Notetaker - The notetaker writes detailed notes on the whole meeting to be used for preparing minutes and reviewing prior discussions.

There was prominent evidence of all these roles at the meeting I observed.

At this meeting, the two main agenda items that were up for group vote was, 1) to

allow a new member to build on a parcel of land, and, 2) to allow an elderly member

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to leave the community without fulfilling the requirements stated in her lease and the

community bylaws. This second issue was particularly controversial and had been the

topic of heated discussion for several weeks. At the time of this particular meeting,

lawyers had been consulted by both the community and the former member.

After consensus was reached on some smaller agenda items, the first main issue

came up for vote. It went relatively smoothly and it was decided by the community

that they would put off making a decision on the proposal until more information

would be provided at the next meeting. The second agenda item, however, really

taxed the consensus process. This topic had two distinct camps. One thought that

since the woman was a long-time community member and friend, she should be

allowed to break her lease, while the others thought that since they had put much time

and effort into creating a lease that everyone could agree on in the first place, it should

not be broken for any reason. It was obvious that this argument had been going on for

some time and many people’s patience had been tried.

Several of Butler’s methods had to be used during this discussion. At one point,

the peacekeeper felt that people were getting nasty and called for 5 minutes of silence.

Additionally, a go-round technique was employed where everyone in the room stated

their personal opinion one at a time, with no interruptions allowed. The allotted time

for this discussion passed and the community voted to extend it. When the time came

to vote, a consensus could still not be reached and it was decided that a committee

would be formed to review the issue further and report back to the group at the next

meeting.

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As an outsider observing this meeting, I was quite surprised by what occurred. I

had come in with stereotypical expectations of a laid-back, easy going, ffee-form get-

together, and instead was confronted with a 5 hour very tense, structured and rule-

oriented meeting. Throughout the meeting, I felt like I was back in elementary school.

You had to raise your hand to speak; you could not interrupt, and if the "class"

misbehaved, the "teacher" called for a time-out.

However, after confronting Will on the paradox of, on the one hand the

community not wanting to be rules-oriented and on the other hand, the rigidly

structured community meetings, he told me,

I’ll explain the thing about rules. I like rules when they have to do with how we make our decisions. I don’t like rules when they are the result of our decisions. I don’t like trying to make a rule which is going to automatically make a decision for us in the future because decisions have to be made by all of us all the time. And each time a decision needs to be made by the community -- because we are living beings and will change from one time to another as to what our priorities are — we need to be upholding whatever our priorities are as a group. As far as the meeting itself is concerned, when a meeting starts off laid back, when you are getting emotional energy into it and people are invested in various sides of what first appear to be conflicts, then people get hurt. . . . So it’s better to have a pretty rigid structure as far as once you getting the people together. Because the idea behind this kind of meeting is not that we bash out all the stuff and work it all out in the meeting, it’s that we’ve already bashed out most of the stuff outside the meeting and we try and do as much communicating as we can. We try to clear issues as much as we can. And the meeting, for the most part, is just to make sure everybody there knows what’s going on and agrees to what’s going on (August 1994).

Jason also feels that strict conflict resolution is an important component of the

community.

. . . you’re encouraged to communicate and resolve conflicts in a constructive way. And the other thing is you’re encouraged to resolve these conflicts and you’re living with these people on the thins land. And thus, if you don’t resolve them, you see them everyday, all the time. You’re in meetings with

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them and it’s hard if you don’t resolve things. It is hard work living in community life and working things out. However, the up side of that is that it’s a wonderful skill to learn. . . . its really beautiful to be able to truly communicate with people and truly get to the heart of problems quicker than having to go through angst and blow up in situations to get to what was really the heart of the matter (August 1994).

Resolution

Since Shannon members recognized that their biggest problems were internal

conflicts and lack of communication among members, they sought outside help to

strengthen their conflict resolution skills. This, I believe has strengthened members’

commitment to the community and each other and has probably helped to ensure the

future of the community. Amelia told me, "The consensus method has kept us going

where others failed" (August 1994).

John feels that the community committed itself to making things work out instead

of giving in to internal strife:

. . . And the biggest thing was commitment. . . Say we’re gonna make this work. We’re just gonna stay with it and make it work no matter what the hell happens. That’s real useful, real important to people who want to do it. You gotta have some people involved that sort of understand how to make certain things work. How you can decide things with large numbers of people. Particularly with this consensual stuff that we’re doing. So you sorta gotta have your organizational structure. Certain things set to help the community survive and then the commitment. And that can work. We came up with ways over time. We didn’t have the organization thing. We sort of grew it as we went along. We will find systems to take care of us and meet our needs (August 1994).

One physical manifestation of this is in their monthly potluck dinners. After each

monthly meeting, there is a community-wide potluck dinner. At this dinner, tensions

are left at the meeting and members relax and enjoy each other’s company. When I

arrived at the potluck, people who were at each other’s throats earlier in the day, were

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laughing and chatting with each other.

I don’t think that Shannon is quite where they want to be as far as internal

relations with each other. However they have made the necessary commitment to

tackle the root of their problem -- to change the ways that decisions are made.

Additionally, no matter how tough the struggles had become, all the people I

interviewed expressed that there was no place else that they would rather be than

Shannon. I think Jason speaks for the community when he says,

The best part [about living at Shannon] is having a sense of an extended family and that there is great security in knowing that everyone around you is a friend. Not just a next door neighbor that you may or may not know. Everyone here on Shannon knows each other. We’re all good friends. We can all rely on each other for anything. If something comes up, at the core of things we’re all together. That’s really special (August 1994).

And that is what keeps them going.

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COMPROMISE AND COMMITMENT

The purpose of this thesis was to explore issues surrounding the long-term survival

of intentional communities. It focused on two communities that had to face and

overcome very real threats. The Farm served as an example of a community in danger

from external forces, while Shannon had to overcome internal forces. However, the

mechanisms that both communities employed to survive were compromise and

commitment.

I had the opportunity to visit these two communities and the main conclusion that

I drew from my research experience was that it is possible for communities to adapt

and change as needed for survival without compromising the original vision. In fact,

according to Rosabeth Kanter (1972), change is preferred. A rigid and static social

structure can not uphold the commitment factor needed to survive.

On the surface it looked to me as if the Farm did have to compromise its vision

(since they now have an unequal distribution of wealth). People were living at

different economic levels, Stephen Gaskin no longer conducted his services, and they

closed the front gate to the open membership that had made them famous. However,

after spending time observing and interviewing members, I realized that, although the

economic dynamics of the community had changed, many of the founding values had

not.

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The Farm was founded on the principles of maintaining a strong cohesive

community through communalism, non-violence, spirituality, and charitable outreach.

I believe that all those principles, with the exception of communalism, still exist.

However, what has changed are the institutions used to organize these principles. For

example, while the Farm is still strongly spiritually-oriented, the focus of that

spirituality has shifted from Stephen Gaskin to encompass a more nondenominational

practice. "We consider ourselves to be a spiritual community. . . . On Sunday

mornings many of us like to gather for group meditation and church services out in the

meadow" (Farm brochure, 1992).

The Farm has also maintained their vision of providing services to the larger

society. They manage a renowned birthing center where women from all over the area

come to have their babies delivered by experienced midwives. Additionally, they run

a program called Kids to the Country, inviting inner-city children (mostly from

Nashville) to come and spend time on the Farm. These kids participate in horseback

riding, camping, canoeing, swimming, and other activities foreign to their city lives.

Finally, the Farm’sPLENTY USA encompasses volunteer projects such as the Natural

Rights Center, a public policy research, education and litigation project. The Center’s

current activities include litigation on issues such as endangered species, toxic waste,

military impact, and radiation. Most recently the Farm has created Rocinante, one

hundred acres of land which will be used as a place to facilitate the co-operation of

expectant and new mothers, the elderly, the disabled, and people in the final stages of

life (Rocinante brochure). Farm members see this community as a place where these

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people can hold down their living expenses and improve the quality of their lives.

Like the Farm, Shannon has also maintained most of their original values

throughout the years. The community was founded on the following principles

(Bylaws of Shannon Farm Association, Inc.):

1. Belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person regardless of gender, race, age (young or old), sexual orientation, financial resources, property, or income;

2. Respect for the right of all to express their own beliefs about the nature of reality;

3. Concern about each other’s well-being;

4. Sharing power and responsibility to shape our community through a consensus decision-making process characterized by a cooperative search for solutions which fulfill and protect the needs of all concerned;

5. Commitment to resolve conflicts without violence, to take responsibility for our own actions, to communicate directly and honestly, and to be sensitive to the concerns of others;

6. Stewardship of the land and ecologically sound use of our resources.

I believe that Shannon was in grave danger of losing two of their values —

numbers 4 and 5. Although they strived for consensus-based decisionmaking, they

found themselves with a vocal minority that overtook many group meetings and

community-wide decisions. Now the community employs techniques (discussed in

Chapter 5) to ensure participation of all members.

Additionally, Shannon had to get to the heart of their internal dissensions to find

ways to resolve their problems. They brought in outside help in the form of C.T.

Butler’s formal consensus decisionmaking process when it became necessary and

committed themselves to completely its guidelines. While they still have some internal

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strife, I feel that members are committed enough to the community to work things out.

Finally, T saw repeated evidence that Shannon members have lived by the credo to

respect and encourage individual freedom, while at the same time, share in the

responsibility for the well-being of the community as a whole. Their economic

structure, which encourages members to work outside the community has helped them

strike that balance.

While the Farm and Shannon share many of the same values, such as the respect

for human rights, concern for the well-being of fellow members, and responsible

stewardship of the environment, notable differences between them do exist.

Significantly, I found the members of the Farm to be a much more diverse group than

those at Shannon. While both communities were predominately white, Shannon

members were much closer to each other in levels of education and income as well as

childhood upbringings.

One reason for this could be that Shannon started with a relatively homogeneous

group of young college graduates, while the Farm was formed around a charismatic

leader. As a charismatic leader in San Francisco in the late 1960s, Gaskin attracted

many different types of people to his teachings, from graduate students to teenage

runaways. Subsequently, this diversity followed him to Tennessee. Additionally, for

many years, the Farm served as a haven for unmarried, pregnant women and many, as

a result of this situation, were not able to attain higher educations or professional

training Communalism was one way to bring economic equality to this diverse

crowd. However, when the time came for Farm members to earn their own livings,

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some people had more marketable skills then others, hence, the economic diversity and

inequality that now exists.

Shannon, on the other hand, has seemed to attract a less diverse membership.

Most of the members have similar educations and professional skills. Therefore,

Shannon has managed to maintain economic equality without having to resort to

communalism. I believe that is the reason that they have been less pressured by

financial obligations and other external forces for most of their tenure.

THE SOCIAL RELEVANCE OF COMMUNAL SOCIETIES

Intentional communities are a viable social organization that is worthy of scholarly

attention. One way of looking at them (which I have tried to do here) is as

decisionmaking social units where the goal of human desires and dreams intersect with

organizational necessities. In looking at them in this way, intentional communities can

teach us about the nature of social bonding.

For the systematic examination of these various ways of trying to modify social structure, communes, with their unambiguous definitions of purpose and membership, their intricate and involuted role sets, and their well-defined but volatile hierarchies, constitute a useful natural laboratory (Zablocki, 1980:2).

Furthermore, the internal dynamics of intentional communities offer themselves up

to a vast array of research possibilities. For example, preliminary studies have shown

that intentional communities (even the most liberal ones) tend to adhere to strict,

traditional gender roles. This topic would be an interesting and worthy pursuit. Other

possibilities include researching family life, community-owned businesses, and urban

communes.

Finally, since both Shannon and the Farm expressed concern that they are aging

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and will eventually die out, it would be interesting to explore the youngest generation

of community members to investigate whether they want to inherit this lifestyle from

their parents. Informants told me that while most kids leave the community after high

school, there is evidence that they may return after they are married and want to settle

down and raise a family.

One major criticism of communities concerns their social relevance to the rest of

society. Historically, intentional communities have generally maintained strong

boundaries with the outside and have exclusively been concerned with their own

existences.

However, present day communities involve themselves with greater social concerns

of the outside world. Many address issues that are not only relevant to themselves, but

also to important social ills. For example, some rural cooperatives devote themselves

to finding way to combat poverty. Current activities at the Farm include the

previously mentioned PLENTY, a non-profit organizations dedicated to combating

world poverty, and Rocinante, an adjoining parcel of land which will be set up for the

elderly and disabled. Other contemporary communities have experimented with solar

energy and lobbied for state-wide recycling programs.

Although they have been slow to do so, communal societies do have the potential

to bring about social reform for the rest of us. For example, Israeli kibbutzim banded

together to form the Kibbutz Federation in order to give the movement more state­

wide recognition. At one time several members of the Israeli parliament came from

kibbutzes, indicating that the movement did gain some political influence. If

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American communities can combine into politically and socially relevant units, they

may be able to have positive social influence and affect reform for the rest of society.

The ultimate impact of communities on American society can not be readily

determined. However, the movement has sustained long enough to be considered more

than just an interesting deviance. Its existence has offered a set of alternatives to

Americans concerned about their quality of life and the lives of their families.

The communal movement will continue to experience fluctuations. It is hard to

predict whether they will die out, experience another big surge, or reconfigure into

something else altogether. Today’s communities encompass people of diverse ages

and lifestyles. However, no matter the differences in ideologies, values, and

organizational structure, the overarching goal of communal societies has remained a

constant.

The idea of community evokes in the individual the feeling that, ’Here is where I belong, these are my people, I care for them, they care for me, I am part of them, I know what they expect from me and I from them, they share my concerns, I know this place, I am on familiar ground, I am at home’ (Yankelovitch, 1981:227).

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LIST OF INFORMANTS

The Farm

Susan, age 44-15 years on the Farm.

Stephen Gaskin, age 60 - 23 years on the Farm.

Kim, age 48 - 20 years on the Farm.

Phil, age 46-12 years on the Farm, 10 years off the Farm, 9 months back on the Farm.

Vickie, age 39-17 years on the Farm.

Joel, age 50 - 23 years on the Farm.

Donald, age 58 - 12 years on the Farm, 9 years off, 2 years back on the Farm.

Barbara, age 44-16 years on the Farm.

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LIST OF INFORMANTS

Shannon Farm

Amelia, age 32-3 years at Shannon

Gary, age37-10 years at Shannon

John, age 45-19 years at Shannon

Jason, age 22-12 years at Shannon

Mike, age 34-4 1/2 years at Shannon

Will, age 39-10 years at Shannon

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MAP OF SHANNON

BEECH DRUNYMETON

THE RANCI CAT BRIAR ANOTHER ARARAT WORLD

GARDENS BARN MONACAN

72

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73

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