Inside an Intentional Community

BRIAN: We’ve spent most of today’s show focused on Utopian communities that, well, quite frankly, didn’t work out. But across the country there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of intentional communities that are alive and well. They come in all shapes and sizes, some closely connected to mainstream society, and others much more removed.

PETER: One of the most prominent is Twin Oaks, founded nearly 50 years ago in central Virginia. We called up a long time resident, Keenan Dakota, to ask what it’s like to have spent several decades helping build an egalitarian community. Keenan, welcome to BackStory.

KEENAN DAKOTA: Hi, there.

BRIAN: Hey, Keenan.

ED: Hey. Hey, Keenan.

PETER: Hey, Keenan, can you give us a little background on what Twin Oaks is?

KEENAN DAKOTA: OK, so Twin Oaks community these days is 105 people living in rural Virginia on 500 acres. And we have three businesses. One is making hammocks, the other is making tofu, and the other his heritage and heirloom seeds. The company is called Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

And the main value that holds all this together is that we all live here equally. So there’s no economic elite, there’s no political elite, there’s no spiritual elite. We’re all sort of a random and equally empowered group of people who have managed to be running this experiment ever since 1967.

PETER: Wow. That’s an extraordinary record, Keenan. Americans have been pursuing equality for a long time, and they usually end up quarreling with each other.

KEENAN DAKOTA: I mean, the thing about pursuing equality is like, it is a really hard task, because the tendency of humanity seems to be towards social stratification.

PETER: Right.

BRIAN: Keenan, I have a lot of trouble just with Ed and Peter.

ED: We’re a real democracy here.

PETER: No, we’re not Brian’s equals, so it’s not a problem.

BRIAN: So how do you make it work?

KEENAN DAKOTA: Well, so what Twin Oaks does is everybody has to work their share, which is 42 hours a week, and you can work anywhere in the community, including child care, or washing dishes, or cooking, or in the businesses. And it’s up to the individual where their work goes, but at the end of the week, you have to have done your 42 hours somewhere.

PETER: Well, how do you get necessary tasks done? Or do you just have this is magical way of dividing labor that people do all the necessary tasks? Or does somebody have to step up and say, I’m going to sacrifice for the group right now and do something I really hate to do.

KEENAN DAKOTA: Well, there are two answers to that. I mean, one is, Twin Oaks has been going for getting on 50 years, so we are fairly successful getting the tasks done.

PETER: Right.

KEENAN DAKOTA: And what we have is, we have a weekly process where there’s a couple of people who do worksheets and will schedule work to make sure that there’s somebody taking care of the kids and somebody cooking a meal. And so there’s usually a list of people are willing to do that work, and they will just find that it shows up on their sheet.

ED: So you don’t have 50 years of unwashed dishes piling up.

KEENAN DAKOTA: Right. But the other answer to that is we actually make a fairly substantial sacrifice in efficiency. Because if you have people who are doing like four, or five, or six different jobs in a week, they’re not going to be particularly efficient in any one job. But we make enough money and get enough done so that the community’s doing well.

PETER: So, Keenan, one of the great obsessions of Americans in their pursuit of happiness is accumulating property.

BRIAN: We’re an ownership society.

PETER: We are. But you don’t. Everything is collective with you. Explain exactly, what is the status of, well, personal possessions, of property, of things.

KEENAN DAKOTA: So at Twin Oaks, everybody has their own bedroom, and anything that is in their bedroom is their own possession. But everything else is owned communally. So we have a fleet of 15 vehicles, and if I want to take a vehicle, I can go and sign one out and take it, but I don’t own it. And our bank account is also communal, and we have a big library of clothes. Like a big thrift store. And I can go in there and get any clothes I want, and then when I’m done, I can throw them back in the communal dirty laundry I don’t have to clean them.

BRIAN: Unless you’re on duty that week.

KEENAN DAKOTA: Right.

ED: Do you feel that you are sort of standing outside of American history, a kind of alternative to it, or do you feel like you’ve taken the best that America has to offer and sort of refined it? How would you define your relationship?

KEENAN DAKOTA: Well, that’s a good question. I mean, I think that American culture and American history are to continue to experiment and to try new things. And I think it that what Twin Oaks is doing is doing the same thing culturally. Well, let’s try this and see how it works.

PETER: But Keenan, when you started, or when the community started before your time, it was very much part of the countercultural 1960s stuff.

KEENAN DAKOTA: Well, that’s not true.

PETER: Not true. OK, I’m wrong.

KEENAN DAKOTA: It was a coincidence, sort of, that Twin Oaks started in 1967, which was the heyday of communes. But a whole bunch of hippies came to Twin Oaks, and many of them were disappointed in what they found, that Twin Oaks is very structured, and very focused on hard work, and not freewheeling in any of the ways that hippies were looking for.

BRIAN: Keenan, you know there’s a long history of actual Utopian communities, especially the 19th century. To what extent did Twin Oaks draw upon that in setting itself up and in the lessons it drew from other communities?

KEENAN DAKOTA: Well, essentially, Twin Oaks learned nothing from the historical community except to not do things that way. Because the historical communities don’t exist anymore. And for a couple of reasons.

One is that they relied on a strong leader, so they weren’t focused on equality at all. Maybe in theory, but in practice, they weren’t. And so, once you lose your strong leader in any organization, then things tend to go belly up.

PETER: Mm-hm. I did notice, Keenan, that you name your buildings after intentional communities, or at least there’s a–

KEENAN DAKOTA: Yeah, we have Oneida and Harmony. So, certainly we respect that history, but mainly as, like don’t let this happen to you.

BRIAN: Right You’re really laughing at those communities by naming your buildings after them.

KEENAN DAKOTA: Yeah. We only can name our buildings after communities that no longer exist.

BRIAN: There you go.

KEENAN DAKOTA: So as we build more buildings, we are hoping that more communities fail so we have more names to choose from.

PETER: Thanks so much for sharing your insights, Keenan. It’s been wonderful talking with you.

BRIAN: Thank you, Keenan.

KEENAN DAKOTA: Well, thank you so much for having me.

BRIAN: Bye, bye.