Talk:Twin Oaks Community
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[edit] Criticisms of Twin Oaks
The worst criticism that can be made to Twin Oaks community is that the objective of the original community thought by Skinner, Walden Two, wasn't to achieve a good life for a hundred persons only, but global political change, a change in society as a whole, and it seems that Twin Oaks has ceased to search that objective.
-Shevek.
I strongly disagree with your statement that Twin Oaks has ceased to seek large-scale political change. There is no consensus among the members about what the appropriate level of engagement with outside politics is, but the majority of members are politically active beyond simply living in the community. For example, one member sits on several boards of directors of non-profits, has been arrested for political activism a half-dozen times, has organized a campaign to prevent a nuclear power plant from being built in the region, is one of the Western hemisphere's most vocal promoters of polyamory, etc. Several others are active members of Food Not Bombs chapters in Richmond and Charlottesville. Though I not sure what the current status of this is, some of the members historically have been fairly prolific writers in activist publications. The community donates money and labor hours every year to nonprofit and activist groups dealing with women's rights, human rights, gay rights, racism, and other causes. It's true that being an activist is not a requirement for membership at Twin Oaks, but any fair reading of the community would admit that hardly any, or perhaps even no, members of the community think that Twin Oaks's purpose is merely to better its own members' lives. (For more on this, see Kat Kinkade's books' discussions of why people join, or see an article that I co-wrote entitled "A Better World is Possible!" that is available on Twin Oaks' website. If you read the Richmond Style Weekly article on Twin Oaks, take it with a VERY strong grain of salt - the article was written when I was there, and literally every member who read it was stunned by the author's virtually warrantless claim that Twin Oaks was no longer interested in politics.)
(Note: I lived at Twin Oaks for 1 year, about 5 years ago, have conducted formal interviews with a dozen members, have read almost everything ever published about the community, and visit the community about 2 or 3 times a year. These are the foundations for my point of view. Others may disagree, but unless they cite evidence supporting their opinions, are just making baseless assertions.)
-Chicken Soda
One criticism I have of Twin Oaks is that they make no attempt to integrate the youth of the community into their culture, often resulting in teenagers who won't eat community food and only attend parties so that they can laugh at the adults. I've visited the community several times and only on my last visit was it obvious to me that teenagers inhabited the place (and this is because my sister, a member, now lives in a residence with two parent-and-children style families). They go to school, return home, and retreat to their rooms for the most part. I think the idea is to allow the children the freedom to express themselves however they want, but when kids are attending public schools and making friends with townies that think communes are weird, then OF COURSE it encourages rebellion against the lifestyle that they know. It's amazing to meet young people raised at Twin Oaks since they were babies, and these same young people ridicule the culture they were raised in. I'm not saying that the young people need censorship or steering in a certain direction, but that perhaps the founders of the community did not consider youth's tendency to rebel when planning their culture. I'm also not suggesting that I have a solution to youth rebellion, either - it seems to be inherent to western culture to rebel during the teenage years, no matter what social class or sub/counterculture you were raised in. I know of "grown-up punks" whose children are so square, it hurts. - Rashaun 00:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Advert and POV nightmare
To me, this whole thing reads like an advert and a POV nightmare. Would anyone else happen to agree? --Takeel 21:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
- Yep, well, the criticism is a POV problem, the rest is not as much, but it still reads as if it already expects you to be interested in joining. On a somewhat unrelated note, would the non-violence part exclude communists for their support of revolution? More precisely, would your political ideology have to support non-violence or just your actions? If the former, that would be my criticism.--Fasterthanyou 04:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Well, this is interesting. Takeel and i just had a friendly and satisfying conversation about cleaning up the vanity aspects of the entry on me. Now we get to work together (hopefully as effectively) on cleaning up the Twin Oaks entry - which i did have some involvement with, but not that much. So i will make cuts and changes soon to reduce the POV and Ad-like aspects of the article. And then, hopefully, i can get some specific pointers on what remains weak. The first part of the conversation on this page, while interesting (and with some wonderful people i know), is not appropriate for this page. Paxuscalta 00:41, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
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- I've done some minor cleanup of the first two paragraphs, and I've also added some inline citations. Since I don't usually do major edits, I'm rather wary and I hope that others will also contribute. Citations and tightening are needed more than anything. --Takeel 03:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
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Well thx, Takeel. The main article is much cleaner now in terms of POV problems. I have made a few cosmetic changes, including trying to get the first citations addressed. I will see if i can get the last section "Critisms of Twin Oaks" adjusted by some editors we have here (at Twin Oaks). Paxuscalta 14:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
What still feels missing is more of the abandonment of behaviorism - a casual reader might think we still embrace it, since the two references to dropping it have been deleted. We are working of line on the Crit of Twin Oaks section, it will be up shortly. Paxuscalta 22:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, that's definitely an important item to note because it was a large part of the inspiration of Twin Oaks. --Takeel 22:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Last Paragraph
Hey guys, think we can add any more citation needed tags? I think there might be room! Oddly, sentences like "Twin Oaks' commitments to absolute nonviolence and near-absolute equality are obviously unappealing to some people of some political persuasions" don't demand citation, despite the fact that they are completely without meaning.
Just to make my point clearly, for this article and all others: Sticking "citation needed" all over the place makes an article unreadable and is tantamount to vandalism as far as I'm concerned. If an article is lacking citations on the whole, there exists boilerplate for that. It is unnecessary to make the article illegible in the name of comprehensiveness. Ipsenaut (talk) 19:41, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Population
I couldn't find how many people are at TO. The article is kind of long, so it's possible I missed it (reading a screen is not easy). So, please, either add it, or -- if the number is already given -- make it easier to see. Kdammers (talk) 10:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
