This paper was written for a specific audience: my fellow members of Twin Oaks Community. It is both a limited survey  of types of social organisms and an inquiry into the drift of Twin Oaks from its original vision.

Lately I’ve been taking with Skyblue [a fellow community member] about clarifying the purpose of Twin Oaks Community. These conversations have provoked me to sort out my own thinking on this subject. When I was a Planner here a few years ago I sponsored a community-wide visioning process that fizzled out, like so many similar efforts before it. Since then, I've been pessimistic about Twin Oaks' ability to productively engage in visioning and values clarification. It seems that as a group we lack the motivation needed to engage in such a process. Is this a failing on our part or simply a natural dimension of the community that we’ve evolved into?

To explore this question I’ve sketched out some distinctions amongst several types of "social organisms". The definitions that follow are somewhat arbitrary. If some of these terms have different meanings for you, please bear with me. My aim here is to usefully point out a few key aspects of the vast realm we call "community". Obviously these are generalizations. Many shades of gray and fine points could be appended. (And all these groups can have "unhealthy" dimensions and variants as well.) My hope is that these distinctions might spark some useful conversation about the nature of Twin Oaks.

A Tribe is a group of folks who share a livelihood and a mythology (i.e. a shared Story that answers questions like: Who are we? and Where are we going? and What’s our rightful place in this big universe?) Members of a Tribe live in physical proximity, with nearly daily contact amongst themselves. The highest values in a tribe are generosity, integrity, sacrifice.

A Neighborhood is a group of folks who live in proximity, but not necessarily in economic association with each other. Highest values in healthy neighborhoods include neighborliness(being sociable, watching out for each others kids, helping out in an emergency, etc) and tolerance (a live and let live attitude: "Different strokes for different folks".)

A Family is a group of people who join together in a long term commitment to supporting each others' quest for health and happiness. The central values of a healthy Family inched fidelity, intimacy, encouragement and forgiveness.

An Ensemble is a group of folks who come together to realize a shared creative/artistic goal. There are Dance Ensemble, Social Change Ensembles, Singing Ensembles, Circus Ensembles, Construction Ensembles. An Ensemble may or may not "live together". The central values in an Ensemble are beauty, dedication and esprit de corps.

A Crew is a group that share a responsibility for executing a specific job or task. The job has relatively fixed parameters: garden crew, STP crew, dairy crew. The central values of a good Crew are reliability, excellence and consideration.

A Set is a group that associate around a recreational or lifestyle orientation: the Compost Cafe Set, the 20-something Set, the Poker Set, the Juggling Set. The central values of a Set are enjoyment and camaraderie (and sometimes prestige and status, but let’s not go there). In the context of Twin Oaks, to join a Set you just need to show up and act within the Set's "norms".

A Fellowship is a group of comrades that share a heartfelt vision and practice of personal and/or cultural development/evolution. Highest values are synergy and embodiment (of the group's values). Habitat for Humanity, Doctors Without Borders and the Jesuit Order are well known Fellowships. The group that founded Twin Oaks was perhaps an embryonic Fellowship. They shared an enthusiasm for the noble Walden Two vision of designing a just, easygoing, yet dynamic society in which all members were empowered to realize their positive potentials. What the Twin Oaks founders lacked was an effective "program" or methodology through which to realize the Walden Two vision of a Pragmatically Utopian Social Laboratory. (Such a program would need to be "user friendly" -- easily passed on to new members.) A viable Fellowship needs practical (and explicit) ethics and a gymnasium/lab that keep members fit and focused on the core purpose.

Enough definitions for now! On to the diagnosis! Twin Oaks as it exists today is a unique and unprecedented hybrid and patchwork of all these forms. In some ways the mix is beautiful and synergistic, in other ways it’s contradictory and dysfunctional. In particular, the conflict between our "Neighborhood" function and our "Fellowship" function is a source of ongoing difficulty, stifled potential and crossed purposes.

In this regard let's look a bit more at our founding vision. Walden Two, as depicted in B. F. Skinner's novel, encompassed all the social forms I've sketched out here. The inclusive, easygoing, tolerant, Neighborhood aspect of Walden Two is vividly portrayed. Individuals and Sets within the community happily go their own way. Some members aren't at all interested in the Utopian, world transforming goals at the community's core. At the same time, strong Ensembles and Fellowships thrive throughout the Community. The Planners function as the fundamental Ensemble/Fellowship. They are conscientious, dedicated, highly skilled "cultural engineers" who carefully and experimentally design the overall framework of their society --always with an aim to best support the freedom and fulfillment of all the community's members. Likewise every area of community life--agriculture, child rearing, housekeeping, industry, architecture--is stewarded by managerial "ensembles" that devote themselves to finding/inventing/refining the best possible way to conduct the "business" of their domains. Effectiveness, Elegance and Economy are the aesthetic ideals of the Walden Two physical plant. Harmony, Flexibility, Equality and Excellence are the greatest social goods. These values are not imposed by edict from above. They’re embodied in the ethics of the Ensembles and "programmed" in the social design of the community, especially in its child rearing techniques.

In short, Walden Two is a big (500+ members!) thriving Neighborhood/Tribe, full of creative Ensembles and Fellowships, looser knit Sets and crews, and plenty of breathing space for loners, introverts and/or the unambitious to feel at home and well employed as well.

Certainly Twin Oaks functions in this spirit at times. I myself am thrilled to see our gardens ever more skillfully managed by Pam, George and the other dedicated gardeners who work and innovate through the ups and downs of the growing season with such good cheer. There's also plenty of individuals who cultivate excellence and higher goals in their work areas and/or their personal lives.

Overall, though, what has become of the original vision? As I understand the story, soon after its founding, Twin Oaks was brimming with hippies who had little knowledge of or interest in Professor Skinner's "square" Utopian blueprint. The Hippies had their own cultural ethics and vision: "Do your own thing." "Go with the Flow." "Don't lay your trip on me". The Hippies were certainly experimental, but had a vastly different methodology from what Skinner advocated. These two cultures (and others as well) have clashed and conversed and over the years a compromise has been forged: we kept the explicit structures and boundaries of our labor system, economic agreements and policies; we've gradually dropped the ideal that our culture would/could be planned, designed or engineered. The quiet collapse of the Meta childcare program a few years ago was a big milestone in the fading of the Walden Two vision. Our vast body of policy aims more at maintaining equity and peaceful coexistence than at cultivating excellence or deepening our communion.

Here’s the gist of how I see our current reality: we function quite nicely as a Quasi-Tribal EcoSocialist Neighborhood. But as a group we lack the vibrant vision needed to bond and function creatively in our community planning or governance. And thus we’re not very successful as a Fellowship on the world's playing field. Yes, we do have a presence on the web and a well run and popular visitor program. We'll keep attracting replacement members, no problem. And the world is definitely a better place with Twin Oaks in it! Yet the world is being rapidly fouled and squandered by its current "social ecology". The ideal of Twin Oaks is to Expand/Disseminate an irresistibly just/kind/green/sustainable/fun/relevant social organism into that world. That we’re only marginally succeeding at! Twin Oaks/East Wind/Acorn aren’t much larger or more innovative than they were 7 years ago. Communities set up along our lines are founded rarely and succeed even less.

Our cultural evolution has largely stalled because we aren't balancing the diversity, tolerance, and anarchy of a good neighborhood with the cohesion, accountability, and creativity needed for a great Ensemble or Fellowship. Is it interest or skill that we lack? Certainly most of us didn't grow up in a culture that trained us in the art of Ensemble building. As it stands, we've created a lovely, comfortable, Eco-village and "country living school" for ourselves. But it’s quite idiosyncratic, not a very prolific cultural organism, compared to, say, Starbucks or Alcoholics Anonymous or even CoHousing or Community Supported Agriculture. We can probably carry on more or less as we are for another hundred years if the world doesn't rudely crash in on our enclave. But our central purpose of Expanding an elegant, egalitarian, Earth Friendly way of life that is relevant to the world at large has become Irrelevant to our ongoing life. We have yearly economic planning. We do not have annual Relevance planning. Different subgroups have cherished ideals of greater self sufficiency or eco-purity or personal growth or (fill in the blank). But as a collective we lack the interest, the aptitude and/or the shared core ethics needed to be the "cultural software" laboratory our Bylaws say we aim to be. We putter along with our lovely green plateau: we still adamantly resist a possible devolution into more of a typical Neighborhood/Co-op with limited economic independence among households. But we aren’t rising to become the Fellowship of Ensembles that is the heart of the Walden Two vision. Perhaps we no longer want to… That’s no crime, is it?

"Well Craig," you may be saying, "this paper is turning out to be a downer. Don't you have some hopeful prescription of how we might find a better balance between Neighborhood and Fellowship?"

Funny you should ask! Yes I do! While I don’t believe that Ensembles and Fellowships can be created "from above" by Planner edict or design, I do believe they can be nurtured at the grassroots! Here's where the Healing Carnival comes in. This paper is long enough--I won’t launch into a full description of the Healing Carnival now. (I’ve written plenty about it on the Twin Oaks web site. Read all about it at: www.twinoaks.org/carnival.) In brief, the Healing Carnival project is a grope towards building a dynamic Tribe/Neighborhood/Fellowship of Ensembles that is fired up with a common passion for creating a World that Works for Everyone.

Growing Ensembles and Fellowships ain't easy, but it’s our best hope for creating a beautiful world for our children's children. That's my hunch anyway.

I'm a blind man piecing together a description of an elephant. Perhaps you have a little different take. Or a very different take. Let's grope together towards the bigger truths! I love talking about this stuff, so feel free to approach me with any responses you have to this paper. Written comments are fine too. Or if you're more of a Do-er, come to one of the Healing Carnival Ensembles I facilitate:

-Wednesday Juggling at 5 PM in the Bijou.

-Sunday round singing (Harmony through Harmony!) at 7:15 PM in the Bijou.

No previous experience is required to participate in either of these groups!