Community living tests utopian beliefs

When Kathleen Kincaid, 77, died from complications of bone cancer earlier this month, her dream died with her.

Her greatest hope was to create communities of caring persons who, by shunning possessions and ambition, might create the best of all possible worlds for themselves — little heavens on earth.

Utopians have been around forever, but “Kat” Kincaid’s definition of Eden originated in the 1960s, when alienated young men and women fled from commerce and conflict to form rural communes — extended families of otherwise unrelated persons devoted to becoming economically and contentedly self-sufficient.

In 1967 she was a single mother living with her infant daughter in Los Angeles. As a class assignment in night school, she read the book “Walden Two” by B.F. Skinner, a psychologist who argued that people could re-program their lives to provide for one another’s needs and live peacefully together.

After moving to a group house in Washington, D.C., she married a resident. Together, they inspired another would-be utopian to lease a small Virginia farm 35 miles from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Five more enthusiasts joined them to create a primitive community they named Twin Oaks. Members come and go, but today, 41 years later, Twin Oaks is still home to an extended family of 85 income-sharing adults and 15 children.

Joe Holley, writing in The Washington Post, reveals that “each member receives food, housing, health care, and personal spending money from the community, whose income derives primarily from making high-quality rope hammocks and casual furniture” plus indexing books and marketing tofu.

When freeloading hippies tried to crash the community, “Kat” quickly discovered that governing a utopian community was an onerous task. Her daughter, now a physician, says, “My mother was disappointed that Twin Oaks did not turn out to be the model for what the rest of our society would be. When she found out that it was really just a nice place for some middle-class people to live, she was disappointed.”

After a time, she left Twin Oaks to help create two similar income-sharing communes in Missouri and Virginia. In retirement, she bought her own little house in Mineral, Va., and devoted her life to planting flowers and rescuing abandoned kittens. When she was no longer able to live alone, her former Twin Oaks “family” invited her back and cared for her until her death.

Utopians share a belief in the innocence and perfectibility of human nature — a faith that is severely tested by the rigors of cooperative living. Although 1960s-style secular communes are hard-pressed to survive, there are some 20,000 thriving utopian communities across the nation. The vast majority of them are religiously motivated. Their members acknowledge human conflict and the need for mutual discipline to ensure peace. They find it in God’s providence.

It’s worth mentioning that, although “Kat” Kincaid’s utopianism had no room for religious faith, she refused to allow her atheism to keep her from singing in the Yanceyville Church choir.

Scripps Howard News Service