Communes

I have written before on my deeply mixed feelings about communes. Jim Windolf's new Vanity Fair article on The Farm, a commune in the woods of Tennessee, gives me another chance to discuss this issue.

The Farm is a bit legendary among Tennessee progressives, although for reasons I never could quite understand. To be fair, any commune that's been around 35 years has beaten the odds. Windolf gives a pretty fair view of what is happening there. Although I have some respect for the sentiment going into such activities, I can't help but thinking that what they are doing is ultimately pointless. I simply believe that when people withdraw from society, they become worthless to society. They may be trying to live their own City Upon a Hill or they may just want to get away from everything, but unless they actively make connections between their own activities and the world at large, they are doing nothing of value. Windolf talks about some of the environmental technologies Farm members are working on, but it's hard to care. I mean it's interesting and all to grow bamboo in part from people urinating on it (which bamboo likes) but I'm not sure how this is applicable to much of anything.

On a more personal note, I used to know someone who grew up on The Farm. My interactions with her made me laugh at the mention of the school out there. This was one of the most dogmatic and uneducated people I have ever met. She knew the U.S. government was doing bad things and she could speak passionately about it in a shrill sort of way. But she couldn't spell even the most basic words, she knew no details about much of anything, and God forbid you try to engage her in a real conversation. I personally remember with not too much fondness discussing the whole Native American/Indian naming thing with her. She insisted it must always be Native American. I mentioned that I knew lots of Indians who preferred that title to the more recent one. It became stunningly clear that she didn't actually know any Native Americans, yet she insisted on her point of view. Not surprisingly, she was also a Maoist.