Word: twinning
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...there are a great many philosophical points of similarity between Walden Two and Twin Oaks. Skinner says "the Good Life means relaxation and rest"; at Twin Oaks, the prime aim is to finish one's work in four hours or less, so as to have "more time for swimming, listening to music, making love, or doing yoga." In both societies, the family occupies an ambiguous position: monogamous marriage is perfectly acceptable, but so is adultery; children in any event are kept out of the way. (In fact, no children are as yet allowed in Twin Oaks, five years after...
...TWIN OAKS folk, perhaps unaccustomed to such "freedom" desperately insist on their straightness, even though one of the announced goals of the community is a good conscience for all. In this respect they are more human than the satisfaction-maximizing fictions of Walden Two. Thus, drugs are prohibited, material order and punctuality demanded, runaways promptly returned to the police, and, in general, "mixed-up people looking for shelter" are kept out of the community, in favor of "normal people looking for something significant to do with themselves." The normal people have also decided that the "mentally ill" have no place...
This underlying system of attitudes is more manifestly at work in the Twin Oaks community than in Walden Two, because the former lacks much of the scientistic veneer which cloaks these attitudes in Skinner's work. Behaviorism is, in this context, a vehicle by which Skinner advances the prejudices of an age in the imposing guise of "objective understanding...
...MEMBERS OF Twin Oaks place a great deal of stress on "competence" in performing the various chores which must be done for the benefit of all. In this guise, the competitiveness Kinkade believes they have banished is actually resurrected; this is a new form of amour propre: the desire to outdo the other in altruism. The person who works the hardest creates the greatest amount of leisure time for everyone; each member is driven by public opinion to attain this ideal and in turn forces it upon the others, for no one wants to be the object of community disapproval...
...this system is, of course, the desire for fun and relaxation; otherwise, there would be no competitive pressures toward altruistic work, and no motive for escaping community opprobrium or banishment. But can a society survive on such a pleasure principle? If one looks closely, it is apparent that the Twin Oaks community has not even tested the principle yet. Skinner's claim in the foreward to the book that Twin Oaks "is the world in miniature" is simply untrue. It is an artificial community: its population is very small and, as the author admits, homogenous due to its selective admissions...