Twin Oaks Intentional Community

Abstract

Abstract Twin Oaks is a community of approximately one hundred members in rural Louisa, Virginia, originally inspired by the utopian writings of the American psychologist B. F. Skinner. The community’s values are based on the four core principles of income sharing, nonviolence, egalitarianism, and cooperation. Music’s ethical status at Twin Oaks is related to the community’s internal economy, inspired by Skinner’s novel Walden Two. Its labor system poses special problems and possibilities for musicians living in the community and encourages complex conversations about the value of artistic activity in which members pose versions of the question: What kind of good should music be and how should we value it? At first glance, the “planner–manager” system of governance that Twin Oaks adopted from Skinner’s novel appears highly bureaucratic and restrictive. But in fact it is organized around nearly continuous, collective deliberation and situated reasoning—social capacities that are honed through the community’s musical practices.