As you complete the readings for Wednesday (and post your required comment there), you may also be interested in an article published last Thursday in Vanity Fair. In "What Life is Like When You’re Born on a Commune," Erika Anderson tells the story of growing up on The Farm, the commune founded by Stephen Gaskin and featured in one of the assigned videos for our next meeting.

Anderson raises some questions that will likely come up in other readings this semester, including one about whether utopian communes are doomed to failure—especially when they are controlled by the vision of a single leader:

Are all utopias truly dystopias? Are elements of a dream also the seeds of its destruction: hubris, the overwhelming belief that this has never been done before, an utter lack of checks and balances? Before 1983, when The Farm essentially disbanded, and the population fell to its current 200, becoming an intentional community—far more autonomous than a commune, where everyone pays dues, lives in their own homes, drives their own cars, makes their own money—Gaskin could do no wrong in the eyes of his followers.

Yet despite her criticisms of The Farm, Anderson also claims that its influence was wide-ranging:

The legacy of The Farm reaches far beyond the guru who built it: the thousands who lived there, were born there, its visitors, its neighbors, the relatives, and the communities that received those who left, the midwives and mothers who followed Ina May, and anyone whose read a Farm book or watched a Farm documentary. I am one of many.

Feel free to post your reactions to the article in the comments below.