Zendik

haha.... good times, right?

 

Maybe Bob Dylan was talking about the Zendiks when he wrote Maggie's Farm.

It almost sounds like an identical situation....



Funk dem bitches

 

Ha! I just remembered this time I was at a Phish show in ATL and the Zendiks were there trying to peddle their bullshit (which they were giving away and we heard it and it sucked major) and recrute folk.

Anyway all the folks on the lot were just shitting on them and being drunken and very asshole which was funny as hell!! This one guy was talking with them and asked them if it had anything to do with Zen and they said no and this other guy asked if it had anything to do with dicks and they were like "Fuck this!" and started packing up their shit!!


Ran them bitches straight off the lot...

 

im gonna move to the zendik farm, not sure when, but i want 2

 

Doors: That's certainly your choice. Just be ware that Zendik is not the open, fun, free place that they market it as. Somewhere down the road, the Zendiks took the first exit off the "truthway" and ended up where they are now. As for as I know they aren't going to force you to do anything horrible, but beware of their mind games and have a place to go back to in case you get kicked out or choose to leave!

Good Luck

 

door: check it out, BUT make sure you have a place to go home to if it doesn't work out.... and a means of getting home. many people have gone there with nowhere to go, which sucks, so make sure u haven't burnt bridges........one can create a life of there own, just believe!!

 

The "spec check" might be an effective means of birth control (for some women) when combined with other fertility awareness practices (which the Zendiks didn't do), but spec checks do nothing to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, making it a stupid and dangerous practice for people with multiple partners.

And what I can't stress enough is that spec checks were MANDATORY. Other birth control methods were unavailabe, not allowed, and maligned by Zendik "philosophy" as artificial and unhealthy (!).

New Zendiks were told that safe sex was unnecessary because the Zendiks had a sex quarantine program for incoming members-- a few weeks of enforced celibacy during which newcomers were sent to a local clinic for a batch of STD tests. Once your negative results came in, the quarantine ended.

Considering that (at the time) two sexually active long-term Zendiks were known to have genital herpes, the quarantine and testing were meaningless.

And the quarantine might not be enforced at all if a core Zendik wanted to get it on with a newbie and didn't think the person would be around long enough to wait for test results.

There was a "mysterious" chlamydia outbreak at Zendik in 1993. Zendik health administrators shrugged their shoulders and made some ridiculous attempts to explain it, avoiding the obvious failure of Zendik quarantine and the risks inherent in unprotected sex with multiple partners (who have multiple partners who have multiple partners who have multiple partners, etc). Only Zendiks with symptoms (and people they'd recently slept with) were tested and treated in response to the outbreak, regardless of the fact that (this from the planned parenthood website) "Usually, chlamydia has no symptoms. Seventy-five percent of women and 50 percent of men with chlamydia have no symptoms. Most people are not aware that they have the infection." They should have quarantined and tested EVERYBODY.

I'll take the raincoat, thank you.

Debates about HIV testing accuracy and incubation periods happened on occasion. But suggestions of six-month sex quarantines followed by re-testing were rejected because of the severe limits they would impose on sexual activity-- Zendik's turnover rate was so high that very little "Fresh Meat" would be sampled by long-term members if a six-month quarantine was implemented.

But hey, the folks with herpes weren't allowed to have sex while they had sores. That's safe, right?

Planned Parenthood again:
"We now know that it is possible, but less likely, to get herpes from someone who does not have sores. Over the course of one year, the chance of getting genital herpes from an infected partner who has no symptoms is 10 percent."

 

(Again, I'm too slow)

Doors 67, what attracts you to Zendik Farm?

 

If you don't want to sleep with someone and you don't have a lot of respect there, do they like force you or something?

 

i think the zendiks are a bunch of pretentious hippies, who don't want to deal with real life

 

Note to Mallus from the previous page. You said you'd only read good things about Zendik before coming to this thread? Did you read the article at the third address you cited? It's a stinging critque of Zendik - gives ya the willies.

http://www.geocities.com/theangryearth/collective.html

 

If you were in a couple and weren't having sex with other people, eventually you'd be accused of monogamy and would be given a directive ("coerced" rather than "forced") to sleep with others.

Of course, failure to follow directives would result in expulsion from Zendik, so...

Maybe "forced" is a good word for it after all.

 

I should have clarified that I first came to this thread a few months ago. I found other links in the meantime.

I'm not really sure what to believe.

 

Transmission of herpes did occur while I was there. Bugz had been asymptomatic for awhile, and Crea was with him only once. It should be remembered that the ten percent a year figure is only an average.

 

FTNW -
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/07/267435.shtml
http://www.freedomtribenw.org/Links.htm - he links to Zendik Farm's site.

I thought you were against Zendik Farm, rallying for legal action and shit?

 

I recently noticed that Chen, who functioned as Arol's vizier for years is missing from the people line-up on the Zendik website. Did he leave? Looking at the Zendik people list on their website is like when the CIA used to check out the line up at Soviet military parades: they could tell who was in favor by how close they were standing to Stalin or whoever else was the Primier at the time. When someone dissappeared from the line-up it meant they were probably in Siberia. Is Chen now in Zendik Siberia with the rest of us? I thought he was one of the more intelligent of the Zendik party members.

 

Word on the street is that Chen is in a psych ward. But the street isn't the most reliable source. He's definitely not at Zendik anymore.

Chen's been in and out of the group for a couple of decades. I liked him because he was the only person brave enough to contradict Arol. They would actually have arguments. The work he did for their magazine was important enough that they'd keep him around even when he pissed them off.

The rest of us just got the boot.

 

This is really crazy. I don't know about the lawsuit idea, but perhaps people with grievences against them should get together and discuss it, especially if some of them are living in fear. Besides, there are children living in that enviroment; how well are they treated?

 

Wow, Chen's really gone eh? The vultures are circling closer. At least they still have Wulf. He won't talk back - maybe he's got a future on the farm.

Perhaps the plan to subdivide their farm and sell the lots to the highest bidder was the straw that sent Chen off to somewhere "safe" to get deprogrammed.

 

I thought it odd that after all of the years he was at the farm, he left shortly

after he and Shey had a child together. He then came back but is now gone again. Shey and the child, Thea, have also left the farm.