Zendik

deleted.

 

Does anyone know if the "postzendik" site is down or is it just me that can't get in?

 

I just checked for you and it does appear to be down. I can’t access the site either.

 

[font=&quot]The postzendik.com site was down but it's back up now. Its primary administrator recently moved and he had to reconfigure his server. I just accessed the site, and it works as of [/font][font=&quot]1:45[/font][font=&quot] central time on Monday 4/18.

Anyone with an interest in Zendik or just communal living in general is invited to check it out and participate regardless on how you feel about Zendik.

In fact, if they like, the Zendiks are welcome to post (we only ask that if you are a current Zendik that you identify yourself as such, anonymously, of course). Postzendik is all about free speech. [/font]

 

It seams osuMatt has deleted all his posts. Perhaps a mod could remove those as it makes the thread look messy. frog too.

 

Kind of strange, osumatt writing and then Deleting. I never read his posts, but I gather they were very negative. I wonder what his deal is.

 

Yea they were in my opinion and not based on any facts or personal experiences. Like I said above he even had rasha defending the zendiks.

Anyway his last post was:

 

Osumatt: just because people disagree with you doesn't mean that they don't believe you have a right to write whatever you want, but they also have a right to disagree.

As for Zendik children: How much choice do you think the millions of children attending our factory education schools across this country have? Are average mainstream American kids any less brainwashed than Zendik kids? I suggest not. Kids are bombarded with advertising and ideology in this society. Why is the Zendik ideology necessarily any less legitimate than commercialism?

 

Damn, that's some fucked up shit. Why would someone refer me to THAT?

 

Well reading about your starvation there caused me to raid the kitchen. Mmmmmm, trail mix, orange juice, wheat thins. Score one for society after all.

 

While I had some problems with Zendik, I never starved there. The food was actually pretty good.

 

Postzendik.com is still messed up, but should be back up shortly

 

Well my posts were kind of negative so thats why I deleted them.

I think children in todays mainstream society have more free will to explore whats right for them. Of course society, teachers, TV, media, Radio and their parents will always inflict their teachings, views, and misinformation on them. That will always occur, but still more and more children are able to explore out in this world, then if you were a child in some cult.

If you were raised and brought up by Zendiks, you wouldn't no any other way since they isolate you from the real world. Such is the case for the child Red Lentil speaked of who didn't even know what a dollar bill was. That comment is what makes me think the children aren't being properly educated. Ya its great that they teach kids about Wulfs philosphy, but that was just his words based on his expereince. His expereince and philosphy is only valid for him. Their getting a totaly biased view on life and living, so they think the Zendik way is the only right way. Now a kid in public school gets a biased view as well, but they can tottaly make up their own opinions and beliefs on that more easier. They go to school with many different people each day, so they learn about a vast number of things compared to being in a cult with just 50 members thinking on the same level for the most part. Kids in this material world have room to explore and find out the TRUTH then if you were in some cult.

Wouldn't you agree?

I just get the overall impression that if the Zendik farm collapsed or if a Zendik child decided to stray from the way of life he learned from them and went into the city to live, he would have no idea what to do. How to survive in that world, and how to deal with all of the stresses and worries that "normal" people go thru in life. I just feel children in a cult don't have much room to grow as much as someone who is raised into this modern society.

I think its easier for a kid in the modern world to adapt then it is a child of a cult. As they have more expereinces to learn and grow.

 

No. It is not like they keep their kids locked into a basement or anything like that. I get the distinct impression that they interact and have contact with the outside world. On Arol’s radio show she talked about how all the kids there play an online game called warcraft. If I recall what was said on the show correctly, Arol was completely against the kids playing the game. Yet all the parents went out and brought the game for their kids anyway. (So much for Arol being some controlling matriarch who has everyone submitting to her will.)

It seams that they are exposed to the outside world and their will is no more suppressed than a kid who lives in a strong Christian family.

Strange, I get the exact opposite impression. If the farm were to close I believe the people there would survive just fine. They know what the world is about and how to survive in it.

On there other hand, if some disaster should befall our society I don’t know how well we would do. I don’t think we would adapt as well as the zediks (and other similar groups).

 

Dalamar: I can’t believe you’re arguing that because the Zendiks allow their kids to play online video games, that somehow amounts to a healthy degree of interaction with the world outside their farm! I feel strange talking about other people’s children, since it’s none of my business how they’re raised...so I’ll limit myself to pointing out the obvious fact that these kids almost NEVER LEAVE THE FARM. (At least, the kids stayed put 99% of the time when I was at the Farm.) If you spent your entire life in a 100-acre radius (or however much land the Zendiks have these days), interacting with roughly the same group of people, all of whom are sworn to the same belief system, and all of whom actively and absolutely reject everything outside of their community...well, I don’t know what else to call this except: extreme isolation. And if you were a kid who had no more than three or four other kids to hang out with at any given time, again, we’d call this: extreme isolation.

You seem to be saying that they’re “allowed” to interact with the outside world, but that’s rather creepy, isn’t it? As if it’s a point in the Zendiks’ favor to say that they don’t FORBID their kids to communicate with the outside world. And it’s also hardly a point in the Zendiks’ favor to say that at least these kids are not much more dumb or naive than the kids of (say) Christian fundamentalists in the sticks. Isn’t the idea of the Zendik experiment to do better?

 

godlesscommie

Well I guess I could have worded that better but, it is late and I am very tired. The point I was making is that the outside world does make it’s way on to the farm. Honestly, I don’t know how often the kids leave the farm. It does seem like they are knowledgeable of the outside world. Perhaps they have no interest in leaving.

I believe part of the point of ZF is to create a place that is better than life outside the farm where people would not want to leave. If they are successful in creating such an atmosphere I could see why people, adults and children alike, would not wish to leave.

 

Your post reminded me of those thoroughly depressing occasions when I’d return to my backward rural New England hometown and discover that certain people I went to high school with are still there, doing precisely what they were doing ten or fifteen years ago...still pumping gas, still flipping burgers, etc. We wouldn’t say that my hometown should therefore be considered some sort of paradise...so perfect and wonderful that no one would ever want to leave it. Instead, we’d say, isn’t it amazingly fucking sad that these people are too scared to leave home, or have so little ambition that the outside world has no attraction for them? The point is, we could read the fact that the kids never leave as a pro-Zendik point (it’s so great there that the kids don’t want to leave), or as an anti-Zendik point (the kids are so unequipped to deal with the life outside their farm that they really have no choice but to stay put...not to mention, they must be scared of this outside world, through years of being indoctrinated in the evils of the Deathkultur.) Then again, like all kids, these kids can’t just do whatever the hell they want, so their “choice” of staying at the Farm is really no choice at all...and it therefore makes no sense to turn this into a point in the Zendik's favor.

I’m not a parent, so I don't really think too much about what's good or bad for kids, so maybe I should quit while I’m ahead...but still, the topic is making me think of the 1,001 things that kids in the real world take for granted that kids at Zendik Farm don’t have. Minor stuff like tuba lessons, school trips, little league, borrowing dad's car to go for a spin, etc....and major stuff like (more than 1 or 2) friends their own age, boyfriends and girlfriends, a real education, career training, etc. Of course, the Zendiks would laugh at the idea of “career training” (becoming tools of the man, etc.)...but the point of childhood is not to have a cool time riding horses and running around in the woods. The point is to mature, prepare for life as an adult. And it seems like the Zendik kids are being prepared for precisely one role in life: to stay at the Farm and produce more Zendik kids of their own some day.

Maybe you're right and it wouldn't be such a disaster if these kids tried to venture out into the real world. And it's also true that these kids know certain things that other kids don't know (basically, how to do farm work). But to succeed in the real world, they'd have to start from scratch, and forget everything they learned growing up at the Farm...whereas the rest of us (in theory, at least) use what we learned growing up to succeed in the world as adults. It's true that these kids know about the world outside the Farm, but in a rather limited sense...just as American kids "know about" China in the sense that they know it exists somewhere out there, and know that it really has nothing to do with their lives.

 

p.s.

How does the line from that song go...

"There's one more kid that'll never go to school
Never get to fall in love
Never get to be cool..."

Little did Neil know that he was writing about the Zendiks...

 

Well since neither of us knows which of the above statements is true I guess we would have to consider this part of the debate a wash.

 

I should add, by the way, that I'd much rather spend my day with one of the Zendik kids than your typical American Deathkultur kid...because (a) they're more or less unplugged from the whole video games/Harry Potter/Star Wars/Brittney Spears entertainment-industrial complex that most kids are completely immersed in, (b) they spend their lives around adults, so they're fun to hang out with, (c) they recognize that work is a part of life, and so they're not as bratty, prissy, spoiled as most kids. So the Zendik kids are pretty cool...which is why I worry about what might become of them if they ever decide to "see the world" and leave the Zendik nest...