Zendik

Sorry about the swearing.

And I know you're just pushing buttons, dalamar. I get annoyed when people suggest that it's possible to freeload off the Zendiks.

When I was a Zendik, I was told that it cost $50 per month, per person to feed the group. Again, this was 1991-'93. I don't know how accurate that estimate was, or if it included things other than food (toothpaste, tampons, toilet paper, and soap). Some higher-ups got meat and specialty items in their diets, but communal meals were almost always rice-and-beans vegetarian (if they were vegan, they could have gotten this cost even lower). Keep in mind that they're non-profit-- we got a lot of donations of food and other supplies, and we paid no taxes.

Even I, a shitty salesman, could make $50 in one day selling magazines on the streets of Austin. We also sold animals and pecans, and I'm guessing that people paid for the Zendik demolition services as well. During the two years I spent there, I received two new items of clothing: a pair of running shoes and a sportsbra. I also received a hairbrush and toothbrush.

You can access their tax forms online (it's a legal requirement for nonprofit groups) and see how much they spend on human health care (which would be the other major expense):
http://www.guidestar.org/index.jsp
Search "Zendik" for their financial profile. You have to register with the site to access PDFs of the Zendik tax forms, but it's free.

They could be lying about their finances.. but it looks like they're actually just a bunch of fuckups.

 

And I wouldn't have needed the running shoes and the sportsbra if we weren't forced to run two miles several times per week. So, yeah.. they could save some money there, too.

The one time I saw a doctor, they made me ask my father to pay for it. I think it was $30 or so. He paid.

 

No I am not just trying to push peoples buttons. I am however playing the devils advocate a bit in an effort to ascertain the truth about this place.

I am actually grateful for this thread. Before I found it I was considering going there. Now I am not sure anymore.

Don’t worry about the anger. I have felt the same in my own situation. Having been there I also know how my personal anger can color my views of things. All I was trying to do was get people past the anger.

 

Haha..

Oh dear, memory lane..

I remember Arol lecturing the group during Interpersonal because she felt that the toilet paper bill was too high. She instructed we ladies to wipe (after urinating) with only TWO SQUARES of (one-ply) toilet paper. Forever afterward my hands were covered in piss.

p.s.
dalamar, your devil's advocacy is well-done, and I think your posts are rad!

 

Just thinking about chucking hay bails makes my back hurt. This task should be an event in one of those “World’s Strongest Man” competitions that they show on ESPN at 3 in the morning. We had Sundays off in my day...and Zendik became a sort of ghost town on Sundays, as everyone disappeared to do their own thing. This was a relief, but at the same time, a bit depressing, because it seemed like being a Zendik meant always either doing official Zendik stuff (work, meals, watching “Wulf raps,” etc.) or being by yourself. The funny thing is, my fondest memories of Zendik involve those rare moments in between (when we were not doing collective Zendik stuff, and I was not just doing my own thing), but when we were doing decidedly un-Zendik things together (like the dance parties, or shooting pool, or watching movies), when everyone stopped being a Zendik for awhile and started acting like normal human beings...

In the year that I was there, the Zendiks allotted exactly $4 for my personal use...two pairs of shorts, for $2 each at Goodwill. Between you and me, when I was out on the street, selling mags and tapes (which I was also terrible at, because of my lack of overall charisma, but also because I couldn’t force my mouth to say certain things, like “your lie is your pain,” etc.), I’d sneak a buck or two from my earnings to buy smokes. (Though my crime was mitigated, I think, by the fact that I shared the tobacco with the other Zendik “secret smokers”). Don’t tell the Zendiks, or they might come knocking on my door for the $20 or so that went to my secret stash of Bugler Tobacco over the course of a year.

 

Nez stole hundreds and didn't even get kicked out for it!

...but he was fucking Arol, after all...

 

It sounds, Red Lentil, like the Farm was a bit more hardcore in your day (no days off, making people run, toilet paper rationing). On the other hand, being a Zendik meant living according to an overall pattern where the leaders from on high would send the little people some new directive which would suddenly make life a lot more difficult ("from now on, everyone has to do X"). Actually, I liked running, because it meant that I could be alone for at least 30 minutes or so each day. It's very possible, by the way, that I met you, though you'd never remember it, because I stopped by the Farm (for a day) on a road trip with my friends in the summer of '92 (this is how I found out about the place initially...I returned a few years later after I dropped out of grad school). And yes, they made me dig ditches on that day...

 

Yeah, they were trying to become self-sufficient on the Texas farm, so there was a lot more farmwork to do. The population dwindled down to 24 at one point during my stay, which made the workload that much heavier.

Zendik Farm, in my day at least, was poorly organized. Arol was the one calling the shots-- if she says we plant wheat here, we plant it here, no questions asked. She believes (as a Zendik) that women are biologically determined to run the world (read her essay "On Men and Women", available on the Zendik website), which means that she carries her leadership role into areas that she knows little or nothing about. We wasted a lot of time, energy, labor. Why keep a herd of goats so large that we THROW MILK AWAY? We had a draft horse which was used for pulling farm equipment, but why the hell did we keep non-working horses when we could (supposedly) barely afford to feed ourselves? Why did we have 30 pet dogs? Why did we sell our (nutritionally superior) pecans to buy peanuts?

And on and on..

The same sort of tragic waste that happens in any other top-down power structure.. except that this one sells itself as a glorious alternative to all of that.

Of course, I'm a fucking anarchist.
With a filthy mouth.

 

Yes, I do have an idea how heavy those things are. In all honesty (that is the zendik way right?) I probably could not lift one of those things. Most likely they would kick me out in just a few days (if I lasted that long) from my inability to do heavy labor. Which really is a shame because there are a lot of other things I am good at that would benefit them.

So there are some closet smokers among the zendiks. I had a feeling there might be. I know people who quit hard drugs but, you would have to pry their sigs from their cold dead fingers. Then they will come back and haunt you from the grave for taking them.

Any way glad you liked my posts and I did not ruffle your feathers too much.

 

Yes I just read that one. She does not sound like she likes men too much. I thought both were supposed to be equal?

 

They didn't "provide me with food," I worked for it. If I had stopped working they wouldn't have let me hang around, and that's understandable, but the point is that they didn't GIVE me anything. Also, I did not leave Zendik because I didn't like their ideas. I still agree with many of their ideas. I left because I saw them not living up to or even trying to live up to their OWN ideas.

I'm not particularly angry at the Zendiks. I'm angry at the hypocrisy I saw at Zendik and the fact they hold themselves out as being this friendly, just and free haven when they're not. They exploit people. They did not particularly exploit me, however. I went of my own free will, had a good summer in which I worked hard and breathed fresh air, and left about 15 pounds lighter and more muscular. But that was only true because I had a place to go and never made the great Zendik commitment. I was only a migrant Zendik and therefore did not have to endure the kinds of mind games that Red Lentil and others describe.

it's more discouragement than anger, and it's discoragement not only at Zendik but at this whole society and the crummy direction it's going in, and the fact that the Zendiks are exploiting people by giving them the false hope of an escape from our society.

 

Actually he was kicked out in part because of the money stash. Nez masturbating in women’s underwear really set Arol off, but I think she would have booted him anyway because of the money. It must be hard sleeping with the devil. We had this special mid-day meeting where he was summarily banished and then we divided up all his stuff(minus cash, cigs, and music). I got his favorite shirt. I couple months later he comes crawling back to the Farm with his tail between his legs. The first person he sees upon entering the main house is me, and I’m wearing his shirt. If he wasn’t feeling like such a worm at that moment, I’m sure he would have taken it back immediately. You could see the anger of Zendik privilege burring in the back of his eyes.

And pity the poor fool who asks. Ambi was asked to build a very nice fence in front of the main house. Just as he was completing a month or two of work, Arol told him rip it out and do something completely different. He argued with her vehemently, but it is hard to argue with someone who feels entitled to rule over you. He was kicked out of the “outer core” over the issue. He eventually managed to repress his anger enough that he wasn’t booted completely out, at least not right away.

There was a professional DJ who came to the Farm as an apprentice. During his stay a dance party was scheduled, and he was going to DJ. I, and several others, helped him to set the party up. It was a great party. Afterwards he told me that setting up for the party was the greatest experience he had there because he saw that there were people who were willing to help him do the thing that made him happy, just for the sake of friendship, and he could turn around and do the same for others. Now at the end of his apprenticeship, when he was forced to surrender $10K of DJ equipment to the community, I’m sure he felt ripped off just as we all did when leaving. Yet, he also came away with a memory of what community could be like.



My fond memories include camping on the 900 acres at the end of the road, and swimming in the river. As I’m thinking of those moments, I’m realizing they all occurred when Arol and the elite were away from the farm on a trip, and everyone else had a collective sigh of relief. So imagine what community life would have been like with out all that Zendik self-righteous anger lording over you every day…

 

This icky little detail about Nez seems to me a manifestation of normalcy on poor Nez’s part (at least according to the Freudian perspective, which teaches us that it’s perfectly normal to be a pervert). Also makes sense that he’d feel an (ahem) “special connection” to ladies’ undies when you consider that they were rather a rare sight at the Farm, where underwear is generally considered to be unnecessary...

I think you’re right, Jonp, about your point on community (it sometimes felt good or inspiring to be a member of a close community). It seems, though, like the stuff that we got a kick out of at the Farm is precisely the stuff that the Zendiks would, in true “Grinch Who Stole Christmas” fashion, sooner or later crack down on, because it would be deemed too “streety,” i.e., too much of a corrupt pleasure left over from our Deathkultur lives. I have mixed feelings about this...because on the one hand, the whole point of joining the Farm is CHANGING oneself for the better, which means learning how to be disciplined and somewhat ascetic in one’s relation to the things that one got off on in the DK. (Which is to say, I don’t blame the Zendiks for taking away my cigarettes and coffee, or telling others that they can’t watch TV or play video games). People (myself included) often were attracted to the Farm as a sort of “cry for help,” Betty Ford Clinic experience, where you’re willfully surrendering your power to a group in order to "save you from yourself." But on the other hand, it seemed like the Zendiks themselves often got off on stripping you of the stuff that got you off...i.e., they didn’t (for example) forbid me from drinking coffee for my benefit, but because they got an obscene little thrill out of the feeling of POWER that comes from telling me what to do, from making me feel like a bad little boy...

p.s.
It just struck me how absurd, at this point, it is for me to argue for the good points of Zendik Farm, like how much fun certain communal activities were...sort of like arguing that joining the Army is a blast, because when you go on furlough, you get to drink with your buddies...

 

As far as the “tragic waste” issue goes that Red Lentil brought up...if you ask me, the clearest example of this would be their fanatical commitment to a 100% organic diet. Always seemed rather insane to me that in this community of people who were struggling for basic survival, so many of our resources were being sucked up in this effort to purify ourselves of anything “toxic”...and also insane that this would be the top priority of a supposedly “revolutionary” political movement (as if Che Guevara would have done better to worry about the condition of his colon, and not so much about overthrowing Batista). Organic health has never been my top priority (he said, as he lit another cigarette), so maybe others on this board would disagree with me...but there seemed to be something weirdly superstitious or occult about the Zendiks’ belief that, say, eating a non-organic orange is like eating strychnine. I say superstitious because the health info. that informed the Zendiks’ diet seemed to come from some rather dubious sources.

 

Brilliant Che analogy!



We were really paranoid about cancer... not unlike Jim Jones (who, like Wulf, taught his people that "the end justifies the means"-- but that's another story). I remember Lore being terrified when, on a selling trip, I wet my toothbrush with tap water. I might as well have been dipping it in the toilet, the way she looked at me.

 

"For one to be a revolutionary doctor or to be a revolutionary at all, there must first be a revolution. Isolated individual endeavor, for all its purity of ideals, is of no use, and the desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone, solitarily, in some corner of America..." -- Che Guevara

 

/

 

It is not absurd at all. It is healthy to remember the good points of your experience there. The things you learned and friendships you made etc. I don’t think you came off a defending the place. I gather from your posts that you time was not 100% bad. You did have some good times there and it is ok to say so. I am sure others did as well but, it is just forgotten behind the anger and disappointment people are still carrying with them. I also gather that you would not recommend that other people go there either. You made that perfectly clear so don’t worry about that.

 

I guess my point was, sure, I had some good times at the Farm, but it seems like I had those good times despite the Farm (behind the Farm's back, as it were), and not because of it. Jonp reported having fun camping and swimming when he was at the Farm, but one can camp and swim anywhere, anytime, without selling one's soul to a cult. I liked watching movies and shooting pool with some of my Zendik homeboys, but again, one can watch movies and shoot pool with the boys anywhere, anytime...

I'd agree with what you've been saying about how it's a massive waste of energy to be angry at the Zendiks...and a lot of the negative stuff (and sarcastic stuff) that I've written here might seem like anger, but it's really not. I think there's a difference between the attitude that says "those goddamn Zendiks ruined my life! By God, I'll make them pay for how they treated me!" and the attitude (which I've tried to adopt here) that says "well...the Zendiks aren't such bad people once you get to know them, but Jesus, do they talk a lot of shite..."

 

To be hones I was not sure where you stood on the zendiks. You seemed to say on one they sucked but, there is this other side to them as well.

As to the (anger, resentment, disappointment) I think people need to have a chance to express those feelings and get them out. That’s very important and part of recovering from such an ordeal. However, at some point you have to move on to something more constructive. Perhaps people can chanal that anger and organize. Perhaps even create a community that does live by those ideals. The people that went to the farm did so, im sure, because they were looking for something. I know that is why I looked into the farm and ultimately found this forum. But, people may still be lacking something in their lives. The thing that made them decide to go to the farm in the first place. Unfortunately, there is no place where they can get there needs met which of course leads to more frustration and hopelessness.

Perhaps we should get like 50 or so people to all join the farm together and force change through sheer numbers. While it is easy to shout down/dismiss one or 2 people, to do the same with 30-50 people who are unwaveringly united is a far more difficult task.