At various times, people have asked me about the time that I was a member of a “cult”. Well, here’s my experience in a nutshell.
Circa 1988, I joined the Kerista Commune. They humorously described themseves as a “Utopian Sex Cult.” Although not a dangerous or suicidal group such as the Branch Davidians or Heaven’s Gate, the group had many of the definitive characteristics of a cult.
When I joined, the commune had been in existence for almost twenty years. The founder of the commune, Jake Preston aka Jud, had founded several previous attempts which had not survived. I was a member for about a year. Today, the commune has completely disbanded. It partially disbanded in 1992, leaving eight people living in a single group. Over the years, the people in that group have paired off. Many of us from the original commune meet in the SF Bay area each year; I value the friendships I’ve made with many of those people and look forward to seeing them each year.
Other people are living polyfidelitous and communal lifestyles today, but I’m not involved with any of them.
The stated description of the group included: polyfidelity, communal living, utopian social philosophy, philanthropy, a democratic social process, and psychological growth.
Polyfidelity is the sexual lifestyle of fidelity within a group. In my case I was a member of the Purple Submarine BFIC (Best Friend Identity Cluster), with 10 men and 10 women. In our case we were all heterosexual, and our specific sexual tastes were quite tame: no group sex, nothing between individuals that would shock your grandparents. There was one BFIC with two bisexual women.
We conducted sleeping arrangements with a sleeping schedule: each person would sleep with the members of the opposite sex in turn, in order of joining the BFIC. Naturally that tended to divide people into nesters, people who tended to sleep in the same bedroom from night to night, and nomads, people who rarely slept in the same bed. As it turned out (not surprisingly) most of the women were nesters, most of the men nomads. Sleeping was really sleeping; sex was never demanded or expected (but usually did occur). Outside of the sleeping schedule, one could enjoy sex any time with someone as both desired.
The suppression of jealousy was naturally a big part of the lifestyle. I myself had no problem with this aspect of the lifestyle, but it was occasionally a problem, especially in the early days of the commune long before I joined. By the time I got there, most of the jealosy issues had subsided or been suppressed. One curiousity was the elimination of public displays of affction. A good idea, IMHO; in such a group it would have been hard to keep such displays non-preferential.
Non-preferentiality was the key component of maintaining a polyfidelitious group. While each dyad (pair of people) had their own unique relationship and sexual chemistry, one was expected to have the same abstract value on each of the relationships. In some ways, it might seems like doublethink, but it seemed natural for me to value relationships similarly that had different specific expressions.
The social and philosophical bent on the commune was specifically Utopian. Intellectually and philosophically, we were trying to define and explore a way of living that we hoped might change the world. The primary concept was that communal living would save expenses, thus freeing up resources for investment, research and philanthropy.
Expense-wise, we were very successful. Eight cars served a group of 30+ people quite well, even given than many of us commuted to regular jobs. I estimate that housing costs were about a third that of the same number of people as couples living seperately. Many other expenses were a half or two thirds that of couples living seperately, given appliance sharing and bulk buying.
The philanthropy never did get off the ground. We had a couple of project going in Jamaica, but we imposed too many ideological conditions, and didn’t really offer enough money to make any sort of a difference.
We did a lot of interesting work on how to maintain communal living, but as the commune eventually disbanded, that work is of questionable value. A more interesting analysis would address why the commune eventually did disband, but that analysis has not yet been performed with any degree of rigor.
The commune did adopt many cult-like feature. Members, especially the founder, were very hung up on purity: maintaining “ideological consistency”, often in trivial or inappropriate matters. Maintaining the appearance of ideological consistency was, to me, the most difficult aspect of my communal experience. There wasn’t anything big I disagreed with, but there were aspects of the lifestyle in which I was less interested in than others.
Since our ideology was tremendously complicated, “impurity” was easy to establish as a pretext for conducting a personal conflict or vendetta. The founder of the communue, in my opinion, exploited this feature often, usually to challenge strong men who threatened his de facto dominance of the scene. Perhaps it is a badge of honor that I was frequently a target of such charges of impurity. Indeed such a charge was the proximate reason I left the commune for the last time.
Commune life was total, and we cultivated a certain sense of separateness. Each member, upon joining, took a commune name (mine was “Tru”). For most of my time there, I worked with them in our computer store and developing applications for our various businesses, socialized almost exclusively with them, and slept with them. In the latter part of my time, I did work outside the group, as a contract programmer, but I didn’t socialize much with my co-workers (not because of the commune; I normally don’t socialize much on short term contracts regardless of my lifestyle).
Managing 15-20 intimate relationships takes quite a lot of time and energy. I was sleeping with the women, which demands a high degree of intimacy, and there was a sense of closeness, heroic cameraderie in commune jargon, with the men in the group. Often it would literally take two hours to go from the back of one of our flats to the front door, because you would engage everyone in between in conversation. There was no particular sense of obligation, but when you’re that close to someone, it’s often difficult to just wave at them as you pass by.
The “psychological process” was also quite intense. Called Gestalt-o-Rama, it was modelled (very loosely) on Gestalt therapy encounter groups. None of us had any formal training in psychology. These marathon encounter sessions, often fueled by massive quantities of junk food, often resembled caricatures of the more pernicious “criticism/self-criticism” sessions featured in traditional political communism. Quite frequently a member (often the founder) would make some bizarre charge, and when you denied it, you were encountered for “defensiveness.” It was tremendously gruelling and self-esteem-shattering to be on the receiving end of one of these encounters.
We had our own religion, a self-created pantheon of “archetypes” that (naturally) modelled our lifestyle. “Communication” was established with these deities through a Ouiji-like “message” board, with three or four people with their hands on the cup spelling out messages. Since few actual decisions were made using this method, and no factual information was contradicted, my rationalists nature didn’t take much exception; “going with the flow” in this regard seemed a small price to pay for participation in the lifestyle. Certainly no one was ever nearly as uptight and self-righteous about our religion as anyone ever was about our secular ideology.
To their credit, there was no coercion at all. No one was ever forced to stay, or say or do anything contrary to their conscience. Quite the contrary, it was easy to say or do the wrong thing, or nothing whatsoever, and get kicked out of the commune. There was never any enforced isolation from people outside the scene; members were encourage to maintain their outside friendships and relationships with their relatives.
Likewise, no one ever turned over their capital to the group. One’s income, including interest income, was shared, but any property a person brought to the group remained their own.
The first 6 months I was in the group was a wonderful time. I was very happy, and felt accepted without compromising the core of my identity. I let a few weird things slide, and accepted a few weird ideas at face value.
After a while, though, my lack of brown nosing the founder started getting me in certain difficulties. Also, the sheer effort of maintiaing all the relationships and the constant Gestalt-o-Rama process just wore me down.
For about 6 months I had various difficulties. I left the commune three times for up to a week, left the BFIC a couple more times. I found I was keeping more and more of my own ideas and opinions to myself, knowing they would be attacked as ideologically impure. As I mentioned before, impurity was quite easy to simulate; the real thing would most definitely get one kicked out very quickly.
For my last month, I knew I would leave, it was just a matter of when. Fortunately, I had saved up enough of my outside salary that I could establish myself independently. When the final confrontation came, and I said, “Fuck it, I’m out of here,” I was prepared.
Fro about two years after I left, I had no contact at all with the members. Shortly before I divorced, I ran into a few of them by chance, and realized there were still strong feelings of friendship. I started hanging out with them again, and they were very supportive during my divorce. Since then, I’ve maintained friendships with many of the former members.
All in all I learned a lot in the group. Even given the esteem-killing “psychological procces”, the ego boost from having ten beautiful, intelligent women campaigning hard to bring you back to their beds cannot be denied. I will never be self-conscious about my sexual technique or abilities.
I have more of an insight into defensiveness and criticism. I’m much more able to accept and explore criticism without hardening up and going into complete denial. And, after surviving a year in a psychological pressure-cooker, I can handle most any group dynamic situation.
All in all, it was a wonderful year in my life. I have some great memories and some good friends to show for it. I’m glad I entered when I did, and I’m glad I left when I did. I think I’m a better person for the experience.
